It has seemed to me for a while that Amazon is slipping. Their web site, long a model of clarity and usability, has become confusing with the proliferation of non-Amazon sellers. For example I recently did a search for a book and the top listing in the search results was only for used copies, while if I clicked the second listing I got the usual Amazon page for the book. Since you can buy used copies from the main page for the book, I don't even understand why the separate page existed, let alone that it was the first search result.
You are certainly not the first, or only, person to complain about all the non-Amazon sellers at Amazon.com. Am I the only one who really likes being able to buy used books and CDs, or having the option to buy strange products from Amazon without having to register my name and address with yet ANOTHER web retailer? I have never been confused about which products are eligible for free shipping and which are not. For used CDs, it is a very simple calculation: shipping is $2.49. If the price differential between the used CD and the new one is more than $2.49, I save money buying the used one. However, selection, rather than cost savings, is the main reason I like the Amazon Marketplace. I listen to a lot of foreign music that is simply not available, either new or used, in the US. Through the Amazon Marketplace sellers, I've been able to buy "import" CDs for less than I would pay for domestic CDs at the bargin bin in Best Buy. And for out-of-print books, I have yet to see a vendor with a selection even close to Amazon.com's.
I must admit, though, that I wish there were an "advanced search" feature beyond the current offering, including the ability to limit results to products shipped by Amazon itself.
The "d" in "supposed" is increasingly seen as redundant when followed by a word starting with a "d"-like sound, such as "to". So "supposed to" becomes "suppose to", because they are phonetically very similar. It's just how it is these days.
If you're looking for a language where the written word has a strong correlation with the phonetic pronunciation, English is the wrong place to start. If you were right, and common usage dicated proper spelling, I kood b riting like this and it wood b akseptibul. I don't know who modded you Informative, because I consider myself a pro editor, and I've never heard of dropping the "d" in "supposed." Besides, the way people talk it should be one word, "spozeda."
Isn't aluminum known for being quite combustible? I seem to recall there being a rather serious "incident" when it turned out that the aluminum hulls on Britain's destroyers would ignite after being hit by torpedoes, resulting in self-sustaining combustion. I could be misremembering though, so don't take my word for it.
Aluminum, like magnesium, is extremely combustible if you grind it into a powder. But so is wheat grain, for that matter. Just about anything that can be oxidized will be combustible if you increase the surface area enough. Aluminum powder is an ingredient in many fireworks (not black powder, usually). But for a ship's hull, you might be thinking of magnesium, which is known for being able to burn under water. I think it may burn even more efficiently in water, and I'm guessing it lowers the pH quite a bit in the process, or else produces hydrogen gas.
Meanwhile, aluminum has issues. At best it makes your soda taste yucky after a while.
Sorry, but there's no direct contact between the soda and the metal. The cans are lined with a thin coating of some sort. Otherwise the soda would indeed dissolve the can.
In case you're doubting, here's the experiment that showed me what's up: Wash two soda cans. Score the inside of one of the cans, just a tiny scratch going all the way around, to penetrate the protective coating. Then fill both cans with an acidic solution and let them sit around a few hours. Dump out the acid, and you can tear apart the scored can as if it were paper. Chemistry magic trick.
Know anyone who makes swords? I've heard that the metallurgy that goes into a modern metal blade is quite impressive, and that modern swords -- despite being made almost entire by hobbyists -- are far superior to the swords of antiquity.
You weren't addressing me, but regardless . ..
My brother knows one of these modern-day master swordsmakers. One of the new tricks is to use high quality braided cable as a starting material. You flux it or something, then heat and pound. Like starting out with a Damascus or samurai style laminated blade, but woven instead of folded. Sounded pretty cool to me.
America was better off under the King of England than under the plutocracy. Most americans back then didn't even want independence from Britain. Let's not assume Democracy is a good thing.
Wow. I didn't know there were still Tories around. Well, at least you're consistent. How would you feel about having some sort of mandatory competency test as a requirement to vote? Would that make democracy more palatable for you?
Let's encourage elitism. Let's make elitism a good thing, instead of a bad one.
At least you spelled "deity" correctly. I've seen "diety" about as frequently as "priviledge" around here.
Who is running our government right now? The poor underclass? Or is it the Yale-semi-educated elite who are in power? Are you suggesting we relinquish our right to vote and hand over dicatorial power to our l33t president and his staff?
I'm probably as much of a misanthrope as you are, but at least I know democracy works better than a fascist state or monarchy. Get your head out of your ass.
Oh, and though I'm sure plenty of people took issue with your remark about people worshipping deities, I took more offense at your attack on Alabama. Idiots are everywhere, and even some tenured Chicago professors are idiots.
As long as they have bread and circuses. So that's how I tagged this article. On one extreme is the bigbrother tag, which is the government trying to monitor everyone and take away our freedoms (I'm already mourning the 4th Ammendment, which was gutted during the Reagan regime in another nebulous war--on DRUGS--and is about to be completely nullified, if Bush has his way). On the flipside is the breadandcircuses tag, which describes the idiots who happily allow the government to take our freedoms.
I would really like to believe Howard Zinn that the country will have a grassroots, peaceful revolt against those who would have us under their thumbs, but unfortunately I have to agree with your pessimistic view: The masses almost always value security over freedom until they have so little of either a revolution is born. I'd take it a step further: The masses almost always value convenience over freedom until they run out of potato chips and beer and revolt. But by then they've already had their guns taken away, so they don't stand much of a chance.
What makes someone "Unamerican" is not a dissenting viewpoint, but an unwillingness to fight to uphold the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights.
Roche's current production methods use the azide (which is not as hazardous as news articles would have you believe), but their own scientists have already come up with an azide-free route (though it still uses shikimic acid). See for yourself:
J. Org. Chem. 2001, 66, 2044-2051.
"New, Azide-Free Transformation of Epoxides into 1,2-Diamino Compounds: Synthesis of the Anti-Influenza Neuraminidase Inhibitor Oseltamivir Phosphate (Tamiflu)"
Martin Karpf* and Rene Trussardi F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., Pharmaceuticals Division, Non-Clinical Development, Chemical Process Research, Grenzacherstrasse 124, CH-4070, Basel, Switzerland
Google scholar should show at least the first page.
Corey's synthesis is pretty nifty. It just needs FDA approval and Roche has to adopt it. Given that Roche has had an azide-free route available since 2000, I'm thinking the process change is more than trivial. The Chemical and Engineering News article is much more informative, if you have access to that journal, and you like chemical structures.
Yes, we are a car society in the US...we really have no choice..that's the way our cities have been built, and most people cannot live without at least one car...I've never lived where even basic shopping was that close to home, definitely not walking distance. We also have many areas of extreme temperature differences....I dare say you could die from heat trying to carry groceries a couple miles in the west TX heat, or the hot humid spring/summer/fall days in New Orleans. I've never lived up north, but, I've seen pictures of the piles of snow and very cold temps up there....same thing.
I can tell you are being sincere in your numerous comments on this story, but you are nonetheless making me angry, as I am a bicyclist in the US and lived in Texas for six years, much of that time with no working car. The fact that our cities are laid out in a bicycle-unfriendly manner is something to be ashamed of. Dallas or Houston would be very difficult to navigate by bike, I agree, but you're basically advocating a car-only society, which sickens me. Urban areas are where it makes the most sense to ride a bike, versus the rural areas where there are no shoulders and many miles between neighbors. There is no denying the US is car-centric, but that's something we should be working to change, not accept as a done-deal. We're going to need more trains soon, when the pollution in major US cities is as bad as the Districto Federal in Mexico, where any given car is only allowed to be driven on certain days of the week. (Consequently, rich people in the D.F. get around this rule by owning two cars. Rich and poor both have to occassionally wear surgical masks to avoid breathing so much toxic particulate matter, as will be the case in Houston and LA soon.)
I could ramble for a long time, but the point is this: people are lazy, and that is the reason so few ride bicycles. There is nothing inherent to this nation that prevents people from biking to work or to the grocery store. I've done so on a regular basis, with no difficulty. You could too, if you really wanted to, even in a major urban area.
Telling bicyclists to get off the road if they can't keep up with the cars is irresponsible at best. Where I bike, most of the city street speed limits are no more than 25 mph, which I can easily maintain on my bike. Cars still sometimes try to pass me if I don't take a whole lane, so I take the lane if there isn't a bike lane. The common motto is "share the road," which you sound unwilling to do. Not all bicyclists are lawless idiots, you know. I see far more assholes driving while on their cell phones than I see bicyclists running red lights. Oh, and where I live, the laws state that bicyclists can treat stop signs (signs, not lights) as "yield" signs, so they don't have to come to a complete stop. You might want to check the laws in your area--some of those bicyclists breezing through stop signs may have been within their rights.
assume that no driver can see you, ride as if you were invisible.
This has long been the advice for bicyclists. I first heard it from Austin bicyclist Michael Bluejay. It's good advice for anyone on the road. And especially important for cars with turn signals on--I've been a passenger in an accident that occurred because someone had their turn signal on and didn't turn.
It's often helpful to ride in such a way that motorists won't hit you even if they don't see you. You're not trying to BE invisible, you're trying to make it irrelevant whether cars see you or not. If you ride in such a way that a car has to see you to take action to avoid hitting you (e.g., by their slowing down or changing lanes), then that means they will definitely hit you if they don't see you. But if you stay out of their way, then you won't get hit even if they didn't notice you were there.
Except that fuel cells don't combust per se. Which was my point. The hydrogen acts as the Anode, the Oxygen as the Cathode, and the plates between them strip off the hydrogen electrons to create a voltaic imbalance. The actual combustion of the two is secondary to the energy generation, and is not directly used by the process. The only thing used is the attraction between the hydrogen and oxygen atoms.
You're making a false distinction here: almost all chemical reactions are ruled by electronics. All reactive and physical properties of elements and molecules are governed by the distribution of electrons (although the distribution of electrons is determined by the number of protons in the nucleus, of course). Polar means that the electrons in a molecule are unevenly distributed. Nonpolar means they're evenly distributed. Reactivity is determined exclusively by how badly a molecule "wants" to give or receive electrons.
Anyway, if it helps you to make sense of it, think of a fuel cell as a very slow, controlled combustion that produces little heat. Generating H2 and O2 from water is a separation of charge (and therefore consumes energy). Recombining those charges generates current. Normally that requires a high activation energy (ignition with a spark) and is very rapid, very exothermic. The fuel cell catalyst lowers the activation energy of the combustion process, and the fuel cell system regulates the overall reaction rate. But guess what? This process is exactly how plants photosynthesize. The electron transport chain uses solar energy to split water, then stores that energy, from the charge separation, as sugar. Then via respiration (aerobic metabolism), the plants turn the sugar back into energy. All life, whether aerobic or anaerobic, depends on the ability to separate and recombine charge.
What we really need to do is figure out how to make a fuel cell powered by glucose.
The point I'm getting at is that the article feels incredibly imprecise. There is an electrochemical reaction occurring that produces power output, but the actual chemical reaction is not harnessed. Or at least, that's the one way of looking at it. You do still end up with a recombination of the electrons, protons, and oxygen to produce water in the end so I guess I can't entirely fault the article.
Actually, I would argue that you can entirely fault the article. It was a worthless stub, and was indeed incredibly imprecise. All the useful information was already given in the/. writeup.
From the Linde process typically used with atmospheric air we also get liquid neon, argon, krypton, nitrogen and carbon dioxide as byproducts, as these liquids are "distilled" out at different heights (temperatures) of the cascade column.
Claimer: IAACHE (I am a Chemical Engineer)
I did undergraduate research at the University of Texas on a way to separate ethane from ethene (ethylene) without using expensive cryogenic distillation. The idea was for the mixture of gases to pass over a liquid phase that would selectively absorb ethylene at certain pressure, which could be released by a simple pressure swing, after the liquid was saturated with gas. I'm not sure how that turned out, but gas separation has progressed tremendously in the past 10 or so years.
Just this week I saw an ad for nitrogen and hydrogen gas generators: http://www.parker.com/ags The technique uses hollow microfibers that are selectively permeable. Just put compressed air in, and get out pure nitrogen while separating the oxygen, water, and other trace gases. Also back at UT, I had a different professor who wanted to make windows out of these semi-permeable membranes, which would basically serve as air purifiers--oxygen diffuses in, carbon dioxide diffuses out.
Some bastard at Parker posted info about the hydrogen gas separation in a freaking MSWord doc, so here's an excerpt for those who don't have Word:
Parker Balston 75-34 generators produce dry hydrogen gas to a purity level in excess of 99.99999% from deionized water and electricity. The hydrogen generator utilizes the principle of electrolytic disassociation of water and subsequent diffusion through a palladium membrane. The outlet pressure of the hydrogen generator is adjustable and the generator can deliver hydrogen at pressures up to 100 psi. The 75-34 has a hydrogen delivery capacity of 300 cc/minute. The high purity of the gas produced by this generator makes it ideal for use with FIDs, TCDs, trace hydrocarbon analyzers and air pollution monitors.
How on-site generators work
The electrolytic disassociation of water takes place in the electrolytic cell as electricity passes through deionized water. During electrolysis, oxygen and other impurities collect at the nickel anode and are vented from the generator. Hydrogen ions collect at and pass through the tubular palladium cathode driven by the applied electric potential. Inside the tubes, the hydrogen recombines to form purified molecular hydrogen. The newly formed hydrogen is under pressure and ready to be delivered to the usage point. The purity of the hydrogen is ensured by the fact that the palladium membrane allows only hydrogen and its isotopes to pass.
There's nothing new about using hydrolysis to make hydrogen from water, but being able to easily separate that hydrogen is very important if you don't want to foul your fuel-cell catalyst with contaminants.
A more in depth writeup at swoogylee.tripod.com/resume/Lee-jps-B-2004.pdf. For the interested or very bored.
Yeah, that Reuters article was practically useless. The 2003 article at least allowed me to find the more recent one by author, though I can't access the Science article because it was published online only.
I'm wondering where this Center for Nano- and Molecular Science and Technology is located . . . I was at UT from 1996-2002, and I don't remember hearing about it.
So, for those who want info on the current paper about M13 phage and making nanobatteries, here's the reference, noticeably absent in the Reuters writeup:
Virus-Enabled Synthesis and Assembly of Nanowires for Lithium Ion Battery Electrodes
Published Online April 6, 2006
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1122716
Ki Tae Nam, Dong-Wan Kim, Pil J. Yoo, Chung-Yi Chiang, Nonglak Meethong, Paula T. Hammond, Yet-Ming Chiang, Angela M. Belcher (belcher@mit.edu)
Both materials selection and assembly are ongoing issues in the development of smaller, more flexible batteries. Cobalt oxide has shown excellent electrochemical cycling properties and it thus under consideration as an electrode for advanced lithium batteries. We use viruses to synthesize and assemble nanowires of cobalt oxide at room temperature. By incorporating gold binding peptides into the filament coat, we could form hybrid gold-cobalt oxide wires that improved battery capacity. Combining the virus templated synthesis at the peptide level and our methods for the control of two dimensional assembly of viruses on polyelectrolyte multilayers provides a systematic platform for integrating these nanomaterials to form thin, flexible lithium ion batteries.
I very recently saw a seminar by Howard Shapiro, a scientist who, among other things, wrote a song about apoptosis. He performed it for us with accompanying music. Science songs are always great mnemonic devices.
Two sample stanzas:
When outer leaflets of cell membranes
Let phosphatidylserine show,
Labeled annexin V will bind there,
And you can measure it in flow.
Mitochondria deenergize
And superoxide levels rise,
But the nuclear signs of apoptosis
Come later; then, the cell dies.
CDs won't die until everyone has broadband and music is published in lossless CD quality for a better price than that of a CD.
You hit one of the two reasons that I still buy CDs: lossless CD quality, which of course is incredibly lossy compared to analog recordings, but is good enough for my ear. But 128 kbps? Even AAC? Sounds like total crap, especially with a pair of good headphones.
The other reason I still buy CDs is availability. Sure, I have a broadband internet connection, but the music I want is either not available on the P2P networks, or is available in such awful quality I wouldn't download it unless I was unfamiliar with the band and wanted a preview listen.
The funny part is that the obscure CDs I buy are not available in my local retail stores, so I still end up using the internet to get my music. But at prices comparable to iTunes music store, only far higher quality and with bonus liner notes and a backup CD that's pressed, not burned.
Considering that most atoms are ~0.1-1 nm wide, my guess is that all electronics would fall in the nano- scale, not the pico- or femto- scale. Unless you're talking about electrons themselves, in which case it *could* be femtotech, if they were moving fast enough. (Heisenberg and all that.)
Remember that 0.1 nm is equivalent to 100 pm or 100,000 fm. I don't think there are any atoms that are 1 nm in diameter. Uranium has a vdW radius of only 186 pm. But yes, I was mostly referring to the electrons and holes being femtotechnology.
It may be technically true that molecular bio is a type of nanotech, but it's meaningless. What makes nanotechnology fundamentally different from just plain chemistry is the creation of molecules that have very different properties than the bulk phase. I.e., tiny silicon particles or features on a chip, versus a giant crystal of silicon (which is, after all, comprised of atoms that are on the pico-scale). A p-n-p junction is meaningless on the macroscale, because it can't be turned on or off. The gate voltage would be enough to kill a person. Biomolecules are distinct chemical compounds, which have essentially the same properties whether you have nanograms or kilograms. Scaleup doesn't affect their properties (although crosslinking and polymerization are a different story).
Other people have mentioned it, but I'll say it again:
This is not nanotechnology.
The scientists injected peptides. Short strings of amino acids. The same stuff that comprises every protein in our bodies. So how is that nanotech? Simply because molecules are on the nanometer scale? Then I guess that makes all electronics pico- or femtotechnology.
Don't listen to the bullshit article's vocabulary--there's a more appropriate word for what they're doing, and it's called MOLECULAR BIOLOGY
I love mine, in general, but since they go over your ears, they can pinch your glasses between your ears and your head. The sound is great, and I like the design, as well. I like how they can lay flat in my desk drawer when I'm not using them. You won't be able to listen to 128 kbps mp3s with these, however, because you can hear every little artifact of the compression.
I looked around web review sites extensively before purchasing mine; the criterion was the best headphones for under $100. Any audiophiles know why they call headphones "cans"? All the reviewers talked about how great these "cans" were for the price.
I also immediately thought of the ant fungus when I read the article summary. Here's some more information about the order Entomophthorales, which exclusively infect insects. I found a pdf that gives a little more background information on them.
I should point out that the fungus in question might actually be a species of Cordyceps rather than Entomophthorales. There's a cool photo of a beetle that was killed by a parasitic fungus at bugguide.net.
You can't patent a gene. That patent would not hold up in court. Myriad Genetics probably patented the mutation on a gene, with a patent on using that mutation for detection of increased risk of breast cancer, or to develop a theraputic agent.
You can read the
patent yourself if you don't believe me. They claim the rights to do anything with the BRCA1 gene. Legally, you have to send your genetic sample to Myriad Genetics and pay them ~$3000 to even sequence the gene. Here's claim number one, which should demonstrate my point:
1. A method for detecting a germline alteration in a BRCA1 gene, said alteration selected from the group consisting of the alterations set forth in Tables 12A, 14, 18 or 19 in a human which comprises analyzing a sequence of a BRCA1 gene or BRCA1 RNA from a human sample or analyzing a sequence of BRCA1 cDNA made from mRNA from said human sample with the proviso that said germline alteration is not a deletion of 4 nucleotides corresponding to base numbers 4184-4187 of SEQ ID NO:1.
How is patenting a mutation of a gene any different from patenting a gene? You're still patenting a genetic sequence. I think it's fair to say that mutations in just about any gene can cause pathogenic effects, but if those mutations occur naturally, why should anyone be able to patent them? The sequence would exist whether Myriad discovered it or not. They don't have any new technology--just a sequence.
Instead of coming up with something novel, they claim the rights to use pre-existing technology to detect a common variant (~3% of the population) of the BRCA1 gene. Claim 10 is just one example:
10. The method of claim 1 wherein a germline alteration is detected by amplifying BRCA1 gene nucleic acids in said sample, hybridizing the amplified nucleic acids to a BRCA1 DNA probe which specifically hybridizes to nucleic acids containing at least one of said alterations and not to wild-type BRCA1 sequences and detecting the presence of a hybridization product, wherein a presence of said product indicates the presence of said germline alteration.
(They also claim the rights to run gels, PCR, and pretty much all other standard methods of nucleic acid analysis.) I'm not saying they didn't do a lot of work to pinpoint which mutations increase a person's susceptibility for breast cancer, but they should have kept it a trade secret if they didn't want people sequencing the gene themselves. They would have had a few years with a monopoly on testing, then someone else would have duplicated their work and the information would be public domain. What if someone had been able to patent the rights to sequence any of chromosome 17, rather than a specific gene? Craig Venter wanted to patent the entire human genome before the Human Genome Project could publish it. The Myriad patent sets back cancer research, preventing people from even researching BRCA1 without paying a fee. That, as I said earlier, is immoral.
People should review RIM's behavior during this long struggle before being so glib as to equate NTP's patents to patents for a breast cancer gene.
Don't get me wrong--I'm not defending RIM; I'm sure there's some shenanigans going on, such as bribery, but that doesn't mean NTP's patents are anything less than bogus. Not a spec of novelty to them. Wireless email? That's just sticking together two popular technologies, and I'm sure the idea is as old as email itself. But now it can be implemented.
This site pretty well reflects my opinion on the subject. Granted, patenting a gene is even less novel (since the sequence itself has generations-worth of "prior art"), but only by a hair. I do think that novel genetic sequences (i.e., not pre-existing in nature) ought to have some IP protection, but it should be copyright, not patent. A process for expressing the gene should be patentable, but not the sequence itself.
They are crushing the small guy, pure and simple.
If the small guy doesn't have a non-obvious invention, I don't have much sympathy. Seems like both sides are bad guys.
And I'd be willing to bet it has something to do with the 10% of Blackberry users who work for the federal government. Don't get me wrong--I'm also sure NTP's patents are bogus, but that hasn't stopped the millions of other bogus patents (such as Myriad Genetics' downright immoral patent of breast cancer genes), or any of the many software patents that keep popping up in/. articles. Why the special treatment for RIM? If I were less cynical, I'd think this was the dawn of an age of rejecting bogus patents, but let's be realistic.
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I must admit, though, that I wish there were an "advanced search" feature beyond the current offering, including the ability to limit results to products shipped by Amazon itself.
If you're looking for a language where the written word has a strong correlation with the phonetic pronunciation, English is the wrong place to start. If you were right, and common usage dicated proper spelling, I kood b riting like this and it wood b akseptibul. I don't know who modded you Informative, because I consider myself a pro editor, and I've never heard of dropping the "d" in "supposed." Besides, the way people talk it should be one word, "spozeda."
Sorry, but there's no direct contact between the soda and the metal. The cans are lined with a thin coating of some sort. Otherwise the soda would indeed dissolve the can.
In case you're doubting, here's the experiment that showed me what's up: Wash two soda cans. Score the inside of one of the cans, just a tiny scratch going all the way around, to penetrate the protective coating. Then fill both cans with an acidic solution and let them sit around a few hours. Dump out the acid, and you can tear apart the scored can as if it were paper. Chemistry magic trick.
My brother knows one of these modern-day master swordsmakers. One of the new tricks is to use high quality braided cable as a starting material. You flux it or something, then heat and pound. Like starting out with a Damascus or samurai style laminated blade, but woven instead of folded. Sounded pretty cool to me.
Wow. I didn't know there were still Tories around. Well, at least you're consistent. How would you feel about having some sort of mandatory competency test as a requirement to vote? Would that make democracy more palatable for you?
At least you spelled "deity" correctly. I've seen "diety" about as frequently as "priviledge" around here.
Who is running our government right now? The poor underclass? Or is it the Yale-semi-educated elite who are in power? Are you suggesting we relinquish our right to vote and hand over dicatorial power to our l33t president and his staff?
I'm probably as much of a misanthrope as you are, but at least I know democracy works better than a fascist state or monarchy. Get your head out of your ass.
Oh, and though I'm sure plenty of people took issue with your remark about people worshipping deities, I took more offense at your attack on Alabama. Idiots are everywhere, and even some tenured Chicago professors are idiots.
I would really like to believe Howard Zinn that the country will have a grassroots, peaceful revolt against those who would have us under their thumbs, but unfortunately I have to agree with your pessimistic view: The masses almost always value security over freedom until they have so little of either a revolution is born. I'd take it a step further: The masses almost always value convenience over freedom until they run out of potato chips and beer and revolt. But by then they've already had their guns taken away, so they don't stand much of a chance.
What makes someone "Unamerican" is not a dissenting viewpoint, but an unwillingness to fight to uphold the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights.
Corey's synthesis is pretty nifty. It just needs FDA approval and Roche has to adopt it. Given that Roche has had an azide-free route available since 2000, I'm thinking the process change is more than trivial. The Chemical and Engineering News article is much more informative, if you have access to that journal, and you like chemical structures.
I can tell you are being sincere in your numerous comments on this story, but you are nonetheless making me angry, as I am a bicyclist in the US and lived in Texas for six years, much of that time with no working car. The fact that our cities are laid out in a bicycle-unfriendly manner is something to be ashamed of. Dallas or Houston would be very difficult to navigate by bike, I agree, but you're basically advocating a car-only society, which sickens me. Urban areas are where it makes the most sense to ride a bike, versus the rural areas where there are no shoulders and many miles between neighbors. There is no denying the US is car-centric, but that's something we should be working to change, not accept as a done-deal. We're going to need more trains soon, when the pollution in major US cities is as bad as the Districto Federal in Mexico, where any given car is only allowed to be driven on certain days of the week. (Consequently, rich people in the D.F. get around this rule by owning two cars. Rich and poor both have to occassionally wear surgical masks to avoid breathing so much toxic particulate matter, as will be the case in Houston and LA soon.)
I could ramble for a long time, but the point is this: people are lazy, and that is the reason so few ride bicycles. There is nothing inherent to this nation that prevents people from biking to work or to the grocery store. I've done so on a regular basis, with no difficulty. You could too, if you really wanted to, even in a major urban area.
Telling bicyclists to get off the road if they can't keep up with the cars is irresponsible at best. Where I bike, most of the city street speed limits are no more than 25 mph, which I can easily maintain on my bike. Cars still sometimes try to pass me if I don't take a whole lane, so I take the lane if there isn't a bike lane. The common motto is "share the road," which you sound unwilling to do. Not all bicyclists are lawless idiots, you know. I see far more assholes driving while on their cell phones than I see bicyclists running red lights. Oh, and where I live, the laws state that bicyclists can treat stop signs (signs, not lights) as "yield" signs, so they don't have to come to a complete stop. You might want to check the laws in your area--some of those bicyclists breezing through stop signs may have been within their rights.
This has long been the advice for bicyclists. I first heard it from Austin bicyclist Michael Bluejay. It's good advice for anyone on the road. And especially important for cars with turn signals on--I've been a passenger in an accident that occurred because someone had their turn signal on and didn't turn.
You're making a false distinction here: almost all chemical reactions are ruled by electronics. All reactive and physical properties of elements and molecules are governed by the distribution of electrons (although the distribution of electrons is determined by the number of protons in the nucleus, of course). Polar means that the electrons in a molecule are unevenly distributed. Nonpolar means they're evenly distributed. Reactivity is determined exclusively by how badly a molecule "wants" to give or receive electrons.
Anyway, if it helps you to make sense of it, think of a fuel cell as a very slow, controlled combustion that produces little heat. Generating H2 and O2 from water is a separation of charge (and therefore consumes energy). Recombining those charges generates current. Normally that requires a high activation energy (ignition with a spark) and is very rapid, very exothermic. The fuel cell catalyst lowers the activation energy of the combustion process, and the fuel cell system regulates the overall reaction rate. But guess what? This process is exactly how plants photosynthesize. The electron transport chain uses solar energy to split water, then stores that energy, from the charge separation, as sugar. Then via respiration (aerobic metabolism), the plants turn the sugar back into energy. All life, whether aerobic or anaerobic, depends on the ability to separate and recombine charge.
What we really need to do is figure out how to make a fuel cell powered by glucose.
The point I'm getting at is that the article feels incredibly imprecise. There is an electrochemical reaction occurring that produces power output, but the actual chemical reaction is not harnessed. Or at least, that's the one way of looking at it. You do still end up with a recombination of the electrons, protons, and oxygen to produce water in the end so I guess I can't entirely fault the article.
Actually, I would argue that you can entirely fault the article. It was a worthless stub, and was indeed incredibly imprecise. All the useful information was already given in the /. writeup.
Claimer: IAACHE (I am a Chemical Engineer)
I did undergraduate research at the University of Texas on a way to separate ethane from ethene (ethylene) without using expensive cryogenic distillation. The idea was for the mixture of gases to pass over a liquid phase that would selectively absorb ethylene at certain pressure, which could be released by a simple pressure swing, after the liquid was saturated with gas. I'm not sure how that turned out, but gas separation has progressed tremendously in the past 10 or so years.
Just this week I saw an ad for nitrogen and hydrogen gas generators: http://www.parker.com/ags The technique uses hollow microfibers that are selectively permeable. Just put compressed air in, and get out pure nitrogen while separating the oxygen, water, and other trace gases. Also back at UT, I had a different professor who wanted to make windows out of these semi-permeable membranes, which would basically serve as air purifiers--oxygen diffuses in, carbon dioxide diffuses out.
Some bastard at Parker posted info about the hydrogen gas separation in a freaking MSWord doc, so here's an excerpt for those who don't have Word:
There's nothing new about using hydrolysis to make hydrogen from water, but being able to easily separate that hydrogen is very important if you don't want to foul your fuel-cell catalyst with contaminants.Yeah, that Reuters article was practically useless. The 2003 article at least allowed me to find the more recent one by author, though I can't access the Science article because it was published online only.
I'm wondering where this Center for Nano- and Molecular Science and Technology is located . . . I was at UT from 1996-2002, and I don't remember hearing about it.
So, for those who want info on the current paper about M13 phage and making nanobatteries, here's the reference, noticeably absent in the Reuters writeup:
Two sample stanzas:
Well I don't want to support a cabal, or any other sort of Jewish mysticism involving Madonna and Britney Spears.
I prefer to think that for each CD you buy, satan sodomizes your dead relatives in hell.
But see, I'm okay, because all of my dead relatives are either in limbo or would enjoy being molested by the Dark Lord Beelzebub.
You hit one of the two reasons that I still buy CDs: lossless CD quality, which of course is incredibly lossy compared to analog recordings, but is good enough for my ear. But 128 kbps? Even AAC? Sounds like total crap, especially with a pair of good headphones.
The other reason I still buy CDs is availability. Sure, I have a broadband internet connection, but the music I want is either not available on the P2P networks, or is available in such awful quality I wouldn't download it unless I was unfamiliar with the band and wanted a preview listen.
The funny part is that the obscure CDs I buy are not available in my local retail stores, so I still end up using the internet to get my music. But at prices comparable to iTunes music store, only far higher quality and with bonus liner notes and a backup CD that's pressed, not burned.
Remember that 0.1 nm is equivalent to 100 pm or 100,000 fm. I don't think there are any atoms that are 1 nm in diameter. Uranium has a vdW radius of only 186 pm. But yes, I was mostly referring to the electrons and holes being femtotechnology.
It may be technically true that molecular bio is a type of nanotech, but it's meaningless. What makes nanotechnology fundamentally different from just plain chemistry is the creation of molecules that have very different properties than the bulk phase. I.e., tiny silicon particles or features on a chip, versus a giant crystal of silicon (which is, after all, comprised of atoms that are on the pico-scale). A p-n-p junction is meaningless on the macroscale, because it can't be turned on or off. The gate voltage would be enough to kill a person. Biomolecules are distinct chemical compounds, which have essentially the same properties whether you have nanograms or kilograms. Scaleup doesn't affect their properties (although crosslinking and polymerization are a different story).
This is not nanotechnology.
The scientists injected peptides. Short strings of amino acids. The same stuff that comprises every protein in our bodies. So how is that nanotech? Simply because molecules are on the nanometer scale? Then I guess that makes all electronics pico- or femtotechnology.
Don't listen to the bullshit article's vocabulary--there's a more appropriate word for what they're doing, and it's called MOLECULAR BIOLOGY
Cargenie. Sounds like something that can be an air-freshener, a CD-player, and a beverage cooler all at once.
I looked around web review sites extensively before purchasing mine; the criterion was the best headphones for under $100. Any audiophiles know why they call headphones "cans"? All the reviewers talked about how great these "cans" were for the price.
I should point out that the fungus in question might actually be a species of Cordyceps rather than Entomophthorales. There's a cool photo of a beetle that was killed by a parasitic fungus at bugguide.net.
You can read the patent yourself if you don't believe me. They claim the rights to do anything with the BRCA1 gene. Legally, you have to send your genetic sample to Myriad Genetics and pay them ~$3000 to even sequence the gene. Here's claim number one, which should demonstrate my point:
How is patenting a mutation of a gene any different from patenting a gene? You're still patenting a genetic sequence. I think it's fair to say that mutations in just about any gene can cause pathogenic effects, but if those mutations occur naturally, why should anyone be able to patent them? The sequence would exist whether Myriad discovered it or not. They don't have any new technology--just a sequence. Instead of coming up with something novel, they claim the rights to use pre-existing technology to detect a common variant (~3% of the population) of the BRCA1 gene. Claim 10 is just one example:
(They also claim the rights to run gels, PCR, and pretty much all other standard methods of nucleic acid analysis.) I'm not saying they didn't do a lot of work to pinpoint which mutations increase a person's susceptibility for breast cancer, but they should have kept it a trade secret if they didn't want people sequencing the gene themselves. They would have had a few years with a monopoly on testing, then someone else would have duplicated their work and the information would be public domain. What if someone had been able to patent the rights to sequence any of chromosome 17, rather than a specific gene? Craig Venter wanted to patent the entire human genome before the Human Genome Project could publish it. The Myriad patent sets back cancer research, preventing people from even researching BRCA1 without paying a fee. That, as I said earlier, is immoral.Don't get me wrong--I'm not defending RIM; I'm sure there's some shenanigans going on, such as bribery, but that doesn't mean NTP's patents are anything less than bogus. Not a spec of novelty to them. Wireless email? That's just sticking together two popular technologies, and I'm sure the idea is as old as email itself. But now it can be implemented. This site pretty well reflects my opinion on the subject. Granted, patenting a gene is even less novel (since the sequence itself has generations-worth of "prior art"), but only by a hair. I do think that novel genetic sequences (i.e., not pre-existing in nature) ought to have some IP protection, but it should be copyright, not patent. A process for expressing the gene should be patentable, but not the sequence itself.
They are crushing the small guy, pure and simple.
If the small guy doesn't have a non-obvious invention, I don't have much sympathy. Seems like both sides are bad guys.
And I'd be willing to bet it has something to do with the 10% of Blackberry users who work for the federal government. Don't get me wrong--I'm also sure NTP's patents are bogus, but that hasn't stopped the millions of other bogus patents (such as Myriad Genetics' downright immoral patent of breast cancer genes), or any of the many software patents that keep popping up in /. articles. Why the special treatment for RIM? If I were less cynical, I'd think this was the dawn of an age of rejecting bogus patents, but let's be realistic.