Smart Energy

Just imagine: Instead of sending Grandma a holiday photo of the family for her fridge, you call up the image on your computer monitor, click “print,” and your printer produces a three-dimensional plastic model ready for hanging on the holiday tree. Scenes like that — in which homes have 3-D printers that build solid objects on demand – are fast approaching reality, according to the cover story in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News, the American Chemical Society’s weekly newsmagazine.

In the article, C&EN Associate Editor Lauren K. Wolf explains that 3-D printers are on the verge of a personal revolution akin to the one that began in the 1970s and transformed computers from room-size machines to devices that fit on tables and now in pockets. A similar transformation is taking place in the world of 3-D printing, where machines are shrinking and the ability to create detailed objects from a variety of materials is growing. Engineers are now able to create objects out of a number of plastics, metals, ceramics and even foods like chocolate, sometimes with details as fine as a human hair.

The technology promises to foster revolutions in venues ranging from kitchens to hospital operating rooms. Some surgeons, for instance, envision printing bone grafts or replacement blood vessels with embedded proteins and cells that will help them fuse naturally. Chefs could print designer chocolates and gourmet meals with unique textures and tastes. “In 20 years, many people will have a 3-D printer in their kitchen for printing designer foods and other products,” the article quotes one scientist as saying.

via Personal electronics’ next revolution: Home printers that make 3-D objects.

Leading demographers, including those at the United Nations and the U.S. Census Bureau, are projecting that world population will peak at 9.5 billion to 10 billion later this century, and then gradually decline as poorer countries develop. But what if those projections are too optimistic? What if population continues to soar, as it has in recent decades, and the world becomes home to 12 billion or even 16 billion people by 2100, as a high-end U.N. estimate has projected? Such an outcome would clearly have enormous social and environmental implications, including placing enormous stress on the world’s food and water resources, spurring further loss of wildlands and biodiversity, and hastening the degradation of the natural systems that support life on Earth.

The real possibility of fertility decline stopping before the two-children level is reached requires demographers, policy makers, and environmentalists to seriously consider that population growth in the coming century will come in at the high end of demographic projections. The U.N.’s middle-of-the-road assumption for sub-Saharan Africa — that fertility rates will drop to three children per woman and population will reach 2 billion by 2050 — seem unrealistically low to me. More likely is the U.N.’s high-end projection that sub-Saharan Africa’s population will climb to 2.2 billion by 2050 and then continue to 4.8 billion by 2100. The dire consequences of such an increase are difficult to ponder. If sub-Saharan Africa is having trouble feeding and providing water to 880 million people today, what will the region be like in 90 years if the population increases fivefold — particularly if, as projected, temperatures rise by at least 3.6 degrees F, worsening droughts?

via What if population grows faster than the experts project? | 7 billion: What to expect when you’re expanding—a special series | Grist.

Why did they reject my innovative idea?

This explains a lot!

Most people view creativity as an asset — until they come across a creative idea. That’s because creativity not only reveals new perspectives — it promotes a sense of uncertainty.

The next time your great idea at work elicits silence or eye rolls, you might just pity those co-workers. Fresh research indicates they don’t even know what a creative idea looks like and that creativity, hailed as a positive change agent, actually makes people squirm.

To uncover bias against creativity, the researchers used a subtle technique to measure unconscious bias — the kind to which people may not want to admit, such as racism. Results revealed that while people explicitly claimed to desire creative ideas, they actually associated creative ideas with negative words such as “vomit,” “poison” and “agony.”

Goncalo said this bias caused subjects to reject ideas for new products that were novel and high quality.

“Our findings imply a deep irony,” wrote the authors, who also include Jennifer Mueller of the University of Pennsylvania and Shimul Melwani of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “Revealing the existence and nature of a bias against creativity can help explain why people might reject creative ideas and stifle scientific advancements, even in the face of strong intentions to the contrary.”

Uncertainty drives the search for and generation of creative ideas, but “uncertainty also makes us less able to recognize creativity, perhaps when we need it most,” the researchers wrote. “Revealing the existence and nature of a bias against creativity can help explain why people might reject creative ideas and stifle scientific advancements, even in the face of strong intentions to the contrary. … The field of creativity may need to shift its current focus from identifying how to generate more creative ideas to identify how to help innovative institutions recognize and accept creativity.”

via Why we crave creativity but reject creative ideas.

Howard Zinn You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train

review by Brian Charles Clark
5 out of 5 possible stars
Directed by Deb Ellis and Denis Mueller; narrated by Matt Damon

Originally published on Curled Up with a Good DVD

One day — I think it was a Tuesday — about 25 years ago, someone handed me a copy of a book and said, “You’ll love this.” The book was Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. At the time, I was in college and had heavy stats and logic (if P then not Q and such nonsense) homework. I made the mistake of dipping into Zinn’s book over lunch and couldn’t stop reading for three days straight.

I was too young to have taken part in the radical ’60s and then in the ’70s – well, let’s forget the ’70s existed. In any case, I’d never heard of Zinn until I read A People’s History. But I quickly discovered that he was a member of a loosely affiliated cluster of radical activist philosopher-historians, a group that includes Noam Chomsky and many others, some of whom appear in this film. These activists were fighting the good fight against that relentless tide of greed called capitalism: they educated and advocated for civil and women’s rights, unions and labor rights, and against wars big and small, hot and cold. Read the rest of this entry »

Escherichia coli, one of the many species of bacteria present in the human gut

You think you’re a person, but you’re really a spaceship for bacteria:

A team of scientists from around the globe have found that gut bacteria may influence mammalian brain development and adult behavior.

“The data suggests that there is a critical period early in life when gut microorganisms affect the brain and change the behavior in later life,” says Dr. Rochellys Diaz Heijtz, first author of the study.

The research team compared behavior and gene expression in two groups of mice — those raised with normal microorganisms, and those raised in the absence of microorganisms (or germ-free mice). The scientists observed that adult germ-free mice displayed different behavior from mice with normal microbiota, suggesting that gut bacteria may have a significant effect on the development of the brain in mammals.

The adult germ-free mice were observed to be more active and engaged in more ‘risky’ behavior than mice raised with normal microorganisms. When germ-free mice were exposed to normal microorganisms very early in life, as adults they developed the behavioral characteristics of those exposed to microorganisms from birth. In contrast, colonizing adult germ-free mice with bacteria did not influence their behavior.

Subsequent gene profiling in the brain identified genes and signaling pathways involved in learning, memory and motor control that were affected by the absence of gut bacteria, highlighting the profound changes in the mice that developed in the absence of microorganisms. This suggests that, over the course of evolution, colonization of the gut by microorganisms (in total 1.5 kilograms) in early infancy became integrated into early brain development.

via Bacteria in the gut may influence brain development.

This is so beautiful…. I love Playing for Change and the work they are doing. They’ve started several music schools in Nepal, Mali, Rwanda, Ghana, and elsewhere. You can help — make a small donation and direct toward a drum, a stringed instrument or, hell, just lay some bread on these folks.

Doug Stanhope: Voice of America – ABORTION IS GREEN.

Well, duh.

via YouTube – Doug Stanhope: Voice of America – ABORTION IS GREEN.

Jay Greathouse has been telling me for years – nay, decades! – that the end is near. Because I’m sympatico with conspiracy theories, I keep listening. But, somehow, the agro-industrial complex keeps chugging along, as it has for the past few tens of thousands of years.

The one thing we can count on, though, is change. So just because everything hasn’t gone kablooie doesn’t mean it won’t. And, as Jay points out, it depends entirely on your point of view. For the many at the base of the agro-industrial complex, the end came some time ago — and just keeps dragging on, like war, tax and biological reproduction.

What I like about Jay is his gritty determination (and determinism): the end may be near, or it may have already banged upside the head, but he’s doggedly gonna hunker down and weather the super storm. To that end, he’s mustering his mighty intellect (and I may tease him about a lot of things, but his intellect is truly in the 99th percentile [he'll gimme shit for that]) in a new blog called Raw Materials Econ: Resilience Economics for Everyone.

There’s a lot of cool stuff already up, including links to info about cannabis pricing, jury nullification, and issues of economic justice. Here’s hoping you’ll give it a read and offer your opinion.

(Adapted from consultations with the oracle over the first five months of 2008)

A turning point in winter brings nourishment. Obstacles are no problem for water.

Perseverance brings great good fortune.

The Marrying Maiden appears at the new year’s first thought of sex. How long has it been? Six years. The Marrying Maiden is either a matriarchal cosmic joy or an unbearable patriarchal yoke.

The ingenuity of innocence; the energy to bite through entrenched situations. He become single.

“Kings of old… fostered and nourished all beings.” Innocence makes a new life possible.

Wind above water. Dispersion is reuniting. Things are developing. He moves from a dark room into the light.

A slowly developing engagement leads to marriage. A gentle wind moves through the woods on Keeping Still Mountain.

A gentle penetrating wind comes from increase and follows in sequence from the homeless wanderer. The Gentle is a homecoming. The Gentle crouches and remains hidden.

Old wounds heal because peace is a shared desire.

Forgetting, he asks the same question two weeks later. Youthful Folly! “I told you the first time,” the Changes insists: long engagement; marriage. He asks for help in persevering.

“Ten pairs of tortoises cannot oppose it.”

“See the great man” means ask for help.

An animal’s pelt changes in the course of the seasons: Revolution. The great man changes like the tiger.

In the sequence, Revolution changes to Fellowship. In the interest of community, great things may be accomplished.

Trust fate: a natural and mutual attraction is at work. Faith is the perseverance of a mare.

The wind over the water. The visible effects of the invisible manifest themselves.

A crane calls from a shadowed place and her young reply.

How could he ever set trust aside?