Solar cells

Nanowires increase limit of solar cell efficiency, say researchers
The researchers contend that their findings increase the so-called “Shockley-Queisser Limit,” which is the typical efficiency limit for solar cells.
http://www.sciencerecorder.com/news/nanowires-increase-limit-of-solar-cell-efficiency-say-researchers/

Not quite ready for prime time, but this is the first major change to the solar cell industry I can recall for several decades. I expect that the math of ‘really cheap with low efficiency’ vs ‘really expensive with high efficiency’ really isn’t going to change with this, but figured my reader(s) might find this interesting.

THIS is what we should be focused on

Overfished and under-protected: Oceans on the brink of catastrophic collapse
http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/22/world/oceans-overfishing-climate-change/index.html?hpt=hp_c3

I think the reason that people like to harp on global warming is because it is a huge, yet remote problem that involves everyone all over the globe all at once, thus can safely be ignored for now. Overfishing the ocean, on the other hand, is something people could do something about by a simple change in their behavior, yet no one wants to make those changes. I bet that if the US ‘breadbasket’ in the Midwest were to have lost 90% of its yields over the last 100 years (instead of steadily increasing, so much so that farmland is reverting to forest!) people would set up and take notice, but since it is in the ocean and thus out of sight, no one seems to give a damn. This is a big deal, yet articles to discuss it like the one above are rare, almost never trigger discussion and are generally forgotten in minutes. It is articles like this that I started down the road to developing my interest in aquaponics; I am very convinced that at some point in the not-to-distant future (a couple of decades at the most), the cost of sea food is going to explode because the supply will simply cease. If you want fish protein you will have to get it from cultured sources. If I can get off my lazy ass I should be exceptionally well positioned to take advantage of this.

Too bad I am such a lazy worthless bastard!

Salt: the deadly killer

Salt responsible for 2.3 million deaths worldwide, study suggests
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/03/22/salt-responsible-for-23-million-deaths-worldwide-study-suggests/

Personally I am far from convinced that the supposed association between high dietary salt and the manifold health concerns is causative (verses correlative). Certainly there are some medical conditions where high sodium (the component that is actually troublesome) can be dangerous, but salt is constantly lost via sweating, urinating, etc. and our body does a rather poor job (in comparisons to most other ‘savanna’ organisms) of retaining salt. Of course, as a species, our activity level has dropped so much (as we have porked up, causality or correlation?) that we sweat so much less that maybe, just maybe, this is an issue. However, it is critical to understand that for active people who sweat a lot curtailing salt intake can very quickly lead to death, not decades from now by some rather diffuse range of medical conditions but today, this very afternoon, when you drop dead from an electrolyte imbalance. Because of our infatuation with air conditioning most people who work out are not used to the heat and thus sweat more than they would had they been adapted. More sweat means you need more salt intake (among many other electrolytes! don’t focus only on sodium!), not less.

Now if you are an old fat white guy and sit around watching the tube in a conditioned house, you might want to cut back on the massive sodium intake. Since that is probably a significant portion of the population, perhaps these rather hysterical headlines have some validity after all, but if you are young and exercise regularly following these recommendations could put you in the hospital or even in the ground.

More Autism

Since I blogged on autism recently I figured I would toss this one out to my reader(s):

Grandparents ‘may relay autism risk to grandchildren’
The risk of developing autism may be passed on through – and not just to – future generations, researchers say.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21857403

There has been increasing evidence that epigenetic (see here Wiki page) changes can be passed down through the generations. It is plausible that some portion of what triggers autism is from epigenetic changes that our parents, grandparents and even great grandparents received and passed down through the generations. What might be making tracing the genetic component (if any) in autism so challenging is that it might not be due to mutations at all, it might be due to epigenetic changes. Right now getting epigenetic data is quite challenging (something I hope will change with my DNA sequencing invention) so it is hard to do the sort of population studies to winkle out the associations.

Will you be next?

Will I be next? Our police state is working diligently to eliminate any sort of questioning of its actions. This is a critical issue to regaining our freedom as a representative democracy (if you think we live in one now you are living in a fantasy land (but so many are!)). I really encourage my reader(s) to follow the link below and read the entire article. Any regular reader(s) here know we are well down the path, perhaps irreversibly so, but perhaps reading the article will motivate you to forward it (or my post) and get a wider audience. Challenge your complacent friends/family/etc. to read the article and debate it. Perhaps our society really does want a police state (in which case I need to get outta here), but more likely our fellow men and women are instead guilty of willful ignorance (or butt ugly stupidity) and have so far refused to know. The main stream media goes out of its way to downplay or even totally ignore these sorts of things, without the Internet I doubt anyone would know.

The persecution of Barrett Brown – and how to fight it
The journalist and Anonymous activist is targeted as part of a broad effort to deter and punish internet freedom activism
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/21/barrett-brown-persecution-anonymous

A market economy? NOT!

To Bring Healthcare Prices Down, Consumers Must Demand Price Transparency
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/03/20/to-bring-healthcare-prices-down-consumers-must-demand-price-transparency/

The biggest thing to understand is that for our health care costs to drop by 30% that means that the often insane profits that the industry makes has to dramatically drop. That, of course, translates to lower bonuses to pharmaceutical executives, lower paychecks for millionaire doctors, smaller returns on investment to Wall Street, etc., etc., etc. Since the health care industry is over $2.5 TRILLION dollars a year (just here in the US), that means removing 30% of the cost means that someone is going to wind up losing over $750 BILLION dollars. What is the chance of that happening here in the US? The same place where banks are too big to fail (and too big to jail) and when a company gets a billion dollar fine for illegal activity all the executives get bonuses.

Nope, tain’t gunna happen here!

Shocking! Autism nearly doubles in 5 years!

One in 50 School-Aged Children in U.S. Has Autism: CDC
Significant increase in the prevalence of the condition over the past five years, researchers say
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2013/03/20/one-in-50-school-aged-children-in-us-has-autism-cdc

Personally I find this report totally bogus on a number of fronts. That the once great CDC is now reporting things like this, to me, shows that it has totally been taken over by non-scientists, likely health care executives traveling through the public/private revolving door (see here for another of my complaints on the CDC). Much like the new DSM-V seems to be medicalizing normal conditions, this vastly increased rate of incidence may be nothing more than doctors groping around to assign a label to ordinary kids. There is no doubt in my mind that had I grown up today I would be diagnosed with autism, ADD, ADHD, etc. and, presuming my parents were credulous enough to buy it (I hope not, but one never knows), I would be hopped up on drugs and would absolutely grow up a different person. This is not to say that there aren’t real cases of autism, just to say that too many ordinary children are being diagnosed with it.

Make us safer, go to jail!

Expose A Blatant Security Hole In AT&T’s Servers, Get 3.5 Years In Jail
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130318/23033422370/expose-blatant-security-hole-ats-servers-get-35-years-jail.shtml

I didn’t look beyond this article, so it is entirely possible that it is slanted so in favor of the accused that a balanced view would show the outrage is unjustified, but knowing what I do know about infosec, nothing here surprises me at the slightest and I suspect it is fully justified outrage.

The real problem is that there are increasingly likely to be fewer people who investigate infosec and the ones that remain will be intent on selling their discoveries to the bad guys rather than attempting to do a public notification. Even if this guy did break some legitimate laws (what the hell does that mean now when our own government routinely breaks laws and illegally throws people in jail (or kills them)?) it would seem to me that society has clearly benefited from his activity (AT&T patched their software) so any punishment in excess of parole seems entirely focused on sending a message to potential hackers/crackers.

Man this is a great country!

Patent progress

Some progress on my vanity patent… The application was submitted last Friday, though I am not totally clear if this is a provisional patent (sort of like a place holder and only gets you established for priority (if you file the real deal within 18 months)) or the full application. I am meeting with the lawyer on Wednesday to talk about licensing the idea (yes, it will be a challenge to get backers for what is pretty much just vapor ware, but really, am I going to be taken seriously even with a working prototype?) and will nail down that bit of uncertainty.

According to my lawyer my application is still ‘secret’ so I can’t show it to anyone without an NDA. The application is easy to read, which makes me think it is a provisional one since most patents are so much gibberish and legalese to me. The drawings (taken for the most part from my stuff) seem to make sense also. Maybe I am just getting used to reading patents. I recall the first few I looked at decades ago, they might as well have been in ancient Greek for all the information communicated to me.

Such a slow process! I expect that even if I do ‘win the lotto’ it will be late summer or fall before I am able to finally focus full-time on the project. Unlike the real lotto, though, I at least should have some signs that things are moving in a positive, productive manner in the mean time.