Friday, July 31, 2009

Moon engineering

A great post about the lunar orbiter and the engineering success of that marvelous machine. To me it is like the bicycle of space probes; not the biggest, nor most powerful, but the biggest bang for the buck. Simple ingenious engineering, and a mark of how great the American scientific effort can progress when the politicians and administration keep out of the actual design and implementation.

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I don't want to take away for the feat that they accomplished, but to note how the current energy problem could be solved if the scientists were given free range. Currently we are told to make a wind/solar device that works such way... instead they should say; "give me electricity from the sun." The other big problem right now is the constant use of patents. As a scientist I hate patents. They bring the lawyers into the equation; if you think a politician or admin screws things up, try a lawyer!!!

Lastly, but still very important is this fact;

But of the first six Rangers, two failed to leave the Earth's orbit, one failed en route, two missed the Moon completely, and although the sixth reached the target, its cameras failed.

Errors are natural, and acceptable! But currently, if something blows up, or fails the whole project becomes threatened. This is dangerous and stupid! If we learn from our errors, then firing a failed team is losing your more experienced people! We can not be scared to fail; we must be excited to learn!

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

House cooling for small homes

The Tiny house Blog had a great post about cooling small homes. The majority of the post mentions how to reduce the heating of a home. I see many new constructions with southern windows covering the entire side of a hose, and without a square inch of shading. Theses home are only for the rich, because they must need AC on most of the year (not to mention how cold it must be at night in the winter...

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Here are some other links. From Build it Solar about window shading, and from doItYourself.org about redwood trellis.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Green Carier pathways

While I have a lot of work, it is wise to keep an eye open for new opportunities. In my case this is just being abreast of what work is out there. The Center for sustainable energy in San Diego has an upcoming fair on green jobs; costs $15 pre $20 door registration. Its on Aug 1st.. hope I'll close at hand to go...

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

How to read science papers; the kindel

It was a common sight of a scientists desk to have stacks of unread, or highlighted journal articles. When I was in undergrad and my masters these mountains were formed during long nights in the library photocopying journals. But with the publication online of the majority of journals, people started printing out their pdf files.

I've been reluctant, and have been trying several data base programs. Currently I'm using DevonThink which is ok, has a great search function (A see also function lets you look for similar documents) but this sticks me to a computer for reading. The program also works best when you import the documents, leading to big databases (mine are 1-4GB).

I've tried sending pdf's over to my iPhone, but the screen is a little small, and there is no way to mark up the pdf, or add book marks etc..

The Kindle seems to be a possible solution, but does not handle pdf natively, so back to exporting, and having several copies of the same article. To send in pdf's there are a couple of hacks or kindle functions that you can use.

To bring in files there is an open source project Savory with instructions well outlined on Jesse's blog.

So will I buy a kindle to read papers? Well, that is about 4000 pesos. So maybe next paycheck,(too bad the mac tablet still isn't out yet!!) but maybe. I'm still not sure about the service in Mexico. If you have experience on this, please comment. Cheers

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Saturday, July 04, 2009

Open access journals

Picture 1.jpgI've been looking for open access journals to publish in. One of the main ones we use is Optics Express. Its a little pricy, but free to read.

In Eileen's Blog she mentions a talk on this topic. I hope that more universities take this seriously. Its very disturbing that so much research is done on public funds, but the public has no access to their results.

One of the better know groups is the Public Library of Science (PLoS), but their journals are mainly medicine and biology related.

What I've found so far;

Open Renewable Energy Journal

The International Journal of Photoenergy; seems to be mainly chemistry type stuff

Geotermia, a Mexican journal on geothermal studies.

To find open access journals check out the Directory of Open Access Journals

Seems like OREJ is the best bet for what I'm looking at publishing. If you know of any other journals, please leave a comment.


Thursday, July 02, 2009

My back hurts!

Ya, thats all this is. Somehow I'm sitting badly. Here is a good page by ErgoSum consulting on proper seating posture. I was all wrong. I remember someone telling me to tuck your feet under the chair. Apparently that is wrong!

-Don't put your feet on the spokes of the chair

-Support feet on the floor, or on a foot rest if your feet don't reach the floor

-Adjust chair height for comfortable keyboarding


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Hopefully this helps.. but the chairs here are not the best I've seen. Really, I need to get back to exercising! Too lazy for my own good.

Funding in the lab; FOMIX

Until I get a blog set up as an eJournal in CICESE, I'll use this blog space to post some current notes. If you have ideas, feel free to comment..

Grant funding FOMIX

Damanda 4.2; Estudio de factibilidad para la creación del Parque Tecnológico en el Municipio de Ensenada.

I've been wanting to make a hacker space and a sustainable energy center here in Ensenada. Its a bit a stretch to call them a Tech Park, but they would accomplish much of what they want (I think.)

desarrollo de empresas de alto valor ; There is not really the type of people here to make new things, mainly there are a lot of people who follow the status quo. But a hacker space would combine the engineer with the artist, and that could make something; basically we need to bring Hacking and the Hacker Ethic into the Mexican culture.

A sustainable energy center may do something similar, but again there really is no industry here making anything for energy production.

But they want incubación de empresas de alta tecnología , and that gets back to hacker spaces.

Demanda 4.6 Fortalecimiento a la industria asociada a la generación y manejo de energías renovables no convencionales para el estado de Baja California. Modalidad A Investigación científica aplicada

While this seems to be set for our lab, they seem to focus on renewable energy for helping big industry. That mean finding new sources for their existing machinery; which means electricity, or gas. I've been trying to avoid electrical production, it is very hard to be cheaper then gas. Ideally I'd like to try something like industrial hot water heating. Maybe after we have a lab built with some decent solar collectors we can look again at stirling engines or concentrated photovoltaic, but not right away. We'll see if they like industrial hot water production, or maybe solar desalinization?

Water car; free energy

Here is an response I sent to someone who sent me the below video.

WebIslam

and my response (sorry, it is in bad spanish)

Hola ____:

No soy tan seguro de que proceso hablan, pero fue algo similar aquí:

Se llama Oxyhydrogen y hay buen referencia aquí:

La proceso necesita mas emergía para separar la agua que produce en energía mecánico o termal.

Hay otra procesos similar que se llama 'water car';

Es posible que este puede subir la eficiencia de la carro, pero otros tecnologías como frenos rejuvenecer que son mas simple, y menos pelegroso (no tiene H2); entonces su uso en muchos autos hibridos.

Gracias para la link. Si ves otras cosas interesante por favor mandaremos.. mientras muchos ideas son mal ciencia, algunos tiene material muy internaste y bueno!

Saludos

Rodger


note:
just remember, until we figure out some completely new relm of science (I have no idea what that could be, other universes, multidimension etc,) in our daily experience energy can never be free! So when you see "Free Energy" the first thing that you should think is.. 'most likely bull shit!'