Futurismic

A team of researchers has engineered a live form of salmonella that can deliver a vaccine. The modified bacterium eliminates all the things you don’t want in salmonella, the leading cause of food-borne illness. It’s also designed to destroy itself so that it’s not released into the environment. In the petri-dish experiment,  tame salmonella delivered a portion of S. pneumoniae bacterium to cells and stimulated an immune response.  Another possible benefit, if the technique works in animals and humans:

Unlike most vaccines that are entirely manufactured by a vaccine company, the attenuated recombinant salmonella vaccine after entry into the immunized individual serves as its own factory to produce (manufacture) the protective antigens (proteins) from the S. pneumoniae pathogen. This ability to cause manufacture in the immunized individual dramatically decreases the cost of such vaccines to make them affordable for use in the developing world, [Arizona State professor Roy] Curtiss said.

[Image: Salmonella invades human cells by Nutloaf]

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For this edition of Future Imperfect, Sven Johnson has been grasping towards something which may or may not be there to grasp.

If you spend any amount of time straining through global news and pop culture, you’ll probably have had a similar sense of unseen patterns waiting to be discovered. But, Sven asks, what exactly occurs the moment before trend recognition? Continue reading “An Exercise in Trend Recognition”

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Horror writers in search of a plot need look no further: a weasel-like predator known as the fisher is making itself right at home in your Northeast or Midwest suburbs! The mixture of eco- and morality tale make it the perfect story device, given that they were almost wiped out by trappers and foresters in the last century, but reintroduced to prey on porcupines. The New York Times describes a householder’s encounter with a fisher that tried to eat her German shepherd’s face:

“I had never seen anything like it,” Ms. Beaudry recalled. “I didn’t know what it was. It kind of looked like a fox. But it was very, very ratty looking and had fangs and claws. It was creepy looking, but not that big.”

More animals-out-of-place news: The Caribbean monk seal, extinct. The Chinook salmon, endangered in the U.S., is thriving so well in Chile and Argentina that it could disrupt freshwater and marine ecosystems. And there’s thumbnail-sized quagga mussels clogging up the Colorado River. What other displaced creatures might be cast in near-future fiction?

[Image: Wikimedia Commons]

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Personally, I won’t believe it till I hear some guy on cable screaming about it at the top of his lungs. But how about a nanowire-mesh “paper towel” that can clean up 20 times its weight in oil, and recycle the gunk for future use? It might filter and purify water, too.

The new material appears to be completely impervious to water. “Our material can be left in water a month or two, and when you take it out it’s still dry,” [MIT materials scientist Francesco] Stellacci said. “But at the same time, if that water contains some hydrophobic contaminants, they will get absorbed.”

[Photos: Francesco Stellacci, MIT, and Nature Nanotechnology] [story via Gregory Frost]

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It seems to be the custom for new Futurismic posters to introduce themselves. I don’t see race, sex, age, residence, politics, or preferences. But people tell me I’m a 53-year-old white guy who lives in Arizona, leans to the left, and likes fiction, history, journalism, science, The Loud Family and The New Pornographers, and I believe them.

The birth of yet another niece puts me in mind of Samantha Powers’ recent commencement advice: “Be a good ancestor.” One way to do that might be to start treating the environment as part of the economy, by putting a dollar value on it. A report to the U.N. Commission on Biodiversity estimates that humans do at least $78 billion worth of damage each year, “eating away at our nature capital” through deforestation and pollution. Sobering to consider that about 40% of the world economy is still based on biological products and processes.

In light of the likely first contact with an uncontacted seminomadic Amazon tribe on the borderlands of Brazil and Peru, we probably need to factor cultural diversity into the equation, too. There’s something poignant and human about that AP photo of tribespeople firing arrows at an aircraft.

Think about all our ancestors have done for us. The origin and purpose of Stonehenge is no longer a total mystery, according to recent investigations: it served as a cemetary for at least 500 years beginning 5,000 years ago. It may have functioned for 20 or 30 generations as the resting place of a ruling dynasty. At least 300 surrounding homes made it one of the largest villages in northwestern Europe.

Ancestor-worship as big business? If that’s not old enough for you, consider a 375-million-year-old ancestor called the placoderm fish, with a fossil embryo attached with an umbilical cord. It’s the oldest known instance of live birth. Now think what our moms put up with, bringing us into the world. [Image by Danny Sullivan]

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Plastic, and in particular plastic grocery bags, are a big environmental problem because of the huge time taken to degrade in the environment. A collection of plastic the size of a large country is currently floating in the gyres of the Pacific Ocean. Some plastic waste takes 1000 years to be broken down by nature.

Daniel Hurd, a 16 year old high school student from Canada, did a science project on microbes and isolated the bacteria that digests the plastic found in grocery bags and other packaging. By concentrating the solution, he found he was able to break down the plastic by up to 40% in just a week. In addition to winning plenty of local and national prizes, Daniel plans to develop his discovery to help get rid of the nasty disposable plastics problem… and ferment some freaky plastic beer in the process!

[via Daily Kos, picture by Phil Dowsing]

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We’ve all heard about Peak Oil, but mineral hydrocarbons aren’t the only thing that could run out on us sooner than we think. The world is a complex place full of interrelated dependencies (a bit like a Linux install, come to think of it), and there are lots of other essential resources that, with a bit of bad luck, could dwindle or vanish very quickly. [image by The Tardigrade]

Jamais Cascio points out that resource collapse will be one of the most important driving forces of the near future - not just technologically but geopolitically, too:

“Resource collapse isn’t the cause of the rise of the post-hegemonic world, but it’s an important driver. It weakens the powerful, and opens up new niches of influence. It triggers conflict, setting the mighty against the mighty. It reveals vulnerabilities.

Most importantly, it sets up the conditions for the emergence of new models of power, as ultimately the most effective responses to resource collapse will come from revolutions in technology and socio-economic behavior. Those actors adopting the new successful models will find themselves disproportionately powerful.”

Adapt or die, basically. But what will Nation-States2.0 look like?

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Everyone knows the KISS principle, but too often it’s forgotten in an effort to build new gadgets. Typically, desalination requires large amounts of electricity, and operates at a low efficiency. Now, researchers from (where else) the Netherlands have skipped the electrical middleman and are using the mechanical energy created by a standard irrigation windmill to force water through a special reverse osmosis filter.

This will produce around 5-10 cubic meters of water, or roughly enough to satisfy 500 people, with a storage reservoir to save up for windless days. The prototype should be up and running soon on the Caribbean island of Curaçao. No word yet on when Los Angeles will get the 26,000 it needs to avert a crisis soon.

(via DailyTech) (image from press release)

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There’s nothing quite like a good daily mixture of RSS feeds for generating some great serendipitous synchronicity. Today’s topic-from-the-blue - unique hotels!

When Geoff Manaugh isn’t cranking out what are arguably the posts most worth reading at io9, he’s churning out great posts about mad architecture-related stuff at his own BLDGBLOG … like this one about a hotel in Sweden made entirely from ice, or this other Swedish “hotel” - which is in fact just a bunch of fishing shacks on a frozen lake where you can stay to watch the Northern Lights. [Image: Photo by Ben Nilsson of Big Ben Productions, lifted from BLDGBLOG]

Aiming for slightly warmer climates, Warren Ellis’ grinders point us toward some impressive treehouse designs from around the world, delivered in the web-ubiquitous top-ten list format. The ice palace is pretty, but I think I’d rather be sleeping in one of these if I was to be resident for more than one night. [Image lifted from WebUrbanist]

The ice hotel reminds me of a scene from Julian May’s Galactic Milieu series, and I’m pretty sure there have been tree-cities in a number of books - Dan Simmons’ Hyperion Cantos, for a start, and a Brian Aldiss novel whose title eludes me for now.

What’s your favourite environmentally-tailored residence - fictional or otherwise?

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So listening to Science Friday’s podcast today, one of the topics was Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute, an organization dedicated to preventing us from screwing up our planet any more than it already is. He’s come out with the latest version of his book, the 3rd edition of his book called, appropriately, “Plan B 3.0″. In it, he discusses the usual energy crisis, but he also carries it further, describing water wars, the effects of biofuels on food prices, etc. Brown also discusses some things that can be done to rectify these problems. It’s not terribly upbeat, however, as the fixes are rather more politically radical than anything we Americans have heard.

Ok, so it’s not SF, but the speculation is pretty good, and if it doesn’t motivate you to do something, it might just plant the seed for an entertaining story. Check out the book here, the first chapter or so is available free now, and the whole book will be released free later this week. Now that’s a promotional offer!

(image via EPI’s website)

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While we’re definitely big optimists here at Futurismic on alternative energies, there are downsides to most of what we consider clean energy.  Biofuels in their current incarnation pits the hunger of the poor against the hunger of our poor.  Solar is at the mercy of cloudy weather and efficiency concerns, while similar problems face wind power.  And coming from the Midwest United States, tidal power generators aren’t going to do me a lick of good.

The far-thinking people at the Long-Now Foundation had two very fascinating speakers back in September whose theory is that nuclear is the way to go.  They’re not your usual nuclear shills, either.  Gwyneth Cravens wan an anti-nuclear activist who marched against the bomb and against the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant on Long Island.  The other is an sustainable organic-farming, bee-keeping, nuclear expert at Sandia Labs called Dr. Richard Anderson.

Their point is that alternative energies are largely tied to the whims of nature, something not good enough to supply the baseload power for our energy needs.  They do bring up some scary thoughts on our current use of fossil fuels, and make comparisons to what we would consume using nuclear.  One fun tidbit is that all the nuclear waste that would be generated to provide power for the average American over the course of their life would fit inside a Coke can.  Give it a listen if you can, but at least read the blog summary.

Personally, I think nuclear’s the way to go, at least for the moment, although I definitely think wind and solar can and should be used to provide supplemental power.  Maybe someday we can move to completely clean energy, but that day hasn’t come yet.

(image via Operators Are Standing By)

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It’s that classic pub quiz question that fools everyone: what is the biggest man made thing on the planet? Of course, nine times out of ten we’ll say with great confidence “The Great Wall Of China”. After all, it can be seen from space, right? However the smug quizmaster (or a contestant that had this question in trivial pursuit years ago) will inform you that the real answer is rubbish: the giant landfill of rubbish on Staten Island, Fresh Kills. The remains of the World Trade Centre is there.

However, if you get this question in a quiz, you can now happily outsmug the quizmaster, albeit tinged with a bit of self-loathing for the impact of your species. The largest man-made object is now an even bigger collection of human waste. It’s not a landfill, at least not intentially. It’s the size of Africa, some ten million square miles. It’s at the centre of the Pacific ocean and it’s full of plastic refuse. The circular atmospheric currents form a ring of current, inside which there is a still region of ocean where anything drifting into the Pacific accumulates. Non-biodegradable plastics that reach this point will never leave, being broken down by the sun into ever smaller pieces to make their way into the entire marine food chain.

[via Daily Kos, image by countrygirlathome]

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From FuturePundit, we get a rough outline of the solar situation in the US.  Basically, solar power is growing more popular, but the percentage of homes using solar power is still tiny.  According to this article at the Wall Street Journal, various problems await homeowners looking to install solar panels.  In addition to months-long waits, one of the biggest problems is that the panels are installed incorrectly, making them very inefficient.

Overall, though, solar usage is growing and expanding into markets beyond conventional home power.  Golf carts, pool heaters, and solar water heaters are all becoming more popular.  Other good news includes a move from solar thermal cells, where the sun heats up liquid that is used to make electricity, to photovoltaic cells which convert sunlight directly into electricity.

As a young, single guy who hasn’t lived in a place more than three years since high school, buying a house and making it energy efficient won’t happen anytime soon.  I plan on keeping a close eye on developments, however.

(image via Beige Alert)

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In addition to worries about driving up food prices around the world, especially in developing nations, there comes a study from Nobel Prize-winning scientist Paul Crutzen that biofuel may be even worse for us than fossil fuels.  The team calculates that biofuels can release 50-70% more carbon dioxide than fossil fuels, as well as release roughly twice as much nitrous oxide (N2O) as previously thought.

I think the problem here is that everyone is looking for a way to maintain their current standard of living and not admit that this level of energy usage will have to decrease.  The funny thing is, it’s not all that difficult to reduce the usage, if only just a little.  I think it’s actually more difficult to get your car converted to biodiesel than biking/walking to nearby places and not leaving lights on.  But that’s just me.

(via SciTechDaily) (image from neilsphotoalbum)

Update: Apologies, I misread the news report. I should’ve found the original paper first. It turns out that Dr. Crutzen found that N2O was marketdly increased, and if the environmental effects of N2O were converted into how much cooling CO2 would do, it comes out to be the afore-stated 50-70% increase. Which is a lot. Dr. Crutzen also stated he did not take into account the fossil fuel required to power the agricultural process (plowing, harvesting, etc), not did it take into account any beneficial co-products. He only focused on N2O production. It seems there is also some controversy about the efficacy of the calculations used. Please see the paper here(pdf).

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In a move that will excite many science fiction fans, a political scientist from Norway has suggested there may be a third way to solve the coming environmental problems of the21st century: Space. He posits that there are two theories for sustainable development. One, Ecologism, aims for a post industrial era of lessened use of carbon and requires a change in the way our current political and social climate works. The other is Environmentalism which aims to keep life much as it is, only using funds to develop, repair and nurture the environment. However, he thinks that by tapping into the resources offplanet, it may be able to solve the Earth’s issues. Reading the brief it seems like very much a political rather than scientific hypothesis but there’s definitely a place for space in the coming time when resources become scarce - we just have to know where to look.

[from science daily, photo by Hubble Creative Commons]

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Two chaps from Columbia University have published a scheme for chemically extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by passing it through a "chemical sponge". Critics of the scheme point out that the extraction process would be powered by electricity, and that we’d be better off cutting down the amount of greenhouse gas emissions we produce rather than looking for ways to recapture them. I’m no climate scientist, so I can’t pass judgement on which is the better plan … but at least there’s evidence that the prizes like Richard Branson’s Earth Challenge get people thinking about solutions to the big problems. [FuturePundit] [Image by Ju-X]

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There are enough bad peat puns in the article, so I’ll spare you any in the headline here.  Conventional wisdom regarding climate change dictates that as temperatures rise, the frozen lands in the north will release methane that has been locked in the ground.  Methane is regarded as being 23 times stronger than carbon dioxide when it comes to trapping heat, so this phenomenon would likely accelerate global warming.

As bad as it may seem, it may not be quite so.  A five year study done by ecologists at Michigan State University in East Lansing has found that as the frozen peatlands thaw out, they become wetter and provide fertile ground for fast-growing water plants which will suck up carbon dioxide, thus offsetting some of the methane release.

Of course, it won’t be a one-for-one tradeoff.  And as the wetlands fill in, the water plants will be replaced by slower-growing dryland plants and trees.  These new northern forests aren’t nearly as good at reducing global warming as the tropical ones.

So there you go.  We’re still going down the tubes, just not quite as quickly as people thought before.  Well, I’m off for a drink.

(via SciTech Daily Review) (image via brewbooks)

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As Jamais Cascio and others have pointed out, geoengineering - large-scale technological projects aimed at averting the climate change crisis - should only be considered as last-ditch options, because they come with the risk of actually making things worse.

Take for example James "Gaia" Lovelock’s suggestion that we install hundreds of huge pipes in the ocean, with the aim of channeling nutrient-rich deep water to the surface to promote the growth of algae and (hopefully) absorb more atmospheric carbon dioxide. Lovelock himself admits that there’s a risk of the plan backfiring, but he says he’s worried enough that he thinks traditional scientific caution should be left behind. I hope he’s wrong - but even if he is, we could be doing a lot more to solve the problem than we already are. [Via BLDGBLOG] [Image by Jurvetson]

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We’ve been hearing a lot about the potential of biofuels, particularly ethanol, as being a great (and green) answer to our global dependence of petrochemicals. Which is true, to a certain extent.

The problem being that corn ethanol, while itself a cleaner fuel, is a horrendously climate-intensive crop, the cultivation of which may cause as many (if not more) problems than it solves … which is why we’d be wise to look at the numerous other sources for the same chemical (like algae, prairie grass and fast-growing trees) which won’t cause an environmental and economic trainwreck further down the line. [Via Worldchanging]

Of course, we’ll need to do something about the enticing boondoggle subsidies that are making corn ethanol such an enticing political playing piece first. [Image by Jpeg Jedi]

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One of my favorite settings for science fiction is after the fall of Man. You know the one, where cities are deserted, weeds growing up through the streets, etc. Occasionally there are humans eking out a living, but they are no longer dominant. Yeah, that kind. Well, a book that came out recently, The World Without Us, imagines what would happen environmentally if humans just vanished from the face