Dialectics of Science and the Singularity

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Spiralman
Posts: 107
Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2009 5:07 pm

Algae (diatoms) could triple dye-sensitized thin film solar

Post by Spiralman »

Algae (diatoms) could triple dye-sensitized thin film solar cells to 30%

http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtm ... =216500176

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Dye-sensitized solar cells are favored as a thin-film material because they work in low-light conditions and are fabricated with environmentally benign materials compared to silicon solar cells. However, silicon cells have more than twice the efficiency, as much as 20 percent compared to less than 10 percent for dye-sensitized solar cells.

If diatoms could triple the efficiency of dye-sensitized solar cells, they could potentially offer comparable efficiency at a lower cost, especially in low lighting conditions.

The Oregon engineers fed titanium dioxide to living diatoms so they would build shells from the photovoltaic material instead of silicon dioxide, from which they usually build their shells.

"We have found that diatoms will readily accept titanium dioxide in place of silicon dioxide if that's all we make available to them," said Rorrer.

The engineers have grown diatoms on a substrate. They have also bred them in bulk, then coated a glass surface with the material. In either case, the pattern of intricate nanoscale features both boosted the photovoltaic surface area available and trapped incident light inside the pores.

After removing the organic material from the shells, leaving behind the diatom's nanoscale skeletons composed of titanium dioxide, the researchers mixed the material in a dye. The resulting thin-film solar cells had three times the efficiency, according to Rorrer, than the same thin films without diatom nanoscale patterning.

The technique is still experimental, and is expected to add cost to conventional methods of fabricating dye-sensitized solar cells. But Rorrer claims the increased efficiency could justify the extra cost. One reason is that because photons bounce around inside the pores, they have a much greater probability of energizing the dye molecules, thereby coaxing them to release more electrons.
.....

Spiralman
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Aerosols [Sulfates and Soot] May Drive a Significant Portion

Post by Spiralman »

Aerosols [Sulfates and Soot] May Drive a Significant Portion of Arctic Warming & Why Only a Global South Strategy Makes Sense

http://www.physorg.com/news158423459.html
the model suggests aerosols likely account for 45 percent or more of the warming that has occurred in the Arctic during the last three decades. The results were published in the April issue of Nature Geoscience.
Though there are several varieties of aerosols, previous research has shown that two types -- sulfates and black carbon -- play an especially critical role in regulating climate change. Both are products of human activity.

Sulfates, which come primarily from the burning of coal and oil, scatter incoming solar radiation and have a net cooling effect on climate. Over the past three decades, the United States and European countries have passed a series of laws that have reduced sulfate emissions by 50 percent. While improving air quality and aiding public health, the result has been less atmospheric cooling from sulfates.

At the same time, black carbon emissions have steadily risen, largely because of increasing emissions from Asia. Black carbon -- small, soot-like particles produced by industrial processes and the combustion of diesel and biofuels -- absorb incoming solar radiation and have a strong warming influence on the atmosphere.
[
What a surprise! I’m shocked, shocked shocked!
Who would have thunk it that increased black stuff falling on and darkening ice would make it melt faster?
My God, you would have had to sit in a black car in the summer to figure that one out!
Who can get a Climate Change grant for that type of brilliant experiment?

And what a major insight to recognize that burning wood and charcoal to cook and boil water, and using 2-stroke engines and other black smoke-belching outdated vehicles and factories in the global south and eastern europe might contribute significantly to warming through spewing out black carbon!

And then to make that next leap that sulfates, which normally cause the sky to dim and precipitate humidity into cloud formation, and that reducing them, via cleaning up Northern nation factories’ belches, would let in more sunshine especially in the Northern Hemisphere! What a massive leap! NOT

How come James Lovelock couldn’t have recognized this?
After all he was a major one who targeted aerosols and then with his Daisy World model in Gaia Hypothesis showed the role of darkness and lightness in the atmosphere for precipitation and cooling.

Or maybe they could have recognized why clouds form over algae patches in oceans, release of dimethyl sulfide (DMS).
Dimethylsulfide Emission: Climate Control by Marine Algae?
http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/dime ... erview.php
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The regions of Earth that showed the strongest responses to aerosols in the model are the same regions that have witnessed the greatest real-world temperature increases since 1976. The Arctic region has seen its surface air temperatures increase by 1.5 C (2.7 F) since the mid-1970s. In the Antarctic, where aerosols play less of a role, the surface air temperature has increased about 0.35 C (0.6 F).

That makes sense, Shindell explained, because of the Arctic's proximity to North America and Europe. The two highly industrialized regions have produced most of the world's aerosol emissions over the last century, and some of those aerosols drift northward and collect in the Arctic. Precipitation, which normally flushes aerosols out of the atmosphere, is minimal there, so the particles remain in the air longer and have a stronger impact than in other parts of the world.

Since decreasing amounts of sulfates and increasing amounts of black carbon both encourage warming, temperature increases can be especially rapid. The build-up of aerosols also triggers positive feedback cycles that further accelerate warming as snow and ice cover retreat.

In the Antarctic, in contrast, the impact of sulfates and black carbon is minimized because of the continent’s isolation from major population centers and the emissions they produce.

"There's a tendency to think of aerosols as small players, but they're not," said Shindell. "Right now, in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere and in the Arctic, the impact of aerosols is just as strong as that of the greenhouse gases."

The growing recognition that aerosols may play a larger climate role can have implications for policymakers.

"We will have very little leverage over climate in the next couple of decades if we're just looking at carbon dioxide," Shindell said. "If we want to try to stop the Arctic summer sea ice from melting completely over the next few decades, we're much better off looking at aerosols and ozone."

Aerosols tend to be quite-short lived, residing in the atmosphere for just a few days or weeks. Greenhouses gases, by contrast, can persist for hundreds of years. Atmospheric chemists theorize that the climate system may be more responsive to changes in aerosol levels over the next few decades than to changes in greenhouse gas levels, which will have the more powerful effect in coming centuries.

"This is an important model study, raising lots of great questions that will need to be investigated with field research," said Loretta Mickley, an atmospheric chemist from Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. who was not directly involved in the research. Understanding how aerosols behave in the atmosphere is still very much a work-in-progress, she noted, and every model needs to be compared rigorously to real life observations. But the science behind Shindell’s results should be taken seriously.

"It appears that aerosols have quite a powerful effect on climate, but there's still a lot more that we need to sort out," said Shindell.
.......
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[
Financing the rollout of clean energy to the Global South should be the top climate priority bar none over doing anything in the rich countries, who already have plenty of electricity, and whose industrial plants and transportation emissions are actually much much cleaner than in the South, and in fact the cleaning of them has removed the protective effect of their sulfate emissions, and left them more exposed to the impact of the dirty energy of the Global South.

Global Energy Equality is the most important thing from a social economic development and independence standpoint, and it is the most important thing to do from an ecological standpoint.

Solar and Wind power and hybrid vehicles (or even more recent repossessed hand-me-down ordinary cars and trucks from the rich countries) in the South will be the most valuable way to provide jobs, stimulate global aggregate demand, and clean up the environment, with one stroke removing the drive for deforestation, the Brown Clouds settling on Arctic ice, and CO2 emissions, where they are growing the fastest, and where the energy production power plants are the most primitive.

When combined with the imminent affordability of LED lighting, hydroponics and desalination, this South Strategy is the surest path to providing food and fresh water security and sanitation and ensuring that the South will not have to continue to race to the bottom to sell their products so they can earn foreign exchange.

And if the workers and businesspeople in the South weren’t competitively racing to the bottom, they wouldn’t be pulling the workers in the North down as fast. In fact, if the workers in the South had more and better paid jobs and more disposable income they would be buying more stuff made by the workers in the North.

And if the South was more livable, fewer skilled people would be brain draining to the North, and more skilled people in the North would choose to move South.

Global Energy Equality gives everyone a bigger and better world to circulate and co-mingle within.
]

Spiralman
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Will Renewables Represent 90% of New Capacity by 2012?

Post by Spiralman »

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/ ... -6013.html

The U.S. still derives the vast majority of its electricity from coal, natural gas and nuclear reactors, but the growth is all in renewables.

Approximately 90 percent of the new electrical capacity that will be brought on line in the U.S. in 2012 will come from renewables like solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and hydroelectric power, according to a new study from the Prometheus Institute.

The vast majority of the 18.6 gigawatts of renewable capacity that will come on line that year will consist of wind power. Wind capacity will grow by 15.9 gigawatts in 2012 while solar will trail with 2.1 gigawatts. Still, even solar should do better than fossil fuels in 2012, according to Travis Bradford, president of Prometheus. Fossil fuel capacity should grow by just over a gigawatt.

[Solar will be contributing twice as much new capacity as fossil fuels.]
......
Then there is simple construction time. Solar utility fields take time to permit and build, but not as long as nuclear or fossil plants.
......
In 2000, renewables accounted for a whopping 1 percent, or 279 megawatts of new generation capacity. In 2005, it jumped to 2.7 gigawatts or 17 percent. Fossil fuel plants, meanwhile, dived in 2003 from 44 gigawatts of new capacity to 15.9 a year later.

The flip occurred last year. 9,015 megawatts worth of renewable capacity was added last year while only 8,407 megawatts worth of fossil fuel capacity was added. An additional 720 megawatts of "other" power, i.e., nuclear and fuel cells, was added to bring the total of new capacity to 18.1 gigawatts.
.....
[
By 2012, Solar power – PV and thermal - on average will be cost equivalent with every other type of energy. Already best of breed technologies have reached price parity with the incumbents.
And solar will also continue to be the fastest to build.

It could soon thereafter eat into wind power’s share of the growth in the US.
]

Spiralman
Posts: 107
Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2009 5:07 pm

La Vie En Rose: Japanese LED company triples energy efficien

Post by Spiralman »

La Vie En Rose: Japanese LED company triples energy efficiency of red light for plant growth; Green OLED doubled; Blue LED's + >25%

http://ledsmagazine.com/news/6/4/5

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Plant growth gets the red light from Showa Denko
07 Apr 2009
The Japanese LED maker has developed high-performance 660 nm chips that accelerate plant photosynthesis.

Showa Denko K.K., a Japan-based LED maker, has started selling samples of AlGaInP (aluminum gallium indium phosphide) LED chips that emit red light with wavelength of 660 nm. This, says the company, is the optimum light for accelerating the growth of plants.

Showa Denko has developed a new light-emitting layer and claims to have achieved an output of 11 mW at the drive current of 20 mA, which is believes to the world’s highest level for 660-nm LED chips to date.

In recent years, there has been widespread investigation of the growth of vegetables under conditions where various aspects of the environment are controlled, such as lighting, temperature, humidity, CO2 concentration and nourishment.

Nearly 30 facilities of this kind are already in operation in Japan. They ensure stabilized production regardless of season or location; they allow multiple harvests; and they do not need fungicides or insecticides because of the controlled environment.

It has been found that red light with wavelengths of around 660 nm is most effective in increasing the efficiency of photosynthesis, thereby accelerating the growth of plants. Fluorescent lamps, sodium lamps, and conventional red LED lamps are now used at plant growth facilities.
However, fluorescent and sodium lamps emit a great deal of light with wavelengths other than around 660 nm, resulting in energy loss and high costs. Conventional red LED lamps need to use many chips because of their low output, which is also costly. Furthermore, the wavelength of conventional AlGaInP LED chips is 650 nm at best, falling short of the ideal wavelength of 660 nm.

In addition to the development of the new 660-nm-light-emitting layer, Showa Denko says it has improved the shape and arrangement of electrodes as well as the chip surface treatment method. Thus, the external quantum efficiency of LED lamps using the new AlGaInP chips is about three times as high as that of conventional red LED lamps.

Compared with the conventional red LED lamps, the new AlGaInP LED lamps reduce electric power consumption by 70% at a given level of brightness, resulting in lower costs and energy consumption at plant growth facilities. Lower heat emission from light sources will also improve the plant growth environment.
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[Grow For Me......
we can put on the red light......
And the blue one......
Cause Audrey, we know you’re just a Mean Green Mother From Outer Space]

Blue Light Specials
New materials boost efficiency of blue OLEDs by 25%
http://www.pnl.gov/news/release.asp?id=358

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Japanese Researchers Double Green Phosphorescent OLED Efficiency to 210 lm/W
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NE ... 03/168292/
Compare with Edison bulbs: @ 13 - 20 lm/W
Compact Fluorescents @ 57 - 72 lm/W
High Pressure Sodium @ 85- 150 lm/W

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Spiralman
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The Body Politic: Are We Organisms or Living Ecosystems?

Post by Spiralman »

THE DEEP SYMBIOSIS BETWEEN BACTERIA AND THEIR HUMAN HOSTS IS FORCING SCIENTISTS TO ASK: ARE WE ORGANISMS OR LIVING ECOSYSTEMS?
http://seedmagazine.com/content/print/the_body_politic/

Spiralman
Posts: 107
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Third-World Stove Soot Is Target in Climate Fight; ~50% of A

Post by Spiralman »

Third-World Stove Soot Is Target in Climate Fight; ~50% of Arctic Melt; 18% of all global warming;

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/scien ... l?emc=eta1

[
This is a must read and obviously makes the case I have been relentlessly repeating for a very long time that upgrading the Global South’s energy systems should be the TOP PRIORITY of anyone concerned about the environment or social justice.

The slogan Think Globally, Act Locally, is a REACTIONARY slogan when uttered by folks in rich countries.
]

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While carbon dioxide may be the No. 1 contributor to rising global temperatures, scientists say, black carbon has emerged as an important No. 2, with recent studies estimating that it is responsible for 18 percent of the planet’s warming, compared with 40 percent for carbon dioxide. [CO2 is not even responsible for half of global warming.] Decreasing black carbon emissions would be a relatively cheap way to significantly rein in global warming — especially in the short term, climate experts say.

Replacing primitive cooking stoves with modern versions that emit far less soot could provide a much-needed stopgap, while nations struggle with the more difficult task of enacting programs and developing technologies to curb carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels.
.......

Spiralman
Posts: 107
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China Faces a Water Crisis & "Orgaponics" and "Fertigated" v

Post by Spiralman »

China Faces a Water Crisis & "Orgaponics" and "Fertigated" veggie farm in Philippines

China Faces a Water Crisis
http://news.yahoo.com/s/bw/20090416/bs_ ... mo02W1v0gC
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Today some 300 million people living in rural areas, or nearly a quarter of China's population of 1.3 billion, don't have access to safe drinking water. And among more than 600 Chinese cities, 400 are facing water shortages, including 100 that may see serious shortages, says Ma Jun, director of the Beijing-based Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs and author of China's Water Crisis.
.....
Roughly 65% of the country's total water usage goes to agriculture, but less than half actually reaches the crops; the rest leaks from pipes, evaporates, or is otherwise lost on the way to the fields, according to World Bank statistics. And of the 25% that goes to China's industry, the majority isn't recycled. That compares to a recycling average of as high as 85% in developing countries. As more Chinese flock to cities, the 10% that goes to homes is likely to rise.
.......
huge regional disparity. Southern China has a relative abundance of water, getting more than 2,000 millimeters (79 inches) a year of rainfall. In the north -- where 17 million people live in Beijing and 12 million live in Tianjin -- the average annual rainfall is just 200mm to 400mm (7.9 in. to 15.8 in.) a year. "Availability of water drops to a very low level on the north China plain, even below that of Israel," says Ma. And this region is home to "China's political and cultural capital, major manufacturing, and one of China's bread baskets," he adds.
.....
[
Needless to say, China’s cities are excellent candidates for solar-powered, LED-lit, hydroponics-grown urban microfarms, which use 1/10th to 1/20th less water.

Here’s a variation on hydroponics implemented in a greenhouse in the Philippines.
Once LEDs are affordable, operations like this could be set up in parking garages, warehouses, or in simple sheds by even people with very little start up capital.
]

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More innovation in organic veggie farm; cuts water use dramatically; cuts growing time by 40%
http://business.inquirer.net/money/tops ... eggie-farm
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To keep up with the demand, Chito devised a way to grow lettuce quickly—in less time than what it normally takes—without compromising the quality. Derived from hydroponics, Chito applies what he calls orgaponics to their plot system—a faster, economical and environment-friendly way of distributing water and fertilizer to the veggies.

On each 4 x 8 ft. slanting table inside their greenhouse, lettuce is planted in 168 cups. Instead of soil, Chito uses water fed in pipes where lettuce roots can absorb it.

“We put our own formulation of organic fertilizer to the water storage tank that pumps water back and forth,” Chito explains.

This way, water and fertilizer are distributed equally, guaranteeing equal size and color of the lettuce. The growing cycle is cut from five to six weeks in the plot to about 21 to 26 days on the growing tables.

“There is no time wasted as there are no plots (soil) to be prepared after harvest, which previously took from three to seven days or even more,” Chito explained. “On the orgaponics, as soon as the lettuce is harvested, a new set of seedlings in cups are placed on the growing tables.”
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The plots, measuring 1 x 30 meters, are “fertigated” via drip irrigation with water enriched with effective microorganism (EM). There are four plots in a greenhouse, and in-between the rows of lettuce are irrigation tapes.

Chito uses EM as a main component of the compost to hasten the fermentation. Without EM, fermentation will take about 40-45 days.

“But with EM, you’ll have a very nice organic compost in two weeks,” he said.
......
The vegetable farm produces one to two tons a month, which are mainly sold in Manila.
......

Spiralman
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Turkish Delight: White LED breakthrough, 300 lumens/Watt; wi

Post by Spiralman »

Turkish Delight: White LED breakthrough, 300 lumens/Watt; will enable the Catal Huyuk's of the 21st Century

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... light.html

Hilmi Volkan Demir
32 year old Hero of the LED Revolution, which is also the Urban Indoor Agricultural Revolution and thus the Aqua Revolution, which will save the world from the freshwater crisis and starvation.

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Hilmi Volkan Demir
Assistant Professor of Physics
Assistant Professor of Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Associate Director of Nanotechnology Research Center
Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey

PhD in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University in 1998 @ the peak of the DotCommie Revolution.
Fitting that he brings us very close to Free Light and Free Food.

Don’t know how I missed this one! It happened last year in February.

Hilmi Demir’s invention is 25 times more efficient than an Edison bulb and 5 times more efficient than a compact fluorescent light bulb.
It would drop electricity consumption for lighting from 22% to less than 1%.
And since higher efficiency means it gives off much less heat, it also drops the incremental energy needs of additional air conditioning effort to cool down buildings.

This is ~50% of maximum theoretical efficiency of conversion of electricity to white light, and 2/3 of what is expected as practical efficiency.

What was Catal Huyuk?
Çatal Hüyük, (pronounced Chat-al Hoo-yook) located in Turkey; is the oldest known city. First discovered in the late 1950s, it was excavated by James Mellaart between 1961 and 1965. Current excavations led by Ian Hodder have been ongoing since 1993.
Çatal Hüyük is a 9,000 year old Neolithic city, it was the largest and most spectacular farming settlement of the era. The city covered an area of 32 acres and most notably it had no streets. Houses shared their walls and could only be entered by the roof.

It was the beginnings of agriculture that made Çatal Hüyük possible; its economy was based on simple irrigation agriculture, sheep and cattle breeding, and there is evidence of trade in textiles, skins, volcanic glass (obsidian) for tools, and light blue apatite for ornaments.

The houses contained a hearth, mudbrick platforms that served as work or sleeping areas, the interior walls were covered in frescoes of hunting scenes and apparent shrines where the skulls of wild oxen were set into the walls.

Çatal Hüyük may have had a population of around 10,000 people. Tell es-Sultan or Jericho may be somewhat older but was not quite a city.

"The site lies 32 miles southeast of Konya in southern Turkey and is one of several sites being excavated on the Anatolian plain.
"Catal Huyuk has yielded among other splendors, a unique sequence of sanctuaries and shrines, decorated with wall paintings, reliefs in plaster, animal heads, and containing statues, which give us a vivid picture of Neolithic man's concern with religion and beliefs.

"Out of 139 living rooms excavated, not less than one-fourth appear to have served the religion. Such worship rooms or shrines are more elaborately decorated than houses and they are frequently the largest buildings.

"Although these buildings are used for religious practices, no provisions for animal sacrifices have been discovered. No pits for blood or caches of bones of sacrificed animals such as we find in the Early Bronze Age shrines of Beyce Sultan.

"The only evidence of burnt offerings consist of small deposits of charred grain preserved between a plastering of red clay on ceremonial hearths.

"In plaster reliefs goddesses appear solely in anthropomorphic form and the place of the male is taken by bulls and rams, a more impressive exponent of male fertility. Only the bull, stag and leopard occur in full outline as well as in the form of heads, whereas the ram is never fully shown, and is simply represented by rams heads. Stags, boars, and leopards are rare and may be regarded as attributes of the deities, rather than as symbols of the god and goddess themselves

]


Spiralman
Posts: 107
Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2009 5:07 pm

Chuck D, Indeed! & "The Rap Guide to Evolution"

Post by Spiralman »

Video at the Vancouver Evolution
http://www.genomeweb.com/node/915177?em ... 4cb508f503

Hip Hop Darwin
http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/55622/
From "I'm a African":

No I wasn't born in Ghana but Africa is my mama
'Cause that's where my mama got her mitochondria
You can try to fight if you wanna, but it's not gonna change me
'Cause it's plain to see, Africans are my people
And if it's not plain to see then your eyes deceive you
I'm talkin' primeval; the DNA in my veins
Tells a story that reasonable people find believable
But it might blow your transistors; Africa
Is the home of our most recent common ancestors
Which means human beings are all brothers and sisters.
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"The Rap Guide to Evolution" was commissioned by British microbiologist Mark Pallen, who checked all the rhymes for scientific accuracy, prompting Brinkman to remark his may be the first ever "peer-reviewed hip hop show."
......
Beats thumping, the show bounced all over the evolutionary map, covering natural selection, altruism, group selection, and a host of other topics. Brinkman's rhymes were well-received, and the initial reviews of his performance are overwhelmingly positive. Arne Mooers, an SFU evolutionary biologist, said that Brinkman "noticed we all had our mouths hanging open, and it was indeed gobsmackingly mesmerizing. You just don't expect witty lyrics over a hard beat railing against post-modernist waffle on the scientific method. I raved to everyone I bumped into for days."
....
Greg Bole, a UBC zoologist who attended the performance, agreed that Brinkman's 21st century treatment of Darwin's ideas was inspired. "Baba showed real passion, for his music, for entertaining the audience and most importantly for his message: which was one of the wonders of science, the beauty of evolution and the close connection of all humans as brothers and sisters," Bole said. "His performance challenged the audiences perceptions of both evolution and hip hop music. His summation of so much of evolutionary thought was impressive and his lyrical inventiveness was dazzling."
[
I love this format for popularizing scientific concepts.

But.......
We’ll see how they eventually work into their raps the fact that Darwin’s “Tree of Life” is filled with an ever increasingly discovered tangled dogs breakfast of vines and cobwebs of horizontal gene transfer via the transfer of whole chunks of genomes through SymbioGenomics.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... -life.html

I have to wonder how they address the development of the Eukaryotic cell which itself is a result of EndoSymbiosis bringing together multiple microorganisms – the mitochondria mentioned in the “I’m a African” rap, can also be seen as our microbial evolutionary heritage in every cell providing the power plants for every single one of our cells

Will they rap that every individual animal or plant is itself an ecosystem of microbes, fungi, and viri?

Will they rap that it appears that random mutation in higher organisms doesn’t appear to be the dominant driver for the formation of new species of new biological functions, and rather that it is the ultrarapid, exponential churn of the microbial ferment that generates new biological functions, and which promiscuously shares their DNA to such a degree that the word “species” and microbes barely makes any sense, and which then hand off their exponentially generated and tested gene and gene promoter inventions off to viruses which act as the shuttlecrafts pollinating the higher organisms with these novel genetic code payloads?

Will they rap about the activation and inactivation of non-protein coding DNA?

Will they rap about how an organism’s gestation inside of their mothers, while the fetus is marinated for months in its mother’s chemical juices, bacteria, fungi and viri, plays a dramatic role in shaping their development?

Lots to rap about beyond parroting neo-Darwinian, gradualist, point-mutational, individualist, competitive orthodoxy at precisely the moment in history when the Genome Revolution is revealing the inadequacies and errors of neo-Darwinianism on a weekly basis.
]

Acquiring Genomes: The Theory of the Origins of the Species

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465043925
A challenger of the orthodox "neo-Darwinist" interpretation of evolution, microbiologist Margulis has made her professional mark touting an alternative: symbiogenesis. She and coauthor (and son) Sagan have presented their ideas in earlier popular works (What Is Life?, 1995), but never as vigorously as in this volume. Essentially, the debate between neo-Darwinists and Margulis hinges on the definition of a species, and the manner in which a new one appears. To Margulis and Sagan, the neo-Darwinist model, which asserts random gene mutation as the source of inherited variations, is "wildly overemphasized," and to support their view, they delve deeply into the world of microbes. They detail the anatomy of cells with and without nuclei, positing a process of genome ingestion that creates a new species. Surprisingly, the upshot of Margulis' theories is the rehabilitation of Jean Baptiste de Lamarck, whose theory that supposedly acquired traits are hereditary has been ridiculed for 150 years. Polemical and provocative, Margulis and Sagan's work should set many to thinking that evolution has not yet been completely figured out.

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