Bio-Based Ideas

Personal Interest Background  As of late, I have been fascinated by LED light technology because this technology has the potential to drastically reduce energy consumption for lighting solutions. In this quest for more efficient lighting, I found 40W replacement LED lights that use only 6 Watts while producing 400 lumens equivalent to a 66.6 lumens/W. That's not bad considering that an equivalent CFL consumes at least 9 Watts which equals a 44.4 lumens/W. The cutting edge of technology commercially available can be seen in the Phillips L-Prize LED 60 W replacement LED light which produces 940 lumens with only 10W (94 lumens/W!!!). For comparison, CFLs at this range have an efficiency of roughly 61.3 lumens/W. It appears that LED technology still has room to improve which it must to produce lighting solutions at the 100W replacement range. Companies like Osram, GE or Phillips have all announced their first entrance into these market segments. However, the consumption ranges from 2...

Here is an interesting Tech Talk on Algae Pods which has a significant amount of research done already.  

I want to apologize to my readers for not having posted anything in a long time. Ironically, working within the sustainable chemicals field sometimes makes posting about new topics even harder. I have become even more busy over the last couple of months. But my determination to keep this page going has strengthened even more since I have become a father. And the reason for this is simply that preserving the environment or at least helping to setup a frame-work that makes sustainable living possible in the future has become even more important to me now that my son was born.

I listened to an interesting podcast a few weeks ago and just wanted to share what I learned by listening to "Wissenschaft im Brennpunkt" which translates into "Science in Focus". Today's topic: What is forest agronomy? Following is a partial transcript and summary of this podcast.

It has been quite a while since my last post. I owe the readers of my blog the second part of the summary of the "Food and Fuels in the 21st Century" Symposium I attended earlier this year. Rather than detailed, by the minute notes, I thought I would just highlight some of the talks I thought were interesting in order to at least share some of my experiences with the everyone before this gets lost in the midst of time. These are highlights from talks that were held Friday and Saturday.

Today, I attended a symposium organized by the San Diego Center for Algal Biotechnologies. This symposium started three years ago but has grown each year since then. This year the symposium is three days long and titled “Food and Fuels in the 21st Century”. Professor Kay and Mayfield both framed the relevancy of the symposium by mentioning that the increasing world population, our dependency on limited resources (fossil resources such as oil and phosphates, land and water) which are increasingly becoming scarce, coupled with stresses put on by global warming require an adaptive response by increasing the output of agricultural production to meet the need. Agricultural biotechnologies and algal biotechnologies can provide an answer to the challenges mentioned earlier. With this background, professor Mayfield introduced the first talk.

On slight tangent of the more usual "bio-based economy" talk of late, I thought I would share something a bit more eclectic but nevertheless fascinating. Recently, linked up a slightly different TED talk dealing with spider silk . I found another TED talk given by Professor Cheryl Hayashi. I had actually met Professor Hayashi once before. About 10-11 years ago, I invited her to Cal State Fullerton to give a talk about what she is researching. She graciously accepted back then. I can remember that back then everyone (from students to faculty members) was mesmerized by her professionalism, the exact mind displayed in her research,  and  most importantly the passion Professor Hayashi displayed for her research. I felt the spirit of her talk from back then in the following TED talk.