CEOs Make 373 Times Average Worker Pay
May 19th, 2015Via: CNBC:
The average S&P 500 company CEO made 373 times the salary of the average production and non-supervisory worker in 2014, up from 331 times in 2013, according to the AFL-CIO.
Fermenting Morphine with Genetically Modified Yeasts
May 19th, 2015Laudanum Pale Ale?
Via: Radio New Zealand:
Scientists have figured out how to brew morphine using the same kit used to make beer at home.
They have genetically modified yeast to perform the complicated chemistry needed to convert sugar to morphine.
The findings, published in Nature Chemical Biology, raise promise for medicine but also concerns about “home-brewed” illegal drugs.
Experts have called for tight control of organisms genetically modified to produce narcotics.
If you brew beer at home, then you are relying on microscopic yeast that turns sugars into alcohol.
But by borrowing DNA from plants, scientists have been genetically engineering yeasts that can perform each of the steps needed to convert sugar into morphine.
One stage of the process – the production of an intermediary chemical called reticuline – had been a stumbling block.
That has been solved by a team at the University of California, Berkeley, and the scientists say it should now be possible to put all the steps together and “brew” morphine.
Dr John Dueber, a bioengineer at the university, said: “What you really want to do from a fermentation perspective is to be able to feed the yeast glucose, which is a cheap sugar source, and have the yeast do all the chemical steps required downstream to make your target therapeutic drug.
“With our study, all the steps have been described, and it’s now a matter of linking them together and scaling up the process.
“It’s not a trivial challenge, but it’s doable.”
Ripasso Testing 34% Efficient Concentrated Solar System in Kalahari Desert
May 18th, 2015Disclosures: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand and I’m long Enphase Energy.
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Via: Guardian:
A new solar electricity generation system that developers claim is the most efficient in the world, is being tested in South Africa’s Kalahari desert.
The Swedish company behind the project – which combines military technology with an idea developed by a 19th-century Scottish engineer and clergyman – says it is on the verge of building its first commercial installation.
In the remote Northern Cape province, huge mirrors reflect the sun across the brown Kalahari sand. This is the test site for Swedish company Ripasso, which is using the intense South African sun and local manufacturing know-how to develop their cutting-edge kit.
“Our whole team in South Africa has been hired locally, and our new systems have all been built with local South African labour. It works great,” says CEO Gunnar Larsson.
This is one of the few operational small-scale concentrated solar energy systems of its kind in the world. 34% of the sun’s energy hitting the mirrors is converted directly to grid-available electric power, compared to roughly half that for standard solar panels.
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Independent tests by IT Power in the UK confirm that a single Ripasso dish can generate 75 to 85 megawatt hours of electricity a year – enough to power 24 typical UK homes. To make the same amount of electricity by burning coal would mean releasing roughly 81 metric tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.
Paul Gauche, director of the Solar Thermal Energy Research Group at the University of Stellenbosch has visited the test site many times. “The technology looks good to me. I’ve seen it working and I believe it meets the efficiency goals. The technology is proven with years of performance in the navy.”
He points out that it will be crucial to keep costs low enough to compete with photovoltaics, a significant challenge as their price falls every year. The system is also limited in that it is only useful in areas with consistent bright sunshine.
The technology works by using the mirrors as giant lenses that focus the sun’s energy to a tiny hot point, which in turn drives a zero-emission Stirling engine.
Oil Tycoon Wanted University of Oklahoma Earthquake Researchers Dismissed
May 18th, 2015Via: Bloomberg:
Oil tycoon Harold Hamm told a University of Oklahoma dean last year that he wanted certain scientists there dismissed who were studying links between oil and gas activity and the state’s nearly 400-fold increase in earthquakes, according to the dean’s e-mail recounting the conversation.
The One About The “U.S. Cracking Down on Militarization of Local Police”
May 18th, 2015Oh sure, and I guess all of those weapons and other equipment are just going to turn into a giant pumpkin at midnight.
Via: MSNBC:
The federal government will no longer provide heavy military equipment like tanks and grenade launchers to local cops following weeks of backlash against officers who confronted protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, in armored vehicles and camouflage last year, President Barack Obama will announce Monday.
And if they want other, less-imposing military equipment, local law enforcement agencies will have to submit to stringent federal oversight and restrictions, according to guidelines Obama will outline during a visit to discuss police reform in Camden, New Jersey, for years one of the most dangerous cities in America.
Self Driving Trucks Will Wipe Out Millions of Jobs
May 18th, 2015Via: Medium:
Robot trucks also don’t need salaries?—?salaries that stand to go up because fewer and fewer people want to be truckers. A company can buy a fleet of self-driving trucks and never pay another human salary for driving. The only costs will be upkeep of the machinery. No more need for health insurance either. Self-driving trucks will also never need to stop to rest, for any reason. Routes will take less time to complete.
All of this means the replacement of truckers is inevitable. It is not a matter of “if”, it’s only a matter of “when.” So the question then becomes, how long until millions of truckers are freshly unemployed and what happens to them and all the rest of us as a result?
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Take all of these estimates together, and we’re looking at a window of massive disruption starting somewhere between 2020 and 2030.
The Future of Wind Turbines? No Blades
May 18th, 2015Via: Wired:
A Spanish company called Vortex Bladeless is proposing a radical new way to generate wind energy that will once again upend what you see outside your car window.
Their idea is the Vortex, a bladeless wind turbine that looks like a giant rolled joint shooting into the sky. The Vortex has the same goals as conventional wind turbines: To turn breezes into kinetic energy that can be used as electricity. But it goes about it in an entirely different way.
Instead of capturing energy via the circular motion of a propeller, the Vortex takes advantage of what’s known as vorticity, an aerodynamic effect that produces a pattern of spinning vortices. Vorticity has long been considered the enemy of architects and engineers, who actively try to design their way around these whirlpools of wind. And for good reason: With enough wind, vorticity can lead to an oscillating motion in structures, which, in some cases, like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, can cause their eventual collapse.
Where designers see danger, Vortex Bladeless’s founders—David Suriol, David Yáñez, and Raul Martín—sees opportunity. “We said, ‘Why don’t we try to use this energy, not avoid it,’” Suriol says. The team started Vortex Bladeless in 2010 as a way to turn this vibrating energy into something productive.
Missing Morgan Stanley Trader Found Dead
May 18th, 2015Via: Bloomberg:
Murray Abbott, an institutional sales trader at Morgan Stanley in Toronto who had been missing since April 25, was found Monday by the shore of Lake Ontario near the city’s Beaches neighborhood where he lived. He was 36.
His death wasn’t suspicious, Mark Pugash, a Toronto Police Service spokesman, said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “It was obviously a very tragic missing person’s case.”
Why Today’s Automobile Industry Looks A Lot Like IBM in 1985
May 18th, 2015Via: TechCrunch:
With the number of mobile phone subscriptions shortly expected to exceed the total global population, what is the next great connected device going to look like? Hint: It’ll have four wheels.
Gartner predicts that there will be 250 million connected cars on the road by 2020. That means one in every three cars on the road will be connected. By then, digital diagnostics, infotainment channels and enhanced navigation systems are expected to constitute a $270 billion industry, up from $47 billion today.
The only problem is that, now, the automobile industry is looking a lot like IBM did in 1985.
BP Hires Former MI6 Boss John Sawers
May 18th, 2015Via: Guardian:
BP has hired the former head of MI6 as it seeks to capitalise on his top-level diplomatic experience while dealing with some of the toughest political environments around the world.
Sir John Sawers, who was head of the Secret Intelligence Service between 2009 and 2014, has joined the oil company’s board as a non-executive member.
BP’s chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, said the former spy chief “brings extensive experience of international affairs and geopolitics”.
Sawers’ five-year tenure as boss of MI6 spanned two prime ministers, Gordon Brown and David Cameron. He has 36 years of experience working for the UK government in international affairs and security.
Research Credit: eo
