Why America is NOT the greatest country in the world, anymore.

More Good News for Solar Power

Solar cell performance improves with ion-conducting polymer

Sep 04, 2013

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-09-solar-cell-ion-conducting-polymer.html#jCp

       

A dye-sensitized solar cell panel is tested in the laboratory at the School of Chemical Science and Engineering. Dye-sensitized solar photovoltaics can be greatly improved as a result of research done at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Credit: David Callahan

Researchers at Stockholm's KTH Royal Institute of Technology have found a way to make dye-sensitized solar cells more energy-efficient and longer-lasting.

Drawing their inspiration from photosynthesis, dye-sensitized solar cells offer the promise of low-cost solar photovoltaics and – when coupled with catalysts – even the possibility of generating hydrogen and oxygen, just like plants. A study published in August could lead to more efficient and longer-lasting dye-sensitized solar cells, says one of the researchers from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

A research team that included James Gardner, Assistant Professor of Photoelectrochemistry at KTH, reported the success of a new quasi-liquid, polymer-based electrolyte that increases a dye-sensitized solar cell's voltage and current, and lowers resistance between its electrodes.

The study highlights the advantages of speeding up the movement of oxidized electrolytes in a dye-sensitized solar cell, or DSSC. Also on the team from KTH were Lars Kloo, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry and researcher Muthuraaman Bhagavathi Achari.

Their research was published in the Royal Society of Chemistry's journal, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics on August 19.

"We now have clear evidence that by adding the ion-conducting polymer to the solar cell's cobalt redox electrolyte, the transport of oxidized electrolytes is greatly enhanced," Gardner says. "The fast transport increases solar cell efficiency by 20 percent."

A dye-sensitized solar cell absorbs photons and injects electrons into the conduction band of a transparent semiconductor. This anode is actually a plate with a highly porous, thin layer of titanium dioxide that is sensitized with dyes that absorb visible light. The electrons in the semiconductor diffuse through the anode, out into the external circuit.

In the electrolyte, a cobalt complex redox shuttle acts as a catalyst, providing the internal electrical continuity between the anode and cathode. When the dye releases electrons and becomes oxidized by the titanium dioxide, the electrolyte supplies electrons to replenish the deficiency. This "resets" the dye molecules, reducing them back to their original states. As a result, the electrolyte becomes oxidized and electron-deficient and migrates toward the cathode to recovers its missing electrons. Electrons migrating through the circuit recombine with the oxidized form of the cobalt complex when they reach the cathode.

In the most efficient solar cells this transport of ions relies on acetonitrile, a low viscosity, volatile organic solvent. But in order to build a stable, commercially-viable solar cell, a low volatility solvent is used instead, usually methoxypropionitrile. The problem is that while methoxypropionitrile is more stable, it is also more viscous than acetonitrile, and it impedes the flow of ions.

But with the introduction of a new quasi-liquid, polymer-based electrolyte (containing the Co3+/Co2+ redox mediator in 3-methoxy propionitrile solvent), the research team has overcome the viscosity problem, Gardner says. At the same time, adding the ion-conducting polymer to the electrolyte maintains its low volatility. This makes it possible for the oxidized form of the cobalt complex to reach the cathode, and get reduced, faster.

Speeding up this transport is important because when slowed down, more of the cobalt complexes react with electrons in the semiconductor anode instead of with the electrons at the cathode, resulting in rapid recombination losses. Speeding up the cobalt lowers resistance and increases voltage and current in the solar cell, Gardner says.

Explore further: Cobalt replacements make solar cells more sustainable

Journal reference: Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics
Provided by KTH Royal Institute of Technology
 

Prebiotic Molecules May Form in Exoplanet Atmospheres

on 2013/12/25 in Articles, Astronomy, Biology & Chemistry

                        

 

New research suggests that the building blocks of life — prebiotic molecules — may form in the atmospheres of planets, where the dust provides a safe platform to form on and various reactions with the surrounding plasma provide enough energy necessary to create life.

It's time to approve the full Keystone XL pipeline project.





Mark Green, Posted Dec 27, 2013 by Energy Tomorrow

http://energytomorrow.org/blog/2013/december/out-with-bad-arguments-in-with-energy-security#sthash.2u4Tw9oS.xwBwE5V5.dpuf

 

The long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline and whether President Obama will agree with a strong majority of Americans who believe that the full project is in the U.S. national interest landed on a couple of year-ending lists of top energy issues, here and here, no doubt reflecting the politics surrounding the pipeline’s five-year federal review.

Much of politicizing has been fueled by opponents who say stopping Keystone XL will stop oil sands development. The U.S. State Department disagreed in its most recent review, citing key economic factors that argue oil sands will get to market with or without the Keystone XL. The dynamic already is at work.

Last week, Canada’s National Energy Board recommended approval of the Northern Gateway pipeline to bring as much as 525,000 barrels a day of oil sands from Alberta to British Columbia. At the same time others are making plans to build loading terminals to service oil sands-bearing railroad cars. Demand for supply is driving the infrastructure needed to deliver that supply.
The question for the U.S. concerns the impact of Washington’s never-ending deliberation over the Keystone XL, even as other infrastructure for delivering oil sands moves toward reality.

First, remember that the U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that oil and natural gas will supply 62 percent of our energy in 2040, reflecting their desirability as fuels based on availability, reliability and superior energy content. Second, Canada is our largest source of imported oil. Put those two together, and there’s a compelling argument that the U.S. should do everything it can to strengthen its energy partnership with our neighbor and ally.

Canada wants that partnership to grow, but it’s also looking at other options while Washington dithers over the Keystone XL. Platts reports:

The “landlocked” Canadian heavy sour crude, when the Northern Gateway pipeline comes online, will allow greater shipment of Canadian heavy sour crudes to Asia, the region in the world with the highest demand growth. China and Asia in total are expected to add slightly more than 3-million b/d of refining capacity between now and 2016, according to OPEC. Enbridge is expecting the Northern Gateway project to be in operation by 2018. … The Northern Gateway pipeline will reduce Canadian heavy sour crudes’ dependence on the US Midwest and Gulf Coast … “The need to reduce dependence on the US market is the key to ensuring Canadian heavy sour crudes obtain market value and not fall into a boom bust

cycle,” said a Canadian producer.

 

Oil sands development is an important part of strengthening U.S. energy security. We could see 100 percent of our country’s liquid fuel needs met domestically and from Canada by 2024 with pro-energy development policies – including full development of Canadian oil sands. That development is going to occur. The question is whether that oil will come to the U.S. or go to other markets.

The Keystone XL always has been a no-brainer in terms of jobs, economic growth and increased U.S. energy security. A recent editorial in the Las Vegas Review-Journal connected proposals to extend federal unemployment benefits with the benefits of pro-energy development policies, including approval of the Keystone XL:

The country needs jobs, not more jobless benefits. Congress and the White House have completely lost sight of this. Washington could take many steps to put Americans back to work almost immediately. President Barack Obama finally could authorize the $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline, a private-sector project that would employ thousands directly and thousands more through multipliers. Congress could open vast amounts of federal land to oil and gas exploration and allow states besides North Dakota to share in the country’s energy boom.

 

The Keystone XL has been studied – multiple times – and its economic and energy benefits are undeniable. It wouldn’t significantly impact the environment, the State Department has found – multiple times. Oil sands development is ongoing and will continue. All that’s left is seeing whether the U.S. be the beneficiary in jobs and energy.

About The Author

Mark Green joins API after spending 16 years as national editorial writer in the Washington Bureau of The Oklahoman newspaper. In all, he has been a reporter and editor for more than 30 years, including six years as sports editor at The Washington Times. He lives in Occoquan, Virginia, with his wife Pamela. Mark graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in journalism and earned a masters in journalism and public affairs at American University. He's currently working on a masters in history at George Mason University, where he also teaches as an adjunct professor in the Communication Department.



Brainlike Computers, Learning From Experience

By JOHN MARKOFF, full article at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/29/science/brainlike-computers-learning-from-experience.html?_r=1&hp&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1388325631-0aOonXEwhcwXpU33VkB0kQ&

Erin Lubin/The New York Times

 

Kwabena Boahen holding a biologically inspired processor attached to a robotic arm in a laboratory at Stanford University.

 

PALO ALTO, Calif. — Computers have entered the age when they are able to learn from their own mistakes, a development that is about to turn the digital world on its head.       

 

The first commercial version of the new kind of computer chip is scheduled to be released in 2014.

Not only can it automate tasks that now require painstaking programming — for example, moving a robot’s arm smoothly and efficiently — but it can also sidestep and even tolerate errors, potentially making the term “computer crash” obsolete.       

 

The new computing approach, already in use by some large technology companies, is based on the biological nervous system, specifically on how neurons react to stimuli and connect with other neurons to interpret information. It allows computers to absorb new information while carrying out a task, and adjust what they do based on the changing signals.

 

In coming years, the approach will make possible a new generation of artificial intelligence systems that will perform some functions that humans do with ease: see, speak, listen, navigate, manipulate and control. That can hold enormous consequences for tasks like facial and speech recognition, navigation and planning, which are still in elementary stages and rely heavily on human programming.

 

Designers say the computing style can clear the way for robots that can safely walk and drive in the physical world, though a thinking or conscious computer, a staple of science fiction, is still far off on the digital horizon.

 

“We’re moving from engineering computing systems to something that has many of the characteristics of biological computing,” said Larry Smarr, an astrophysicist who directs the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, one of many research centers devoted to developing these new kinds of computer circuits.

 

Conventional computers are limited by what they have been programmed to do. Computer vision systems, for example, only “recognize” objects that can be identified by the statistics-oriented algorithms programmed into them. An algorithm is like a recipe, a set of step-by-step instructions to perform a calculation.

 

But last year, Google researchers were able to get a machine-learning algorithm, known as a neural network, to perform an identification task without supervision. The network scanned a database of 10 million images, and in doing so trained itself to recognize cats.

 

In June, the company said it had used those neural network techniques to develop a new search service to help customers find specific photos more accurately.

 

The new approach, used in both hardware and software, is being driven by the explosion of scientific knowledge about the brain. Kwabena Boahen, a computer scientist who leads Stanford’s Brains in Silicon research program, said that is also its limitation, as scientists are far from fully understanding how brains function.

 

“We have no clue,” he said. “I’m an engineer, and I build things. There are these highfalutin theories, but give me one that will let me build something.”

 

Until now, the design of computers was dictated by ideas originated by the mathematician John von Neumann about 65 years ago. Microprocessors perform operations at lightning speed, following instructions programmed using long strings of 1s and 0s. They generally store that information separately in what is known, colloquially, as memory, either in the processor itself, in adjacent storage chips or in higher capacity magnetic disk drives.

 

The data — for instance, temperatures for a climate model or letters for word processing — are shuttled in and out of the processor’s short-term memory while the computer carries out the programmed action. The result is then moved to its main memory.

 

The new processors consist of electronic components that can be connected by wires that mimic biological synapses. Because they are based on large groups of neuron-like elements, they are known as neuromorphic processors, a term credited to the California Institute of Technology physicist Carver Mead, who pioneered the concept in the late 1980s.

 

They are not “programmed.” Rather the connections between the circuits are “weighted” according to correlations in data that the processor has already “learned.” Those weights are then altered as data flows in to the chip, causing them to change their values and to “spike.” That generates a signal that travels to other components and, in reaction, changes the neural network, in essence programming the next actions much the same way that information alters human thoughts and actions.

 

“Instead of bringing data to computation as we do today, we can now bring computation to data,” said Dharmendra Modha, an I.B.M. computer scientist who leads the company’s cognitive computing research effort. “Sensors become the computer, and it opens up a new way to use computer chips that can be everywhere.”

 

The new computers, which are still based on silicon chips, will not replace today’s computers, but will augment them, at least for now. Many computer designers see them as coprocessors, meaning they can work in tandem with other circuits that can be embedded in smartphones and in the giant centralized computers that make up the cloud. Modern computers already consist of a variety of coprocessors that perform specialized tasks, like producing graphics on your cellphone and converting visual, audio and other data for your laptop.

 

One great advantage of the new approach is its ability to tolerate glitches. Traditional computers are precise, but they cannot work around the failure of even a single transistor. With the biological designs, the algorithms are ever changing, allowing the system to continuously adapt and work around failures to complete tasks.

 

Traditional computers are also remarkably energy inefficient, especially when compared to actual brains, which the new neurons are built to mimic.

 

I.B.M. announced last year that it had built a supercomputer simulation of the brain that encompassed roughly 10 billion neurons — more than 10 percent of a human brain. It ran about 1,500 times more slowly than an actual brain. Further, it required several megawatts of power, compared with just 20 watts of power used by the biological brain.

 

Running the program, known as Compass, which attempts to simulate a brain, at the speed of a human brain would require a flow of electricity in a conventional computer that is equivalent to what is needed to power both San Francisco and New York, Dr. Modha said.

 

I.B.M. and Qualcomm, as well as the Stanford research team, have already designed neuromorphic processors, and Qualcomm has said that it is coming out in 2014 with a commercial version, which is expected to be used largely for further development. Moreover, many universities are now focused on this new style of computing. This fall the National Science Foundation financed the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines, a new research center based at the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology, with Harvard and Cornell.

 

The largest class on campus this fall at Stanford was a graduate level machine-learning course covering both statistical and biological approaches, taught by the computer scientist Andrew Ng. More than 760 students enrolled. “That reflects the zeitgeist,” said Terry Sejnowski, a computational neuroscientist at the Salk Institute, who pioneered early biologically inspired algorithms. “Everyone knows there is something big happening, and they’re trying find out what it is.”

The Act 13 decision unravels protections

December 29, 2013 12:00 AM   

The Dec. 22 editorial “Local Control: Pa. Justices Resurrect a Lost Principle on Drilling” suggests that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s recent decision to remove portions of Act 13 from the law is a victory for our environment. In fact, it unravels some of the environmental protections created by the bipartisan regulatory modernization law and misses an opportunity to establish a standard set of rules that govern responsible shale development — resulting in weaker environmental regulations and a less competitive business climate.

Our industry has worked, and continues to work, closely toward shared goals with the communities in which we operate to be good neighbors and stewards of our environment. And the outcomes are clear. The federal Environmental Protection Agency confirmed in October that U.S. carbon emissions are at their lowest since 1994, thanks to expanded natural gas use. The independent State Review of Oil & Natural Gas Environmental Regulations again gave Pennsylvania’s oil and gas regulatory framework high marks — noting that regulations were strengthened significantly through Act 13’s enhancements.

Consumers are winning, too. A recent Boston Consulting Group analysis projects average U.S. household savings tied to shale development to reach $1,200. And in addition to more than $1.8 billion in state taxes since 2008, our industry has paid $406 million in impact fees over the last two years to communities across the commonwealth. Unfortunately, with this ruling, these shared benefits may unnecessarily be limited rather than maximized.

If we are to remain competitive and if our focus is truly an improved environment, more job creation and economic prosperity, we must continue to work together toward common-sense proposals that encourage investment in the commonwealth.

DAVE SPIGELMYER
President
Marcellus Shale Coalition
North Fayette

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/letters/2013/12/29/The-Act-13-decision-unravels-protections/stories/201312290024#ixzz2osdnciFd

GMOs May Feed the World Using Fewer Pesticides (and Bring Back the Bees)

By Amy Maxmen on Wed, 24 Jul 2013

Read more at:  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/nature/fewer-pesticides-farming-with-gmos/

 

Walter De Jong shouts over the roar of fans in the greenhouse. He’s telling me about the seedlings beside him, which pepper the dark soil in a grid of small planting pots. De Jong, a potato breeder and geneticist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, hopes that at least one of the plants will yield a best seller, but it’s far more likely that they’ll amount to compost.

 

De Jong produced the plants in the same old, laborious way that his father did before him. He collected pollen from a plant that produces potatoes that fry as potato chips should and then sprinkled the pollen on the flower of a potato plant that resists viruses. If the resulting potatoes bear their parents’ finest features—and none of the bad ones—De Jong will bury them in the ground next year and test their mettle against a common potato virus. If they survive—and are good for frying and eating—he and his team will repeat this for 13 years to ensure that problematic genes did not creep in during the initial cross.

Walter De Jong, a second-generation potato breeder, walks the fields in upstate New York.

Each year, the chance of failure is high. Potatoes that resist viruses, for example, often have genes that make them taste bitter. Others turn an unappetizing shade of brown when fried. If anything like that happens, De Jong will have to start from scratch. Tedious as it is, he loves the work. Kicking up dirt in the furrows that cascade along the hillsides of upstate New York, he says, “I’m never stressed in the potato fields.”

De Jong has some serious cred in the agriculture world. Not only was his father a potato breeder, he’s also descended from a long line of farmers. The potato farmers he works with appreciate this deeply, along with his commitment to the age-old craft of producing new potato varieties through selective breeding. They even advocated on his behalf during his hiring and when he was up for tenure at Cornell, a school with a long history of agriculture research. “All of our farmers like Walter,” says Melanie Wickham, the executive secretary of the Empire State Growers organization in Stanley, New York. Often, he’s in the fields in a big hat, she says. Other times “you’ll see him in the grocery store, looking over the potatoes.”

De Jong has been working with farmers long enough to know that our food supply is never more than a step ahead of devastating insect infestations and disease. Selective breeders like De Jong work hard to develop resistant crops, but farmers still have to turn to chemical pesticides, some of which are toxic to human health and the environment. De Jong enjoys dabbing pollen from plant-to-plant the old-fashioned way, but he knows that selective breeding can only do so much.

Seedlings from De Jong's selective breeding experiments poke their shoots above the soil in a greenhouse.

 

So while De Jong still devotes most of his time to honing his craft, he has recently begun to experiment in an entirely different way, with genetic engineering. To him, genetic engineering represents a far more exact way to produce new varieties, rather than simply scrambling the potato genome’s 39,000 genes the way traditional breeding does. By inserting a specific fungus-defeating gene into a tasty potato, for example, De Jong knows he could offer farmers a product that requires fewer pesticides.

“We want to make food production truly sustainable,” De Jong says, “and right now I cannot pretend that it is.”

The need to protect crops from ruin grows more vital every day. By 2050, farmers must produce 40% more food to feed an estimated 9 billion people on the planet. Either current yields will have to increase or farmland will expand farther into forests and jungles. In some cases, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) would offer an alternative way to boost yields without sacrificing more land or using more pesticides, De Jong says. But he fears this approach won’t blossom if the public rejects GMOs out of hand.

When It All Began

In the late 1990s, the agriculture corporation Monsanto began to sell corn engineered to include a protein from the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis, better known as Bt. The bacteria wasn’t new to agriculture—organic farmers spray it on their crops to kill certain insects. Today more than 60% of the corn grown within the United States is Bt corn. Farmers have adopted it in droves because it saves them money that they would otherwise spend on insecticide and the fuel and labor needed to apply it.
They also earn more money for an acre of Bt corn compared with a conventional variety because fewer kernels are damaged. Between 1996 and 2011, Bt corn reduced insecticide use in corn production by 45% worldwide (110 million pounds, or roughly the equivalent of 20,000 Olympic swimming pools).

Between 1996 and 2001, Monsanto also produced Bt potato plants. Farmers like Duane Grant of Grant 4D Farms in Rupert, Idaho, welcomed the new variety. Grant grew up on his family’s farm, and his distaste for insecticides started at a young age. As a teenager, he recalls feeling so nauseous and fatigued after spraying the fields that he could hardly move until the next day. Today, pesticides are safer than those used 40 years ago, and stiffer U.S. federal regulations require that employees take more precautionary measures when applying them, but Grant occasionally tells his workers to head home early when they feel dizzy after spraying the fields. He was relieved when GM potatoes were introduced because he didn’t have to spray them with insecticide. He was warned that pests might overcome the modification in 15 to 20 years, but that didn’t deter him—he says the same thing happens with chemicals, too.

Unlike Bt corn, you can’t find any fields planted today with Bt potatoes. Soon after the breed hit the market, protestors began to single out McDonald’s restaurants, which collectively are the biggest buyer of potatoes worldwide. In response, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Frito-Lay stopped purchasing GM potatoes. In 2001, Monsanto dropped the product and Grant returned to conventional potatoes and the handful of insecticides he sprays on them throughout the summer.

“There is not a single documented case of anyone being hurt by genetically modified food, and yet this is a bigger problem for people than pesticides, which we know have caused harm,” he says. “I just shake my head in bewilderment at the folks who take these stringent positions that biotech should be banned.”

Even some organic farmers bristle when asked about the anti-GMO movement.

In the decade after Monsanto pulled their GM potatoes from the market, dozens of long-term animal feeding studies concluded that various GM crops were as safe as traditional varieties. And statements from science policy bodies, such as those issued by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the World Health Organization, and the European Commission, uphold that conclusion. Secondly, techniques to tweak genomes have become remarkably precise. Specific genes can be switched off without lodging foreign material into a plant’s genome. Scientists don’t necessarily have to mix disparate organisms with one another, either. In cisgenic engineering, organisms are engineered by transferring genes between individuals that could breed naturally.

Even some organic farmers bristle when asked about the anti-GMO movement. Under the U.S. Organic Foods Production Act, they are not allowed to grow GMOs, despite their ability to reduce pesticide applications. Organic farmers still spray their crops, just with different chemicals, such as sulfur and copper. Amy Hepworth, an organic farmer at Hepworth Farms in Milton, New York, says that they, too, can take a toll on the environment.

Hepworth would like to continuously evaluate new avenues towards sustainable agriculture as technology advances. However, her views often clash with her customers’ in the affluent Brooklyn, New York, neighborhood of Park Slope. Many of them see no benefit in GMOs’ ability to reduce pesticides because they say farmers should rely strictly on traditional farming methods.

“What people don’t understand is that without pesticides there is not enough food for the masses,” Hepworth says. “The fact is that GM is a tool that can help us use less pesticide.”