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Panda Poo Yields Key To Cheaper Biofuels
An anonymous reader writes "A new study unveiled at the American Chemical Society points to panda poop as a source of remarkably efficient enzyme-producing bacteria that are able to break down plant materials for cheaper and more efficient biofuel production. Inspired by the giant panda's voracious appetite for bamboo, scientists began to study the fecal matter of giant pandas at the Memphis Zoo. A year of samples indicated that the pandas have a unique ability to convert lignocellulose from plant matter into energy. In fact, gut bacteria of a giant panda can convert 95 percent of the plant's biomass into simple sugars."
You'll need to convince pandas to have more panda-sex in order to get enough panda poo to fuel the biofuel for this whole planet as their numbers are in pretty short supply right now. For some reason pandas hate panda-sex, and I have no idea why. It's awesome!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
This is it! Scientists are now officially bored!
It's not the panda that's efficient, it's the enzymes produced by the bacteria found in their gut. Apparently panda's like bamboo, but the enzymes themselves aren't as fussy.....
The bamboo industry is just trying to get us to raise billions of panda, so they can get rich selling us the food.
I think his point is that if the enzymes are so efficient, then what does the panda do with all that energy the enzymes produce?
Judging by the summary "shit it out" is one possible answer I suppose.
When I told them I was going to be a poop scientist!
Can != Does.
More specifically, their digestive tract is actually geared as a Carnivore's- therefore, even if it is that efficient, they're going to need to eat a damned lot of the stuff just to survive.
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We gotta hook up these panda-poo bugs with those newspaper eating bugs from a few hours ago... once they mate and reproduce, we'll solve all the world's problems and live happily ever after in a global utopia.
Seriously, I'm all in favor of this research, I just wish we could get this tech out of the lab an into the local gas station sometime before the next millennium.
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Looking at the average Panda, I'd say store most of it as fat. Anyway, even a small energy return might still be more efficient than digging up fossil fuels, smashing atoms or gathering sunbeams, given how quickly bamboo grows (so farming it for energy use could be a simple, even automated process) and how difficult/costly the other processes are.
Well, ain't that the shit.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Sorry, that link was wrong, it should have been: http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/08/30/2324243/Making-Fuel-With-Newspapers-and-Bacteria
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
How dare you speak ill of the Urkel!!!
Wow, forget this news story. The real news story is that there is a hardcore fundamentalist anti-panda faction in existence.
Agreed, I think the speed with which bamboo grows is really key here, and if this offers a better way of harvesting it as a biofuel then great.
For those who aren't aware, bamboo has very high oil content and, given the right conditions, some species can grow literally upto a metre per day. That's much better than many other plant species harvested for biofuel!
Decomposing shit makes gas, we dont need a fucking story every time someone discovers that bear shit rots just like everything else.
I about said it yesterday over the amazing "compost makes gas" story but they had to go an use some exotic bacteria so it was at least somewhat new
Pandas don't reproduce in captivity. Generally that's a good sign of depression. Laying around and being inactive all day is another sign of depression. Btw, your signature is hilarious.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
is a mother somewhere talking to her son.
"I spent 50 grand on a college degree and you spend all your time looking at panda poop?"
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
FTFY. I think that's what the article meant...
I'm... I'm having trouble with where to start here.
(1) Don't call them ursine retards. They are not ursine. Retard.
(2) Bamboo is not easy to digest for energy, as compared to a lot of other plants.
(3) Many animals need certain environment cues for mating, or they aren't interested. It has to do a lot with their native environment and what situations ensure optimal survival for the offspring and the mother. You might want to study this field called "evolution". It'll help explain this. We basically have trouble figuring out what these cues are. We really can't blame the pandas for that one.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Food isn't only a source of energy. It's also a source of many other essential components (amino acids the animal cannot naturally make, important trace elements, etc).
It may need a lot of food, for contents other than energy.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
The interesting part comes when they clone the lignocellulase gene from the panda (or its gut bacteria). Then they can insert it into other bacteria to make large amounts of lignocellulace. That's where you start getting into high efficiency.
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some species can grow literally upto a metre per day
While that's accurate, I think it would be misleading to allow it to stand without comment. Bamboo gather energy during the year and store it in their rhizomes. Then they use that energy during the growing season to sprout new shoots. It's these new shoots which may grow that quickly, but only during that season. Any culms from previous years are stuck at whatever height they grew to during their growing year.
What I've said is true of the seven species that I own. Of course there are hundreds of species, so others may exhibit other habits.
I don't own any panda, so I don't have any personal knowledge of their habits, but my understanding is that they eat bamboo leaves. It's the culms that may grow so quickly.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
I thought the big problem right now was not the availability of simple sugars, but the fact that it takes a quite a few gallons of water to make one gallon of ethanol.
I know that people do all sorts of bullshit inflation of the number of gallons of water, where they factor in the irrigation of the crops and all, but it still takes a lot of water to make those simple sugars into ethanol.
Yet, this magical Panda Poo enzyme might come in handy since it can turn inedible plant matter to humans into fuel. Say we turn in the corn stalks, or the enourmous amount of leaves collected every Fall into fuel. Maybe someday there won't be famines, we can ship all our excess grain to the hungry with the power of Panda Poo!
Think of the panda as a bamboo chipper that's powered by chipped bamboo. I challenge anybody to make a machine that can do that.
Think of the panda as a bamboo chipper that's powered by chipped bamboo.
I see it as more of a logging operation.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
The conservatives are partially correct. In the habitats we offer them Pandas are completely incapable of surviving without human assistance. They require insanely huge bamboo forests to sustain their pathetically wasteful lifestyle and slow reproduction.
But humans at least reduced those huge forests down to a point where they couldn't sustain a panda population, so IMO it's our responsibility to to keep them from going extinct.
It's like if a race of super-intelligent sea creatures flooded the earth except for a few microscopic little islands and found that humans couldn't survive on them or thrive in little under-water biodomes, then the conservative aqua-people argued that humans should just be allowed to go extinct since they're so sucky at surviving despite the best efforts by the aqua-people.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I'd call eating starch-filled plants and converting the starch into a different form of energy is no different than say eating meat or raw sugar for that matter.
Really the only thing that produces energy from outside the environment are plants, that produce energy from the sun.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Looking it up, I stand corrected. I guess I'm rather outdated on Panda taxonomy.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
#1) was incorrect on #1.
#2) has everything to to do with evolution, and not intelligence - if there is a food source however inefficient, and little competition for it, something will make use of that source. In fact, it can be argued that is the smart option (you have to eat more, but hey, you don't have to fight others for it)
#3) That's only true regarding creatures which don't put a lot of energy into their young, and that tend to have large litters. Panda don't fall into either category. A large number of species don't mate all the time. Humans and rodents are the most obvious exceptions to this.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
I always thought the future was going to be pig shit.
That's a very efficient process to produce energy in the form of sugar with a good byproduct like oxygen.
It's already here, doesn't need further studies, it is broadly and readily available and doesn't require complex and polluting industrial production.
The only point is that humans are not able to make a reasonable and balanced use of them, as they are also needed for feeding the Humanity itself.
But this would be another story.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
You know, the one with Sean Connery finding the cure for cancer in a rain forest only do have it plowed over? We can't get Pandas to reliably reproduce offspring in captivity... and some people are even saying, "Why are we wasting money trying to save some of these animals that don't seem to want to survive?"
Millions years of evolution is a toolbox we can pull parts from. Lost a species, and you loose millions of years of tools. You don't have to give a damn how cute a Panda is. What you should cause concern is our own survival.
I8-D
Think of the panda as a bamboo chipper that's powered by chipped bamboo. I challenge anybody to make a machine that can do that.
That would be simple enough. Use a steam engine, power the steam engine with chipped bamboo to run your bamboo chipper.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Bio-fuel is nothing but a pipedream. We waste far too many resources trying to develop it when it just takes far too many resources to create a sufficient supply of one type for the fuel to be a sufficient replacement for anything. It would be one thing if we all created a waste of one type from whatever resource we exhumed, but we don't. There is way too much promise in fields like solar power for us to be spending this much time on bio-fuel.
You only see Panda's at zoo, I take it. Sure they are depressed and inactive in captivity, not even having much interest in sex. They took the route of eating mostly bamboo rather than meat in ages past, however they sometimes eat birds and rodents. DNA shows they are true bears (see wikipedia article)
Pandas do eat birds and rodents on occassion, they are somewhat like gorillas in that regard, can be carnivorous and have the teeth and system for doing so.
Maybe Anthony Bourdain's friend wasn't so crazy with his chicken shit vodka idea after all. 95% conversion of biomass to sugar mean shitloads of cheap ethanol.
It's not even a bear, it's somewhat related to the raccoon, so it's also a fucking liar.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
You never know what they might be good for. Personally, i'm for saving species more from a respect for the infinite complexity of nature. But if you want to convince a society ruled by corporate thinking, this is a strong example of why giving a crap about nature might be useful to the human race.
Other animals already digest cellulose and turn it into simple sugars. Is there any particular advantage to the one found in panda poop? Or do journalists simply like saying "panda poop"?
Can they poop dark matter? Didn't think so.
I think putting a panda on top of my car will screw up the aerodynamics, not to mention add too much weight.
When I read "Panda Poo" I thought this submission was about an upcoming version of Ubuntu.
It says right there in the summary that it's "remarkably efficient".
"Only a handful of animals are predominantly dependent on bamboo, including the giant panda, red panda, other bamboo lemurs (grey bamboo lemur (Hapalemur griseus) and greater bamboo lemur (Hapalemur simus)) found in Madagascar, and bamboo rats (including Rhizomys sinensis, R. pruinosus, and R. sumatrensis) found in China and Southeast Asia. (Roberts 1992)"
Very, very few animals can digest plant matter efficiently enough to live on bamboo.
It's bad enough that all our sh!t is made in China, without it being a literal fact.
I say we sick a bunch of enraged grizzlies on them to demonstrate our continued superiority. To hell with biofuels. This makes me want panda burgers. ;^)
You identify the problem while simultaneously glossing it over... Yes, plants give us the simple sugars we need for our nutrition, but they devote a majority of their photosynthetic efforts toward complex sugar-polymers bound by lignins (ie: cellulose) which we are unable to digest. Cows, termites, and some other critters are able to digest this stuff with the help of their gut flora, but thus far we have not been able to efficiently mimic this process to produce fuel at an industrial scale.
> they are also needed for feeding the Humanity itself
The point is, we humans don't use this stuff anyway, so it would be handy if we could figure out a way to convert it into fuel. Also, there are plenty of crops, such as switchgrass or hemp, that can be grown on land that is currently not practical for "food" crops like corn or beans. Thus, we could expand our harvest of sunlight for fuel without reducing our output of food calories.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Now, we have a good reason to keep this animal species alive!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
There are parts of the world where seasons are less of an impact in plant growth, especially within the tropics.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've been so desensitized by the internet that I assumed panda poo was a username.
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
No, I'm jealous of *Red* Pandas. *Giant* Pandas can suck my balls.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If you can convert cellulose to simple sugars, then brewer's yeast can convert that to ethanol without worrying about going blind from creating wood alcohol, methanol.
Of course, you'd want to be blind before reading the "Panda Poo Porter" on the label.
Many animals have segmented stomachs for extra bug time, and chew their cud to give it multiple chewings.
95% rate is pretty good.
If pandas digest that lignocellulose ( there's another word for the spell checker), what is left in their poo? Really.
Best regards.
It's more than half water. Coverting 100 pounds of cellulose into 95 pounds of sugars is an amazing feat.
pandas have a carnivore's short digestive system so they spend the majority of the day eating. The gut bacteria make this just efficient enough for them to survive but its less efficient than a real herbivore's guts. But hey, it might be efficient enough for fuel production "However, the giant panda still has the digestive system of a carnivore, as well as carnivore-specific genes,[30] and thus derives little energy and little protein from consumption of bamboo. Its ability to digest cellulose is ascribed to the microbes in its gut.[31] The giant panda is a "highly specialized" animal with "unique adaptations", and has lived in bamboo forests for millions of years.[25] The average giant panda eats as much as 9 to 14 kg (20 to 30 pounds) of bamboo shoots a day. Because the giant panda consumes a diet low in nutrition, it is important for it to keep its digestive tract full.[22] The limited energy input imposed on it by its diet has affected the panda's behavior." - wikiepdia panda page
we have not been able to efficiently mimic this process
Mimic? Why mimic somehting that's already the way we want?
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Oh how I wish I had mod points. Good one mate. Good one. :-)
Cool post bro, highfive \o
They show a prideful disdain for the Panda that I find to be rather demonstrative of their real attitude, which is of a Darwinian Socialist attitude that sees the weak as something fit to be crushed, not to be sheltered.
Haha, I'd love to see them approach one with a sharp stick and give it a good poke. When they come back I'll shake their stump for their bravery.
Cool post bro, highfive \o
Cool post bro, highfive \o