Bidatzi writes here

The Linguistic Genius of Babies: States essentially the same as...

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 09:46:00 +0100

The Linguistic Genius of Babies: States essentially the same as Barbara Zurer’s “Raising a Bilingual Child”, which has been of immense help for me, but it’s cool to see it well presented in a video.

Crazy-shaped gears. The math behind those is beautiful

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 21:49:04 +0100

Crazy-shaped gears. The math behind those is beautiful

On energy, its sources, storage and uses

Fri, 24 Dec 2010 19:14:00 +0100

This is a conversation that I have a lot. Usually with smart, curious people that are interested in our eternal “energy dilemma”. There are A LOT of fundamental misconceptions in our public energy debate, most of them perpetuated by interested parties.

One glaring example is the promise of the so-called hydrogen economy. Let’s cut to the chase. One very easy and convenient way of obtaining usable energy is to just burn stuff. It can be oil, coal, wood, natural gas, hydrogen. A lot of stuff burns nicely. You can convert that energy into mechanical movement and use it directly, or transform that movement into electricity.

We need energy in many different places and for different purposes. In some cases, it’s more convenient to transport the stuff-to-burn and in other cases it’s better to transport the electricity.

This duality is a source of confusion: yes, electricity and chemical fuels are form of transporting energy. BUT chemical (fossil) fuels are also a source of energy. To transport electricity we first need to turn some other form of energy into electricity. To transport oil we just need to pump it from the ground.

So, what about hydrogen again? It’s an abundant element, it burns nicely (producing water and heat as outputs). But there’s a (fatal) catch. The form of hydrogen we need is molecular hydrogen (H2) and there’s NONE of it floating around. Hydrogen is easily captured by other elements and most of what we have is in water, hydrocarbons, etc.

Wait a second, isn’t that actually a good thing? We take water, take the hydrogen out of it, use it for our energy needs (burning it) and we get water again! It’s a closed, endless process! Alas, no. For that sad negative we have to thank the 2nd law of thermodynamics, the greatest killjoy in all of science. Really, if there is a God somewhere*, I will never forgive him for imposing the 2nd law of thermodynamics on us. What this law means, in lay terms, is that you can not get back to the starting point without losing some energy in the process. So the hydrogen scheme looks like this, more or less:

You have a solar panel and produce electricity with it. Efficiency (I’ll be generous): 20% (You could use some other more efficient energy than solar, but I want to be hipster-eco-conscious here)

You take the electricity and use it to breakdown water and produce Hydrogen. Efficiency: 40%

Now you can do two things:

a) Store it in tanks (which is VERY difficult) so that you can use it wherever you want (like in a car, ship, etc.). You will burn it in your car. Efficiency: 40%.

b) You transport it (with pipes) so that it can be used in other places by burning it in, let’s say, a modern turbine or fuel cell. Efficiency: 55%.

Total process efficiency with either alternative is depressingly low (4%). And in the end, we’re using the hydrogen ONLY as a way of transporting energy that we already had converted into electricity. What is the freaking point of that!?

Transporting electricity is not a very efficient process (line loses are about 20%) but transporting hydrogen is HELL. Hydrogen molecules are very small and tend to diffuse into almost all metal alloys. So you lay a crazy expensive pipe network for transporting H2 and you have to scrap the whole infrastructure in less than a decade because all the pipes have become brittle from the hydrogen diffusion. You DO NOT want brittle pipes transporting an extremely flammable gas.

I understand the search: we want to be able to use primary energy sources other than fossil fuels but we lack the convenience that fossil fuels provide for storing energy. Fossil fuels are easy to move, have very high energy densities and burn nicely.

We have many good ideas for replacing these fuels with other sources (like the Sun, the wind, nukes, geothermal, tides, whatever…) but we don’t have many good ones for the role of fossil fuels as easily manipulated energy storage.

Hydrogen could conceivably be one such storage&transport medium. But it is NOT one today. There are huge engineering problems to be solved. And it will always be a process that requires huge over-capacity in generation because producing H2 is just stupidly costly (in energy terms).

Other alternative is using hydrocarbons but only as a storage medium, not as a primary source: bio-fuels. With bio-fuels, the theory goes, we have a renewable source (the sun will make the grass/soy/corn/sugar cane grow again) and we’re using the methanol/ethanol only as an energy storage medium. OF COURSE this produces CO2 (it doesn’t matter much if you simply burn the fuels or if you feed them to a fancy fuel cell, you will get CO2 as an output), but supposedly the same CO2 will be captured by the plants when they grow up again.

One last point about the misinformation: Regarding fuel cells, if they use anything different than pure H2, like methanol, ethanol, natural gas, gasoline, etc. they DO produce CO2. It’s just a little less than burning because they are (usually) more efficient, but they’re based in an oxidation of the fuel and there’s no way to do that without producing CO2. In the case of natural gas, modern turbines can be as efficient as any fuel cell on the market. They’re just less fashionable (and cheaper).

* There isn’t.

Claudio CC

Fri, 24 Dec 2010 13:02:56 +0100

Claudio CC:

If you want to read interesting stuff written by a very smart, no-nonsense, shouting nerd, go ahead: click.

Christmas lights, billionaire style

Sun, 19 Dec 2010 23:54:00 +0100

Does it snow in Minneapolis? Yes, it does. A lot.

Sun, 12 Dec 2010 21:19:34 +0100

Does it snow in Minneapolis? Yes, it does. A lot.

This guy built a functional version of the mind-blowing...

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 19:03:28 +0100

This guy built a functional version of the mind-blowing Antikythera mechanism with Lego!. I’ve always been fascinated by the Antikythera. You mix that with stuff like the Aeolipile steam engine and I would say that the ancient Greeks had a good shot at producing the industrial revolution 18 centuries in advance.

How the first transistor worked. Wonderful explanation by the...

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 15:54:00 +0100

How the first transistor worked.

Wonderful explanation by the always amusing Engineer Guy.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 15:33:55 +0100

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

I want to be Han Solo for Halloween.

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 20:38:55 +0100

I want to be Han Solo for Halloween.

Universal Gripper. Here is the paper. Featured at TEDMED.

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 20:09:00 +0200

Universal Gripper. Here is the paper. Featured at TEDMED.

Fall

Sun, 24 Oct 2010 15:23:13 +0200

Here it is! At long last, summer ended. In a few days we’ll have Halloween, Thanksgiving and then we’re off for holiday season, the best part of the year. And sometime between all that, Samuel will be born and change our lives forever.

A few days ago a friend from work gave us a bag of chestnuts she had picked in the country. And today being cooking day, and a nice autumn day, we couldn’t let the opportunity pass… chestnut stew! Here’s the list (serves four):

1 small onion
4 garlic cloves
1/2 red pepper
6oz smoked chorizo (red sausage)
1 coffee-spoon of each: cumin, clove, black pepper, pimentón (smoked paprika)
2 leaves of bay
2 pinches of salt
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 quart of water
2 lb. of pinto beans (soaked in water since the night before)
1 lb. of peeled chestnuts

Sauté the onions, garlic and pepper with the directly in the pressure cooker (we have a 2 gallon Kuhn Rikon and can’t speak good enough about it). Add the chorizo (shredded) and the pimentón. Stir for a minute or so and put in the chestnuts, beans, the spices and the water. Close the cooker and pressure boil for 18 minutes. Voila!

We’ve also roasted sweet potatoes with honey as a side dish. Yummy!

There’s only one thing missing for a perfect autumn day: New England

The Human Connectome Project

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 13:44:19 +0200

This is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting big-science projects going on right now.

The Human Connectome Project (HCP) is a project to construct a map of the complete structural and functional neural connections in vivo within and across individuals. The HCP represents the first large-scale attempt to collect and share data of a scope and detail sufficient to begin the process of addressing deeply fundamental questions about human connectional anatomy and variation.

It’s a multinational project with collaborators in the U.S, U.K., Germany, Switzerland, Australia.

Check out this TED talk on the subject by MIT’s Sebastian Seung:

Modern neuro-imaging is wicked cool.

(Via @aberron)

A kid and his dad send an HD camera to the stratosphere. This...

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 10:38:19 +0200

A kid and his dad send an HD camera to the stratosphere. This just made my week :-)

"It is extraordinary to me that the idea of buying dollar bills for 40 cents takes immediately to..."

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 16:46:34 +0200

“It is extraordinary to me that the idea of buying dollar bills for 40 cents takes immediately to people or it doesn’t take at all. It’s like an inoculation. If it doesn’t grab a person right away, I find that you can talk to him for years and show him records, and it doesn’t make any difference. They just don’t seem able to grasp the concept, simple as it is.”

- Warren Buffett

We call it Sunday morning

Sun, 12 Sep 2010 14:40:00 +0200

The cooking morning! So far today, we’ve prepared:

Octopus sautéed with red peppers and onions
Tuna, egg and tomato pasties
Curry & ginger chicken legs with mushrooms
Icelandic cod with zucchini and tomato
Pork loin with prunes, almonds and beer
Lettuce, green apple and smoked cheese salad

Yummy!

Zero to Three

Sat, 11 Sep 2010 19:24:42 +0200

Zero to Three:

ZERO TO THREE is a national, nonprofit organization that informs, trains, and supports professionals, policymakers, and parents in their efforts to improve the lives of infants and toddlers.

Their mission is to promote the health and development of infants and toddlers.

Never Forget

Sat, 11 Sep 2010 11:01:00 +0200

Never Forget

Bruce Berkowitz interview

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 19:14:17 +0200

Here’s a very good WealthTrack interview with one of my favorite investors: Bruce Berkowitz, manager of Fairholme Funds:

We don’t time (the market). We price.

Power line inspection robot

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:34:04 +0200

Power line inspection robot