Human Achievement Hour

Human Achievement of the Day: Human Nature

by Michelle Minton on March 17, 2010 · 1 comment

in Odds & Ends

Leave it to man to improve upon mother nature. Sure, she’s got trees of every shape color and size, they rustle in the breeze, and produce life-giving oxygen, but can her trees produce jet fuel? Now, ours can:synthetictree

Over at Columbia University, professor Klaus S. Lackner has one-upped the natural world by coming up with a synthetic tree that can absorb carbon dioxide 1000 times faster than “old-style” trees and hundreds of times faster than windmill generators.

The “tree” uses plastic leaves that capture the carbon dioxide in a chamber. The carbon dioxide is then compressed into liquid form. The tree captures the carbon without the need for direct sunlight, which means that, unlike traditional trees, the synthetic trees can be stored in enclosed places such as barns, used anywhere, and transported from one site to another regardless of conditions.

Lackner says the captured CO2 could be used to create fuel for jet engines and cars, the two most common carbon emitters. In other cases, the CO2 could be used to enhance current production of vegetable produce.

klaus-lackner-of-columbia-uni1

The “trees” are similar to devices used to capture carbon from the flue stacks of carbon power plants, but the major difference is that these new trees capture ambient carbon from the environment at all times.

One thing this achievement highlights is how environmental problems can be solved by the free market. Rather than passing laws that simply mandate industry use less energy or emit less carbon dioxide, creating an effective way to reuse energy and create cheaper fuels is likely to result in systemic changes in the way energy and pollution are dealt with. With these “trees” the perception of emissions from naughty pollution to the wastefulness. Why freely emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when we can re-purpose it for cost-effective fuels?

Human Achievement of the Day: the Robo-Toilet

by Michelle Minton on March 16, 2010 · 1 comment

in Odds & Ends

Since the very first man installed the very first toilet inside the home, women have been there to nag him to put down the toilet seat. A new invention created by the Danish toilet seat company Pressalit may soon change all of that:

The AutoClose loo keeps track on you using an infra-red beam – and will raise and lower the seat accordingly. The seat closes automatically after you’ve stepped out of range

autoclose-toilet-seat

While this new innovation is something to be applauded for the millions of men who are too lazy/don’t care to put down the toilet seat and their vexed female housemates too lazy/hurried to look before they sit, this is just a small improvement on one of mankind’s greatest achievements: the indoor Crapper.

The idiomatic expression used above might verge on vulgarity, but the term “Crapper” has historical significance. The flush toilet’s apparent champion, Thomas P. Crapper, should be lauded as an innovator (I should note that the term “crap” has a different suspected origin). Like Edison for widespread electricity usage, Thomas Crapper seems in part responsible for the thomas-crapperimplementation of indoor plumbing–an achievement that should not be overlooked. Where there was no plumbing or waste management human populations were, historically, ravaged by disease and death.

Before the Black Death struck down ~400 million in the 14th century (with additional waves sweeping Europe and elsewhere for hundreds of years), the bubonic plague decimated the emperor Justinian’s Byzantine empire in 541-542 AD.

While these diseases probably would have spread even if a city-wide system of waste management was implemented at the time, anecdotal evidence provides reason to believe that it would have been far less severe.

For instance, one of the few places with plumbing, Canterbury monastery, escaped unscathed during the darkest days of the plague in London.

So, when you find yourself in the bathroom on March 27th take a minute to stop and appreciate the human achievement that just might have saved civilization.

Human Achievement of the (Fri)Day:Let’s have a BioBeer

by Michelle Minton on March 12, 2010

in Odds & Ends

Thank the calendars it’s Friday! Many of you have already left your jobs and are on the way to a pub to meet some friends for a few drinks, to have fun, and to relax. Well, imagine if your frosty mug of beer did more than plumping your ego and soothing your nerves…what if your brew of choice could extend and improve the quality of your life?

Imagine no more. In November 2008, scientists working at Rice University managed to create a yeast that can be used in the brewing process to create a beer with potentially age-fighting ability.

BioBeer, as it’s called, has three genes spliced into special brewer’s yeast that produce resveratrol, the chemical in red wine that is thought to protect against diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s and other age-related conditions.

Okay, it doesn’t quite meet the invented-in-2009 criteria, but it is just on the cusp…and so cool I had to bend the rules a little. Resveratrol is not only thought to prevent Alzheimer’s disease and heart disease, but it is also believed that it aids in weight loss.

Combine these developments with the recent news that the hops in beer is now thought to fight cancer and you have one powerful potion that could someday make the “beer versus wine” argument (at least in terms of which one is better for your health) obsolete.

Researchers at the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg have discovered that beer contains a powerful molecule that helps protect against breast and prostate cancers.

Found in hops, the substance called xanthohumol blocks the excessive action of testosterone and oestrogen. It also helps to prevent the release of a protein called PSA which encourages the spread of prostate cancer.

So tonight, when you raise a glass, raise it for the scientists working hard to identify the factors underlying disease and age-issues and come up with nifty and tasty ways to solve these problems. Cheers and remember to enjoy this particular human achievement in moderation.

Human Achievement of the Day: Knees on Sale

by Michelle Minton on March 11, 2010

in Odds & Ends

Today’s Human Achievement of 2009 highlights an oft overlooked benefit of defending individuals’ right to freely innovate and compete: technologies become more available and cheaper for everyone. After many centuries and countless individuals’ contributions to chemistry, medicine, and materials science an engineer at Stanford University created an artificial knee joint that will cost just $20.jaipurknee2

The new kind of prosthetic, dubbed the JaipurKnee, was created by Joel Sadler and his classmates at Stanford’s Institute of Design as a class project.

“We’re doing magical things in these classes,” Sadler said. The project’s presence at [Stanford's annual Cool Product Expo]was a callout to our students to be joel-sadler-of-standfordthinking in the mode of, ‘What am I doing in my education? How can I apply this to what I want to do in my life?’”

High-end prosthetic knees can range in cost from $10,000 to over $100,00 but the lower-end models provided little stability for the person because the design (a basic hinge) did not move in the same way a human knee would.

twenty-dollar-kneeOld models of low-cost knee joints used a single-axis joint, which rotated like a door hinge. They were unstable and unsafe for India’s varied terrain; the joint tended to buckle under weight, which could be physically as well as psychologically painful for a freshly fitted amputee.

Sadler’s team developed a new model out of a less costly oil-filled nylon polymer and is self lubricating. The design was based on the models of high-end titanium joints and has proven to be flexible and high-performing. While the estimated cost of production is only $20 Sadler noted that he expects the costs to drop even further–and he is correct. As technologies advance, as market saturation increases, as competition heats up, the costs and prices of technologies almost always decreases.

Human Achievement of the Day: Beam me up, Scotty?

by Michelle Minton on March 10, 2010

in Nano & Biotech, Odds & Ends, Privacy, Tech & Telecom

Today’s achievement doesn’t quite put us on the final frontier, but the successful transmission of atoms via teleportation by scientists at the University of Maryland is a quantum leap toward significant advancements in technology…maybe even human teleportation someday.

Brace yourselves; this post gets a little esoteric.

“For the first time, scientists have successfully teleported information between two separate atoms in unconnected enclosures a meter apart – a significant milestone in the global quest for practical quantum information processing.”

From what I’ve tried to learn, and I’m not pretending to understand all this, quantum physics theorizes that reality acts differently upon particles based on their size and that at the atomic and sub-atomic levels particles, such as photons, can simultaneously have properties of both energy and matter (armchair physicists: feel free to use the comment section to correct me).

Quantum information, such as the spin of a particle or the polarization of a photon, is transferred from one place to another, without traveling through any physical medium.

With the convergence of the principles of matter and energy, it makes sense that teleportation would be based on quantum mechanics…I think.

A team from the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) at the University of Maryland and the University of Michigan has succeeded in teleporting a quantum state directly from one atom to another over a substantial distance…

Our system has the potential to form the basis for a large-scale ‘quantum repeater’ that can network quantum memories over vast distances, says group leader Christopher Monroe of the Joint Quantum Institute and the University of Maryland department of physics. Moreover, our methods can be used in conjunction with quantum bit operations to create a key component needed for quantum computation. A quantum computer could perform certain tasks, such as encryption-related calculations and searches of giant databases, considerably faster than conventional machines. The effort to devise a working model is a matter of intense interest worldwide.

I think the scientists here are being a little modest. More than just a “considerably faster” computer:

Development of a quantum computer , if practical, would mark a leap forward in computing capability far greater than that from the abacus to a modern day supercomputer , with performance gains in the billion-fold realm and beyond. The quantum computer, following the laws of quantum physics, would gain enormous processing power through the ability to be in multiple states, and to perform tasks using all possible permutations simultaneously.

aspirin

My brain hurts now. Somebody Wonka me a bottle of pain killers. Is it too late to change today’s Human Achievement of the Day to Aspirin?

Human Achievement of the Day: Averting Armageddon

by Michelle Minton on March 9, 2010 · 1 comment

in Odds & Ends

No, I’m not talking about a bad Bruce Willis movie (science has yet to come up with a way to prevent box office boredom bombs). I’m talking about a device that scientists came up with this past September that will have the ability to redirect an asteroid if it’s on a collision course with Earth.

In the event that astronomers discover an asteroid likely to collide with earth (so long as we have a 20 year head start) scientists will launch the craft. It will then slowly pull the deadly planetoid out of line with our home world.

Researchers’ latest invention is designed with the goal of attracting asteroids towards itself using a small gravitation force on the cosmic object. Then the spacecraft would guide the asteroid away from the planet. Four low-energy ion thrusters would be used to help the spacecraft adjust its arrangement relative to the asteroid. The latter’s gravitational pull would be quite enough to move the cosmic object into a less dangerous orbit.

Why it is important: While the likelihood of a large asteroid colliding with the Earth is slim, it isn’t impossible. It would only take one of the many near-earth objects to cause serious damage.

The “gravity tractor” spacecraft will be able to divert an asteroid of up to 430 yards (393 meters) in diameter. Scientists consider that if the asteroid of such size hits the planet, the impact would discharge 100,000 times the energy of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War.

While 393 meters is no Texas (at 1400 kilometers across there is no asteroid in our solar system that large; the largest being just 900 kilometers wide) presumably, the larger the asteroid the more likely it is that astronomers will spot it early and this tractor can have more time to affect its path.  So, stop your worrying about the doomsday rock and give a cheer for a scientific advancement that could end up saving the lives of every human being on the planet!

Now, if they could just come up with a device to prevent bad sci-fi movies from hitting the box office…Your move Freeman

Superman picture via Newsarama.com
President Freeman picture via Pollsb.com

Human Achievement of the Day: Liquid Condoms

by Michelle Minton on March 8, 2010 · 1 comment

in Odds & Ends

To continue our daily series of human achievement highlighting, today’s post focuses on what could be the next great revolution in sexual health; the liquid condom.

In the US and much of the developed world sex is funny. And at first a new kind of condom might seem like a trivial advancement, especially considering the many diseases and conditions science has yet to address. However, the impact of this new innovation should not me overlooked. Since the dawn of human civilization pregnancy, childbearing, and sexually transmitted diseases have had been major contributing factors in the quality of life for human populations–especially the females in these populations. Preventing unwanted pregnancy and disease has, until now, largely been in the hands of men. This new technology may change that.

A group of researchers from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City have invented a vaginal liquid condom that is effective as both a contraceptive and in preventing the transmission of sexual disease including HIV, papilloma virus (HPV), chlamydia, and others.  What makes this “molecular condom” so revolutionary is the fact that it puts women in the driver’s seat. The liquid gel can be inserted into the vagina hours before intercourse and becomes a partial solid when it comes into contact with semen. The ramifications of this new device, which they hope to release in the next 5 years, will be huge.

March is Women’s History month: While I’m generally not a fan of damning or celebrating any grouping of individuals, I will point out that as a group the history of the female sex is one of marginalization, abuse, and disenfranchisement. To a large degree those abuses and lack basic freedoms persist in many cultures. In many countries women simply have no ownership of their lives or bodies–a fundamental principle to individual liberty. In addition to the benefits this liquid condom will provide to couples in developed countries, the new form of birth control and disease prevention has the potential to aid in the liberation and improve conditions of women in societies where their bodies aren’t their own and the risks are great.

Unfortunately for women in the countries with some of the highest rates of STD infection and least access to care, the decisions about sex are not often up to them. As this new technology becomes more available though, all of that may change.

Their goal was to protect women in countries with a high level of HIV-positive people by offering them a rather inexpensive way of contraception and protection when their partners do not wear a condom.

“We did it to develop technologies that can enable women to protect themselves against HIV without the approval of their partner,” says Kiser.

Not to be over-dramatic, but women around the world celebrating Women’s History Month should cheer the researchers behind this condom. They should credit human innovation and technology for helping women around the world take greater ownership of their bodies and their first steps toward freedom.

Human Achievement of the Day: Headache-free Liquor

by Michelle Minton on March 5, 2010

in Odds & Ends, Zeitgeist

March 27th at 8:30pm local time is Human Achievement Hour once again! In the lead-up to this year’s celebration of the event, we’ve decided each day to highlight one innovation or invention in science, technology, and business achieved in the last year that contributes to the ever increasing awesomeness of life on earth for human beings.

To start things off right our first Human Achievement of the Day centers on one of the most important human innovations of all time: booze! 

Beer is certainly one of my personal favorites when it comes to human invention. I am, however, not particularly fond of the experience the day after I’ve imbibed too much of this particular achievement. Luckily, according to this report at fox news, scientists have come up with a method of producing booze that reduces the likelihood of hangovers!

A team of researchers added extra oxygen to drinks and found that the body was then able to metabolize the booze quicker and eliminate the alcohol quicker – cutting down the after affects.

“Elevated dissolved oxygen concentrations in alcoholic drinks accelerate the metabolism and elimination of alcohol,” according to researchers In-hwan Baek, Byung-yo Lee and Kwang-il Kwon of Chungnam National University’s College of Pharmacy.

The only downside the researchers found was that the process also reduced the amount of time drinkers were actually drunk for.”

Now, if they can just come up with a beer-gut-free booze we’ll really be in business.

Brilliant picture via Atom.com

Light It Up: Earth Hour 2010

by Michelle Minton on March 2, 2010 · 1 comment

in Odds & Ends

March 27th at 8:30pm local time folks will be sitting in the dark to cast their vote for global climate action. While most of the folks participating in the event are selfishly and rightly motivated by a desire to live in a clean and beautiful environment (nothing wrong with that) most are unwittingly lending their support to a movement which seeks to throw humanity back into the dark ages. The implicit idea behind earth hour is that humanity’s existence, through our use of energy, clearing of land for buildings, and pollution-causing industry that produces the goods we use to survive and thrive on earth has a negative and unnatural impact on the world. This movement wants humanity to limit its productive ability and impede our ability to experiment and create freely. Some environmentalists see this type of celebration as communicating the “wrong message,” but perhaps it makes them uncomfortable because it gets a little too close to the truth. In this article from 2009

The founder of Climate Outreach Information Network, George Marshall was quoted saying:

“Asking people to sit in the dark plays very well to a widely held prejudice that ‘the greens’ want us all to go back to living in caves.” Darkness symbolizes fear and negativity (ever seen

furtado-earth-hour-fail1

a depressed teenager dress in all white?) while light symbolizes innovation, creativity, and everything else we love about civilization. There’s a reason that cartoonists put a light-bulb above characters’ heads when they come up with ideas. “

I couldn’t agree with George more. Celebrations like this promote the idea that humanity does not have a right to advance at the sake of the environment. Each wing of the movement has its own idea about what the acceptable limit of human impact is. Of course, I think a darkened light-bulb and a darkening world is a perfectly appropriate symbol of the environmental movement.

Apart from being ineffective at reducing power usage during the hour (admittedly, not the purpose) and ideologically abhorrent, the celebration is usually mind-bogglingly stupid. In 2008 Nelly Furtado celebrated the hour with a free concert–electrical sound system, floodlights, and all.  Other countries celebrated with concerts, high-powered telescopes (to view the extra dark night’s sky) and televised displays, disregarding the energy usage it took to produce all the elements involved and to transmit their celebrations to the world.

Last year the Competitive Enterprise Institute cheekily declared that anyone not sitting in the dark, naked in the woods was by default celebrating Human Achievement Hour–a holiday we created to highlight the innovations and discoveries made by human beings that improve the quality of our everyday lives and highlight the necessity of free thought. These include anything from using electricity to wearing clothing. We also asked folks to conscientiously pick out and utilize some of their favorite examples of human achievement. Some watched television, others listened to the radio, read a book, or a had a glass of beer.

This year we’re doing it again! For the second annual celebration of Human Achievement Hour we are highlighting some of the best innovations, discoveries, and improvements humans have made throughout the last year via our facebook group and twitter feed.

Vote for human ingenuity and freedom by celebrating Human Achievement Hour on March 27th at 8:30pm local time by turning your lights on.

LibertyWeek 36: We Go Green

by Richard Morrison on April 1, 2009

in CEI Projects, Podcast

Hosts Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist join Michelle Minton in welcoming you to LibertyWeek 36: The Green Episode. We begin our environmental adventure with an update on the high cost of renewable energy and the good news from the coal laboratory. We then pass on advice for drinking green in Beer News and celebrate the recent observance of Human Achievement Hour. This brings us to the featured interview with our distinguished colleague and author Steve Milloy – where we explore his new book Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Ruin Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them and its targets, from the Audubon Society to Zero Population Growth. Finally we round out the program with a little Olympic News.

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