Good news: hydrogen powered cars as well

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The Rasa is a prototype hydrogen car that, like the drone mentioned yesterday, emits only water vapour. It is produced  by start-up Riversimple in Llandrindod Wells, UK, and instead of using pellets like the drone, it is designed around a fuel cell requiring 10 times less power than an ordinary car. This keeps the vehicle cruising, but to generate the bursts of energy needed for acceleration, the Rasa uses a sort of high-tech electricity trap called a supercapacitor. Because they store energy as electricity, rather than in chemical form, supercapacitors can release large amounts of energy faster than anything else – perfect for giving a car some oomph. The hydrogen fuel cell sends a constant trickle of energy into a supercapicitor, then the whole lot is released when the car needs it.

The Rasa slows down by reversing the motor in each wheel. This turns the motors into generators, recapturing the car’s kinetic energy and pushing it into the supercapacitor. Friction-based brakes only come into play for emergency stops. In a normal braking event about 50 per cent of the kinetic energy of the car is recovered.  For comparison, a similar system in the Toyota Prius only recovers 10 per cent of this energy.  Hydrogen offers an alternative to electric cars that is likely to have a place alongside battery power.

The Rasa has a long way to go, literally.  The infrastructure for it has to be developred and that will be expensive.  But the good news is that non-fossil-fueled locomotion should be with us in the foreseeable future.  (based on an article by Hal Hodson in New Scientist)

For hope for the future we seem repeatedly to turn to clever scientists. And whether it is about health or engineering these people are making truly wonderful breakthroughs.

A hydrogen-powered flight

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For 10 minutes the first flight by an aircraft, powered fully by solid hydrogen, has stayed in the air. It is an experimental drone and runs on pellets that emit only water vapour when they burn. The fuel cell is also three times as light as a comparable lithium battery. 

Previously, large tanks of liquid hydrogen kept at super-low temperatures were needed to power hydrogen flight.  But the tanks were too big to be practical. Storing hydrogen as a pressurised gas is also inefficient. The new system uses 100 solid pellets packed into a cartridge. The 1-centimetre-long pellets are made from a chemical compound that produces a steady stream of hydrogen as it is gently heated. This gas is converted into electricity in a fuel cell that runs the drone’s rotor. The inclusion of a polymer stops the compound melting and helps it release hydrogen at a lower temperature. Unlike with a battery, if you put in twice as much fuel you can go twice as far. It is cleaner and because the drone’s propeller is its only moving part, it is also not susceptible to carburettor icing that can prevent petrol drones from operating in extreme cold. (Niall Firth, New Scientist)

Amid all the political turmoil and violence in the world, good news that could have dramatic effects on the environment in the next twenty yesrs keep emerging, offering hope for staving off some of the most dire predictions on climate change. This is just one instance; tomorrow another.

Playing fast and loose with elections

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Thousands of people didn’t get to cast their ballots in the recent Arizona primaries. Hundreds of people were still in line at 11:30pm in Phoenix, more than four hours after polls closed. 

One reason it is so hard to vote in Arizona is because the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. As a result, there were 70 percent fewer polling places this year than in 2012 in Phoenix’s county. They wouldn’t have been allowed to cut those polling places if the Voting Rights Act was still intact. These cuts meant that, in a county with more than 4 million residents, there were just 60 polling places.  It isn’t clear on what basis polling places were removed, but the implication is that most were in areas with heavy minority voters, although the Bernie team hasn’t actually said so. Fewer polling places discriminates against….  Well, use your imagination.

The Voting Rights Act was an effort to make sure that minorities were not disadvantaged.  What has happened is that local State legislators have passed laws gerrymandering constituencies and making it increasingly difficult for poor people to vote.  In this way a political party is trying to shore up its waning power when long-term demographics are going the wrong way for it. (based on a report from the Bernie campaign)

A government run by Epicureans would ensure a level playing field for all citizens. Meanwhile, since an Epicurean government and a level playing field are both about as likely as aliens landing from Alpha Centaurus, I personally have to support anyone who seeks to turn round this shameful and deeply corrupt system.

Personality is overrated – just do the job

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So much does our culture prize personality over achievement that even lawyers these days have to have an “interesting” one. Take the director general of business tax – at Britain’s Inland Revenue – one Jim Harra. A key figure in negotiating a derisory tax deal with Google, he has also, believe it or not, been voted “Tax Personality of the Year”. Yes, at the Taxation Awards Harra won the prized statuette. (which is interesting, because if you have a tax issue with the British authorities and you phone them,you are told you will have to wait on the line for 45  minutes to speak to someone.  Presumably, they are all awarding one another statuettes for personality).

What is it with this modern stress on personality, anyway? Why does the BBC think being “Sports Personality of the Year” matters more than being, well, “good at sport”. Do our politicians really have to be interesting; can’t they just be competent? Nothing personal, but I always prefer people who just get on with the job. (adapted from an article by Elizabeth Day, The Observer).

I suppose the “importance” of personality must owe something to Facebook, where the public quickly learns the value of self-promotion and one-uppedness. What people talk less about is the sense of humour that ought to go with it, particularly, a sense of humour about themselves. I happen to live most of my life in arguably the most serious city in the world, a capital of a country that thinks of itself as the greatest country in the world. Which is why poking a bit of fun at it, its pomposities and its capital, should be a happy pastime for all educated people; but it isn’t. When did people stop stop realizing that they are faintly preposterous, and why don’t they laugh at themselves?

If you want to be a real “personality” don’t take yourself too seriously.

Fighting the super- bug: good news?

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Over the past 12 years, Novobiotic Pharmaceuticals has cultivated 50,000 strains of microorganism no one else could. And they’ve discovered 25 new antibiotics. One made headlines a year ago because it kills bugs in a new way,  and one to which it is much more difficult for bacteria to develop resistance.

These 25 antibiotics will not necessarily all be useful; many look to be toxic to our cells as well as to bacteria. But the point is the speed of the approach. The firm found a new candidate antibiotic for every 2000 microbe strains it grew. That is orders of magnitude better than the pharmaceutical industry managed before it abandoned this method of discovering antibiotics.

Added to this, two of the 25 molecules appear to work against tuberculosis. As a result, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are now funding their development into drugs. And antibiotics that are toxic to human cells often go on to be useful anticancer drugs, so they are not a lost cause.

This effort is in response to one of the greatest threats to human health ever: the super-bug, resistant to all known anti-biotics, and a strain, probably originating in Chins, that is now being found in Europe and elsewhere. Colisten, a form of anti-biotic used in meat production,  is also losing its resistance to the super-bug, and if there is no replacement, it will have a devastating effect on beef cattle especially.