SD Science Junction

*** Something must be happening at Sanford Underground Lab.

KELO TV has some coverage of the Sanford Underground Lab at the old Homestake Mine in Lead.  Sure would be nice to get a little information on that, but Bill Harlan, chief propaganda minister for the project and founder of the blog Mt. Blogmore, does not believe blogs such as SD Scientific Junction or Dakota Today warrant any kind of notification of news releases or even notices at Sandord Underground Research Lab.

So look for that important stuff someplace else.

--- Doug Wiken with information from nowhere

*** College lectures archaic practice left over from Gutenberg Press days

I have sat through perhaps thousands of University course lectures and wondered since the first day if there couldn't be a better way to do this.  A professor or graduate assistant standing at the front of the room droning on with information that does not relate in a useful way to text material is something left over from 100s of  years ago when books were very scarce and very expensive.  That is not the case now and has not been for many years.

Right now (noon to 1PM, Jan 4, 2012) SDPB-Radio is running a program from American Radio Works titled "Don't Lecture Me".  The gist of it suggests that science and math lecture instruction is currently very ineffective uses of professors' and students' time. 

College instruction which is aimed primarily at sorting out unworthies such as that at SDSM&T prevents serious consideration of alternate instruction systems which might not waste the time and lives of 2/3 of the students who start at SDSM&T. 

If you want to get an idea of how science instruction/education must be changed if the US is not to languish in Science and technology becoming the equivalent of a third-world science country, listen to  "Don't Lecture Me". 

Systems based on scarcities of year 1440, do not make sense in 2012 and haven't made sense for many years.  Faculty administrators and professors have a cushy familiar system which benefits them primarily and their students only secondarily or thirdly or worsely {I know, but as my daughter used to say, "It could have been wuss, mommy.").

The South Dakota Board of Regents is failing nearly completely to seriously consider the time and resources of students.  The whole South Dakotahigher education system needs very fundamental re-working based on how humans actually learn.  But, don't hold your breath, this should have been obvious nearly 100 years ago.

by Doug Wiken opinion based Public Radio and enduring a score of years listening to lectures.

 

*** Exploit Ethanol advantages in engines designed for the high Octane Fuel

I suspect every real scientist is aware of the advantages of ethanol as a fuel, but also the disadvantage that by weight, ethanol has only about 66% as much energy as does gasoline. Alcohol does have the advantage of a 100 Octane however and that allows higher compression engines and relatively high turbo boost pressures.

Recently on Dakota Midday at SDPB-Radio, "Bob" the Caller, made it seem that ethanol was some kind of devil's plot because he could not run it in his old motorcycles or if he did he got reduced mileages.  He kept ranting until it appeared he was saying that ethanol had negative energy since he claimed more gasoline would be needed with the more alcohol used.  This is total nonsense even if alcohol used with lower compression ratios has only 66% of the energy of gasoline.

Yesterday, I read an article in CAR AND DRIVER titled too cutely "Driving under the Influence".  Even so, it has interesting information and history.  Take a look at an image of the page below.  Click on it for a larger version.

Click for larger more readable version.  Sized to print well on lettersize paper.

We in South Dakota already produce ethanol, and can produce methanol using our stranded wind energy.  Research and development or intelligent tinkering with existing engines to run optimally with alcohol would seem to be in the interests of the South Dakota economic development.  SDSM&T Mechanical Engineering and Chemistry Departments and the same at SDSU might think about some research projects for students using the ideas suggested in the CAR AND DRIVER article.  Get Car and Driver

-------- Written by Doug Wiken with information from Car and Driver Magazine.

*** What about 10,000 engineering internships in Obama Jobs speech?

In his recent speech to Congress concerning job growth in the USA, President Obama stated the following:

Already, we’ve mobilized business leaders to train 10,000 American engineers a year, by providing company internships and training. Other businesses are covering tuition for workers who learn new skills at community colleges. And we’re going to make sure the next generation of manufacturing takes root, not in China or Europe, but right here, in the United States of America. If we provide the right incentives and support — and if we make sure our trading partners play by the rules — we can be the ones to build everything from fuel-efficient cars to advanced biofuels to semiconductors that are sold all over the world. That’s how America can be number one again. That’s how America will be number one again.

I haven't searched for more information on that, but it would seem that might offer some extra opportunity for South Dakota engineering students at SDSM&T and SUSD and also perhaps for companies employing engineers in South Dakota.  If you have more information, let everybody know with a comment.

*** By Douglas Wiken

 

Fund both research on science and engineering, but also on teaching these courses effectively

At the same time we are hearing calls for balancing the US budget by slashing the budget for research and education, a lot of magazines are ending the year with reports on the top 50 inventions, science developments, etc. Some great ideas come from people with no formal engineering or science experience, but most require advanced study. The complexity of modern devices, computers, communications, medicine, biology, botany, cancer research, genetics research, etc all require years of preparation.

The position of the US in the world literally depends on greatly increased research rather than on reducing government aid for research. Some government money never produces anything obviously, but it may also almost never be obvious at the start of research whether it will result in just another needless consumer gadget or become the basis for whole new industries and profit centers which then can and should be taxed.

Anybody watching something besides Fox News and reading more than TEA “Party” propaganda will be aware of the current concern for lagging US science and math education and research. The sheer number of researchers and scientists in India and China by themselves requires the US do a much better job of science education by funding better teaching at both K-12 levels, but also in colleges and universities as well as research at those institutions..both in the sciences themselves, but also in best methods of instruction which don't grossly waste student's time and resources.

The education of scientists and engineers will fall far short of needs if professors intent on research consider students only as necessary evils who don’t warrant maintaining published office hours or worth consultation…or even good teaching or relevant fair testing.. let alone providing relevant relations to current engineering and science questions and work.

--- Doug Wiken...still looking for others to add relevant posts here.

** Use stranded wind in SD to produce hydrogen, ammonia, methanol

Georgia researcher claims to be able to produce hydrogen for less than the cost of gasoline.

Break through hydrolizer for cheap hydrogen

 South Dakota has a lot of potential wind energy resources, but since the impetus behind using this energy in South Dakota seems to come from the Public Utilities Commission, they see only power lines---power lines to export another resource out of South Dakota.  They are like the boy who has only a hammer and then thinks every problem is a nail.

It is my contention that SD would be much better off producing fuel with the electricity right here instead of helping maintain inefficient coastal city living with another form of cheap energy.

Our SD colleges and universities should be working on ideas like this instead of producing data for power companies interested in SD only as a source of green credits to enable them to continue polluting the world with fossil fuels such as coal elsewhere.

--- by Doug Wiken with information from Smart Planet, Smart Energy

The recent gene patents case and a perhaps irrelevant point or two

Recently reports of a court case that took a shot at gene patents hit the news.  I heard most of what facts I found on Science Friday on NPR.  The Myriad company claimed it had an "invention" and apparently patented the gene of a woman who had cancer.  This case is also interesting because apparently the patent did not suddenly make it possible for more tests for this cancer, but cut something like 8 labs out of the process and left the patenting company with a monopoly that effectively reduced the benefits of the knowledge which somewhat contradicts the idea justifying patents to begin with.

My perhaps irrelevant point about this relates to previous medical learning.  The first cavemen who slashed a fellow with a sharp stone found blood and muscle like that in other meat.  That however did not give them a claim on muscle and blood as an invention.  Scalpels finer and sharper than butcher knives made it possible for early scientists to discover internal organs, blood vessels, etc.  They did not however get patents on internal organs, veins or arteries.  Invention of the microscope made even finer knowledge of life and the body possible, but that did not mean such researchers got patents on brain cells, liver cells, or even on skin cells. 

By now you are probably getting my drift on this.  The invention of X-Ray technology and magnetic waves for even more discoveries did not give those researchers ownership and a patent on the discoveries of new features found in the human body and now viewable and measurable processes. 

Knowledge of genes, DNA, RNA and whatever else available with genetic research tools also should not give such researchers ownership of the cells, genes, or whatever else they can sort out with new versions of even sharper rocks and virtual knives and distilleries.

For a year or so, this court decision might provide some opportunities for South Dakota research unless of course such research would run afoul of the state imposition of religious myth to limit scientific research.

As usual comments welcome especially since my opinion on this may be actually irrelevant in law and science even if historians might find it amusing.

-- By Douglas Wiken with information from National Public Radio and recent SD newspapers.

South Dakota- Stranded Wind Paradise ready for our own development

South Dakota has a lot of wind.  South Dakota government seems to think it has to give all kinds of tax incentives and breaks to out-of-state or out-of-country corporations while it seems to work hard at making it impossible for South Dakotans themselves to develop wind energy or much of anything else for that matter.

Every idea I have read from SD bureaucrats and legislators and pleading special interests flatly state that we must subsidize or invest heavily in more power lines to make use of wind energy in South Dakota. It is just more "efficient" that way.  But, narrow focus on such absolute rather than practical efficiency can lead us down the wrong road.

South Dakota is a stranded wind paradise waiting for developments that are owned and run by South Dakotans with continuing jobs not just one-shot construction labor.

A blog that I have mentioned before discusses "stranded wind" like that in South Dakota. If you check that blog you will see a post on using wind energy to produce anhydrous ammonia which can be used as fertilizer or fuels.   In any case, in a farm magazine today, I noticed an article on a University of Minnesota project to convert wind-generated electricity into anhydrous ammonia.  The article in the print magazine has not yet reached the website however.

The article Technology: Made in the USA by Rhonda Brooks indicates a pilot project after 5 years in the making will be operating by next December "using wind power to drive a water electrolysis system to produce hydrogen and and air separations unit to pull nitrogen from the air" according to Mike Reese, renewable energy director at the UM west central research and outreach center.  He then indicates that the hydrogen and nitrogen will be combined in and advanced catalytic converter designed and developed by the university to produce ammonia.

The article notes that this is a way to greatly reduce the amount of natural gas imported from countries like China, India, and Russia.

More information is available at  Mike Reese U of M .   Much information at the site and also the snail mail  and email addresses which  follow.

Contact Information:
Michael Reese
Director- Renewable Energy
West Central Research & Outreach Center
University of Minnesota
(320) 589-1711

reesem@morris.umn.edu

Perhaps I am presenting a provincial, parochial perspective here, but this approach to wind energy development with ownership retained by South Dakota individuals, coops, partnerships, or corporations seems to make more economic sense in the long run than quick building of highly subsidized power lines to export another South Dakota resource so that coastal interests can again benefit as we remain a colony not just for ag products, but also for wind energy.  South Dakota development officials and university researchers need to be aware of this research and get ahead of the curve.

-- By Doug Wiken with information from Farm Industry News, Stranded Wind Blog, and the U of Minnesota.

New Red Menace: UG99 Wheat Fungus

Despite living in a part of the "wheat Breadbasket" of the USA, I had missed a story that apparently has been developing for over a year.  A new wheat rust fungus UG99 is attacking wheat in Africa and has spread on the wind apparently to other areas of the world, but not yet to the US except in research labs in frigid Minnesota.

You can read the story I saw in Wired Magazine today Inside the Race to Stop the UG99 Fungus by Brendan I. Koerner  .  Koerner notes the Wired Story and has a photo with some additional info at Micokhan . 

Earlier mention of the UG99 Wheat Stem Rust from Uganda can be found in a February 18, 2009 Washington Post article In the Wheat Fields of Kenya, A budding Epidemic .  A New York Times blog in a Science Area Dot Earth March 17, 2009 has an article indicating new wheat strains may resist the UG99 Wheat Stem Rust.

And an April 4, 2008 article at Asia Times Online indicates that Monsanto and other companies working with genetic manipulation or engineering may be trying to get patents on wheat resistant to UG99.  This story may contain a bit of paranoia toward corporations doing GM on plants.  The article in Wired noted at the beginning of this post suggests that Pakistan has another variant of the UG99, but apparently views such pathogens as something they should keep less somebody gets a patent on a way to eliminate its danger. 

So, if you are a wheat farmer or a consumer who eats bread and breakfast cereals, you may find reading all the Wired story both interesting and worth your time.  It indicates that the USDA's Cereal Disease Laboratory about a half mile from the Minnesota Fairgrounds in St. Paul is working on the Fungus.  Les Szabo at the CDL is the recognized authority on P. Griminis discusses research and the possible result of spreading of this dangerous fungus. 

I don't know if this is being considered in any kind of South Dakota research or if it is viewed as any kind of significant threat, but if you do know, let me and readers here know.

--- By Doug Wiken with information from Wired, NY Times, Asia Times, Washington Post, and Micokhan..and of course Google ..

SD Governor Rounds wants nuclear power in "his" backyard

Soon after President Obama's SOTU speech mentioned nuclear power as an area needing revisiting in this time of energy crisis and use of oil from unstable or unfriendly sources, Gov. Mike Rounds of SD noted this as a hopeful point in Obama's speech.

Today, February 4, 2010 in the Governor's Press Conference broadcast on SDPB-TV before noon, Governor Rounds again discussed nuclear power as he had just been to Washington, DC attending a conference with President Obama and advisors and 10 or so other governors.  Rounds got his tongue around either green fields and brown fields or some similar combination referring apparently to new nuclear plant construction on existing nuclear plant sites or on fresh or green sites....like Rounds backyard in South Dakota.  He does not want the US government to fail to consider new locations like South Dakota.

This is not the first time a huge expansion of nuclear power in South Dakota has been discussed.  Back in the 60's or 70's, an international consortium of some kind was apparently seriously considering building 8 or 10 nuclear plants in South Dakota along the Missouri River.  Once those plans got out, they more or less disappeared... even if the Minuteman missiles had turned South Dakota into  a major world nuclear power prior to that.

Now Rounds is talking like he knows something about nuclear power.  He may for all I know, but he and everybody else thinking that nuclear power is a panacea for our current energy problems needs to consider the problems with uranium-based nuclear power plants compared with the advantages which seem to come with nuclear power plants running on Thorium instead of Uranium isotopes.

Wired magazine recently had a story on Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) indicating they work in a self-limiting way at near atmospheric pressures rather than requiring huge high pressure enclosures.  That story which caught my attention a few weeks ago page 114 in the Jan 2010 issue Wired -- Uranium is so last Century.... by Richard Martin  has a good summary of the advantages of the LFTR approach.  Take a look at that first for the basics.  You will find mention of Kirk Sorensen who more or less rediscovered the idea of LFTR  (pronounced "lifter") ways to generate power in government documents from the 1970's. That idea got sidetracked then by the US military desire to have weapons grade waste generated in nuclear power plants which is not done easily with Thorium reactors.

Kirk Sorensen has a site with access to many resources at Energy from Thorium (Site) and he has current discussions at his blog also titled Energy from Thorium (Blog) .  Checking those two sites and the summary at Wired will provide a lot of information which should be interesting to South Dakota Scientists and government officials interested in many options for green or at least somewhat greener energy production..especially compared to coal. (Note that one of the sites below indicates the running a coal plant for a year puts enough Thorium in the waste ash to generate the same energy for 10 years.)

Below is a list of other sites with more information or the same information presented in other ways with other perspectives.

Start with Thorium the Element  and move on to LFTR at How Stuff Works .  You can check The Pros and Cons by Yahoo  and you can find a quick summary or buy a book at Aim High Rethinking Nuclear Power  and there is even a Diary on the topic at Daily Koz , but wait, there is more at the organization calling itself IThEO.org .  And another blog titled YottaWatts from Thorium .

But, if all this has caught your attention, go back to the Energy from Thorium Site and check the resources there.  At one of these or a linked site, I found a pdf of a paper presented by Moir and Teller a few years before Edward Teller died in which the LFTR idea was discussed by one of the coldest cold warriors.  I doubt I can understand much of it, but if it intrigues you let me know.

Moir-Teller PDF

 --- Doug Wiken with thanks to Governor Rounds and his in my backyard generosity and Wired Magazine as a starting point.