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RenewEconomy has an article on an ANU study of growth in renewable power generation in Australia - Solar, wind could replace all fossil fuels in Australia by 2040.

Solar and wind energy could replace all fossil fuels in Australia by 2040 if their recent rate of deployment is maintained and slightly increased over the next 27 years – delivering the country with a 100% renewable electricity grid “by default” as early as 2040.

The stunning conclusions come from research from Andrew Blakers, the director of the Australian National University’s Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems. It notes that nearly all new electricity generation capacity in recent years has been wind and solar photovoltaics (PV), and demand has also ben falling since 2008.

Blakers says that if this situation continues then Australia will achieve renewable electricity system by 2040, as existing fossil fuel power stations retire at the end of their service lives and are replaced with renewables.

And the cost will be no greater than having fossil fuels because, as Bloomberg New Energy Finance notes, wind is already cheaper than new coal or gas-fired generation and solar soon will be. These are the critical points – because renewables are often painted as expensive when compared to fully-depreciated, 40 years fossil fuel plants. But not compared with the new capacity required to replace ageing fossil fuel fleet.

Blakers says his scenario works even using the more conservative technology cost forecasts prepared by the Bureau of Resource and Energy Economics. These forecasts are being updated, but they came to similar conclusions as BNEF on technology cost trends, just not quite as quickly.

The 100% by 2040 scenario is probably not that much different in scope to current trends. Australia was sitting at around 10 per cent renewables in 2010, and will probably end up with at least 25 per cent by 2020, given current trends on rooftop solar and the fixed 41,000GWh target for large scale renewables.

Interesting reading and news items.

These items are also bookmarked at my Diigo account.

Crashing the size barrier

Over the past 50 years, the most common method of increasing the energy of a particle accelerator has been to increase its size. Yet that tactic is reaching a breaking point. While even higher energies are needed to answer many of sciences most pressing questions—such as the origin of mass and the identity of dark matter—simply scaling up the current technology is becoming prohibitively expensive. Scientists need less costly, more efficient means of accelerating particles to ever-greater energies. [Symmetry, 10/1/09]

Are Black Holes the Architects of the Universe?

Black holes are finally winning some respect. After long regarding them as agents of destruction or dismissing them as mere by-products of galaxies and stars, scientists are recalibrating their thinking. Now it seems that black holes debuted in a constructive role and appeared unexpectedly soon after the Big Bang. “Several years ago, nobody imagined that there were such monsters in the early universe,” says Penn State astrophysicist Yuexing Li. “Now we see that black holes were essential in creating the universe’s modern structure.” [Discover, 1/4/10]

Genome advances promise personalized medical treatment

Six years after scientists finished decoding the human genome -- the genetic instruction book for life -- theyre starting to take their new knowledge from the research laboratory to the doctors office and the patients bedside. ... Researchers are seeking ways to tailor treatments to individuals -- they call it "personalized medicine" -- in order to improve patient outcomes and to lower costs in the overburdened U.S. health care system. [Physorg.com, 11/18/09]

Hunting for Planets in the Dark

In Europe, the Euclid mission is a proposed space telescope for characterizing dark energy, but some believe that it might be more attractive to funding agencies if it included an exoplanet survey. [Physorg.com, 11/19/09]

Dark Energy Search Could Aid Planet Hunters

The search for dark energy might help in the search for life in the universe. Thats because planet hunting through a technique called microlensing requires a similar sort of instrument as a dark energy mission. [Space.com, 11/19/09]

Recipes for planet formation

Observations of extrasolar planets are shaping our ideas about how planetary systems form and evolve. Michael R Meyer describes whats cooking elsewhere in our galaxy – and beyond. [Physicsworld.com, 11/2/09]

The Americanization of Mental Illness

We have for many years been busily engaged in a grand project of Americanizing the world’s understanding of mental health and illness. We may indeed be far along in homogenizing the way the world goes mad. This unnerving possibility springs from recent research by a loose group of anthropologists and cross-cultural psychiatrists. [New York Times, 1/8/10]

What Life Leaves Behind

The search for life beyond our pale blue dot is fraught with dashed hopes. Will the chemical and mineral fingerprints of Earthly organisms apply on other worlds? [Seed, 11/9/09]

3 Questions: Sara Seager on searching for Earth-like planets

MIT planetary scientist Sara Seager has been studying exoplanets — planets circling stars other than the sun — for many years. The first such planet was discovered just 15 years ago, and now more than 400 others are known. This week, a paper co-authored by Seager and NASA scientist Drake Deming in the journal Nature reviews what we know about exoplanets so far, what we can expect to learn about them in the next decade or so, and the chances for finding a twin of our own planet. She has also just published an online book to answer questions about exoplanets and the lessons they hold. [Physorg.com, 11/23/09]

Quest for the Holy Grail: Sara Seager Seeks to Complete a Revolution

Sara Seager is fascinated by stories of explorers visiting uncharted places. From her groundbreaking work on the detection of exoplanet atmospheres to her innovative theories about life on other worlds, Seager has been a pioneer in the vast and unknown world of exoplanets. Now, like an astronomical Indiana Jones, shes on a quest after the fields holy grail - another Earth-like planet. [NASA, 10/6/08]

Two-qubit quantum system used to model the hydrogen molecule

Even though quantum computers are still in their crawling phase, computer scientists continue to push their limits. Recently, a group of scientists used a two-qubit quantum system to model the energies of a hydrogen molecule and found that using an iterative algorithm to calculate each digit of the phase shift gave very accurate results. Their system, while not directly extensible, has the potential to help map the energies of more complex molecules and could result in significant time and power savings compared to classical computers. [Arstechnica.com, 1/13/10]

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The FT has an article by John Dizard explaining why he thinks the shale oil boom will prove far more disappointing than many are claiming - ‘Saudi America’ remains a Washington fantasy (it seems to be readable without a subscription - though you may have to go via Google News). He quotes Bernsteins Bob Brackett as predicting oil production in the Bakken (North Dakota) will peak in 2019 at 1.2m barrels per day.

The Globe and Mail has an update on peak oil - Inexpensive oil vanishing at alarming rate.

The United States is awash in shale oil. Iran, once OPEC’s second-largest producer, is slowly ramping up output. Oil consumption growth in the Western world has been somewhere between negative and flat since the 2008 financial crisis. The “peak oil” theory has pretty much vanished, along with The Oil Drum, the bible of peak oil believers. Rest in peace.

Or turn in your grave, for the oil price charts tell a different story.

On the New York Mercantile Exchange, crude oil futures are up 13 per cent over one year. Since 2009, they have climbed every year except 2012. In Europe, the Brent crude futures are flat over the year after rising three years on the trot. Brent, the de facto global benchmark, trades at about $108 (U.S.) a barrel; West Texas Intermediate, the North American benchmark, is at $97. For the sake of argument, let’s say the world is valuing oil at $100. You would think the price would be far less as the United States challenges Saudi Arabia for top producer status.

While the oil forecasters were pumping out bearish calls, the market itself has stuck to its triple-digit price outlook. Oil buyers apparently know the Western world’s economic recovery will boost consumption, since growth and oil use are aligned. That’s not all. They also know that the math doesn’t work: Prices can’t go into gradual, long-term decline, or even stay flat, when the world’s conventional oil fields are in fairly rapid decline.

Exotic production – oil sands, biofuels, natural gas liquids – are supposed to fill the gap. But this so-called unconventional production is highly expensive and quite possibly insufficient to cover the drop off in cheap, conventional production. Prices will rise to the point that demand will have to level off or fall. The “peak oil” and “peak demand” theories are really opposite sides of the same coin.

A few days ago, Richard Miller, the former BP geochemist turned independent oil consultant, delivered a sobering lecture at University College London that laid out the case for dwindling future oil supply. His talk was based on published data from the U.S. Energy Information Agency, the International Energy Agency, the International Monetary Fund and other official sources.

The data leave no doubt that the inexpensive oil is vanishing quickly. Conventional oil production peaked in 2008 at about 70 million barrels a day and is declining by about 3.3 million barrels a day, every year. Saudi Arabia pumps about 10 million barrels a day. The math says a new Saudi Arabia has to be found every three years to offset the conventional oil drop off. Good luck. Now you know why Russians, Canadians and Americans are so keen to lock up the Arctic, the alleged keeper of vast new reserves.

About one-quarter of conventional production comes from the 20 biggest fields and most of them are in decline, some precipitously. North Sea oil production peaked at 4.5-million barrels a day in 1999. This year’s production is forecast at between 1.2 million and 1.4 million barrels a day. The so-called Forties field, the North Sea’s biggest, has been losing 9 per cent a year for more than 20 years. Ditto two other North Sea biggies – Brent and Ninian.

Great Britain shed its status as an energy powerhouse about a decade ago, when it became a net energy importer. Its energy import bill is horrendous. Last year, Britain spent almost £22-billion ($38-billion) buying foreign oil, natural gas and coal.

Repeat all over the world, from Mexico to Indonesia. Indonesia’s oil production has been in steady decline since the mid-1990s, and the country has gone from oil exporter to importer, at which point it got kicked out of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. While new exploration and technologies will extend the life of some of the gasping old fields, the long-term downward trend is intact.

Resveratrol, of course, is somewhat famous as the substance in red wine that is widely believed to be able to retard aging and promote longevity. There are various hypotheses as to how it might do this, and several may turn out to be correct, as they are not mutually exclusive. There is experimental evidence supporting several of these hypotheses.

Ironically, however, it may be that the amount of resveratrol available in red wine is not sufficient to account for the experimentally supported effects, and there may be other substances in red wine that account for whatever anti-aging properties red wine may have.

Among the properties of resveratrol that might explain an ability to promote longevity are its antioxidant characteristics or other abilities to impede cancer. Resveratrol also has anti-inflammatory properties. Yet another hypothesis is that resveratrol is able to stimulate sirtuin proteins. These proteins are hypothesized to promote longevity, and they may also explain the known longevity-enhancing effects of calorie restriction.

I plan to write about both sirtuins and calorie restriction soon, but right now lets just focus on resveratrol. The most recent news about resveratrol concerns its anti-cancer properties:

Red Wine Compound Shown To Prevent Prostate Cancer

Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) have found that nutrients in red wine may help reduce the risk of developing prostate cancer.

The study involved male mice that were fed a plant compound found in red wine called resveratrol, which has shown anti-oxidant and anti-cancer properties. Other sources of resveratrol in the diet include grapes, raspberries, peanuts and blueberries.

The magnitude of the observed effect was substantial:

In the study resveratrol-fed mice showed an 87 percent reduction in their risk of developing prostate tumors that contained the worst kind of cancer-staging diagnosis. The mice that proved to have the highest cancer-protection effect earned it after seven months of consuming resveratrol in a powdered formula mixed with their food.

Other mice in the study, those fed resveratrol but still developed a less-serious form of prostate cancer, were 48 percent more likely to have their tumor growth halted or slowed when compared to mice who did not consume the compound, the UAB research team said.

Unfortunately, the amount of resveratrol (in proportion to body weight) the mice received to achieve these effects would not be very practical for humans to get from wine:

The amounts used in the UAB mice studies were the equivalent of one person consuming one bottle of red wine per day, which is not advisable. Since drinking alcohol in excessive amounts can have harmful health effects, doctors generally recommend moderate red wine consumption, which is an average of two drinks a day for men and one drink a day for women.

Actually, the amounts used are the equivalent of far more than one bottle of wine per day – see further discussion on this below.

Unfortunately, too, this research doesnt address various questions wed really like answers to. Does resveratrol have a similar effect with other cancers? What is the mechanism by which resveratrol affects cancer?

Heres a blog post at Futurepundit with more on this research, and in particular some suggestions about connection with sirtuins: Resveratrol Reduces Prostate Cancer In Mice

Lets now go back a little way in time, to November 2006, when resveratrol made a big splash with apparent longevity-enhancing effects of a different kind.

Red Wine Molecule Extends Lifespan Of Fat Mice Lives By Reversing Obesity-Related Gene Pathways (11/2/06)

Researchers have used a single compound to increase the lifespan of obese mice, and found that the drug reversed nearly all of the changes in gene expression patterns found in mice on high calorie diets--some of which are associated with diabetes, heart disease, and other significant diseases related to obesity. The research, led by investigators at Harvard Medical School and the National Institute on Aging, is the first time that the small molecule resveratrol has been shown to offer survival benefits in a mammal.

Importantly, one of the other principal investigators in this research is David Sinclair, who has been one of the main researchers studying sirtuins (see references in the Futurepundit post mentioned above), has done previous work with resveratrol (in non-mammals), and whose research has also been somewhat controversial. Some relevant background:

Resveratrol is found in red wines and produced by a variety of plants when put under stress. It was first discovered to have an anti-aging properties by Sinclair, other HMS researchers, and their colleagues in 2003 and reported in Nature. The 2003 study showed that yeast treated with resveratrol lived 60 percent longer. Since 2003, resveratrol has been shown to extend the lifespan of worms and flies by nearly 30 percent, and fish by almost 60 percent. It has also been shown to protect against Huntingtons disease in two different animal models (worms and mice).

Heres what the researchers say about the sirtuin connection:

Investigators identified resveratrol while looking for compounds that activate Sir2, an enzyme linked to lifespan extension in yeast and other lower organisms. For the last 70 years, scientists have been able to increase the lifespan of a variety of species by reducing their normal food consumption by 30 to 40 percent - a diet known as calorie restriction. Through this research, scientists identified Sir2 as a key contributor to life extension. Without Sir2, for example, fruit flies see none of the benefits from either calorie restriction or treatment by resveratrol. The mammalian version of the Sir2 gene is SIRT1, which has the same enzymatic activity as Sir2, but modifies a wider variety of molecules throughout cells. Indicators in this study show that resveratrol might also be activating SIRT1 in mice, as well as other known longevity pathways.

The experiments divided their mice into three categories: standard diet (SD), high-calorie diet (HC), and high-calorie diet with resveratrol (HCR). Among other findings, there were some which looked specifically at standard indicators of diabetes.

In humans, high calorie diets can increase glucose and insulin levels leading to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. In the HC fed mice, researchers found biomarkers that might predict diabetes, including increased levels of insulin, glucose and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1). Conversely, the HCR fed group had significantly lower levels of these markers, paralleling the SD group. For example, a standard diabetes glucose test on the HCR fed group found considerably higher insulin sensitivity, meaning the HCR group had a lower disposition toward diabetes than the HC fed group. Lower insulin levels also predict increased lifespan in mice.

All-in-all, this appears to be a pretty comprehensive piece of research. However, there are a couple of flies in the ointment. Most importantly, as with the prostate cancer research reported above, the mice received rather high doses of resveratrol – much higher, even, in Sinclairs study. The following article by Nicholas Wade explains it pretty well:

Yes, Red Wine Holds Answer. Check Dosage. (11/2/06)

The mice were fed a hefty dose of resveratrol, 24 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. Red wine has about 1.5 to 3 milligrams of resveratrol per liter, so a 150-lb person would need to drink 750 to 1,500 bottles of red wine a day to get such a dose.

Dr. Richard Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging, which helped support the study, also said that people should wait for the results of safety testing. Substances that are safe and beneficial in small doses, like vitamins, sometimes prove to be harmful when taken in high doses, Dr. Hodes said.

One person who is not following this prudent advice, however, is Dr. Sinclair, the chief author of the study. He has long been taking resveratrol, though at a dose of only five milligrams per kilogram. Mice given that amount in a second feeding trial have shown similar, but less pronounced, results as those on the 24-milligram-a-day dose, he said.

So Sinclair is taking about one fifth the dose as his mice – still something like the equivalent of 150 to 300 bottles of wine per day. Its probably a good idea not to expect that drinking even a bottle a day will provide any significant protection against diabetes. The recognized fact that there does appear to be some health benefit to people who consume moderate amounts of wine must therefore be due either to other effects of resveratrol (anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory, for example), or else to other substances in wine.

It is possible that dietary supplements containing more concentrated resveratrol might help, but probably not any currently on the market, as Wade notes:

Many companies sell the substance, along with claims that rivals’ preparations are inactive. One such company, Longevinex, sells an extract of red wine and knotweed that contains an unspecified amount of resveratrol. But each capsule is equivalent to “5 to 15 5-ounce glasses of the best red wine,” the company’s Web site asserts.

A couple of other problems are that the longevity-enhancing effects of resveratrol – or even calorie restriction, for that matter – have not yet been demonstrated in human trials, and that the lack of human trials also leaves open the question of possible harmful side-effects at high dosage, given the other properties of resveratrol (anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory).

And if all that werent enough to worry about, the connection between resveratrol and sirtuins is still not clearly demonstrated to general scientific satisfaction. As Wade writes,

“It hasn’t really been clearly shown, the way a biochemist would want to see it, that resveratrol can activate sirtuin,” said Matt Kaeberlein, a former student of Dr. Guarente’s who does research at the University of Washington in Seattle. Sirtuin is the protein produced by the SIRT-1 gene.

Dr. Sinclair said experiments at Sirtris had essentially wrapped up this point. But they have not yet been published, so under the rules of scientific debate he cannot use them to support his position. In his Nature article he therefore has to concede that “Whether resveratrol acts directly or indirectly through Sir-2 in vivo is currently a subject of debate.

Sinclair is working with a start-up biotech company (Sirtris Pharmaceuticals) that is developing pills containing resveratrol and similar molecules for eventual use in humans. But it almost always takes 5 to 10 years to guide a new drug – which must show measurable beneficial effects for specific diseases as well as safety – through clinical trials in humans, in order to gain approval from the FDA.

Other reports on this research: here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Results of this study were followed closely by those of another study, which apparently was funded by Sirtris:

Red wine compound boosts athletic endurance (11/16/06)

High doses of a compound found naturally in grape skins and red wine can improve muscle endurance in mice, and the compound also keeps them slim, a new study shows. ...

Johan Auwerx at the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cell Biology in Illkirch, France, and colleagues placed mice on a high-fat diet. Half of those mice received daily amounts of up to 400 milligrams of resveratrol per kilogram of body weight. ...

After three weeks, the mice on the resveratrol supplements weighed only about 20% more than mice on a standard diet. But those on the high-fat diet that did not receive the supplement weighed 60% more than the control mice. The resveratrol also improved the rodents endurance in fitness tests, and seemed to have no toxic side effects.

Mice on the high-fat diet that also took resveratrol were able to run twice as far on a treadmill as those on the same diet but without the supplement, even after the animals’ weight differences were taken into account.

Note that the dose of 400 mg per kg of body weight is about 17 times as much as was used in Sinclairs study. One has to wonder whether these dosage levels have been reported correctly. It would seem to make more sense to use similar dosages so that similar studies of this sort would be more comparable to each other.

Another report on this research suggests a possible explanation for the results:

A Second Pour of Good News About Substance in Red Wine (11/17/06)

Additional experiments on the animals cells indicate the substance works by increasing the activity of an enzyme known as SIRT1, boosting the number and activity of structures inside cells called mitochondria, the researchers said. Mitochondria are like power plants inside cells, burning fat and providing energy. They tend to get revved up by exercise, and deteriorate with age.

Mice fed resveratrol had more muscle tissue resembling that of a trained athlete, sharply increasing their endurance. They could run twice as far before collapsing as mice that did not receive the substance.

The researchers in this study also had something to say about the connection with sirtuins in humans:

In addition to the mouse experiments, the researchers also produced evidence supporting the theory that SIRT1 plays a key role in longevity in humans in an accompanying analysis of 123 Finnish adults. The subjects born with certain variations of the SIRT1 gene had faster metabolisms, naturally burning energy more efficiently, indicating the same pathway works in humans, too.

According to a third report, Sirtris has actually (as of last November) begun phase 1 clinical trials in humans of their more potent formulation of resveratrol:

Red Wine Compound Could Boost Endurance (11/17/06)

But if you think that drinking more wine or taking resveratrol supplements might turn you into a super-athlete, think again, said Sirtris CEO Dr. Christoph Westphal.

"Native resveratrol from red wine or nutraceuticals cannot reach therapeutic levels in man," he said. "You would need to drink hundreds of glasses of red wine or take hundreds of nutraceutical pills in a day to get a therapeutic dose."

According to Westphal, the company has completed two phase 1 studies with 85 human volunteers of an improved formulation of resveratrol which reaches therapeutic levels in man and is safe.

In addition, Sirtris has started giving diabetic patients its resveratrol compound in a 28-day phase 1 trial to test the safety of the drug and to see how it affects glucose levels.

Another report on this study: here.

Just about 10 days later additional cold water was thrown on the notion that resveratrol in red wine is responsible for the apparent benefits of wine drinking for cardiovascular health. Whatever virtues resveratrol may actually have, there simply isnt enough of it in wine to make a difference. Instead, other substances in wine are more likely to deserve the credit:

Forget Resveratrol, Tannins Key to Heart Health from Wine (11/29/06)

Resveratrol, a molecule found in the skin of red grapes, among other places, has been found to have a host of health effects, most recently prolonging the life spans of obese mice. But the natural wonder drug does not play a role in the beneficial effects of wine drinking, according to research published in the November 28 issue of Nature. "There are some fascinating effects of resveratrol in animal systems," notes plant biochemist Alan Crozier of the University of Glasgow. "To get similar doses into humans through red wine, you would have to consume more than 1,000 liters of red wine a day."

... Using the endothelial cells that line human artery walls, the researchers tested which compounds in wine had the greatest effect. The tests showed that flavonoids called oligomeric procyanidins--essentially condensed tannins, the compounds that impart bitterness to young reds--suppressed production of the peptide responsible for hardening arteries. Such procyanidins can make up as much as 50 percent of the bioactive compounds in a given wine, the researchers observed. "Resveratrol," Crozier notes, "is available at one one-hundredth or one one-thousandth of the levels of procyanidin." Corder adds: "The role of resveratrol in the health benefits of wine has been popularized without any scientific evidence to support it, given the amounts needed for these actions are approximately 1,000-fold greater than could be achieved by wine consumption."

Other reports of this research: here, here.

Unfortunately, some people have perhaps gone off the deep end where resveratrol is concerned. In spite of the tiny amount of it thats actually in red wine, some folks have actually invested their time in charting that amount in different wines and spinning fantasies about adding information on resveratrol content to wine labels:

Resveratrol Content Varies Among Red Wines (4/20/07)

“The long-term aim is for people to be able to go along to the supermarket and to be able to know at a glance the levels of resveratrol contained in the wines they are choosing,” said Dr Hoffman.

Such information, if ever provided, will serve no other purpose than (wine merchants hope) sell more wine, but otherwise be next to useless.

However, one should not conclude that resveratrol has been over-hyped and is nothing but one of the latest "neutraceutical" scams. The problem is that its a natural substance that hasnt been specifically optimized as a therapeutic drug – especially while in the form of just one biologically active trace ingredient in wine.

Many researchers, including David Sinclair, are hard at work to find a better form or chemical analogue of resveratrol. Sirtris Pharmaceuticals is also working hard to that end. The following article from January of this year profiles the company and its CEO. The profile is mostly from a business perspective, but theres a lot about resveratrol itself in it, so its worth reading, despite its length:

Can red wine help you live forever? (1/19/07)

[I]f [Sirtris] succeeds, its medicines may retard the onset or progression of a whole slew of age-related diseases, from diabetes to Alzheimers to cancer. The drugs may also have an extremely provocative side effect: They might extend life span. You have to go back to the advent of antibiotics in the first half of the 20th century to find such broad therapeutic potential.

Theres much more to say about Sirtris and about the related scientific issues of calorie restriction and sirtuin proteins. But that will have to wait for later.

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Further information:

Via Eye on DNA I see some new research by David Sinclair and others has just been reported, dealing with calorie restriction: New Clue To Why Eating Fewer Calories Can Help You Live Longer.

Theres a lot of information on resveratrol, as well as the related topic of sirtuins, at the Ouroboros blog. In fact, the whole blog is about the biology of aging. For resveratrol see here, and for sirtuins see here.

Tags: resveratrol, sirtuins, aging, longevity, diabetes, cancer, calorie restriction, caloric restriction