Dialectics of Science and the Singularity

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Spiralman
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Computer Program Self-Discovers Laws of Physics & Robot scie

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Computer Program Self-Discovers Laws of Physics & Robot scientist makes discoveries without human help

Computer Program Self-Discovers Laws of Physics
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009 ... tonai.html

Robot scientist makes discoveries without human help
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... -help.html

Spiralman
Posts: 107
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Iron Man: Iron compounds might replace Platinum for Fuel Cel

Post by Spiralman »

Iron Man: Iron compounds might replace Platinum for Fuel Cells & Replace Copper for Lossless Electric Cables

Although I have mainly written off hydrogen as a near-term energy storage carrier, developments like this one could put it back in the game.

Over the last year or so, there have been several a few breakthroughs that address key showstoppers for hydrogen. Cheap catalysts made from abundant materials like manganese, phosphorus and plastics, and that using very little energy imitate biology for breaking up water into hydrogen and oxygen. Radical reduction in usage of platinum as a catalyst through nanotech.

Also this week, there was a major breakthrough for rapidly loading hydrogen into a metal hydride storage system. 5 minutes for 300 miles-driving range worth of energy.
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2009/04 ... 238693191/

I’m still skeptical about whether the whole infrastructure of converting solar or wind-generated electricity to hydrogen, then storing hydrogen, then using it with a fuel cell to generate electricity makes sense compared to storing the electricity directly in batteries without the intermediate steps of :

1. Electricity to hydrogen conversion
2. Hydrogen storage
3. Conversion of hydrogen back to electricity via a fuel cell


I will remain dismissive of hydrogen compared to batteries unless the combined costs of the 3 components of hydrogen generation, storage and fuel cell systems can somehow be cheaper, lighter, smaller, more durable, scalable, with greater range than the one component of a battery or a two component ultracapacitor/battery combo.

Put simply, in order to be relevant, hydrogen creation and hydrogen fuel cells have to beat electric inverters and transformers, and hydrogen storage has to beat batteries.

Nonetheless it still is important to note the unstoppable trends of using dramatically less of, or replacing completely, the usage of scarce or expensive materials with highly abundant materials.


The second article, about Superconductors, is more significant, although much harder to read or understand for most people.
High Temperature Super Conducting is revolutionary since it radically reduces the size and weight of motors and usage of copper and will enable very far flung locations to be linked together electrically enabling Inter-Hemispheric Power Transmission so that Solar and Wind power from anywhere on Earth can be used day and night 24/7/365 without largescale storage.

A Catalyst for Cheaper Fuel Cells
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/22386/?a=f
A new catalyst based on iron works as well as platinum-based catalysts for accelerating the chemical reactions inside hydrogen fuel cells. The finding could help make fuel cells for electric cars cheaper and more practical.

Fuel cell researchers have been looking for cheaper, more abundant alternatives to platinum, which costs between $1,000 and $2,000 an ounce and is mined almost exclusively in just two countries: South Africa and Russia. One promising catalyst that uses far less expensive materials--iron, nitrogen, and carbon--has long been known to promote the necessary reactions, but at rates that are far too slow to be practical.

Now researchers at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS) in Quebec have dramatically increased the performance of this type of iron-based catalyst. Their material produces 99 amps per cubic centimeter at 0.8 volts, a key measurement of catalytic activity. That is 35 times better than the best nonprecious metal catalyst so far, and close to the Department of Energy's goal for fuel-cell catalysts: 130 amps per cubic centimeter. It also matches the performance of typical platinum catalysts, says Jean-Pol Dodelet, a professor of energy, materials, and telecommunications at INRS who led the work.

The improvement, reported in the latest issue of the journal Science, is "quite surprising," says Radoslav Adzic, a senior chemist at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, NY, who also develops catalysts for fuel cells. The new material meets a benchmark for hydrogen fuel cells set five years ago that "we thought nobody would ever meet," adds Hubert Gasteiger, a visiting professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. "For the very first time, a nonprecious metal catalyst makes sense."
........
Dodelet believes that while his group has "solved the problem" of increasing the activity of the catalyst, two more significant hurdles remain before it can be practical in fuel cells. First, the catalyst's durability needs to be improved. After 100 hours of testing, the reaction rates decreased by half. Second, because the catalyst can only work as fast as the reactants are provided, the transport of oxygen and protons into the material needs to be improved, something Dodelet plans to leave to fuel-cell engineers. Adzic says that the first step toward addressing the materials' durability will be closely studying the catalyst to better understand how it works.

Magnetism Governs Properties Of Iron-based Superconductors
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 132452.htm
“Determining the mechanism of superconductivity in iron pnictide systems is very important in solving the long-standing mystery of the high temperature superconductor phenomena in general,” Yildirim says. “Once we have such an understanding of this strange phenomenon, we can then make predictions and design new materials with even higher superconductivity temperatures.”

Spiralman
Posts: 107
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Dow Chemical to produce thermoplastic solar roof shingles by

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Dow Chemical to produce thermoplastic solar roof shingles by 2011

http://www.mlive.com/business/mid-michi ... hermo.html

Needless to say, in this integrate solar shingle approach the cost of solar further collapses since the installation cost of solar almost vanishes as it is just a tiny part of the cost of redoing a roof, and solar installations won’t require anywhere near as much skill as it does today.

By 2011-2012, we are looking at the lowest cost thin film solar tech costing about $0.75/W to produce (today it costs $0.98).
Of course there will be the additional costs of attaching the roof to the electric grid, which will add another $0.50/W

So cutting out what will be the big remaining expenses of the solar panel engineering evaluation/analysis and installation process will really help in beating the incumbent approaches of power generation.

As a comparison, Coal, Oil, Nuke, and Gas power plants cost anywhere from $2/W - $3/W to build.

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Spiralman
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India plans to test space shuttle in next 12 months & Intern

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India plans to test space shuttle in next 12 months & International Space Race Dominance

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandte ... onths.html
It hopes the shuttle will enable India to offer cut-price satellite launches and become a dominant player in the industry. Last night officials said if successful the shuttle may, in time, be used for other transport uses, but its main purpose now is to "reduce the cost of access to space."
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International Space Race Dominance
http://worldstoreblog.com/2009/03/10/in ... dominance/

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Spiralman
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Mass Extinctions, Ancient Viruses May Hold Clues to Life's O

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Mass Extinctions, Ancient Viruses May Hold Clues to Life¹s Origins & Economic crisis drives the mothers of invention

Mass Extinctions, Ancient Viruses May Hold Clues to Life’s Origins
http://www.physorg.com/news157973463.html

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As previous research has shown, the battle between viruses and the cells they try to infect is thought to be a major force in driving evolution. Under pressure from viruses, cells continually develop mutations to avoid infections, but these mutations usually aren’t useful in other ways (except coincidentally).

However, as the new model shows, when an extinction event occurs that kills off many of the cells in an environment, the number of viruses also decreases for lack of hosts. The viruses’ main weapon is having a variety of host recognition proteins (HRPs) that know which cells to attack. But fewer viruses means fewer HRPs, so that surviving cells that are immune to the few remaining viruses now have a chance to evolve in an environment free of virus interference. Under virus-free conditions, cells can inherit mutations that are likely to be more useful in the long run, rather than simply defensive strategies. In this way, extinction events speed up the development of new biological functions that might otherwise be unlikely to emerge. Without extinction events, viruses might control all of Earth’s evolution.

"I find the idea that viruses face extinctions along with their hosts important," said Jalasvuori. "It is widely believed that viruses, in a sense, control the evolution of their hosts and kill the evolutionary winners. Therefore, right after extinction level events, such as massive meteorite impacts, there would be very few viruses to bring the success-story of the winner to an end. Some of the novel evolutionary innovations observed today might have emerged for the first time in the genomes of these winners."
Economic crisis drives the mothers of invention
http://www.physorg.com/news158049975.html

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Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention (1967)

Cosmik Debris

The mystery man came over
And he said "I'm outta sight!"
He said for a nominal service charge
I could reach nirvana tonight
If I was ready, willing and able
To pay him his regular fee
He would drop all the rest of
His pressing affairs and devote
His attention to me

But I said "Look here brother
who you jiving with that cosmik debris?
Now who you jiving with that cosmik debris?
Look here brother, don't waste your time on me"

The mystery man got nervous
And he fidget around a bit
He reached in the pocket of his mystery robe
And he whipped out a shaving kit
Now I thought it was a razor
And a can of foaming goo
But he told me right then when the top popped open
There was nothin' his box won't do
With the oil of Aphrodite, and the dust of the Grand Wazoo
He said "You might not believe this, little fella
But it'll cure your asthma too"

And I said "Look here brother
Who you jiving with that cosmik debris?
Now what kind of a guru are you, anyway?
Look here brother, don't waste your time on me"
(Don't waste your time)

Spiralman
Posts: 107
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Germany: The World's First Major Renewable Energy Economy; 3

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Germany: The World's First Major Renewable Energy Economy; 33% by 2020; 50% by 2030; 100% by 2050

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea ... gy-economy
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According to the German Aerospace Center (DLR) there is enough solar energy falling over the North African deserts to satisfy the world’s electricity needs many times over. Despite its abundance in regions like the Sahara, the generation of solar power has been traditionally cost-prohibitive.

A design known as the parabolic trough power plant by Hamburg physicist Gerhard Knies is changing this. Such a plant improves on standard photovoltaic cells by generating power day and night.
.......
According to the DLR experts, a parabolic trough power plant of 254 by 254 kilometers [152 miles X 152 miles] in the Sahara Desert could power the world’s energy needs for a year.

German technology to harness solar power in the North African desert
Insecurity in supplies combined with the global climate crisis [‘lefty’ coopting fig leaf] is driving interest in the use of renewable energies. Projects to harvest solar power for use in Europe from North Africa, which experts predict could meet the world’s electricity needs, are growing.
http://www.young-germany.de/news-verwal ... no_cache=1
43 countries signed an agreement creating the Union for the Mediterranean in July 2008. TREC hopes to also reduce the needed oil imports in countries like Tunisia and Morocco, rich in solar energy.

Germany hopes to reap as much energy from solar-thermal power plants in North Africa by 2020 as all of its present nuclear power plants combined.

Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel was in North Africa in February to discuss the solar energy initiative. In early 2009, construction began near Cairo on the first parabolic trough power plant in North Africa under the direction of Solar Millennium.

Current plans are to install at least 53,000 parabolic trough mirrors on more than 130,000 square meters by mid-2010. Solar Millennium also has proposals for plants in Algeria, Morocco, Israel and the United Arab Emirates. In addition to serving their regions, the plants will export clean and low-priced solar energy to Europe.

Spiralman
Posts: 107
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ARM: Heretic in the church of Intel, Moore's Law & relating

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ARM: Heretic in the church of Intel, Moore's Law & relating this to Solar

http://www.computerworld.com/action/art ... Id=9131098

Some non-techies may shy away from this type of thing, but you should realize that dynamics like Moore’s Law illustrate powerful principles that ultimately have huge impacts far beyond what they are addressing on the surface.

This article points to the fact that in the quest for greater mobility for computing, there is a simultaneous need for reduction of energy usage per computation so that batteries last longer.

Moore’s Law of doubling transistor density has coincided with a rapid decline in the amount of energy needed per computation.
Moore’s Law in effect meant that a shrinking amount of matter and energy was required to create a computer chip with increasing capacity.

But the decline of energy cost per computation will continue even when/if Moore’s Law stop working on dropping the construction cost of the chip of a given capacity.

In effect Moore’s Law is just a subordinate law to the bigger notion that humanity is constantly figuring out how to get more and more functionality from less and less matter and energy.

Haitz Law does the same for LED lights, in noting a continuing rate of growing efficiency of converting electricity into light, and the dropping price per light fixture.

And one day, someone will name the Solar Manufacturing Cost Reduction trend, which has seen the price per watt of solar panels fall by three-fold every decade since 1970.

Ironically, some have cited the fact that solar panels don’t obey “Moore’s Law” in terms of a periodic doubling of sunlight-harvesting efficiency improvements on the panel itself.

But what they have failed to see is the steadily growing efficiency of applying materials and energy overall to the harvesting of sunlight, since the panel themselves are already at 10% - 25% can only reach 100% efficiency at converting sunlight, and thus grows somewhat slowly towards the limit of 100%, the efficiency of using our overall technical infrastructure for producing solar panels continues to accelerate, and we are nowhere near the upper limits of efficiencies.

So we have two types of laws here that have been conflated with Moore’s Law, but for which the ARM chip approach exposes the distinction:

1. cost reductions per quantity of utility when operating the chip (or panel) - ARM’s Law
2. cost reductions per quantity of matter and energy required to produce that portion of a chip (or panel) with a given capability - Moore’s Law


What the solar detractors have really noted is that when we look at a single panel, it doesn’t follow an exponentialized version of ARM’s Law, ie reduced cost through operational efficiency, since it can’t grow exponentially towards 100%, when it is already so high.

However, on a single panel basis we know that solar is obeying a type of Moore’s Law for exponential reduction in the cost of manufacturing, > 3X/decade.

And on a global scale, if we think of the world as a potential harvester of sunlight, we are doubling the number of the solar analogy to ‘transistors,’ - Megawatts of solar panel absorption capacity - at a rate very similar to what is traditionally thought of as Moore’s Law, ie every 12 – 24 months.

And consequently, also on a global scale, we are also doubling the Earth’s efficiency of harvesting the sun in the form of electricity.

Eventually, we will saturate the exponential curve for harvesting sunlight on the Earth’s surface.
But just putting the panels above the Earth’s atmosphere and ever closer to the sun radically grows the amount of energy that can be harvested.

The amount of the sun’s energy that hits the Earth’s surface is gigantic - 10,000 X - what all of humanity uses through every form of energy every day.

But the energy that hits the Earth’s surface is insignificant compared to what the Sun produces.

Those that try to quote Physics’ Laws of Thermodynamics against Solar power as a solution to our energy needs and claim that there are limits to the Earth’s Carrying Capacity are either dishonest or incredibly stupid.

Life and civilization are just pinwheels in the Solar System being driven by an insignificant fraction of the Sun’s power.
There is no end in sight to the Solar Exponential.

Spiralman
Posts: 107
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$5 DNA Test for Virus Outperforms Pap Smear; No False Negati

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$5 DNA Test for Virus Outperforms Pap Smear; No False Negatives; No Pelvic Exam by Doctor Necessary; Do It Yourself; Test only every 5-10 years

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/healt ... ml?_r=1&hp

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......
Cervical cancer was a leading cause of death for American women in the 1950s; it now kills fewer than 4,000 a year.

In poor and middle-income countries, where the cancer kills more than 250,000 women a year, cost is a factor, but the test’s maker, Qiagen, with financing from the Gates Foundation, has developed a $5 version and the price could go lower with enough orders, the company said.
......
The Indian study, begun in 1999, divided 131,746 healthy women ages 30 to 59 from 497 villages into four groups. One group, the control, got typical rural clinic care: advice to go to a hospital if they wanted screening. The second got Pap smears, the third got flashlight-vinegar visualization, and the fourth got a DNA test, then made by Digene, which is now owned by Qiagen. The company did not pay for or donate to the study, its authors said.

After eight years, the visualization group had about the same rates of advanced cancer and death as the control group. The Pap-smear group had about three-fourths the rates, and the DNA test had about half.

Significantly, none of the women who were negative on their DNA test died of cervical cancer. “So if you have a negative test, you’re good to go for several years,” Dr. Blumenthal said.
......
Cervical cancer is caused by a few of the 150 strains of the human papillomavirus. Women pick strains up as soon as they start having intercourse, but more than 90 percent of cases clear up spontaneously within two years. Early DNA tests would find these, but lead to useless overtreatment. So in women ages 20 to 30, doctors often order repeat Pap tests, which is expensive but may catch the tiny minority of cancers that develop in less than 15 years.

“The U.S. has high resources and low risk-tolerance,” Dr. Schiffman explained, while countries like India have little money and are forced to tolerate risk.

Dr. Jan Agosti, the Gates Foundation officer overseeing its third world screening, said Qiagen’s new $5 test — which proved itself in a two-year study in China — runs on batteries without water or refrigeration, and takes less than three hours. In countries where women are “shyer about pelvic exams,” she added, it even works “acceptably well” on vaginal swabs they can take themselves.
Diagnostics, especially for viruses, bacteria, fungus and protozoan, are some of the best and easiest applications of DNA technology to our health problems.
Since a great many of our health problems are due to the 90% of our bodies’ non-human cells (bacteria, fungus and viruses are 10% of our body weight, but they are 1/100 the size of human cells), DNA tests for the presence of pathogens reaching critical levels or even improper ratios of normally beneficial microflora, are a low cost method of performing preventative healthcare.

While the emphasis on the Human Genome pProject was to discover new molecular targets for new medicines, over the last 25 years it has led to the almost 1 Trillion-fold reduction in the cost of gathering DNA information.

Although the biopharma industry’s progress on developing new medicines based on genomics has been far less than impressive, the development of molecular diagnostics is becoming explosive.

While human genetic tests have tended to focus on finding very small subgroups of human populations with elevated risks of contracting a disease and at various severity levels, they run up against the incredible complexity and diversity of the human genome and the multitude of compensating factors - genetic and environmental - that reduce the applicability of any single genetic variation as a diagnostic measure, and require gigantic sized research populations of patients to statistically cover that diversity, DNA testing for the presence of pathogenic microbes and viruses is much more clear cut.

Spiralman
Posts: 107
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Why ET's genetic code could be just like ours

Post by Spiralman »

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/ar ... ?nlid=1918
A new thermodynamic analysis suggests that 10 of life's 20 amino acids must be common throughout the cosmos
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"The combined actions of thermodynamics and subsequent natural selection suggest that the genetic code we observe on the Earth today may have significant features in common with life throughout the cosmos."
http://arxiv.org/abs/0904.0402


A thermodynamic basis for prebiotic amino acid synthesis and the nature of the first genetic code
Paul G. Higgs, Ralph E. Pudritz
(Submitted on 2 Apr 2009)
Of the twenty amino acids used in proteins, ten were formed in Miller's atmospheric discharge experiments. The two other major proposed sources of prebiotic amino acid synthesis include formation in hydrothermal vents and delivery to Earth via meteorites. We combine observational and experimental data of amino acid frequencies formed by these diverse mechanisms and show that, regardless of the source, these ten early amino acids can be ranked in order of decreasing abundance in prebiotic contexts. This order can be predicted by thermodynamics. The relative abundances of the early amino acids were most likely reflected in the composition of the first proteins at the time the genetic code originated. The remaining amino acids were incorporated into proteins after pathways for their biochemical synthesis evolved. This is consistent with theories of the evolution of the genetic code by stepwise addition of new amino acids. These are hints that key aspects of early biochemistry may be universal.
[Neat stuff, but you may ask, How come nobody did this simple calculation and graph many decades ago?

Answer:
It probably required seeing that there were only these 10 amino acids in meteorites combined with the recent flood of observations that there are Microbes From Outer Space, making people accept more and more the Panspermia Hypothesis, that life is everywhere throughout the cosmos.

Panspermia evidence from last month:

Discovery of New Microorganisms in the Stratosphere
http://www.isro.org/pressrelease/Mar16_2009.htm

Southpaw Solar System
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/co ... 2009/316/2

[This was significant because if amino acids were solely made through the random actions of inorganic chemistry there would be equal amounts of left-handed and right-handed molecules.

The article contains just BS suggesting that water or polarized light would cause the handedness of amino acids, and then suggesting that there would be different handedness of alien lifeforms as a result of their unsupportble hypothesis, but that is patently false.

Water is not a chiral molecule, and light is polarized in both right- and left- handed equally.

The answer is quite simple:
Life’s enzymatic processes themselves force handedness onto molecules.

The molecules seen in the meteorite are evidence that life once lived inside those 6 meteorites; and even if the microbes died off billions of years ago they would still leave behind the chiral signature.]

Spiralman
Posts: 107
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New discovery may end transplant rejection

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http://www.examiner.com/x-1242-Science- ... -rejection

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Big news in the medical world: scientists in Australia have found a way to stop the body from attacking organ transplants, greatly decreasing the possibility of organ rejection.

The last major hurdle of transplantations is the body itself. When a new tissue is introduced, one's immune system kicks into overdrive, sending out cells known as killer T cells to attack and destroy the unknown tissue. Because of this, those who receive transplants have to maintain a regime of toxic immune-suppressing drugs. Not only does that make them more likely to have severe complications from diseases the immune system would normally handle easily, the drugs themselves do not-so-nice-things to the body as a whole. Getting past the immune system obstacle would be the medical breakthrough of the year (maybe, and sincerely, even the decade).
.......
The idea was to boost the number of Tregs in the system, quieting the killer T cells for a period of time sufficient for the body to accept the new tissue. After that point, the immune system would return to normal activity.
........
Webster explained what followed after the transplant: "The numbers of T regulatory cells dropped over time, and the immune systems returned to normal in about two weeks. By that time 80% of the mice had accepted the grafts of insulin producing cells as their own. This acceptance rate is very high for transplantation, with mice normally rejecting grafts within 2-3 weeks. A graft is considered accepted if it's tolerated after 100 days. We took some mice out to 200-300 days, and not one of them rejected."

This is fantastic news for the transplant world. If immune-suppressing drugs can be removed from the procedure, those receiving transplants could lead healthier, and undoubtedly longer, lives. Not to mention, cutting the drugs means cutting the cost of the procedure.
.......
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