As part of photosynthesis plants somehow very efficiently split water into hydrogen and oxygen, using relatively small amounts of energy from sunlight. Humanity can accomplish the same split by using tremendous amounts of electricity (that’s how oxygen is generated inside a nuclear submarine). If plants had to rely on human technology they’d use up far more energy trying to do photosynthesis than they’d possibly get out of the process. Plants have been hyper efficient in a way scientists have only been able to envy.
When I learned about this in high school I wondered if as our ability to analyze plants improves, humanity will discover how to split water as efficiently as plants do. I pondered how this could transform how humanity generates energy. A small amount of electricity (from a solar cell or other source), along with some water, and the right process, could split hydrogen from oxygen. They could then be recombined to generate power, either in a fuel cell, or by exposing the hydrogen to oxygen (ie, burning it, forming water again). All that is needed is for the day to come when human technology can split water as efficiently as the leaf of a plant.
That day may be much closer. MIT professor Daniel G. Nocera and his postdoc Matthew Kanan made an important discovery in January of 2008, and are publishing an article describing it in the August 1, 2008 edition of Science (article stub).
Prior efforts to split water efficiently tried to run electricity into water with some type of stable catalyst (a catalyst is other chemicals, that help the process along). Photosynthesis is a violent chemical process however, and has tended to tear down catalysts. Scientists have searched for a stable catalyst that can help make splitting water happen with small amounts of electricity.
Nocera and Kanan used an unstable catalyst instead. They dissolved an inexpensive cobalt and phosphate catalyst mixture in water, ran an electric current through an electrode, and with the additional presence of some platinum catalyst, oxygen bubbles out of the water and hydrogen forms around the electrode. Although the cobalt and phosphate catalyst gets corroded whenever electricity is not applied, Nocera and Kanan found that it reassembles when electricty is applied.
If you are interested in more articles on this discovery, check out google news: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=%22daniel+nocera%22&ie=UTF-8&scoring=n
When I was about 6, I was bitten pretty badly on the back of one leg by a neighbor’s German shepherd that saw me running around in circles and mistook me for fleeing prey. It had the effect of making me look at dogs differently than most people. In even the smallest dog I could see the teeth, the potential for rage, and I felt an inability to know what they were really thinking or feeling. Unlike humans, you couldn’t communicate easily with a dog, and I wondered at people’s willingness to raise the sharp toothed creatures and treat them like their children.
When I was perhaps 10, I lost my fear of dogs. I had a friend who was a few years older, who every kid on the street admired for his bravery, his athleticism, and his collection of martial arts weaponry. A bunch of us were in a large field when 2 doberman pinchers appeared at the far end of the field and started approaching us, snarling. My friend ran away from us, and away from the dogs, and they took chase after him. But then he turned and ran straight at them being noisy and flapping his arms, and they became confused, and ended up running from him. I realized then that dogs were vulnerable creatures, and easily manipulated by human intelligence. I started to see better how dogs have many states of mind, which vary between individuals. As you can see from my paintings of the terribly sweet Lara and the very inquisitive Tank, I have attempted through painting to capture the essence of some of the dogs I know.
Yet some part of me remains aware that models for predicting behavior can be seriously flawed.
Sometimes our models are flawed because in making our models for animal behavior we are getting confused about the true causes. The dog is barking because its territory is being infringed, not because it doesn’t like someone.
Sometimes they are flawed because the models are only predictors of what usually happens, and don’t account for extreme situations. Like a polar bear deciding it wants to play with a husky.
And sometimes our models don’t accurately reflect what usually happens, because we are kept ignorant of behavior or choose to avoid observing true behavior. Like the vicious fighting engaged in by giraffes trying to establish dominance.
With animals, when our models fail to make accurate predictions, we call it wildness. And yet perhaps unpredictability is more a fault of our ability to model, of our internal capabilities, than it is a characteristic of the animal. The animal is likely acting on a complex chain of cause and effect relationships, which we don’t understand, but that are still there. If that’s true, real wildness lies in ourselves.
Update, 9/28/07: Some animals, once trained, are more likely to hold to that conditioning than others, at least until a powerful environmental stimulus causes them to forget their conditioning. We consider such animals domesticable, and think of their character as reverting to one that is more wild. But in this use of the word “wild” we often mean behavior we would find predictable (e.g., the dog will chase a skunk), but tried to condition out of the animal. My conclusion is that wildness has two definitions: one is based on the unpredictability we feel about nature, and the other just means acting as they would in nature without human agency or conditioning even if we find such acts predictable. In this second sense, the dog isn’t really acting wild, it’s acting natural, as if “in the wild”.
A study by federal scientists has concluded that meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring is safe to eat and should be allowed to enter the food supply without any special labeling. It is likely based on the study made by federal scientists that the Food and Drug Administration will approve such meat and milk for human consumption. The study has attracted considerable media attention (see http://news.google.com/news?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&tab=wn&q=clone+fda&btnG=Search+News), and has given rise to shock and concern.
Why would scientists conclude there is a lack of risk? After all, if you clone a creature, isn’t there something unnatural about it?
To my mind, part of the problem is that cloning is a terrible term. The actual technology should be called twinning. The technology made famous by the sheep Dolly doesn’t xerox a creature. It instead is an expensive process that often fails, but creates a slim chance that identical twins will be born. Because this technology is so expensive and so prone to failure, its unlikely that anyone will eat meat from a cloned animal anytime soon. Simply put, once you’ve gone through the process of creating a cloned animal, it’s too valuable to kill. It’s much more likely that people will eat the offsprings or milk of the identical twins created by the process.
Currently, we don’t worry about whether the steak we are eating or the milk we are drinking was from a cow that was an identical twin or not. Some people say that would change if the identical twin was forced into being by a process like cloning. Yet it doesn’t make difference to the molecular makeup of the animal whether it is an identical twin that arose due to complex processes in a womb, or complex processes in a petri dish, just as it doesn’t make a difference whether a human child arose due to conception in a womb, or conception in a test tube. When artificial insemnination first arose, people thought the human child conceived in a test tube would be somehow different. Time has put that fear to rest.
Interesting things are likely to result from twinning technology. For example, a lot of drugs must now be created by synthetic processes that are expensive and difficult to distribute. You could potentially gene splice a drug into a cow that allowed it to by organic processes produce an anti-malarial drug. With twinning technology you could then create identical twins of that cow and then breed mutliple offspring from such cows. The offspring that carried the spliced gene could be used to create very inexpensive therapies.
Alternatively, you could breed different cows together, and then when the cows have an offspring that produces a particularly high quality milk, you could twin the offspring so that you can create more robust milk producing breeds. Therefore twinning technology could be used in conjunction with the much older technology of breeding.
Regardless of the factual evidence, not everyone would trust such a process. Should such people be kept purposely dark of the source of their food by government mandate? I don’t think so.
Although I don’t think it is proper for the government to ban people from making the decision that such food sources are fine with them, I do think it is proper for the government to require better information be provided to consumers.
Therefore, although I agree with the conclusions of the federal scientists that the meat and milk of cloned animals is safe for human consumption, I would prefer that the source of such food be clearly disclosed. We should be able to know what we ingest, and choose whether or not to ingest it, whether or not we will be rational in making that choice.
Therefore I support the conclusion of federal scientists that meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring is safe to eat, but I do not conclude that it should therefore be allowed to enter the food supply without any special labeling. In fact, I would support that all food in the food supply be labeled as to its origins (farm, factory, etc) and the processes used upon it.
It captures and uses rainwater, heats water and runs it under the floors to heat the house, filters and reuses sink and shower water, has a living roof that insulates the roof, runs mostly on solar power, uses bars of led lighting to light the house, and has double paned glass walls:
Here’s a non pre-fab eco friendly home for comparison, Idea House in San Francisco’s Mission District:
http://www.sunset.com/sunset/home/article/0,20633,1666702,00.html