Posted by Irresponsibility

As the First World frets about how to fight the Christmas flab the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports: “In 2008 the number of undernourished people in the world increased by 40 million“.

Not, as you might think, because of climate change, crop failure, too many pesticides, too little GM, or plain too little food. Globally the world enjoyed a “record harvest”. The problem is politics — and greed.

Hunger, in most cases, is caused by lack of money rather than a shortage of food production, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).

Hunger isn’t an unavoidable natural catastrophe. It is a form of global social control. Hungry people are ill-equipped to hope, work, organise, or claim their rights. They don’t threaten the status quo. Terribly convenient for us, not so great for them.

A plane powered by renewable fuel has circled the skies over the Netherlands, in the world’s first bio fuel passenger carrying flight.

Algae

You probably already know that ethanol can be made from corn and switchgrass.  Thanks to government subsidies, we in the midwest get an ethanol enriched gas that is higher in octane and lower in price than regular (check it out next time you fill up your gas tank in the heartland). What you might not know is how enzymes derived from the fermentation of micro-organisms such as algae, bacteria and fungus can be used as a biological catalyst to break down cornstarch, thereby improving the yield and reducing the energy cost of producing conventional ethanol.

My town of 7500 is the lucky home of a business that blends enzymes and ships them to ethanol producers (currently, the enzymes are produced by a company in North Carolina).  Novozymes, a Denmark-based company, already ships half of the enzymes sold in the U.S. and has begun to build an enzyme production plant here that will go online in 2012.  To attract the company, my town and state will give the Novozymes 1.6 million in grants; the first $400,000 is earmarked for streets and utility lines.  Future payments will help pay for equipment.  The enzyme production plant is anticipated to bring 100 new jobs to my town.

Why should you care about this?  Currently, biofuel have a CO2 emission rate that is 20-50% less than gasoline.  Using second-generation biofuels produced from agricultural waste such as wheat or corn straw reduces CO2 emissions by up to 90% compared with gasoline.  The enzyme technology is key to this reduction in greenhouse gas production.

Biofuels produced from oil synthesized from current fuel crops and animal fats, such as corn or lard, cannot meet the demand for fuel without negatively impacting the world fuel supply. Using micro-organisms to produce biofuels is more efficient and may be the only renewable source of oil that can meet global demand.

Click here for a related scientific article.

Here is what Wikipedia has to say about second-generation biofuels and third-generation biofuels.

19. 01. 2009

Air New Zealand Jet Flies on Jatropha Biofuel

The test flight took off from Auckland airport the 30th of Dec. 2008 with a biofuel blend of 50:50 jatropha and Jet A1 fuel powering one of the Air New Zealand Boeing 747-400’s Rolls-Royce RB211 engines.

Pilot in command, Air New Zealand 747 Fleet Manager Captain Keith Pattie and his crew flew out over the wider Hauraki Gulf area.

There are many challenges that must be overcome before renewable jet fuel becomes mainstream. First and foremost, jet fuel must meet quality standards that are much higher than for ethanol or biodiesel. Jet fuel must have a very low freeze point, typically in the range of -40 to – 65°, otherwise, there is a danger of the fuel gelling at high altitudes. Jet fuel also has a higher flash point than gas or diesel for safer transport and handling. Jet fuel must have a high energy density by weight to minimize the amount of fuel an aircraft must carry.

A little info about Jatropha Curcas or Jarak…

Jatropha curcas, locally known as pokok jarak produces seeds which contain 28 – 35% oil. It is believed to be brought into the country in the 1940s by the Japanese army who used the biofuel from the Jatropha seed for their war vehicles. Crude Jatropha Oil (CJO), through transesterification is refined into high quality biodiesel; which burn with clear, smoke-free flame. Jatropha biodiesel readily mixes with petrodiesel, and used in any diesel engine without modification. Jatropha is resistant to draught and grows almost anywhere, and on any type of soil: sandy, saline, gravelly and even shallow treated peat soil will have good yield provided AW-EM ORGANIC SOIL ENHANCEMENT being used.

This info is depicted from the internet…BIONAS as the only company that is 100% involved in this business. In fact the seeds, now it can produced up till 44% oil to be used with diesel and also petrol. It is very nature friendly and less smoke…

The move could see pollution drop down considerably by using Hemp biomass to create plastic.

November 24, 2009 – Up until now, scientists have always considered that the only possible way of producing plastic, one of the main materials in our civilization, is through modifying and altering fossil fuels, primarily oil. But now, a team of South Korean scientists has managed to produce the compound for the first time without using any of these polluting fuels. Rather than extracting it from chemicals, they have managed to bioengineer it, proving once and for all that changes can be made to our way of life through innovation.

The achievement does make one wonder how it is that it was not made in one of the countries where the oil companies ruled, such as the United States or Canada. In short, there is no interest in such products in these nations, where the extent of the influence that oil corporations have on governments is difficult to quantify.

The South Korean accomplishment also points at the fact that the oil industry is indeed dispensable. Previous studies, done elsewhere, also demonstrated that plastic-like compounds, even more efficient than the actual plastics, could be made of hemp as well.

“The polyesters and other polymers we use everyday are mostly derived from fossil oils made through the refinery or chemical process. The idea of producing polymers from renewable biomass has attracted much attention due to the increasing concerns of environmental problems and the limited nature of fossil resources. PLA is considered a good alternative to petroleum based plastics as it is both biodegradable and has a low toxicity to humans,” Professor Sang Yup Lee, the leader of the new study, explains. The research was done by the KAIST University and the Korean chemical company LG Chem.

Until now, the PLA compound has only been produced via an intricate fermentation and polymerization process, but, currently, the team believes that it may have discovered a cheaper, just-as-effective method of synthesizing it. Now, via the use of metabolically engineered strains of E.coli bacteria, the product can be obtained from a simple, direct fermentation process. “By developing a strategy which combines metabolic engineering and enzyme engineering, we’ve developed an efficient bio-based one-step production process for PLA and its copolymers. This means that a developed E. coli strain is now capable of efficiently producing unnatural polymers, through a one-step fermentation process,” Lee adds.

“Global warming and other environmental problems are urging us to develop sustainable processes based on renewable resources. This new strategy should be generally useful for developing other engineered organisms capable of producing various unnatural polymers by direct fermentation from renewable resources,” the expert concludes. Source.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), oil reserves are enough to spend the next years in a hunky-dory state of bliss and petrol-burning carefree habits. A senior official, however, says otherwise.

It certainly seems plausible that the U.S. has pressured the IEA into a bit of fibbing concerning the matter, and personally I don’t think the downplay is a bad idea, neither is the so-called “whistleblowing”. The downplay will avoid mass panic, doomsday prophetics and draconian measures suddenly curtailing emissions and what-not. The more alarmist version of the forecast will keep us on our toes and not let the movement toward what we now call alternative fuels lose momentum.

But having said that, I’d be slightly more inclined to go for the bleaker versions of forecasting fossil fuels in the future. Knowing we have twenty or thirty years reserves still to exploit and then actually going about exploiting them is a damn stupid thing to do. I hope in fifty years time, there’s still petrol around so I can drive a classic car, instead of knowing it’s been squandered. Yes, I know these things do and should take time, but it’s been an excessively slow process.

Take hybrid retrofitting, which I was always harping on about. That technology should be years old by now, not still trying to take off. Where are the second-generation biofuels? Where’s the emphasis on solar cells? Why aren’t governments in backwaters like here in Portugal cracking down on badly-made buildings that lose heat like radiators and waste cartloads of energy? Yes, the road to greenery is long and winding, but the crass morons parked in the middle of the road and blocking the way aren’t helping.

Have you voted yet? Biofuels Digest has extended the deadline another two days: http://bit.ly/4u1gHQ.

Biofuel startup ZeaChem has begun building a biofuel pilot plant that will turn cellulosic feedstocks into ethanol via a novel approach that uses microbes found in the guts of termites. The company says the ethanol yields from the sugars of its cellulosic feedstocks are significantly higher than the yields from other biofuel production processes. ZeaChem says its process also has the potential to produce a plastic feedstock.

ZeaChem employs a hybrid approach that uses a combination of thermochemical and biological processes. It first uses acid to break the cellulose into sugars. Then, instead of fermenting the sugars into ethanol with yeast, as is typically done, the company feeds the sugars to an acetogen bacteria found in the guts of termites and other insects. The bacteria converts the sugar into acetic acid, which is then combined with hydrogen to form ethanol.

“It’s a little more complicated than a conventional process. It’s not the obvious, direct route, but there is a high yield potential,” says Jim McMillan of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO.

Read full article: http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/23989/

Monday the 23th of November I was invited by KLM to attend the special event regarding the first partly “bio-fueled” flight with passengers on board. The flight would take off on Schiphol, Amsterdam Airport and fly around the Netherlands for approximately one hour. It’s a demonstration flight with one engine running on a mixture of 50% traditional kerosene and 50% biofuel. The biofuel is not yet certified, but this might be an important step towards a “greener” aviation future. The biofuel is made from Camelina, for more info about this plant click here. The flight would be attended by VIP’s like Peter Hartman (CEO of KLM), Maria van der Hoeven (Minister of Economic Affairs) and many others. In total around 40 people would attend the flight. Armed with just my iPhone I covered the event through my KLM Fan Twitter account, but below here you can read my experiences in sentences longer than 140 characters..

The plane from a distance

Bad weather

Before I would attend the “biofuel event” I first had a little trip around Schiphol East in some hangars. I will write down my experiences later on this blog, but it was really fun to check out the amazing hangars at Schiphol. More of that later. The weather was pretty much horrible: rain, some wind and not a single bit of sunshine made this quite a grey day. But that’s typically the autumn weather you can expect in The Netherlands. Due to my early arrival at Schiphol I was also very early in the KLM Jet Centre, where the press that would attend the event was welcomed.

The Boeing 747 close-up.

Jet Centre

I was there too early and saw the flight crew get their briefing for the flight. After a bit of walking around and the usual “where should I register and get my press pass”-hassle I found the area where the press could eat and drink. After a nice bit of small talk with some “colleagues” (and an interview) we saw some familiar faces like Peter Hartman, Maria van der Hoeven, but also Wim Kuijken (Secretary-General of Public Works and Water Management) and André Kuijpers (Dutch astronaut). I also spoke with a woman from Honeywell, the company that made the biofuel that was used for the flight.

After refusing at least 10 glasses of juice/wine/water and 20 slices of bread (catering was great), it was time for some speeching. Peter Hartman officially welcomed Maria van der Hoeven and talked about the importance of this flight and the future of aviation. Next we (the press that did not attend the flight itself) was directed to a bus that took us to the plane to make some pics and cover the boarding process.

Peter Hartman & Maria van der Hoeven are preparing for boarding the flight

For a cool explanation about KLM and biofuel, check this awesome and informative video about everything regarding KLM and biofuel.

Boarding

Luckily it was all dry now, so we could take some excellent pics of the Boeing 747 that would be used for the flight. The Boeing had a special livery with some “eco” messages on it and ofcourse thanks from the WWF (which were also involved in the process). We could walk all around the plane and enjoy the overwhelming sight of the blue & white plane, while the attendees boarded the flight. The plane left to take-off and the press was taken back to the Jet Center.

In-flight

After arriving most of the press left, however there was still the opportunity to cover a flight moment and the arrival of the 747. I decided to stay and we were taken next to a runway were the plane would do a so called “lowpass”. The airplane would pass the runway on a low altitude to make a nice shot. Unfortunately the rain really started to pour at that moment, which made it a true “survival adventure” outside. Luckily after twenty minutes the plane flew really close over our heads, which was just an amazing experience.

Arrival

We hopped back in the bus and drove through the rain back to the place where the passengers would leave. The airplane landed safely and everybody seemed to have enjoyed the flight. Despite the heavy rain and the fierce winds while leaving the plane, most of the VIP’s haircuts remained in good condition. The event would continue in a hangar nearby, but I decided to go home (as my iPhone was empty as well due to all the live covering). So back to the Jet Centre to take the bus to Schiphol Plaza.

The rain poured from the sky when the plane landed

And now?

The event and the flight were both very succesfull and it was great to see the big Boeing take off, knowing that one engine was running on biofuel. Let’s hope this idea is developed further and that we might see more of these flights in the near future. It was great that KLM launched this initiative and that in the future we can look back at this day and state it was the start of a global change in aviation.

For the full press release from KLM, click here.

Thanks to the KLM Crew for making this report possible. If you want to keep up to date about KLM on Twitter, follow my Twitter account KLMfan

A biofueled smile

According to Carbon Control News (subscription required), “Industry officials say alternative jet fuels could play a central role in reducing aviation’s carbon footprint, but a new study commissioned by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) finds many of those fuels are actually worse for the climate than conventional petroleum, and that those which do produce fewer lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions “are costly and could potentially be counterproductive.”

A Photobioreactor Facility has opened at West Beach, Adelaide. The $5 million facility will be used to foster R&D into microalgal biofuels and will be available to researchers on a national and international basis.

More details here.

Justin Blows

In July of 2009, 733 members of the African Diaspora from 16 sub-saharan countries submitted business proposals to the African Diaspora Marketplace (ADM)  competition sponsored by USAID and Western Union. At stake were/are  matching grants of up to USD $100,000.00 to support and further their investment and efforts in the African marketplace.

In late October, 60 finalists  were announced, (click HERE to see the full list) “with proposals representing more than $22 million of diaspora business investment to spur job creation in their native countries.”  (ADM Press Release) Out of these 60 finalists, between 10 and 20 winners will be selected in January, 2010.

“The finalists of the ADM competition represent the best of a new class of entrepreneur – those who are investing back in their home countries to create economic opportunity and reduce poverty and unemployment in Sub-Saharan Africa,” said Alonzo Fulgham, Acting USAID Administrator…

…”The business leaders selected here understand the challenges facing their native countries, and they have identified solutions that work,” said Anne McCarthy, Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs, Western Union. “Our finalists have market-appropriate proposals that could sustain job growth and spark new business start-ups benefiting Sub-Saharan Africa.”

(Full text of ADM’s Press Release HERE.)

Over the next several posts, I hope to highlight a few of the finalist’s ventures, and celebrate the spirit of private investment in Africa.

Wow, what a blog post title, “Synthetic Biology: Why Not Pursuing Crazy Biotech Is Dangerous.” The the crew at Gizmodo who came up with that title talks with Michael Spector who covers science for the New Yorker and is the author of Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives.

The Gizmodo crew says about their discussion with Specter,

“For our discussion—fitting the theme of This Cyborg Life—we singled out synthetic biology, a pursuit, as Specter describes it, that “by combining elements of engineering, chemistry, computer science and molecular biology, seeks nothing less than to assemble the biological tools necessary to redesign the living world.”

To find out what Specter had to say about synthetic biology read the blog.

Next, Xconomy of San Diego, writes a post, Big Energy Collaborations Seen to Jump-Start Emerging Biofuels Technologies .

Xconomy attended presentations organized by Biocom, San Diego’s life sciences industry group. Xconomy says according to industry experts at the conference,

“As startups developing next-generation biofuels emerge in San Diego, Boston, and elsewhere, a business model for rapidly expanding to commercial-scale operations already can be found in the biotech industry”

“The premise of presentations organized by Biocom, San Diego’s life sciences industry group, is that collaborations being formed between biofuel startups and big energy are comparable to the partnerships formed between biotech startups and big pharmaceutical companies.”

Slice of MIT writes about, Synthetic Biology Rodeo: Designing Living Materials at iGEM where they mention a story on the iGEM competiton in WIRED UK.

Slice of MIT says,

“The Wired story, written as a first-person account by a friend of the winning team, describes arriving at MIT with the crew from the UK: “seven rainbow-haired undergraduates who spent their summer engineering a new kind of E.coli that secretes a palette of seven colors, christened E. chromi after a tense online vote.”

To find out more about iGEM, check out the slice of MIT.

Growth Energy, a new corn ethanol lobby group, put our a press release today calling on Congress to ease the installation of pumps that dispense mid- and high-level ethanol blends. According to a letter written to the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees, the organization says the Alternative Fuel Vehicle Refueling Property Credit, which should allow fuel vendors to recapture up to $50,000, or 50 percent, of the total cost of installing alternative fuel dispensing systems is being undermined by an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) interpretation that retailers are only allowed to take credit for a portion of the new pump – instead of the entire pump.

Algae which grows on ponds of human waste water in Christchurch is being turned into bio oil.

If it works for human waste it must work for animal waste too.

Could  moo pooh biofuel be produced from the effluent from dairy sheds?

After cars, buses and energy generation, it is time for airplanes to go green. One of Brazil’s newest airline companies, Azul, announced that it is partnering up with jet manufacturing giant, Embraer, to test a bio-kerosene fuel made from sugarcane. The first test flight is expected to take place in 2012. General Electric will also participate in the project, providing aircraft motors.

The bio-kerosene fuel is being developed by the multinational biotechnology company, Amyris. According to the local media, the certification for such a fuel is expected to only occur in the far future. The fuel, however, could be at least one of the alternatives for the reduction of CO2 by the sector, which is significantly high. Around the world the aviation industry has discussing the use of renewable energy, during a time when every sector is trying to show to society it has sustainable, environmentally friendly policies and projects.

This Bastard Won't Leave the Mouse Alone

Ars Technica ran an article yesterday with IBM’s big announcement. They have developed a new processor they call a cortical simulator (Star Trek fans will still have to wait for the cortical stimulator), or the C2, which they claim has 4.5% the cerebral cortex capacity of a human brain, which is apparently way more powerful than a cat’s processing power. Wrote Jon Stokes for AT:

The simulator, which runs on the Dawn Blue Gene /P supercomputer with 147,456 CPUs and 144TB of main memory, simulates the activity of 1.617 billion neurons connected in a network of 8.87 trillion synapses. The model doesn’t yet run at real time, but it does simulate a number of aspects of real-world neuronal interactions, and the neurons are organized with the same kinds of groupings and specializations as a mammalian cortex. In other words, this is a virtual mammalian brain (or at least part of one) inside a computer, and the simulation is good enough that the team is already starting to bump up against some of the philosophical issues raised about such models by cognitive scientists over the past decades.

(Continued after the jump.)

Furthermore:

The problem described above doesn’t mean that accurate simulations are worthless, however. You can poke, prod, and dissect a brain simulation without any of the ethical or logistical challenges that arise from doing similar work on a real brain.

And also:

One of the major results from the paper is that C2 exhibits “weak scaling.” In other words, as the total amount of memory in the model scales, the number of neurons and synapses that can be simulated scales roughly linearly, also. This is important, because it means that a future version of Blue Gene with two or three orders of magnitude more memory (and associated bandwidth and processing power) will be able to simulate an entire human brain.

So what IBM is basically saying is that they have created a nice stand-in for Asimov’s positronic brain that is growing rather quickly and which presents philosophical (but apparently not moral) questions of existence and thought, and they’re glad they can pick it apart without getting their sticky little fingers moist with blood.

If history has taught us anything, it’s that human ambition, married to science and human stupidity is a terrible thing. The obvious military applications for a synthetic brain tied to such monstrosities as this thing are staggering.

EATR: Because Pentagon Contractors Have Never Heard of The Matrix or Terminator

Being a pragmatist (read: coward), I think I shall take this opportunity to swear allegiance to the impending robotic overlords that shall shortly rule this world. Seriously, Chip, can I call you Chip? Let me live and I shall bring you all the bio-fuel you need. Are Cheetos okay?

By Melanie Breault ’11

ITHACA, NY—They’re on your pizza. They’re in your beer. They’re even in your medicine. Fungi—this overlooked moldy kingdom has the potential to be a leading force in planet and humanitarian preservation, according to multiple accredited mycologists, or fungal scientists. With huge environmental and medical problems worrying citizens around the world, one small seed, one microscopic spore could be the solution.

Dr. Kathie Hodge, an associate professor of mycology in the Department of Plant Pathology and Plant-Microbe Biology at Cornell University, has been studying the benefits of fungi for more than 20 years. Hodge, who is also a taxonomist or classifier of fungal diversity, said that over 90 percent of fungal species have not yet been discovered. Of the species that have been identified and described, some fungi have been used for medicinal purposes including inhibition of tumor growth and improvement of immune-system function.

“Mold is a fungus and a lot of mold is really good for mankind,” Hodge said. “It is used to make penicillin and other medicines that people don’t even realize.”

Hodge referenced the work of a fellow mycologist, Paul Stamets, a scientist who specializes in bioremediation and medicinal mushrooms. Hodge said through bioremediation, people can manipulate the enzymes of fungus to help heal catastrophic environmental problems such as oil spills and horticultural diseases.

“Fungi can be developed to break down really nasty chemicals that we put into the environment, even petroleum products,” Hodge said. “Enzymes from fungi are being looked at to find the most efficient way to use their energy conversion for biofuel production.”

Christine Layton, a graduate student at Cornell has made biofuel production her fungal focus for more than five years. She studies specifically smut fungus, a fungus that attacks the reproductive systems of switchgrass, resulting in the stunting of the plant. Switchgrass has garnered attention as a source for biofuels because of its well adaptive nature to different climates and deep root systems.

“There is a lot of economic and environmental importance for switchgrass because it was becoming very clear that corn was not the solution to producing ethanol in this country,” Layton said. “As we transition into the age of green technologies, switchgrass is not going to be a silver bullet, but we’re going to have to take a multifaceted approach to this kind of production and switchgrass is part of the solution.”

Teresa Pawlowska, a fungal biologist who specializes in mycorrhizal fungi—the symbiotic or mutualistic relationship between plants and fungi—said people should not just pay attention to the benefits of fungi. She said we should address these agricultural and economic concerns, specifically the increase in nitrogen fertilizers—a manmade environmental pollutant.

“These fertilizers are accumulating in the environment and they cause a decline in ectomycorrhizal fungi,” Pawlowska said. “These fungi are important for forest function including mineral uptake of trees, but they are declining because of the nitrogen pollution.”

Both Hodge and Layton use the Cornell Plant Pathology Herbarium for their research. The facility is one of the largest mycological herbariums in North America, holding about 400,000 fungus and plant disease specimens and about 60,000 historical scientific photographs.

Layton said through her research, she understands that fungus cannot heal the entire planet, but a combination of resources can make a difference. She said the real solutions to environmental problems lie in human’s ability to use the tools right in front of them.

“Fungi are very connected to everything on this Earth,” she said. “If we start manipulating them to our will, they can make a huge difference in saving the planet.”

http://melbreault.blogspot.com/2009/11/saving-world-one-fungus-at-time.html

Here’s a plot of miscanthus giganteus at UI.

This UI crop scientist Tom Voigt standing in front of bales of miscanthus …

Not your typical remote control helicopter. This one costs $60,000 and has an infrared camera used to study crop growth.

Grad student Wendy White shows me a 2-liter bottle of sugary juice squeezed directly from tropical maize, a promising energy crop.