The Last Bass Outpost
Main Forums => The Outpost Cafe => Topic started by: Barklessdog on May 20, 2010, 01:17:01 PM
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Seems we have created synthetic organic cell = life
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703559004575256470152341984.html?mod=djemalertNEWS
Heralding a new era in biology, scientists for the first time have created a synthetic cell, completely controlled by man-made genetic instructions, which can survive and reproduce itself, researchers at the private J. Craig Venter Institute announced Thursday.
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"I don't think it represents the creation of an artificial life form," said biomedical engineer James Collins at Boston University. "I view this as an organism with a synthetic genome, not as a synthetic organism. It is tough to draw where the line is."
Although the new cell, a form of bacteria, was conceived solely as a demonstration project, several biologists were certain that the laboratory technique used to birth it would soon be applied to other strains of bacteria with commercial potential.
As long as there is commercial potential..
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Pandora's Box is something that once opened cannot be closed again...
I am still kinda freaked by GM - do I want to eat a tomatoe that is part fish...?
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God help us.
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I'm not blindly in favor of this stuff, but it will develop and proceed no matter what we do - science, even when going in a wrong direction, can never be halted no matter what men, churches and politicians do to stop it. All Godzillas come out of the ocean eventually. "History shows again and again ... Go-Go-Godzilla!"
Let's face it: We'll have artificial life long before Gibson reintroduces chrome hardware ... (Exit with mad Vincent Price laugh!)
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... how nature points out the follies of man... (BOC)
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When the Hadron Collider tears a hole in the space-time continuum, maybe this project will get sucked into the void.
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Any one see the UK rat brain cell controlled robot?
rat brain controlled robot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-0eZytv6Qk
The thing that scares me about all this is what countries without ethics do. I saw an article of Chinese face transplants that they do that go horribly wrong. They supposedly do them routinely now.
I'm all for curing diseases, but not by creating monsters. No ones going to stop it either.
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Seems we have created synthetic organic cell = life
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703559004575256470152341984.html?mod=djemalertNEWS
Heralding a new era in biology, scientists for the first time have created a synthetic cell, completely controlled by man-made genetic instructions, which can survive and reproduce itself, researchers at the private J. Craig Venter Institute announced Thursday.
Does this make up for all the marine life we are killing in the Gulf due to the oil spew?
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Does this make up for all the marine life we are killing in the Gulf due to the oil spew?
They don't seem to be able to control that, looks like it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
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You said it, Dave. I figured BP was lying about how much was spewing out of those leaks. They keep saying, "We'll trying this new approach in a few days or next week, etc" and I'm thinking, "No, you are going to try something today and if that doesn't work you are trying this other thing tomorrow and if that doesn't work you are trying this other thing the day after that."
It disgusts me.
What this shows is that they really did not have a plan at all in case something went wrong. Sitting out in my backyard last night with a beer and enjoying the nice weather it felt slightly ominous, like some in Europe probably felt when Chernobyl melted down.
I've contacted someone about switching my truck over to biodiesel full time. :)
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I immediately copied that URL and dropped it into my online course which examines the impacts of technology on society.
GREAT article for a graduate-level discussion!
And yes, BP lies. It's their job to put the best possible face on everything. Problem is, when you spin too hard, you get caught. They got caught.
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I can't believe they let these people drill at depths where they obviously can't control a "mishap".
It appears they have no idea how to stop the leak.
And I read that any criticism of them is "un-american"?
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Boy, the idea that criticism of anything is "un-American" is simply ridiculous! America became a nation independent of England in large part because we were critical of the way King George treated us as a colony.
If anything, criticism is absolutely American!
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BP's (mis)handling of the oil spill is indeed amateur hour. This has probably long been discussed and rejected, but why exactly don't they plant a bomb there, even a small nuclear one and blow up the hole? I can't believe we have all these nuclear subs in the world's oceans that can blow up half of Russia or half of the US, yet we are unable to fill the leak by blowing it up. My guess is that the oil field is still to interesting for future use to do something as radical as that.
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It's amateur hour indeed. Now BP is saying that it will be a few days or a week before they can topfill the leaks with, get this, golf balls, rope and mud. WTF?! I mean, WTF do they spend all their money on? Sure doesn't seem like they spend much on fallback measures.
Funny you mention explosives that Uwe, because one of the ways of stopping a fire in an oilfield is to use explosives.
Isn't it odd that most of the world's man-made environmental disasters involve energy?
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............
It disgusts me.
I've contacted someone about switching my truck over to biodiesel full time. :)
That's admirable Denis but what will you do in the winter when the Biodiesel gels up? I've always considered the bio angle to zero sum gain, that just makes you feel good, because it takes carbon based energy to produce - energy to convert and process and fertilizer to grow it. The folks that covert left over cooking oil have it down - the oil has served it's original purpose and uses little energy to be converted. The drawbacks are space to run your home converter and your car smells like french fries when you drive. ;)
As for why we are drilling at the depth of mile? As the feds! >:( We have TONS of oil and natural gas in very shallow waters but we can not get to it! Ask California! Ask Florida! Hey, we want to gas up our Hummers and live in 10,000 sqare foot, air conditioned, houses but you can't drill here! In short they are drilling a mile in depth beacause that is the only place they are allowed to drill.
The oil patch/energy sector has been my customer for almost 30 years now and I've had many discussions with engineers, geologists and the like to know that there are two sides to this story.
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Funny you mention explosives that Uwe, because one of the ways of stopping a fire in an oilfield is to use explosives..........
The explosion concept robs the well fire of oxygen.
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I know, but wouldn't it also cave in any channel/drill hole to the oil?
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I'm not an engineer but I think that the pressure involved, forcing the oil to through the damaged drill pipe - almost a mile below sea level, is huge and that it would take many tons of earth to contain it. What if the explosion just opened it up more?
Funny enough the earth seeps oil into Gulf naturally - anyone who has ever been to the beach in Galveston has run afoul of the dreaded "tarballs"
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I'm not slinging tar-balls here, but here are some interesting stats, and we all know what those are (lies, damned lies, etc)
BP being called British is interesting... 40% is British owned; 39% is US owned... unless their website has got that wrong too...
Of the 21% of those shares that are owned by "individuals" 7% is UK; 14% is US...
http://www.bp.com/extendedsectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9010453&contentId=7019612 (http://www.bp.com/extendedsectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9010453&contentId=7019612)
Of the top six users of oil in the world, positions 2 thru 6 nearly equate to US usage, which is approximately 20% of the total planet useage, of which they are only able to produce slightly less than half that figure...
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/country/index.cfm?view=consumption (http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/country/index.cfm?view=consumption)
I don't think there is enought farmland in the world to grow that much material for all the required vehicles/generators/heating in use today, let alone the present, unsustainable, human population growth rate...
Why do governments allow such exploration as this Gulf BP site, or others like IXOTOC 1...? for fun...? sorry guys, but regardless of how it turns out, you have the most to lose by it going ahead/not going ahead...
Soap box now being shreded for fuel...
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BP was British, the merger with Amoco and later Arco changed all that.
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That's admirable Denis but what will you do in the winter when the Biodiesel gels up? I've always considered the bio angle to zero sum gain, that just makes you feel good, because it takes carbon based energy to produce - energy to convert and process and fertilizer to grow it. The folks that covert left over cooking oil have it down - the oil has served it's original purpose and uses little energy to be converted. The drawbacks are space to run your home converter and your car smells like french fries when you drive. ;)
As for why we are drilling at the depth of mile? As the feds! >:( We have TONS of oil and natural gas in very shallow waters but we can not get to it! Ask California! Ask Florida! Hey, we want to gas up our Hummers and live in 10,000 sqare foot, air conditioned, houses but you can't drill here! In short they are drilling a mile in depth beacause that is the only place they are allowed to drill.
The oil patch/energy sector has been my customer for almost 30 years now and I've had many discussions with engineers, geologists and the like to know that there are two sides to this story.
Here in North Carolina we don't have that much of a problem with the gelling of fuels and there are several different types of biodiesel: B5, B10, B20 (all mixtures of bio and petroleum based), B100 and then there are the kinds where used oil is collected, heated and strained. The latter one usually required the addition of a tank in the vehicle which contains a heater and is connected to the fuel pumps in conjunction with the regular tank. The vehicle is started with regular diesel, then when the engine is warm a switch is thrown changing over to the biodiesel. Once warm the vehicle can be started directly from the tank of bio.
The other kind of 100% biodiesel (and the one which retailers and wholesalers usually offer) has been strained, filter and has an added chemical to keep the fuel from gelling and this type is much more fluid at lower temps. I've run all of these except the one requiring an extra tank, but I'm considering trying it out.
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Learn something every day! But is it truly a seperation from oil? Meaing how much oil used to process the corn, soybean, or other ag product that provides the bio stuff? If it's truly an improvement I'm all for it. I still like the recycled fryer oil ;D
Anyone here in the bread basket? Remember a few years back when congress mandated that a percentage of ethanol be added to gasoline? The price of corn went apeshi* which caused big ripple in the price of everything that depended on corn for a feedstock - beef for one. It also caused mass chaos in Mexico where corn is a staple.
I'm all for lessing our addiction to oil but it seems that most folks don't comprehend just how our existance is tied to oil and Kenny's right - we have much to lose.
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I should have perhaps clarified something, now that I've read your reply. Yes, you can make biodiesel from corn, rapeseed oil (this is big in Europe), soybeans, etc, but the 100% biodiesel I've bought from independent was made exclusively from used oil collected from restaurants in the area. And sure, there is some energy used in the purification process but since that's used primarily for purifying the oil rather than MAKING it, it's probably a tiny amount in comparison.
If I went the route of adding an additional tank to the truck, collecting and filtering the oil while it's in that tank, the energy used is almost nothing.
That whole push in the US for ethanol made from corn a few years ago was foolish and shortsighted because a) lots of that corn WOULD have been used for food, either for humans or animals in the US or shipped over seas for food and b) actually cost a little more to make than the benefits earned from using it.
When you realize, as I suddenly realized the other day, nearly all the world's man-made environmental disasters are energy oriented (Exxon Valdese, Amoco Cadiz, Chernobyl, etc, etc) it's pretty sobering.
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The UK is ideal for rapeseed growth, but the smell is really unpleasant when it pollenates...
Britain had the worlds first fast-breeder reactor - now decommisioned - but the clear-up is going to take decades...
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??? Maybe we should have strived for wisdom instead of power? ???
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The UK is ideal for rapeseed growth, but the smell is really unpleasant when it pollenates...
Britain had the worlds first fast-breeder reactor - now decommisioned - but the clear-up is going to take decades...
Irony being one of Australia's leading characteristics, we have the worlds largest reserves of uranium (24% of the worlds supply in my state alone) but only one small 20 megawatt reactor in Sydney which gets used for research, particularly neutron diffraction experiments, production of neutron transmutation doped silicon, and for production of medical and industrial radioisotopes.
The current state govt make a big deal out of being anti Nuke but are very pro mining the stuff to send overseas and have even tried to convince us that due to our large desert area we should be getting the spent fuel back from other coutries after the fact.
The pro Nuke lobby tell us we are mad not to be building Nuke plants because its such a clean cheap source of power.
We have a 1045mw wind farm network.
Hot rocks that have (as of last week) been determined 4 times hotter than expected.
5000kms of Great Southern ocean coastline (most of which is unpopulated) should wave power be required.
Huge uptake in solar panels on residential housing over the last 15 years (excess unused power getts fed back into the grid) and lots of sunshine to go with that.
And as a fossil backup we have huge reserves of Natural Gas which is one of the cleanest fossil fuels.
Its a huge argument here at the moment. The Nuke Lobby are pushing the Clean and Cheap line very hard.
My attitude is why would you want nuke waste if you dont have too. The other thing that annoys me is that they dont factor in the clean up and waste holding costs as part of the overall expense of the power.
As for BP in the Gulf .......sigh ???
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It's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it...
(hmm... that might be a hook line...)
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and sinker ;)
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Might need a VERY BIG lead weight to plug that hole...
We need to hire a BIG Dutch boy to stick his thumb in...
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The pro Nuke lobby tell us we are mad not to be building Nuke plants because its such a clean cheap source of power.
We have a 1045mw wind farm network.
Hot rocks that have (as of last week) been determined 4 times hotter than expected.
5000kms of Great Southern ocean coastline (most of which is unpopulated) should wave power be required.
Huge uptake in solar panels on residential housing over the last 15 years (excess unused power getts fed back into the grid) and lots of sunshine to go with that.
And as a fossil backup we have huge reserves of Natural Gas which is one of the cleanest fossil fuels.
With all that space unsettled Down Under it would be crazy not to go for the windfarm approach.
There is a huge windfarm in Illinois that must have 200 turbines standing that you can see for miles but in other parts of the country they are a big issue because people claim that if they put them in the bays or offshore, it will harm sea life. Uh, jackasses, can't you see that oil in the water is worse?
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Wind may be practical for Australia. All other issues aside, not enough wind power could be generated here to make a dent in US needs. We should still pursue it though.
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The issue is assuring a steady supply of power at all times, 24x365. Wind is notoriously unreliable and irregular in terms of the energy available. A combination of sources may meet that need, but then you need to add storage and a way to manage both inputs and outputs from the grid, including some very sophisticated switches and computer-driven management systems to balance the inputs and outputs. All this is new stuff, much of which is still in development. The thing about fossil fuel and nuke power is that it's steady and manageable at the head end.
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Yeah I hear ya Al, that part of the discusion has been had here. There is no doubt that a diversity of sources is a must. I guess my point is that we have such a wide selection of renewable energy sources available to us plus gas as a fossil based backup (which the current main power station in Adelaide has been running on for years) that I find it hard to see why whe should go down the Nuke path. Remembering of course that we would be starting from absolute scratch to develop a nuclear industry.
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The difficulty for everyone to accept is that in a (relatively speaking) short period of time there will come a point when fosil fuels will become scarce, Harry Harrison's "Make Room, Make Room" will be an awful premise for the masses, and then it will be too late...
There are still too many without the barest of essentials for life while the rest of us sit fat and happy...
The time for change is N... O... W...
In our lifetime...
We are burning up our kids future, for what...? Keeping fat-cats in a life they have got more than used too...
(not sorry, hadn't got the chance to shred the soap-box yet...)
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The difficulty for everyone to accept is that in a (relatively speaking) short period of time there will come a point when fosil fuels will become scarce, Harry Harrison's "Make Room, Make Room" will be an awful premise for the masses, and then it will be too late...
There are still too many without the barest of essentials for life while the rest of us sit fat and happy...
The time for change is N... O... W...
In our lifetime...
We are burning up our kids future, for what...? Keeping fat-cats in a life they have got more than used too...
(not sorry, hadn't got the chance to shred the soap-box yet...)
I remember many predictions in the early 70s that the world would run out of oil by 1980. When doomsday predictions turn out to be false, then many people no longer listen to them. It will happen eventually. In the meantime we drill deeper and more dangerously.
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I remember many predictions in the early 70s that the world would run out of oil by 1980. When doomsday predictions turn out to be false, then many people no longer listen to them. It will happen eventually. In the meantime we drill deeper and more dangerously.
That & we are going metric.
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John, cut it out!!!
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;D :popcorn:
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We're more likely to run out of oil before we go metric.
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We're more likely to run out of oil before we go metric.
Today's cars are completely metric and at least 90% of motorcyles and basses. What else is there that matters? Oh yeah...
Seriously almost no manufacturing is done using the English system.
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(Don't hog all the popcorn, Bret, this could take on a life of it's own... ;D)
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Today's cars are completely metric and at least 90% of motorcyles and basses. What else is there that matters? Oh yeah...
Seriously almost no manufacturing is done using the English system.
True, industry has been that way for years. And the federal government often requires it in contracts. But the man on the street won't use it unless he has to. I don't see that changing anytime soon, since two generations have grown up with it and it still hasn't made headway.
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True, industry has been that way for years. And the federal government often requires it in contracts. But the man on the street won't use it unless he has to. I don't see that changing anytime soon, since two generations have grown up with it and it still hasn't made headway.
It certainly has in engineering and design. Your local mechanic uses metric tools. He knows 15mm is bigger than 14. Is 5/8 larger than 13/32? Have to think about that one. Metric has taken over liquid measurement and some solids.
But in general I agree with you, the metric system will only be used by techies in the US.
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I work on my own cars...until recently, US cars were a weird mix of metric and
SAE fasteners. Never know which one is coming next.