Yesterday, we celebrated the birthday of my daughter (a real person, of course). Today, we’ll celebrate the birthday of a groundbreaking new law.
Continue reading Happy birthday, IRA
My buddy always laments that his heat pump doesn’t work well when the outside temperature is running cold. That’s because he has what can be called an ancient device (more than a decade old). There have been major improvements in the devices, which is why the recent tax law changes all provided tax credits to install heat pumps. Because now they work over a wide range of temperatures.
When I became a biochemical/biomedical engineer some 50 years ago, the focus was on human applications. This was long before genetic engineering, CRISPR, and the like existed in the scientific/technological domain.
Continue reading Bioengineering
What do we do with an energy solution that only works in various parts of the world? Simple- we make sure that it becomes the modality of choice where it works well.
Continue reading No, Now SWAK- but SWAC!
One of the big problems with many forms of renewable energy is storage. What do we do when the sun isn’t shining? When the wind isn’t blowing?
Continue reading The lightest of all
Here’s a new wrinkle. Our antibiotics are compounds that interfere with bacterial cell wall production, membrane integrity, protein biosynthesis, and DNA synthesis. But, given our overuse (and incomplete drug regimens), the microbes we hope to kill have already developed resistance to the antibiotics in our arsenal.
Continue reading Let’s get MRSA!
Imagine, if you were alive, you were back in 1975.
We’ve just endured the travesty of Tricky Dick. The Viet Nam war is finally over. A peanut farmer spent two years (a first in political circles) running for president and won. We’ve survived the Oil Embargo, when gasoline was rationed and life was dramatically curtailed. Skylab (not the space station) is in the sky and the two major warriors in the world jointly launched a test to make the space station a reality. Oh, and America is finally upgrading its wastewater treatment systems- some going to secondary treatment (which means removing more than sticks, stones, bones, and other large objects that were the focus of primary treatment; the new approach includes going after the biological load), with a few others advancing to tertiary treatment (removal of specific pollutants that were not biological).
Continue reading On a clear day…
Of the more bizarre things I learned some five or six decades ago was that everything has a wavelength. Yes, a car that weighs about a ton has a wavelength; albeit a small one on the order of 5 X 10-47 nm. And, when compared to the wavelength of red light, which is 700 nm, you can see that the wave properties of a car are pretty darned small- especially in relation to the effect of its mass.
Continue reading The theory says…
I’m guessing y’all want to know from where the title arises.
Continue reading MIT. PhD. M-o-n-e-y. 2
