Half in U.S. Continue to Say Gov’t Is an Immediate Threat
September 21st, 2015Via: Gallup:
Almost half of Americans, 49%, say the federal government poses “an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens,” similar to what was found in previous surveys conducted over the last five years. When this question was first asked in 2003, less than a third of Americans held this attitude.
Low Profile Solar Panels for People Living in Vans
September 21st, 2015Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand.
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Cops are the biggest problem for people who live in vehicles. Normal solar panels on a van would be a dead giveaway that someone doesn’t have a mortgage or a landlord.
Check out this couple’s almost invisible installation of three Renogy 100 watt flexible solar panels on the roof of their van.
Via: Exploring Alternatives:
Artificial Leaf Harnesses Sunlight for Efficient Fuel Production
September 20th, 2015Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand.
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I like reading the artificial leaf news, even though there are always tall hurdles ahead of the technology becoming practical. In this iteration of the artificial leaf, for example, the system only works for about 40 hours.
I wondered how much money was being spent on this potentially game changing research. Here you go:
On Monday, April 27, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced a five-year, $75 million renewal of the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP).
That’s a lot of money, right?
In alternative energy research, that’s a decent chunk of change over five years. But relative to other programs, you don’t want to prioritize research into technologies that lead to ubiquitous, clean, cheap energy. Oh hell no. That’s just crazy.
There are much more important programs out there! Take the F-35, for example, where I doubt that $75 million down the gurgler would even register anywhere in the annals of that disaster:
The F-35 has come to symbolize all that’s wrong with American defense spending: uncontrolled bloat, unaccountable manufacturers (in this case, Lockheed Martin), and an internal Pentagon culture that cannot adequately track taxpayer dollars.
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It’s no small irony that on the same day the change in Air Force strategy was revealed, Winslow Wheeler, a staff member at the Project On Government Oversight and a long-time critic of the F-35 program, reported that American taxpayers will pay between will pay between $148 million and $337 million per jet in 2015, depending on the model.
“A single Air Force F-35A costs a whopping $148 million. One Marine Corps F-35B costs an unbelievable $251 million. A lone Navy F-35C costs a mind-boggling $337 million. Average the three models together, and a ‘generic’ F-35 costs $178 million,” Wheeler wrote.
“It gets worse. These are just the production costs. Additional expenses for research, development, test and evaluation are not included,” he added.
And don’t believe the hype about Air Force contracts changing because of the F-35 debacle, either.
See: Long Range Strike Bomber:
The Air Force plans to purchase 80–100 LRS-B aircraft at a cost of $550 million each, at 2010 prices.
And if those things only wind up costing $550 million each, I’m Santa Claus.
Yep, clean energy is expensive.
Via: Caltech:
Generating and storing renewable energy, such as solar or wind power, is a key barrier to a clean-energy economy. When the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) was established at Caltech and its partnering institutions in 2010, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Energy Innovation Hub had one main goal: a cost-effective method of producing fuels using only sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide, mimicking the natural process of photosynthesis in plants and storing energy in the form of chemical fuels for use on demand. Over the past five years, researchers at JCAP have made major advances toward this goal, and they now report the development of the first complete, efficient, safe, integrated solar-driven system for splitting water to create hydrogen fuels.
Flying Robots Replace Oil Roughnecks
September 20th, 2015Via: Bloomberg:
Oil rig inspection is a dangerous business. Traditionally roughnecks dangled from a wire, in gale-force winds if needed, to manually log wear and tear on the girders. Assessments include giant chimneys — called flare stacks — that belch fire during million-dollar-a-day shutdowns.
Increasingly the industry has found that swapping abseiling humans for small drones equipped with high-definition and thermal cameras can save time, cut costs and improve safety.
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The next milestone for inspection drones is automating their flight. “We still have to send out an oil and gas inspection engineer and a drone pilot. Our vision is total automation,” says Blackford.
Apple Meets California Officials to Discuss Self-Driving Car
September 19th, 2015Via: Guardian:
Apple executives have discussed their plans for an “autonomous vehicle” with officials at California’s department of motor vehicles (DMV), the Guardian has learnt.
According to documents obtained by the Guardian, Mike Maletic, a senior legal counsel at Apple, had an hour-long meeting on 17 August with the department’s self-driving car experts Bernard Soriano, DMV deputy director, and Stephanie Dougherty, chief of strategic planning, who are co-sponsors of California’s autonomous vehicle regulation project, and Brian Soublet, the department’s deputy director and chief counsel.
The discussions come as Google and Uber are both advancing their plans to develop self-driving cars. Google already has a fleet of robot cars on the streets of California and is planning to have several hundred built in the near future.
Last month, the Guardian disclosed that Apple had looked into booking a secure car testing site in California to road-test its vehicle, codenamed Project Titan. Maletic wrote the mutual confidentiality agreement signed by GoMentum Station, a disused military base near San Francisco with miles of empty streets for driverless cars, when Apple inquired about testing there in May.
The department would not comment on what was discussed at the August meeting, beyond saying that “the Apple meeting was to review [the] DMV’s autonomous vehicle regulations.”
Japan Curtails Its Pacifist Stance
September 19th, 2015Via: The Atlantic:
Seven decades after its surrender ended World War II, Japan took its most significant step away from the pacifist foreign policy that shaped 70 years of its post-war history.
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The bill passed on Friday does not change Article 9’s language. That would require a constitutional amendment and two-thirds support in both houses of the Diet, which Abe and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party lack. Instead, it reinterprets it to allow for “collective self-defense.”
Japanese forces will now be able to assist the U.S. and other allies if those allies were attacked, although there would still be limits on the scope and scale of Japanese assistance. The BBC notes, for example, that Japan could now shoot down a North Korean missile fired at the U.S. and provide logistical support to South Korea if Pyongyang invaded, but could not deploy Japanese troops to Korea.
Cyborg Insects
September 19th, 2015Via: Vice:
I asked Anthes why she thought the military was so keen to work with insects. “I’d imagine there are several reasons,” she said. “Firstly those creatures are simpler to work with, biologically speaking. It’s much easier to commandeer an insect’s nervous system than a dog’s or a human’s. But also, for the specific applications they were imagining, I believe they wanted small, inconspicuous animals.”
The reasoning behind their call was also similar to that behind the Acoustic Kitty decades earlier: technology piggybacking on an already-living, remote control “insect drone” would be easier than building a robot from scratch. In this case, the creature would have the advantage of natural flight.
75% in U.S. See Widespread Government Corruption
September 19th, 2015Via: Gallup:
Three in four Americans (75%) last year perceived corruption as widespread in the country’s government. This figure is up from two in three in 2007 (67%) and 2009 (66%).
Scientists Claim They Have Grown Human Sperm in the Lab
September 19th, 2015Via: Independent:
Human sperm cells have been made in the laboratory for the first time by culturing immature cells taken from the testes of infertile men. The breakthrough promises to help young boys made sterile by cancer treatments and adult men who cannot make their own sperm, scientists have claimed.
The sperm cells made in an artificial “bioreactor” look identical to those produced naturally. The technology could be used in two to four years to help infertile men have their own biological children, according to researchers based at a French national research institute in Lyon.
Scientists have been trying for two decades to find a way of producing human sperm in the test tube (in vitro). But no one has been able to complete the complicated cycles of cell division and development that lead the immature “germ cells” in the male testes to become fully mature sperm cells capable of successfully fertilising eggs.
Analysis of Antidepressant Paxil Finds Data on Teen Risk Was Held Back
September 18th, 2015Via: Reuters:
A medical journal criticised British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline on Thursday for delaying access to key data from a trial of its antidepressant paroxetine (Seroxat, Paxil) that would have shown earlier that it is neither safe or effective in adolescents.
The widely used medicine is linked to an increased risk of suicide in young people and has carried a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) “black box warning” advising against its use in adolescents since 2004.
Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency recommended in 2003 that antidepressants like paroxetine should not be used in children or adolescents, and European regulators followed suit in 2005.
But, writing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), researchers who re-analysed a paroxetine study first published in 2001 said the drug’s dangerous side effects could easily have been highlighted years earlier.
“This is fundamentally about correcting the scientific record,” said Peter Doshi of the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy in the United States, a BMJ associate editor.
The re-analysis used previously unseen data from records of patients involved in the trial and found that at least 12 out of 93 children taking the drug had developed suicidal thoughts.
