Dispatches from a rapidly changing, rapidly improving world
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Take your pick — either this is a lucky Friday the 13th edition of Better
All the Time, or its the special Valentine’s Day edition, one day early. Either
way, the news is just as good.
Today’s Good Stuff:
Quote of the Day
In fact, the bottom line is that, historically, the problems that technology
has addressed have gotten solved, and the ones that were dependent on politics
and so forth have not.
J. Storrs Hall
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Item 1
Wireless
Electricity Is Here (Seriously)
This could be really huge:
But strap on your rubber boots; Tesla’s dream has come true. After more than
100 years of dashed hopes, several companies are coming to market with technologies
that can safely transmit power through the air — a breakthrough that portends
the literal and figurative untethering of our electronic age. Until this development,
after all, the phrase "mobile electronics" has been a lie: How portable
is your laptop if it has to feed every four hours, like an embryo, through
a cord? How mobile is your phone if it shuts down after too long away from
a plug? And how flexible is your business if your production area can’t shift
because you can’t move the ceiling lights?
The world is about to be cured of its attachment disorder.
The Good News
Look at it this way: in Kentucky, some people have been without power since
the first ice storm on January 27th. The number of folks suffering from the
power outage was down to a "mere" 30,000 earlier this week (from a
high of nearly nearly three quarters of a million) before wind storms knocked
out some additional infrastructure, leaving more
than 100,000 people in the state without power.
Why does the power keep going out? Because the cables keep breaking. Wireless
power offers many promising possibilities — including electric transportation
without power cables or reliance on batteries — and keeping electricity working
even in the face of cable-breaking weather is an important one.
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Item 2
Extinct
ibex is resurrected by cloning
The Pyrenean ibex, a form of wild mountain goat, was officially declared
extinct in 2000 when the last-known animal of its kind was found dead in northern
Spain.
Shortly before its death, scientists preserved skin samples of the goat,
a subspecies of the Spanish ibex that live in mountain ranges across the country,
in liquid nitrogen.
The Good News
The scientists then placed genetic material from these skin samples into the eggs of domestic goats. The result? A newborn ibex.
If we can restore an extinct species, is there any reason to believe that we
can’t correct any of the damage that humanity has done to this planet’s ecosystem?
Bringing back an ibex is certainly an encouraging step, but it’s far too early
to say the species has been restored. The cloned ibex kid did not survive. But
the next one might. And after that, who knows? A passenger pigeon? A dodo?
How about a species whose extinction can in no wise be laid at the feet of
humanity.
A triceratops, perhaps?
(Just asking.)
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Item 3
Vitamin D
For Babies Boosts Growth, Cuts MS
Randall Parker reports:
Summer sunshine is suspected to cause taller children.
Those born in the late summer and early autumn are around half a centimetre
taller and have wider bones than their peers born in winter and spring,
an 18 year project found.
Expectant mothers lucky enough to be blooming in the hot months should
get enough sun to boost their vitamin D levels just by walking around outside
or even sunbathing.
But winter parents should consider taking vitamin supplements, researchers
at Bristol University recommended.
At the same time, some carry a genetic variant that might make them more
susceptible to multiple sclerosis when they do not get enough vitamin D before
and after birth.
The Good News
There has been a lot of controversy of late as to what — if any — proven
benefits can be linked with vitamins and other supplements. This kind of research
helps to shed some much-needed light. And if it leads to even preventing a few
children from getting MS, I think we can all agree that vitamin D is a wonderful
thing.
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Item 4
Waterproof Sand Could Green Deserts
Brian Wang reports in his blog, Next Big
Future:
Waterproof sand – or as German scientist Helmut F. Schulze calls it
– hydrophobic sand, a nanotechnology wonder seven years in the making.
By simply laying down a 10-centimetre blanket of DIME Hydrophobic Materials
sand beneath typical desert topsoils, the new super sand stops water below
the roots level of the plants and maintains a water table, giving greenery
a constant water supply. 3000 tons/day is already being produced. 1 ton of
silicate coated sand would probably be good for 10 square meters. 4 days of
production to cover one square kilometer. More factories will be needed made
to scale this up to address the water crisis in the Middle East, Africa, India
and China.
With new hydrophobic sand in place, traditional watering of desert plants
five or six times a day can be reduced to one watering, saving 75 per cent
more water, a precious resource that is dwindling across the Arab Peninsula.
The Good News:
One day, humanity might take it upon itself to rebuild a planet (possibly Mars,
possibly a planet not yet discovered) so that it’s environment is hospitable
for human life. This proposed ambitious technology is called terraforming.
So, yes, one day we might try to terraform another planet. In the mean time,
isn’t it wonderful that we are figuring out how to "terraform" parts
of this planet?
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Item 5
Better
Than Theory Predicts
Classical Values provides a quick
and very encouraging status report on the Polywell
Fusion experiments
1. The machine is working way better than the usual theories predict
2. No one knows why (lots of suspicions floating around)
3. New instruments are being added
4. The current machine is called WB-7. WB 7.1 (no details) is in progress.
All this is very good news. It means what they have learned so far warrants
further efforts.
And then goes on to ask an excellent question:
Why hasn’t Polywell Fusion been funded by the Obama administration?
Of course, another great question would be why was it never funded by the Bush administration? But that doesn’t have the same forward-looking appeal. There’s still some hope that the current administration might choose to do so.
The Good News
Basically we’re talking about easy, cheap, safe, clean, non-radioactive, limitless
power. This is the Bussard concept for producing energy about which we have
written previously. In reflecting on the above question, it’s hard to imagine
anything that would better stimulate our economy. In fact, it’s hard to imagine
anything that would have a bigger or more beneficial on our economic future.
Faster, please.
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Item 6
New
antibiotics would silence bugs, not kill them
In future, the most effective antibiotics might be those that don’t kill
any bacteria. Instead the drugs will simply prevent the bacteria from talking
with one another.
Drug-resistant bugs are winning the war against standard antibiotics as they
evolve resistance to even the most lethal drugs. It happens because a dose
of antibiotics strongly selects for resistance by killing the most susceptible
bacteria first.
If, however, researchers can identify antibiotics that neutralise dangerous
bacteria without killing them, the pressure to evolve resistance can be reduced.
One way to do that is to target the constant stream of chatter that passes
between bacteria as molecular signals.
The Good News:
With this approach, we will stop breeding increasingly more powerful strains
of bacteria with each new generation of antibiotic that is developed. We might
at last get the upper hand!
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Item 7
One
more step for private Moon mission
A spectrometer meant to fly to Mars on a European mission in 2016 will get
to the Moon first. The Dutch team that is building the instrument last week
announced it would send a scaled-up version, dubbed MoonShot, to the lunar
surface by 2011 with Odyssey Moon, a company headquartered in the Isle of
Man, UK.
If it works, the private MoonOne lander and its successors could serve scientists
much as a commercial trucking company serves wholesalers, providing a platform
to ferry science instruments and other payloads to the lunar surface.
The Good News
Today, private unmanned craft landing on the moon. Tomorrow, commercial
passenger service? One step at a time, folks.
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Item 8
JAGUAR
PICTURE: First Seen in Central Mexico Since 1900
February 11, 2009—The largest cat in the Americas is alive and well
in the heart of Mexico, scientists say.
Three photographs of a male jaguar and exactly 132 poop samples (including
the one above, released February 10) are the first known evidence of the predator
since the early 1900s.
The big cat was snapped by a camera trap in the Sierra Nanchititla Natural
Reserve.
The Good News
Welcome back, jaguar. You took a hundred years off and then decided to show
up again? Good for you.
And no cloning required!
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Item 9
Biggest
Solar Deal Ever Announced — We’re Talking Gigawatts
The largest series of solar installations in history, more than 1,300 megawatts,
is planned for the desert outside Los Angeles, according to a new deal between
the utility Southern California Edison and solar power plant maker, BrightSource.
The momentous deal will deliver more electricity than even the largest nuclear
plant, spread out among seven facilities, the first of which will start up
in 2013. When fully operational, the companies say the facility will provide
enough electricity to power 845,000 homes — more than exist in San Francisco
— though estimates like that are notoriously squirrely.
The technology isn’t the familiar photovoltaics — the direct conversion
of sunlight into electricity — but solar thermal power, which concentrates
the sun’s rays to create steam in a boiler and spin a turbine.
The Good News
Solar thermal energy is such a great idea. Photovoltaics may, in the end, prove
to be the most efficient and productive means of turning the sun’s energy into
electricity, but isn’t it amazing that we’ve had "solar power" for
all these years and it’s only recently that people have seriously looked to
the sun as a power source…because of the heat it provides?
What will we think of next?
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Better All The Time was compiled by Phil Bowermaster. May you have a perfectly
mundane Friday the 13th and a Valentine’s Day that is anything but. And don’t
forget to live to see it!
