Likes Alter energy

The NYT has an article on electric bike riding in Switzerland - Over the Alps on a Bike With a Boost. I had one of these things overtake me (startlingly quietly) as I was riding up a hill last week - they are looking quite sleek nowadays.

THE road east out of Sörenberg rears up into a series of steep turns that climb the Glaubenbielen Pass, the high point of a road the Swiss Army punched through the Alps more than 60 years ago. Though the occasional car and bus make the journey to the top, these days much of the road belongs to cyclists.

On a cool afternoon in mid-July I was one of them. I hadn’t ridden much all season, yet something primordial kicked in when I spied another biker just ahead. His calf muscles were swollen like Salamanca hams, and he was stooped over the bars, sweat dripping onto the pavement.

Easy pickings, I thought, as I tore after him. Within moments I’d reeled him in. He, gasping; me, hardly out of breath: I felt, well, guilty. “You’re cheating!” he panted in German as I sped by. “You’ll be out of power soon!”

He was right: I was cheating. With the mash of a button on my handlebars, a 250-watt electric motor had spun to life and increased the power of my pedal strokes by 150 percent. Suddenly I had my own domestique, a 26-volt brute that seemed to grab the saddle and shove me onward every time I pedaled. In a few minutes, I had reached the summit, taken a short walk and realized that cycling big Alpine passes with some breath to spare might not be such a bad way to cheat.

Here in the United States electric bikes are slowly becoming more popular — you can, for instance, take e-bike tours in San Francisco and Napa Valley. In Europe, the trend is more developed with robust rental schemes in places like Britain’s Lake District, Versailles and Amsterdam. But it is the Swiss who have embraced the concept with the most imagination.

For 50 Swiss francs a day, about $62 at $1.25 to the franc (with discounts for multiple days), you can rent an electric bike from one of 400 rental stations around the country and then set out on some 5,600 miles of well-marked bike paths. With hundreds of places along the way to obtain fresh batteries free, you don’t need to be a whippet-thin racer to roll for days through the spectacular Swiss hinterlands — up steep mountain passes and past soft meadows, burbling creeks and curious cows. You’re free from unforgiving train schedules and away from the tourist hordes but still have access to all the traditional Swissness you can take at inns and restaurants along the way. And since sweating is cheap, a famously expensive country just became a little more affordable.

Just under three years ago, in October 2006, some important stem cell research was announced by a Japanese scientific team led by Shinya Yamanaka. The team showed how ordinary mouse skin cells could be transformed into cells that turned out to be pluripotent, just like embryonic stem cells (ESCs). The new cells were called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). Although "ground-breaking" is an over-used term, this research genuinely deserved the description.

Aside from the fact that it could be done at all, the surprising thing was that the transformation could be effected by adding transcribable genes for just four transcription factors to the skin cell DNA. Those genes were Oct4, Sox2, c-Myc, and Klf4. And now very recent research shows that, under the right conditions, just the addition of Oct4 alone can accomplish the same feat.

We discussed some of the early research here, with additional reports here, here, and here.

In the three years since the original announcement, research has extended and improved the process in a number of ways. The ultimate goal is to be able to produce pluripotent human stem cells that are in all important respects equivalent to embryonic stem cells, by a process that meets several important criteria:

• Cells to be reprogrammed into a pluripotent state should be readily obtainable from human subjects (unlike embryonic cells or rare types of adult stem cells).
  
• No permanent changes to cellular DNA should be made, only changes to gene expression.
  
• The process should be relatively quick and efficient, so that reasonable number of pluripotent cells can be obtained for routine therapeutic or experimental uses.
  

Reprogramming of other cell types into pluripotent cells is important not just as a technical feat to prove it can be done. There are two other important objectives. The first is to develop human cell lines that model many types of pathology (cancer, Parkinsons disease, or whatever) to facilitate research into therapeutics for these diseases. The best way to develop such lines is first to obtain pluripotent cells with the appropriate pathology, derived from human subjects with the disease, which cant generally be done from embryonic sources. From there, several techniques can be used to produce appropriate cell cultures with the desired model pathology.

The second objective is longer-range but even more important: to manufacture cells, for patients with certain diseases, that can be used as therapeutic replacements for the patients own malfunctioning tissue. This would be accomplished by obtaining pluripotent cells derived from the patient, correcting genetic problems in those cells, and then inducing the cells to differentiate into the required tissue type. Diseases that should be treatable in this way include Parkinsons disease, Type 1 diabetes, and heart disease. Starting with cells from the actual patient eliminates the problem of tissue incompatibility.

The criteria listed above that are imposed on the process are important for meeting both of these objectives.

In the three years since the original work was announced, dozens of research groups have set about testing improvements to the original procedures in order to progress towards the ultimate objectives. The improvements that have been made include:

• adapting the procedures to work in species other than mice – including pigs and fruit flies, as well as humans
  
• reducing the number of transcription factors that need to be introduced, or finding other suitable transcription factors
  
• finding other cell types besides skin cells to start with, generally various types of non-pluripotent stem cells – which makes other improvements in the process easier to accomplish
  
• changing the way that the transcription factors are introduced into the target cells, in order to avoid alteration of the original DNA (since such alterations may introduce risks of cancer or other cellular malfunction)
  
• finding other proteins or small molecule compounds that can be added to enhance the efficiency and speed of the process
  

Quite a few important improvements have been announced within the past several months, along with other related news. The most interesting related news is a demonstration that iPSCs really are not only equivalent to ESCs in terms of gene expression, but are in fact equally pluripotent. This latter fact was convincingly demonstrated by cloning several generations of live, healthy mice from iPSCs. (Well discuss that in a separate article, but heres an overview.)

What I want to discuss here is how the list of transcription factors (or their genes) that need to be added to a non-pluripotent cell has been reduced to just one: Oct4. The work was done by a mostly German team led by Hans Schöler of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine.

So how was this accomplished? Well, the trick is, you have to start with the right kind of cells. In this case the researchers used human fetal neural stem cells (HFNSCs). While such cells arent pluripotent, they are "multipotent", which means they can normally differentiate into various other cell types.

Back in February the researchers in this study reported that reprogramming with just Oct4 could be done in mouse neural stem cells (see here, here, or here). But would this also work with human cells?

Yes. The latest report shows that HFNSCs can be reprogrammed to a pluripotent state using only Oct4 and Klf4, and (generally) even with Oct4 alone. How is this possible? It is known that mouse neural stem cells already express Sox2, c-Myc, and Klf4. As for the human case, the paper says, cautiously, that "The feasibility to reprogram directly NSCs by OCT4 alone might reflect their higher similarity in transcriptional profiles to ES cells than to other stem cells like haematopoietic stem cells or than to their differentiated counterparts."

And the main indication of this is that the process works: "One-factor human NiPS cells resemble human embryonic stem cells in global gene expression profiles, epigenetic status, as well as pluripotency in vitro and in vivo. These findings demonstrate that the transcription factor OCT4 is sufficient to reprogram human neural stem cells to pluripotency."

What this is saying is that there are several criteria for similarity to embryonic stem cells that the reprogrammed HFNSCs meet. At a molecular level the reprogrammed cells express the same genes and have the same epigenetic markers as ESCs. In addition, they can differentiate into many adult cell types both in vitro and in vivo (in the latter case, by forming teratomas (mixed masses of cell types) when implanted in mice).

There are still several drawbacks to this method for practical purposes, even of research. For one thing, human fetal neural stem cells are not exactly easily obtainable. And in addition, retroviruses were used (as in the original Yamanaka work) to introduce Oct4 into the cells. For therapeutic applications it would be absolutely necessary to use one of the other methods that have been explored and that do not disrupt the existing cell DNA or leave exogenous DNA in derived cells – since either alternative means the derived cells might revert to a more undifferentiated state. On top of all that, the process is still inefficient and slow.

Reprogramming methods that have been explored in other research include the introduction of genetic material in forms other than retroviruses, as well as direct delivery of the transcription factor proteins. The researchers in this study intend to investigate such possibilities, as well as use of other initial cell types: "Future studies will show if direct reprogramming is possible with small molecules or OCT4 recombinant protein alone. ... It will be interesting to extend this study to human NSCs derived from other sources, such as dental pulp, as well as to other stem-cell types."

Kim, J., Greber, B., Araúzo-Bravo, M., Meyer, J., Park, K., Zaehres, H., & Schöler, H. (2009). Direct reprogramming of human neural stem cells by OCT4 Nature DOI: 10.1038/nature08436

Further reading:

One step to human pluripotency (8/28/09) – blog post at The Scientist

Stem cells, down to one factor (8/28/09) – blog post at The Niche

Induced pluripotent stem cells, down to one factor (9/10/09) – excellent overview at Nature Reports Stem Cells

Direct reprogramming of human neural stem cells by OCT4 (8/28/09) – Nature research paper

One-gene method makes safer human stem cells (8/28/09) – New Scientist article

Tags: stem cells, pluripotency

The SMH reports that Origin Energys coal seam gas LNG project has taken another step forward with Sinopec signing on as both a customer and a new shareholder in the project - Sinopec inks LNG deal with Origin.

Chinas Sinopec has signed a binding agreement to buy 4.3 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas annually for 20 years from a project to be developed by Australias Origin Energy and US oil company ConocoPhillips, Origin said today.

Sinopec will also take a 15 per cent stake in the project, Origin Energy Chief Executive Grant King told reporters at a joint news conference. ... The project equity sale leaves the Australian and American firms with 42.5 per cent interest each in APLNG. Sinopec was welcomed as a joint venture partner with a signing ceremony in Brisbane today.

Resources minister Martin Ferguson said it was the biggest single LNG sales and purchase agreement by annual volume in Australian history. ‘‘Deals like this one put Australia on track to be one of the world’s largest suppliers of LNG in coming years,’’ Mr Ferguson said. ‘‘The APLNG project has the potential to significantly expand the burgeoning coal seam gas to LNG industry on Australia’s east coast and cement Gladstone’s place as a key LNG hub.’’

APLNG chairman and Origin managing director Grant King said the joint venture was engaged with potential buyers for gas from a second processing ‘‘train’’.

The Australian has a report on the progress of Better Place in Canberra - Canberra powers ahead with electric car network.

Within a few weeks, charge spots where drivers can plug in their vehicles will be installed. Twelve foundation members have signed up to work with Better Place Australia in Canberra, including the ACT government, ActewAGL, Lend Lease, Crowne Plaza and the ACT Electric Vehicle Council.

"We chose Canberra because there are a large portion of two-car households with garages," Better Place Australia chief executive Evan Thornley said. About 54 per cent of Canberra households have two cars or more and 89 per cent have off-street parking, which makes it ideal for Better Place to launch, because garages are preferred charge spots.

"Canberra is the first stage in the process of delivering electric cars around Australia and having the facilities in place to service them," Mr Thornley said. Better Place recently signed a deal with ActewAGL, worth $60 million over 10 years, to purchase 100 per cent renewable energy for the electric car-charge network in Canberra. "We will be paying for everything besides the car," he said. The battery, the charging, plug-in and so forth. Consumers will just have to pay us a single membership fee and that will be determined by the distance people drive."

The Renault Fluence ZE, a five-seat family sedan automatic with a top speed of 135km/h, is expected to arrive on the local market in the middle of next year, priced between $30,000 and $35,000. Batteries will be $12,000 but the monthly membership fee is still being calculated.

"I can say that if you are paying $80 a week for petrol now, it will be cheaper to have an electric car," Mr Thornley said. "The reality is that petrol costs are increasing and battery costs will decrease as more people purchase electric cars. Therefore, it will only become cheaper to buy an electric car and run one."

Property giant Lend Lease invested $10m in Better Place Australia in 2009 and has helped to construct some of the infrastructure for the rollout.

Early Warning has a look (with lots of graphs, click through to view them) at the security situation in Iraq - Checking in with Iraqi Stability.

The future of global oil supply, and the timing and height of peak oil, depend critically on whether and when Iraq can markedly increase its oil production. A precondition for increased oil production is adequate political stability in the country. So its good to check-in every so often on how the statistics in the Brookings Iraq Index are tracking.

The above graph shows the number of foreign troops in Iraq since May 2003, shortly following the invasion of the country by the US and other "coalition of the willing" members. As you can see, the number of troops stabilized last summer at a much reduced number - just shy of 50,000 Americans (everyone else lost their willingness by the middle of 2009).

Notwithstanding the withdrawal, security indicators have mostly stabilized or continued to improve. For example, here is the estimate of violent fatalities of Iraqi civilians, which continues to mainly trend down:

Similarly, deaths of the Iraqi military and police are stable or declining:

There are now very few US troop casualties by comparison with earlier years:

Likewise, the number of troops wounded is a tiny fraction of the levels of the mid 2000s:

Therefore, the continued deployment is politically tolerable in the US (though its likely that Iraqi domestic politics will enforce the current bilateral agreement that all troops will leave by the end of this year).

However, Iraq is still not a normal country - there are still 10-20 multiple fatality bombings a month, a very high rate of terrorism. However, the number is not increasing.

It appears likely that the Maliki government can keep the country stable enough for development of its oil resources to proceed at some pace constrained more by logistics than the security situation.

Technology Review has an article on new solid-state power-management devices which "will charge cars fast and make the power grid more flexible and efficient" - A Way to Make the Smart Grid Smarter.

New semiconductor-based devices for managing power on the grid could make the "smart grid" even smarter. They would allow electric vehicles to be charged fast and let utilities incorporate large amounts of solar and wind power without blackouts or power surges. These devices are being developed by a number of groups, including those that recently received funding from the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E) and the National Science Foundation.

As utilities start to roll out the smart grid, they are focused on gathering information, such as up-to-the-minute measurements of electricity use from smart meters installed at homes and businesses. But as the smart grid progresses, theyll be adding devices, such as smart solid-state transformers, that will strengthen their control over how power flows through their lines, says Alex Huang, director of a National Research Foundation research center thats developing such devices. "If smart meters are the brains of the smart grid," he says, "devices such as solid-state transformers are the muscle." These devices could help change the grid from a system in which power flows just one way—from the power station to consumers—to one in which homeowners and businesses commonly produce power as well.

Todays transformers are single-function devices. They change the voltage of electricity from one level to another, such as stepping it down from the high voltages at which power is distributed to the 120- and 240-volt levels used in homes. The new solid-state transformers are much more flexible. They use transistors and diodes and other semiconductor-based devices that, unlike the transistors used in computer chips, are engineered to handle high power levels and very fast switching. In response to signals from a utility or a home, they can change the voltage and other characteristics of the power they produce. They can put out either AC or DC power, or take in AC and DC power from wind turbines and solar panels and change the frequency and voltage to whats needed for the grid. They have processors and communications hardware built in, allowing them to communicate with utility operators, other smart transformers, and consumers.

The devices are so flexible that researchers are still working out how to make the best use of them. There are several possibilities. Today, charging an electric vehicle at home takes many hours, even if its plugged into a special charger with 220/240-volt circuits rather than more common 110/120-volt outlets. Direct-current chargers can cut the time for charging a 24-kilowatt-hour pack like the one in the new Nissan Leaf from eight hours to just 30 minutes, but theyre inefficient, wasting about 10 to 12 percent of the power that comes in to them. The new transformers could replace these special chargers, and theyre more efficient, wasting only about 4 percent of the power, says Arindam Maitra, a senior project manager at the Electric Power Research Institute, which is developing smart transformers.

Whats more, because the transformers have communications and processing capability, if several neighbors plug in their cars to charge at the same time, the transformers can prevent circuits from being overloaded by slowing or postponing charging based on consumer preferences and price signals from the utility. The same devices can also be used to send DC power from solar panels to the grid, eliminating the need for some equipment currently used to convert the power from solar panels and leveling out fluctuations in their voltage that could otherwise cause the panels to trip off and stop producing electricity.

As power consumers such as big-box stores start to install more solar panels and energy-storage devices, smart transformers could be key to integrating power from these sources and the grid, Maitra says. Storage systems and distributed energy can allow stores to decide when to draw power from the grid and when to send power back to it, depending on the price of electricity at a given moment. Smart transformers could coordinate this potentially rapid change from buying to selling power, while keeping the grid stable and preventing neighbors lights from dimming. They could even allow people to buy electricity from their neighbors, Huang says. "If you plug in your electric car at night, you could charge it by negotiating with those in your neighborhood who have excess power," he says. "You actually pay him. You dont pay the utility."

Other kinds of devices can do many of the same things, but the idea of coordinating a large number and variety of consumer-owned devices makes utilities nervous about their ability to keep the grid stable. The new transformers would simplify the system and be utility-owned, making it easier for grid operators to keep the lights on, Maitra says.

Another potential benefit of smart transformers—or what the Electric Power Research Institute is starting to call smart-grid interfaces—is saving energy. For one thing, they can set the voltage of electricity at any given time so that it is at the minimum level appliances need to perform properly. One recent study suggested that doing this could reduce power consumption in the United States by up to 3 percent, which is equivalent to several times as much power as is now generated by all solar panels in the U.S. Even larger energy savings could be seen if smart transformers supplied DC power rather than AC to servers in data centers. Ordinarily, the servers convert the AC to DC themselves—and they do it inefficiently. (Other inefficient conversions, too, are involved in the uninterruptable power supply.) A recent demonstration of such a system by Duke Energy, a large utility company, and the Electric Power Research Institute found that supplying DC could cut power consumption at data centers by about 15 percent.

The Conversation has an article proposing an Asian supergrid supplied with renewable energy from Australia that reminded by a lot of the Grenatec proposal that has been floating around for a while now (but is still getting some press attention) - The north’s future is electrifying: powering Asia with renewables.

Imagine a project that could help Indonesia achieve energy security, dramatically cut energy poverty for hundreds of millions, catalyse renewable energy production in Assocation of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries, cut regional carbon pollution, and transition Australia’s energy exports from risky fuels to renewable energy.

Sounds far-fetched? In fact, such a proposal has already been published in the international peer-reviewed literature. It takes several existing technologies already in widespread deployment, and joins them together in a new configuration on an unprecedented scale, in a region with enormous natural competitive advantage — north-western Australia.

Here’s the plan.

Take part (say 2,500 km2) of an existing cattle station somewhere near Lake Argyle and cover one third of it with solar panels on tracking arrays. Build a large reservoir upslope at least 300 metres above Lake Argyle, holding at least 1,000 gigalitres of water.

Build a 100 gigawatt power station that uses solar energy to pump water from the lake up to the upper reservoir. The water flows back down the hill through turbines at night, generating power to the grid 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Hundreds of “pumped hydro” schemes of this nature are already working well around the world, albeit not on this scale.

The “grid” in this case, would be an integrated south-east Asian supergrid, the spine of which would be a High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) cable running from northern Australia along the Indonesian archipelago and up into the Philippines, Malaysia and Indochina, and then eventually into China.

The capital cost of building such a power station, storage and HVDC link and extending it as far as Jakarta is estimated at around US$500 billion. This compares with Indonesia’s current projections that it needs to invest US$1,000 billion in conventional (coal and nuclear) power stations to meet its energy needs over the next 40 years.

Gizmodo has a post on an unusually ambitious plan for space based solar power being promoted in Japan (being dubbed a "death star" in some quarters) - Japan Wants To Ring The Moon With Solar Panels To Power The Earth.

After the Fukushima boondoggle back in 2011, Japan has wholeheartedly embraced solar power as its alternative energy of choice. So much so, that one Japanese construction firm is campaigning to power the whole Earth with solar energy — that they will beam down from the moon.

The Shimizu Corporation wants to, essentially, build a ring of solar panels around the moon’s equator and transmitted back to the Earth via microwave. And they want to get the project, dubbed LUNA RING (yes, all caps), started by 2035.