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TFA is actually a six-page article behind a paywall, but everyone can get a 13 page PDF with the supplementary information, (most of which is pretty Greek to me as a non-bio geek) behind the "Supporting Info" link.

If I read the article correctly, this research group had already got 95% efficiency using a different kind of foam, it's just that this frog-protein-foam enables more sugar to be generated before the foam breaks. OTOH, I'm pretty sure I'm not really qualified to even have an opinion.

And judging from the summary of the article, the researchers are not expecting this to be able to be more efficient than the most efficient plants. So that 95% number is just not comparable to the maybe 10% photosynthetic yield of the best plants from sunlight because it's measuring something different.

I'm surprised this paper from Inorganic Chemistry didn't get mentioned

Available here free of charge:

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/suppl/10.1021/la903813g

CO2 is risky because it has a half-life of over a century.

Not according to scientists (peer reviewed paper below). People who claim CO2 is teh end of the wurld and has a half life of decades are environmental nutcases with an agenda and aren't trustworthy.

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ef800581r

TFA isn't particularly enlightning, but the news is indeed slashdot worthy but raises many questions.

While not currently aimed at solar panel technology

Why not?

their research has uncovered a way to turn optical radiation into electrical current that could lead to self-powering molecular circuits

Battery-free gizmos? It doesn't say, but it seems like the photons wouldn't have to be optical wavelengths. However, how much current does this tech produce? "we could conceivably manufacture a 1A, 1V sample the diameter of a human hair and an inch long"

WOW, that's a lot of power from a tinty surface. 1 amp at one volt is one watt; a device using this tech the size of a phone battery could run an air conditioner if there were any way to keep the thing from melting.

At the end of TFA it links the study.

Where have I seen that design before?

It's been standard in nanotechnology since 2004, when the carbon nanotube community used it to create intrinsic nanotube (junctionless) transistors. I really doubt we were the first ones to come up with it either. Nanotubes aren't compatible with CMOS? Well, neither are electron beam lithography defined channels and gates.

I have no doubt that the climate is changing. Of course it is. That's what it does. It always has and always will. If it were not warming, it would be cooling, and there would be politicians claiming that man was responsible.

There is also no doubt that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and its percentage in the atmosphere has an effect on the climate. What is debatable is how much of an effect that is. Within that debate, the amount of CO2 that man is directly responsible for must be considered as well.

As to your source, it's a video, so it's not like I can copy and paste from it. But the title itself is telling, The Biggest Control Knob, Carbon Dioxide in Earth's Climate History. From everything I've read, water vapor, not C)2 is the "Biggest Control Knob" affecting the Earth's climate. So it would appear that this video is wrong starting with the title itself.

What's the point of pretending you are debating if you've already decided the conclusion? A futile exercise if I ever saw one. But what the heck, I'll humour you. I have actually read both the pieces, and FWIW I am a scientist (physicist).

You quote two opinion/personal webpages, dated 7 and 9 years ago, by people who aren't even climatologists (one is an engineer, the other is appears to be a geologist or archaeologist). Not that that makes their opinions wrong - just it means you should take extra care when accepting what they say. Just as you should double check medical advice from people who aren't doctors.

I'll provide the source:

This is a viewpoint piece, just because it is on a journal website doesn't mean it was peer-reviewed or otherwise considered good science. Also dated 9 years ago. Specifically, his presentation of the Arctic Ocean model is not backed up by anything other than his assertion that "this is sufficient to explain the cycle", which is in direct conflict with actual data, for example referenced in the video I linked. The Arctic Ocean model was, as he says, developed 30 years ago then (40 years ago now!) and the general opinion today is that it has been shown that it cannot explain the warming cycles. This pretty much invalidates every conclusion he purports to reach.

In other words, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but it's concentration is minuscule in the atmosphere and its effect even less so.

Water vapor, responsible for 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect, is 99.999% natural (some argue, 100%). Even if we wanted to we can do nothing to change this.

Anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 contributions cause only about 0.117% of Earth's greenhouse effect, (factoring in water vapor). This is insignificant!

Adding up all anthropogenic greenhouse sources, the total human contribution to the greenhouse effect is around 0.28% (factoring in water vapor).

This is a false analysis of the situation. Natural greenhouse gases, including water vapour, contribute significantly to the greenhouse effect - but a majority of this effect is simply keeping the earth habitable. The question of how much _additional_ effect is man-made.

When the articles you reference (this one is 7 years old) were written, there were indeed significant questions about the magnitude of the contribution by water vapour, and any honest climatologist would have told you that. It's one of the reasons the first few IPCC reports were so vague. Knowing this was a weak point in our understanding, however, it has been a major focus of effort since then and modern climatologists are now much much happier about water vapour. Here's a quote from AR4:

Water vapour is the most abundant and important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. However, human activities have only a small direct influence on the amount of atmospheric water

I have no doubt that the climate is changing. Of course it is. That's what it does. It always has and always will. If it were not warming, it would be cooling, and there would be politicians claiming that man was responsible.

There is also no doubt that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and its percentage in the atmosphere has an effect on the climate. What is debatable is how much of an effect that is. Within that debate, the amount of CO2 that man is directly responsible for must be considered as well.

As to your source, it's a video, so it's not like I can copy and paste from it. But the title itself is telling, The Biggest Control Knob, Carbon Dioxide in Earth's Climate History. From everything I've read, water vapor, not C)2 is the "Biggest Control Knob" affecting the Earth's climate. So it would appear that this video is wrong starting with the title itself.

I'll provide the source:

What the evidence shows
So what we have on the best current evidence is that

        * global temperatures are currently rising;
        * the rise is part of a nearly million-year oscillation with the current rise beginning some 25,000 years ago;
        * the “trip” or bifurcation behavior at the temperature extremes is attributable to the “opening” and “closing” of the Arctic Ocean;
        * there is no need to invoke CO2 as the source of the current temperature rise;
        * the dominant source and sink for CO2 are the oceans, accounting for about two-thirds of the exchange, with vegetation as the major secondary source and sink;
        * if CO2 were the temperature–oscillation source, no mechanism—other than the separately driven temperature (which would then be a circular argument)—has been proposed to account independently for the CO2 rise and fall over a 400,000-year period;
        * the CO2 contribution to the atmosphere from combustion is within the statistical noise of the major sea and vegetation exchanges, so a priori, it cannot be expected to be statistically significant;
        * water—as a gas, not a condensate or cloud—is the major radiative absorbing–emitting gas (averaging 95%) in the atmosphere, and not CO2;
        * determination of the radiation absorption coefficients identifies water as the primary absorber in the 5.6–7.6-m water band in the 60–80% RH range; and
        * the absorption coefficients for the CO2 bands at a concentration of 400 ppm are 1 to 2 orders of magnitude too small to be significant even if the CO2 concentrations were doubled.

In other words, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but it's concentration is minuscule in the atmosphere and its effect even less so.

Water vapor, responsible for 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect, is 99.999% natural (some argue, 100%). Even if we wanted to we can do nothing to change this.

Anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 contributions cause only about 0.117% of Earth's greenhouse effect, (factoring in water vapor). This is insignificant!

Adding up all anthropogenic greenhouse sources, the total human contribution to the greenhouse effect is around 0.28% (factoring in water vapor).

I'm not going to give up control of my life for a 0.0028 affect in greenhouse effect especially when considering that natural variation of climate outweighs this effect by an exponential order of magnitude. It's as if we are trying to bail out the Titanic with a shot glass.

Or indeed oil, which was similarly demonstrated to possess "intelligence", as it can solve a maze due to a pH gradient. Interestingly, that work debunked the claims of intelligence made for this same mold 10 years ago - for solving mazes and finding shortest paths.

It may be incorrect for popular culture books, but for research materials there definitely exists a many tier pricing scheme. The American Chemical Society, for example, has separate member prices and four different pricing structures for institutions (Domestic Academic, International Academic, Corporate, and Government.) Within this, there are 5 different 'tiers' for Domestic Academic and six different tiers for International Academic.

Five years ago there were different prices for personal and institution print copies... but now a print subscription is only available to institutions and is roughly ten to fifty times as expensive as a member electronic subscription.

I wouldn't want to spoil your joy, but there it is.

[abstract]
We have developed nanoscale double-gated field-effect-transistors for the study of electron states and transport properties of single deliberately implanted phosphorus donors. The devices provide a high-level of control of key parameters required for potential applications in nanoelectronics. For the donors, we resolve transitions corresponding to two charge states successively occupied by spin down and spin up electrons. The charging energies and the Land g-factors are consistent with expectations for donors in gated nanostructures.

The whole Article at Nano letters

Here, let me help. This brief blurb discusses Dr. Breaker's research history a bit better and shows where this current research stems from. He is a proponent of the "RNA World" hypothesis and actually has done some seminal research in the field.

Back to the car.... Hmmm.... OK - the RNA World hypothesis states that the first nucleic acid (the chemical responsible to for transmitting genetic information) was RNA. Breaker's hypothesis is that if that is the case, one should find RNA-based control structures somewhere since they are ancestral and nature loves to preserve ancestral things (don't recreate the wheel very often and if you do, keep a copy of the old wheel stashed somewhere).

He did find evidence of this in the coenzyme that helps vitamin B12 activity (see the previous link). So, perhaps these new RNA molecules have some sort of control function.

So, it's like finding a whole class of levers and rods that allow your car to do things when you were expecting that buttons and switches did all of the work.

Does that help?

All we can glean from this is that someone has put out a press release about rf absorbant paint, something that has been around for decades.

Using information in the article I was able to find the actual science paper. It turns out they are able to tune the resonate frequency of this paint. Very cool. However, the it doesn't go all the way down to 2.4 GHz. That's a pretty long wavelength for this process.

Wow, the propaganda machine is on overdrive today

Projecting much? Your response is disingenuous scaremongering. You guys are like Intelligent Design advocates, constantly shifting from one justification to another as each is debunked, each one flimsier than the last, with the only constant being the judicious abuse of scientific language to instill fear and doubt in ordinary people. Yes, you are exactly like Intelligent Design advocates.

It produces CFC114 emissions in the enrichment process.

Enrichment consists of passing vaporized uranium through membranes to separate out the heavier isotopes. It doesn't emit CFFs or anything else as a matter of course. That one older plant does is an artifact of that plant and not the process itself. The USEC plans to replace that plant.

Also, the one primary source I found for the CFC114 information mentions 800,000 pounds per year for two plants, which means that it's around 400,000 pounds now, equivalent (using your numbers) to 1.5e9 kg of CO2. That refined uranium generates 8e8 megawatt-hours. Coal generates 1,970 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour. So had the electricity supplied by nuclear been produced by coal, we would instead have emitted 7.1e11kg on CO2. That's approximately five hundred times less CO2, and starting to get into negligible territory. And that's 1) using a relatively inefficient enrichment process, and 2) not recycling the enriched fuel in any way. Do you want to compare that to the CO2 used to manufacture and maintain wind turbines (don't forget transportation), or the quite toxic chemical soup used to manufacture photovoltaic cells?

The rest of your post is similarly misleading, and not worthwhile to debunk in detail. In brief, the noble (I don't know why you capitalized it) gas fission products are managed and harvested (as we've known how to do for 50 years --- read the date on that paper), not simply emitted into the atmosphere. Even if they were emitted, they have very short half-lives, and would contribute insignificantly the background radiation level. Remember, noble gases are insert and don't bioaccumulate. But since they're not simply vented, it's a moot point anyway.

Your phytoplankton reference is the worst kind of scientific pandering. It's not CFCs that are the primary danger, but rather the acidification of the oceans caused by their absorption of CO2. We've already established that coal emits quite a bit more CO2.

As for Yucca mountain: a granite facility with no groundwater permeation probably would be better, sure. Let's use or make one.

Nevertheless, Yucca isn't bad. Even a 5.5 "aftershock" is hardly enough to damage a secure facility. (If these shocks even exist: a source would be nice here.) Long-term corrosion information, because it's a gradual process, can be extrapolated from short-term experiments. Corrosion doesn't suddenly accelerate three hundred years out, as you imply. And remember: by the time nuclear waste even gets to a storage facility, it's already radioactively decayed into longer-lived isotopes that simply aren't that dangerous. As for groundwater permeation: first of all, the waste is put in containers specifically designed to avoid water contact. Second, even if water were to erode these containers, the radioactive waste within is highly insoluble and vitrified, so contamination would be low. And even if contamination were something

Show me a single SULEV diesel, for example.

Show me more than a handful of non-hybrid SULEV vehicles. Besides, since diesels hardly sell in the US, there hasn't been a lot of point in developing the technology. SULEV is a US (not EU) standard, and diesels only account for a small percentage of passenger car sales. Most of the diesel vehicles are produced by EU companies and there is no reason SULEV cannot be achieved by diesel.

The modern "clean diesels" generally barely meet modern US emissions reqs.

The regulations are arbitrarily established standards. Some gasoline engines "barely" meet the requirements and some exceed them. Same with diesels.

The only reason they're so widespread in Europe is because they have more lax emissions reqs.

The reason diesels are popular in Europe is because gasoline is so heavily taxed in Europe that the 10-30% improvement in fuel economy diesels get adds up to real money. Furthermore as of this writing the EU and Japan have more stringent emissions standards than the US.

It's almost 15% denser and releases correspondingly more CO2 per gallon

Even if that were true (and this study says you are wrong), diesel also uses 10-25% less fuel for the same power output thanks to that same energy density. Diesels get 10-25% better fuel economy which offsets their emmissions. It's a wash at worst. There are particulate differences and some other output differences but please at least think it through. There is no reason to accept that petroleum is inherently cleaner than diesel.

And it's no longer true, thanks to modern desulfurization reqs, that diesel takes significantly less energy to refine, offsetting the difference.

Yes cleaner diesel requires more processing but you haven't provided any evidence that it is worse than gasoline in this regard.

"And what do you propose to do with all those corporate lawyers..."

Here is an interesting proposal

.

Conventional thin-film photovoltaics rely on the optical generation and separation of electron-hole pairs (EHPs) with an internal electric field, as shown in Fig. 1a. Among different factors, the absorption efficiency of the material and the minority carrier lifetime often determine the energy conversion efficiency15. In this regard, simulation studies have previously shown the advantages of three-dimensional (3D) cell structures, such as those using coaxially doped vertical nanopillar arrays, in improving the photocarrier separation and collection by orthogonalizing the direction of light absorption and EHPs separation (Fig. 1b)16.

Later in the paper they discuss the light-absorbing properties of these kinds of pillar arrays:

In addition, 3D nanopillar or nanowire arrays, similar to the ones used in this work, have been demonstrated in the past to exhibit unique optical absorption properties13,18. Similarly, we have observed reduced reflectivity from CdS nanopillar arrays especially when the inter-pillar distance is small (see Supplementary Fig. S6). This observation suggests that 3D nanopillar-based cell modules can potentially improve the light absorption while enhancing the carrier collection.

References 13,18 are:
L. Tsakalakos, J. Balch, J. Fronheiser, B. A. Korevaar, O. Sulima and J. Rand "Silicon nanowire solar cells". Appl. Phys. Lett. 91, 233117 (2007). doi 10.1063/1.2821113
Hu, L. and Chen, G. "Analysis of optical absorption in silicon nanowire arrays for photovoltaic applications". Nano Lett. 7, 3249-3252 (2007). doi 10.1021/nl071018b

Quoting from that second paper:

We found that, in comparison to thin films, nanowire array based solar cells have an intrinsic antireflection effect that increases absorption in short wavelength range.

Essentially the nanowire arrays are acting as anti-reflection coatings and allowing the light to instead be absorbed.

the aqueduct

The Nile doesn't count.

Who said anything about the Nile? The Egyptians had sophisticated irrigation systems.

Another thing we can credit to Egyptians, and thus to Africa, is antibiotics:

Antibiotics are compounds produced by bacteria and fungi which are capable of killing, or inhibiting, competing microbial species. This phenomenon has long been known; it may explain why the ancient Egyptians had the practice of applying a poultice of moldy bread to infected wounds.

http://acswebcontent.acs.org/landmarks/landmarks/penicillin/discover.html

The article reports the ground-breaking/unprecedented/whatever direct conversion of cellulose to HMF. Here's an earlier article from a different research group that the editors of "Gizmag" seem to be unaware of. It was published earlier and actually describes the same process from either cellulose or untreated biomass:

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja808537j

It still needs to be converted to biodiesel to be safe for long-term use in a diesel engine

Googling for more data on this, I found at least one article that claims otherwise: "... copaiba (Copaifera Langsdorfii) has raised the possibility of eliminating even the processing step. The copaiba produces at least 20-30 liters of oil every six months -- and this oil is a mixture of 15-carbon hydrocarbons which can be used directly to power a diesel engine"

Realistically, how was this not blindingly obvious?
If you put a bunch of life forms into a high stress environment, evolution is going to happen quickly. Clearly, the gene for radiation resistance is going to quickly become prevalent in a population exposed to large amounts of radiation....

You're dramatically oversimplifying things. They weren't asking "will life adapt to these conditions?" Since they were studying plants that were growing in the area, they knew that much already. It was indeed blindingly obvious, they did all their experiments on the proof. They were instead asking "HOW did this life adapt." A much much more complex question. Turns out it's not one gene, and it's not even genes that can be lumped as "radiation resistance."

The real article abstract(right here) points out that these plants aren't just adapted to one new stress.

Our results suggest that adaptation toward heavy metal stress, protection against radiation damage, and mobilization of seed storage proteins are involved in plant adaptation mechanism to radioactivity in the Chernobyl region.

That last stress itself is far from obvious, maybe plant experts would have guessed that would be a problem, but for me at least, I wouldn't have guessed that would be a major problem. But apparently it is, and the plants have overcome it. I would have guessed it would all be DNA damage.

It also points out that of nearly 700 analyzed proteins, nearly 10% were expressed at different levels from I guess an uncontaminated stock. Far from one gene, seventy genes, apparently tweaked in just a few generations, not millions of years. Not blindingly obvious that evolution could work that fast on that many genes. At least not to me. I also have to point out, that as of yet they don't seem to have found any evidence that nature had to redesign any of the existing machinery, it seems rather that it just changed the levels of machinery made. That's far from certain, but it doesn't seem like it modified most of those 70 proteins, just the levels.

I'm willing to bet that even though soybeans are an important crop, we don't know all there is to know about their molecular mechanisms of dealing with any of those three problems. And even if we did, we don't know how evolution is going to co-opt these systems to deal with new challenges. So examining the actual pathways will probably tell us a great deal about which proteins are involved in these pathways, if any are being used for new purposes. We might even be able to use something we learn there in human medicine, the new scientist article mentions one of the proteins protects human blood against radiation, if we find that one protein is really critical to helping the plants cope, maybe a drug can be developed that will increase the activity or abundance in that protein to help with radiation poisoning and maybe even help with cancer.

HOW is extremely complicated, and they're just scratching the surface. It's fascinating, though not so much that I'm going to spend 30 dollars to read the article right now.

Mass spectrometry, using "Direct Analysis in Real Time" ion source. You wave the thing you want analyzed in the instrument and you get your mass peaks data. No sample prep required (don't have to cut up your money or dissolving it up)

http://www.ionsense.com/drugsoncurrency.php

and a here is nice site describing the technique:

http://www.jeolusa.com/DesktopModules/Bring2mind/DMX/Download.aspx?TabId=337&DMXModule=693&Command=Core_Download&EntryId=171&PortalId=2

A newer mass spectral ionization technique, called DESI or "desorption electrospray ionization" is also used:

http://news.uns.purdue.edu/x/2007a/070227T-CooksDesi.html

also:

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ac071114x

Apparently, you can make plastic from soy.

How about this:

Dealing with CO2

From the article:

TWO LEADING chemical companies, Dow Chemical and Air Products & Chemicals, have signed agreements to test competing technologies for capturing carbon dioxide emitted by coal-fired power plants. The advances come as geochemists find that most CO2 sequestered underground is likely to dissolve in deep-formation brine.

Your implicit assumption that higher energy photons are universally more dangerous than lower energy photons would seem to speak for the latter.

This has been experimentally verified in experiments on the photoelectric effect. Indeed, Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1921 "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect" (emphasis mine; notice that Einstein did not win the prize "because of relativity", as many would assume). Below a certain energy level per photon, nothing happens no matter how intense the light. Above the threshold, something happens (with the rate dependent on the intensity of the light).

Of course, thermal warming can also happen. In recent years, microwave-assisted organic synthesis was a big fad. But the most careful studies have demonstrated that the so-called "microwave effect" is simple thermal heating in all known cases, and despite theoretical explanations for why a non-thermal microwave effect might exist (going so far as to predict the types of reactions for which the largest effect might be found) and papers claiming the discovery of such effects, effects seen to date are purely thermal. See this J Org Chem paper. Any effect we see from a cell phone in the pocket would appear to be the same effect as simply warming our thigh a miniscule bit.

'What we've got here is a technology that could be saving the world $80 billion a year,' Wilcox says."

Anyone able to translate that into number of trees saved? Not only does it save trees but the chemistry involved in making paper is horrible. Even with new process'. http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/corg/content?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=PP_ARTICLEMAIN&node_id=1188&content_id=CTP_003400&use_sec=true&sec_url_var=region1&__uuid=b6dfb0f1-988d-4fd1-96e3-8856d0b81993

I searched for the words "bromoageliferin" and "biofilm" on Google Scholar to see the distribution of articles by year.

1997, 1 article, Japan
2007, 1 article, US
2008, 6 articles, US

The anti-biofilm activity of this and other substances derived from sponges was discovered by Japanese researches. The application they were looking for was the prevention of biofouling in shipping, power stations cooling systems, etc.
In 2007, the use of bromoageliferin analogues against antibiotic resistant strains was tested in NCSU.
In 2008, a NOAA researcher rediscovered it, apparently independently.

Windfarms are only profitable with government subsidy; wind mills cost more energy than they make in there serviceable lifetime (Hence the need for subsidy). Bad for bat populations, which are already in decline.

What? The ERoEI for wind power is pretty high, maybe as high as 20 If wind turbines used more energy to manufacture than they produced in their lifetime they would be useless. Wind power is profitable, less so than gas or coal currently are, but still profitable. Here they calculate the cost in dollars as $53.1 per mega watt hour for coal, $52.5 for gas, $55.8 for wind and $59.3 for nuclear.They do suffer from high capital costs though.

Solar panels are fantastically bad environmentally. They require the production of green house gasses far worse than CO2, lifetimes are limited and exponentially decay. They require toxic batteries to work, and are unreliable due to weather. 14% efficiency. Also, bad for ground-level wildlife.

I have tried to find out how toxic and inefficient the production of photovoltaic panels are but came up blank. This paper says the opposite, at least compared to coal, but really is that a surprise? In 3-5 years they have created more energy then was used to make them, with 300+ times less heavy metal pollution than coal.
Your post seems more biased against renewables with each sentence. Isn't exponential decay good compared to the alternative functions of decay? 20% loss in efficiency after 20 years does not sound too bad. However photovoltaic cells are fantastically expensive.

Nuclear (low risk, high output, radioactive half-lives are down to 200 years)

You forgot to mention expensive and 200 years half-life only if you are re-processing the fuel.
Wind power and nuclear are fairly favourable now, while photovoltaic have potential but are too expensive. Of course little will change until the inevitable finally happens and fossil fuels start to raise in price faster than other forms of energy generation. Until then coal and gas will meet most of our electricity needs unless the government looks ahead.

You have not mentioned the cost of mining, processing and transporting uranium. Fancy that.
A propaganda-like page with some points you maybe never considered: http://www.peakoil.org.au/nuclear.co2.htm
And a newer study on some gaps in the pro-nucelear argumentation: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es702249v

Terry Collins: Persuasive Communication about Matters of Great Urgency: Endocrine Disruption: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es800079k
Shanna Swan: Decrease in Anogenital Distance among Male Infants with Prenatal Phthalate Exposure http://www.ehponline.org/members/2005/8100/8100.html

My understanding is that *endocrine disruptors* are the chemical pollutants responsible for these gender shifts. EDs cause shifts in cellular development, which is particularly important because it is a very fragile process. For example, the fundamental difference (from a molecular perspective) between testosterone and estrogen is very subtle. Therefore minor mistakes can cause drastic changes depending upon the timing and dose of exposure. You don't want things to disrupt *how* your maleness cells develop. What scientists are beginning to find is that babies (in the womb) who have exposure to EDs during development are showing significant differences in the finalized male genitals.

Today two types of endocrine disruptors: Bisphenol A and Phthalates are ubiquitous in our lives, namely in vinyl, PVC, and polycarbonate (plastics 3 and 7). Regulatory committees struggle to monitor the impact of these chemicals because of their ubiquitous application and the tiny size of what constitutes an *exposure* (something like 4 parts per trillion). Supposedly there have been lots of discussions in the scientific community about EDs since these findings started to come out in the mid 90s. However, its been a lot more talk than it has research and action.

But I can't sell everybody short. There was a big Nalgene bottle recall last year for this exact reason. The state of California has banned EDs from pesticides. Companies like BornFree make baby products without EDs. It feels like its coming, awareness just isn't there yet.

Bah! My links didn't work. Here they are: Torion: http://www.torion.com/ Seacoast Science: http://www.seacoastscience.com/ QualSec: http://www.qualsensors.com/ American Chemical Society article: http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/sample.cgi/chreay/2008/108/i02/html/cr068121q.html Maybe these won't work either. But I tried!

I'm a bit surprised that as a technical guy your only criticisms appear to be nitpicks. What Temple's PR dept. writes and what Tao actually published are two different things. You say that the graphs show little difference; I see a graph that shows an approximately 10% increase in very small droplet size for diesel fuel.

http://pubs.acs.org/isubscribe/journals/enfuem/asap/figures/ef-2008-004898_0006.html

I don't know the editorial policy of the journal. but it appears to be a standard professional journal. Certainly independent confirmation of Tao's results are warranted at this point, but his results appear to be valid and easily reproducible.

I'm assuming this is sarcasm, since your previous post goes on about scientific rigor and the paper published in the journal Energy & Fuels does all of this. It's a good read.

http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/sample.cgi/enfuem/asap/html/ef8004898.html

First off, did you read this? The link was in the article.

http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/sample.cgi/enfuem/asap/html/ef8004898.html

I read it carefully, and pretty much all of your questions are answered. Next time RTFA.

This is the second Google hit, http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/enfuem/asap/abs/ef8004898.html

The link to the full text is below the abstract.

Electrorheology Leads to Efficient Combustion, is that good enough for you?

interesting, I did notice they're version of gasoline was E20

Figure 5. (a) Size distribution of diesel fuel following atomization with or without an applied electric field. (b) Size distribution of gasoline (with 20% ethanol) following atomization with or without an electric field. Electrorheology Leads to Efficient Combustion

which would have a lot more polar effects.

As a professional creator of scam (3 phds, 4 bachelors and 3 time ignobel prize laureate), I call bullshit.

The fact that I am a professional should boost your opinion of my opinion; but this fact is merely a side note to my remarkably slashdotty ability to refute professional scientific research and experimentation with words alone. (fear my power)

The first assumption made by the article is that smaller particles make for faster combustion. The fact that this happens to be a correct assumption does not lend credibility to the argument.

The second assumption is that something that is non-ferrous and non-polarized can be affected by an electric field. Wait what? You tell me that the experiment says that it is imparting a negative charge to the diesel particles and as a result they repel each other and increase atomization thereby causing the fuel to combust more efficiently?

RFTA

The paper makes reference to electrorheostatic properties of suspensions of spheres. The paper they reference is this one

You can see from the abstract that they are discussing the viscosity of organic compounds like neoprene latex. The idea is that if you pass a suspension of rigid spheres through a magnetic or electric field, the viscosity of the liquid changes. (BTW, I have no idea what that means, just trying to paraphrase from the abstract -- hope I got it right ;-) )

Tao et al then published a paper in 2006 showing that passing crude oil through a magnetic field reduced its viscosity temporarily. The paper is here. Then in their latest paper they show that diesel fuel is reduced in viscosity by 9% when passed through an electric field.

They then measured the droplet size of the diesel fuel when put through an atomizer. On average the particles were smaller. So they built a device for an engine and measured the power output using a dynamometer. They found a 20% increase in power using the same fuel consumption. Hence a potential 20% reduction in fuel consumption.

Now, I'm not a physicist. I don't even play one on slashdot. But I've read my share of scientific papers. This one isn't great. it just doesn't have any statistical rigor to back up their claims. They've got pretty pictures and charts, but I don't see any good numbers to tell me exactly what I'm looking at. However, I don't see anything particularly wrong either. Their method is simple and should be easy to reproduce. So maybe we'll get another group confirming their findings.

I'm with the GP here. I'm not going to call "Snake oil" until I see something to reasonably discredit their claims.

The paper makes reference to electrorheostatic properties of suspensions of spheres. The paper they reference is this one

You can see from the abstract that they are discussing the viscosity of organic compounds like neoprene latex. The idea is that if you pass a suspension of rigid spheres through a magnetic or electric field, the viscosity of the liquid changes. (BTW, I have no idea what that means, just trying to paraphrase from the abstract -- hope I got it right ;-) )

Tao et al then published a paper in 2006 showing that passing crude oil through a magnetic field reduced its viscosity temporarily. The paper is here. Then in their latest paper they show that diesel fuel is reduced in viscosity by 9% when passed through an electric field.

They then measured the droplet size of the diesel fuel when put through an atomizer. On average the particles were smaller. So they built a device for an engine and measured the power output using a dynamometer. They found a 20% increase in power using the same fuel consumption. Hence a potential 20% reduction in fuel consumption.

Now, I'm not a physicist. I don't even play one on slashdot. But I've read my share of scientific papers. This one isn't great. it just doesn't have any statistical rigor to back up their claims. They've got pretty pictures and charts, but I don't see any good numbers to tell me exactly what I'm looking at. However, I don't see anything particularly wrong either. Their method is simple and should be easy to reproduce. So maybe we'll get another group confirming their findings.

I'm with the GP here. I'm not going to call "Snake oil" until I see something to reasonably discredit their claims.

http://pubs.acs.org/about.html

This is the site for the publisher. So, since it's HAS been peer reviewed and published in a respectable journal, by your standards it's not snake oil but solid science. Go ahead and try to reproduce the results - that's why he published the paper.
Electrorheology is NEW. He doesn't charge the fluid, he used an electric field to reduce the viscosity.

Did you RTFA?

The centerpiece of their work is shown here http://pubs.acs.org/isubscribe/journals/enfuem/asap/figures/ef-2008-004898_0001.html Now that's something I'd like to see confirmed by independent work, but it too sounds very credible.

After looking at this, I'm more suspicious than before. Because the graph shows an average power output around 0.4 hp. A realistic power output for a 3liter engine might be 40hp or more, not 0.4 hp.
So the authors either did something pretty irrelevant, like measuring an idling engine, or they were incredibly sloppy in putting their publication together.

For a number of reasons.

First of all the work is devoid of hype, mysterious "black boxes", is well-documented, links to established physics known since 1905 and 1959, and actually gives a credible explanation, verified in detail, of why we are seeing this improvement.

Secondly, prof. Tao's work spans at lest 2 years, witness this http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/sample.cgi/enfuem/2006/20/i05/pdf/ef060072x.pdf?sessid=2827 article, by the same prof. Tao, from 2006. In that publication, the authors properly relate their own work to much earlier theoretical work on viscosity (from 1905) that describes how viscosity of a fluid changes if you suspend a small amount of non-interacting spherical particles in it and later work (1959 by Krieger and Dougherty) on how much the viscosity changes. when you suspend a not-so-small amount of particles. The earlier work was backed up by experiments.

So up to that point we have the "thinning" effect on viscosity by suspending inert particles in a fluid, and it's solid physics to boot. Now what does this all have to do with magnetic or electric fields?

Well, it turns out that the thinning effect depends on the size of the particles you suspend in it. That's not so surprising either, and (again) experimentally verifiable.

Now here comes the trick: if you take a fluid that has large molecules in it that can be polarised by an electric or magnetic field that is strong enough to orient the particles despite the Brownian motion, you will see that short-distance order emerges in clusters of polarised molecules within the liquid. The net effect is as if you were seeding the liquid with particles. Now that's interesting. If you leave on the field for several minutes, the short-distance order extends a bit and you get fairly large ordered structures within your fluid, leading to an increase in viscosity. So there is an effect, but if you leave the field on for a long time it makes your liquid more viscous, not less. However, and this is the second trick, if you switch off the field soon enough, the molecules have enough time to become so polarised that short-distance order ensues, but not long-distance order. The net effect is that the "particles" (in reality small clusters of polarised and more-or-less ordered molecules) remain small. This effect is described in detail and the article describes tests that verified the effect. The level of detail coupled to the careful description of the underlying physics again make this claim credible.

And yes, with enough fiddling you seem to be able to tune your field strength and pulse duration so that you get an amount of polarised clusters that will measurably decrease the viscosity of your liquid. By about 9% or so. That seems pretty solid too.

Now about the applications. The first thing they though about was decreasing the viscosity of crude oil in pipelines. That will save a little energy if you're pumping lots of viscous oil through long cold pipelines. Nine percent isn't nothing, but it's not a great gain either. That was the state of affairs reported in Tao's 2006 paper.

The second application (Tao's 2009 paper) however is in internal combustion engines. As the article avers, lower viscosity leads to smaller droplets when fuels is injected. And smaller droplets seem to cause a cleaner and more efficient combustion. In fact, the authors report tests on a diesel engine by Cornaglia Iveco that showed a 5.5% efficiency improvement. Of course this result still has to be confirmed by independent tests, but its modest claims and well-publicised details make it thoroughly credible.

To produce the final results, the authors modified their device and claim to have obtained 20% efficiency improvement on a Mercedes-Benz diesel engine. The centerpiece

"Reducing the Viscosity of Crude Oil by Pulsed Electric or Magnetic Field"

http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/sample.cgi/enfuem/2006/20/i05/html/ef060072x.html/

As others have said before me, this sounds like pure 100% Unalduterated Snake Oil.

Now we just wait for the infomercial.

The excerpted patent abstract:

A method for increasing and/or modulating the yield shear stress of an electrorheological
fluid includes applying a sufficient electric field to the fluid to cause the formation
of chains of particles, and then applying a sufficient pressure to the fluid to cause
thickening or aggregation of the chains. An apparatus for increasing and/or modulating
the transfer or force or torque between two working structures includes an electrorheological
fluid and electrodes through which an electric field is applied to the fluid such that
particles chains of particles are formed in the fluid and, upon application of pressure to
the fluid, the chains thicken or aggregate and improve the force or torque transmission.

The flow characteristics of an ER fluid change when an electric field is applied through it.
The ER fluid responds to the applied electric field by what can be described as progressively
gelling. More specifically, the ER fluid is generally comprised of a carrier fluid, such as
pump oil, silicone oil, mineral oil, or chlorinated paraffin. Fine particles, such as polymers,
minerals, or ceramics, are suspended in the carrier fluid. When an electric field is applied
through the ER fluid, positive and negative charges on the particles separate, thus giving
each particle a positive end and a negative end. The suspended particles are then attracted
to each other and form chains leading from one electrode to the other. These chains of particles
cause the ER fluid to "gel" in the electric field between the electrodes in proportion to the
magnitude of the applied electric field.

The other reference is interesting and can be seen here:
http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/enfuem/2006/20/i05/abs/ef060072x.html
although it appears to apply to crude oil and not low viscosity fluids like gas and diesel.

How does this apply to gas or Diesel? Both which do not meet the definition of a electrorheological fluid.
Is this yet another scam, using scientific research to bolster claims for snake oil sellers to peddle
even more expensive sets of fuel line magnets?

Here.

http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/sample.cgi/enfuem/asap/html/ef8004898.html

Yes, except this one has a paper published, and lab tests on the fuel injector mist as well as a dynanometer and other tests.

http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/sample.cgi/enfuem/asap/abs/ef8004898.html

Seems like you threw the baby out with the bathwater.

Have you considered reading the article?

http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/sample.cgi/enfuem/asap/abs/ef8004898.html

A Chemical Research in Toxicology article here stated that rats and humans handle bisphenol A in very different ways so I'd be careful drawing lines between rat and human results.

"Enterohepatic circulation of bisphenol A glucuronide in rats results in a slow rate of excretion, whereas bisphenol A is rapidly conjugated and excreted by humans due to the absence of enterohepatic circulation. The efficient glucuronidation of bisphenol A and the rapid excretion of the formed glucuronide result in a low body burden of the estrogenic bisphenol A in humans following oral absorption of low doses."

The article actually says humans basically excreet all of the material resulting in extremely low (near undetectable) levels of biphenol A or its metabolite. They fed humans 5mg of isotopicaly labeled bisphenol A and studied what the body does with it - there is no way any plastic bottle or cup is gonna deliver 5mg of bisphenol A to you via drinking or eating its contents. Bisphenol a is an anti-oxidant used in ppm levels in the plastic to keep it from yellowing over time. So IMHO the jury is still out - BUT my kids use BPA free plastics :) With kids why take the chance?

Another situation that was used to look at air quality, though not many tried to tie it to climate change immediately: the widespread power outage in the US & Canada a few years ago: http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/8225/8225blackout.html (Chemical and Engineering News) Note: I can't find the article in Science about this ... maybe someone else can.

The short: the air cleared very quickly of many pollutants, allowing scientists to refine their models on both time and distance these are in the air.

Using Beijing as another example will help these kinds of models, but reporting on "results" now looks more like an article in the Onion http://www.theonion.com/content/video/diebold_accidentally_leaks than a real story.