Science and Technology

Difference | C.V, Resume & Biodata

2013-02-12T21:41:00.001-08:00

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Six Sigma implementation

2010-11-02T22:41:00.000-07:00

These software systems were non-existent at the time when Six Sigma was used for the first time in the late seventies by Motorola Corporation, but now they have become an inseparable part of each and every Six Sigma quality improvement project. This is mainly because business processes have become more complex over the years, generating mountains of raw statistical data that is virtually impossible to compile and analyze manually.

This is why it has become necessary for businesses to invest in advanced software systems that automate the whole process and make available the requisite information quickly and accurately.

What Makes Six Sigma Software Systems So Effective?

Well, it’s simply because most of these software systems are quite versatile. They can handle different types of raw data generated by different business processes in different functional departments that might exist in a business organization. Most of these software systems have essential inbuilt functionalities such as ‘data repositories’ that enable Six Sigma professionals to gain access to critical data as and when needed.

The best part is that accessing data from the repositories is quite easy and in most cases, does not take more than a few seconds. By using these essential functionalities, implementation team members are thus able to make the most accurate assessments of ongoing Six Sigma implementation projects. The functionalities also enable them to gauge the exact level of process improvements that might have been effected by the ongoing Six Sigma implementation projects.

Businesses are thus in a better position to identify potential mistakes and take corrective action as soon as possible.

How They Are Being Utilized?

Apart from data collection, storage, retrieval, and analysis, Six Sigma software systems also perform many other critical tasks such as selecting quality improvement projects that can be implemented in the least possible costs. The thing to remember here is that the software does this by analyzing data based on different criterions as might have been set by the Six Sigma professionals.

After analysis, the software generates crucial reports and results that make it easier for Six Sigma professionals to take the most appropriate decisions regarding project selection. This also helps in reducing interpersonal conflict - because when a decision is based on scientifically generated facts and figures, most organizational members associated with the implementations readily agree to it.

In most cases, the absence of interpersonal conflict helps to promote unity and harmony among those who might have been chosen to work as a team to achieve Six Sigma quality improvement goals and objectives.

Six Sigma software systems may be quite effective, but businesses should never forget that the effectiveness of these software systems depends a lot on the level of expertise of those who might be using them. This is why businesses should make it a point to provide the right training to everyone who might use the software.

It will help businesses to realize the full potential of these software systems, which in turn will go a long way in ensuring the success of the ongoing Six Sigma implementations.

A paper - Geomagnetic field reversals

2010-09-02T22:19:00.000-07:00

Magnetic minerals in 15-million-year-old Nevada rocks appear to preserve a moment when the magnetic north pole was rapidly on its way to becoming the south pole, and vice versa. Such “geomagnetic field reversals” occur every couple hundred thousand years, normally taking about 4,000 years to make the change. The Nevada rocks suggest that this particular switch happened at a remarkably fast clip.

" Magnetic Flip-Flops

Considering that ships, planes and Boy Scouts steer by it, Earth's magnetic field is less reliable than you'd think. Rocks in an ancient lava flow in Oregon suggest that for a brief erratic span about 16 million years ago magnetic north shifted as much as 6 degrees per day. After little more than a week, a compass needle would have pointed toward Mexico City.

The lava catches Earth's magnetic field in the act of reversing itself. Magnetic north heads south, and -- over about 1,000 years -- the field does a complete flip-flop. While the Oregon data is controversial, Earth scientists agree that the geological evidence as a whole -- the "paleomagnetic" record -- proves such reversals happened many times over the past billion years.

"Some reversals occurred within a few 10,000 years of each other," says Los Alamos scientist Gary Glatzmaier, "and there are other periods where no reversals occurred for tens of millions of years." How do these flip-flops happen, and why at such irregular intervals? The geological data, invaluable to show what happened, registers only a mute shrug when it comes to the deeper questions.

For that matter, why is it that instead of quietly fading away, as magnetic fields do when left to their own devices, Earth's magnetic field is still going strong after billions of years? Einstein is said to have considered it one of the most important unsolved problems in physics. With a year of computing on Pittsburgh's CRAY C90, 2,000 hours of processing, Glatzmaier and collaborator Paul Roberts of UCLA took a big step toward some answers. Their numerical model of the electromagnetic, fluid dynamical processes of Earth's interior reproduced key features of the magnetic field over more than 40,000 years of simulated time. To top it off, the computer-generated field reversed itself.

"We weren't expecting it," says Roberts, "and were delighted. This gives us confidence we've built a credible bridge between theory and the paleomagnetic data." Their surprising results, reported as a cover story in Nature (Sept. 21, 1995), provide an inner-Earth view of geomagnetic phenomena that have not been observed or anticipated by theory. Furthermore, the Glatzmaier-Roberts model offers, for the first time, a coherent explanation of magnetic field reversal.....more here ..."

Anyone carrying a compass would have seen its measurements skew by about a degree a week — a flash in geologic time. A paper describing the discovery is slated to appear in Geophysical Research Letters.

It is only the second report of such a speedy change in geomagnetic direction. The first, described in 1995 based on rocks at Steens Mountain, Ore., has never gained widespread acceptance in the paleomagnetism community. A second example could bolster the theory that reversals really can happen quickly, over the course of years or centuries instead of millennia.

Researchers aren’t sure why the geomagnetic field reverses itself. Many think it must have something to do with what creates the field in the first place — convective motions of liquid iron in the planet’s spinning outer core. As each flow cooled, it preserved the orientation of the magnetic field at the time, frozen like a tiny compass needle in the rock’s magnetic crystals.

One particular flow caught the scientists’ attention because it seemed to carry a complex magnetic history. The lava, initially started to cool and then was heated again within a year as a fresh lava flow buried it. The fresh lava remagnetized the crystals within the rock below, causing them to reorient themselves a whopping 53 degrees. At the rate the lava would have cooled, that would mean the magnetic field was changing direction at approximately 1 degree per week.

The Steens Mountain rocks have been reported to preserve a change of 6 degrees per day. That rate was so high — imagine trying to navigate when a compass changes by multiple degrees per day — that many scientists challenged the report. One line of argument held that the liquid outer core simply can’t generate magnetic field changes that rapidly. Another held that, even if the changes were happening, they wouldn’t be observable at the surface because the Earth’s internal electrical conductivity would screen the signals out.

" Steens Mountain looms on the horizon like a giant stone battleship becalmed on a vast, placid sea. Sixteen million years ago, a series of immense flows of lava gushed forth across those plains. Erosion has since claimed most of the lava flows, but the mountain remains, stretching 60 miles from north to south. Massive lava flows are common historically, but Steens Mountain contains geologic oddities so unexpected that they may profoundly alter our perception of the inner workings of our planet.

In the center of the Earth sits a dense core of nickel and iron, roughly 2,000 miles in diameter. Geophysicists, who study the Earth's interior, believe the inner core to be solid and the outer core fluid. A layer of solid rock 1,800 miles thick called the mantle surrounds the outer core. Atop the mantle rests the Earth's crust, the thin layer where mountains form, and wind and water wear them down.

Geophysicists think the fluid in the outer core circulates, with currents driven by gravitational and thermal forces interacting with the Earth's rotation. The currents are thought to travel roughly six to twenty miles per year.

This circulation in the iron-rich outer core generates the global magnetic field, the helpful force that guides not only compass needles but also, as biologists are finding, a wide variety of animals, from bacteria to seagoing turtles.

Yet the Earth's magnetic field is not as reliable as one might expect. Paleomagnetists, scientists studying the history of the magnetic field, learned 30 years ago that the polarity of the field occasionally reverses. If the field were reversed now, compasses would point south instead of north. Many scientists believed that these reversals happened slowly, in a series of short steps, taking roughly 5,500 years. But the rocks in Steens Mountain record episodes when the field was moving up to six degrees in a single day, a burst of speed over 1,000 times faster than expected. How the relatively slow-moving fluid in the outer core can generate such rapid changes is a mystery. .... more ..."

The last stable reversal occurred 780,000 years ago. Some geologists argue the Earth is overdue for a reversal and might even be entering one now, as the geomagnetic field has been getting weaker over the past 150 years or more.

But apocalyptic SyFy channel movies to the contrary, nobody should worry about waking up one morning to geomagnetic havoc. To geologists a polarity reversal is a nearly instantaneous thing that changes a global feature of the Earth — it’s really a spectacular phenomenon.

" Strictly speaking there are two types of polar reversal. One is the reversal of the planets magnetic poles and the other is a full geographical tilt of the Earth on its axis. While it is uncertain whether both would occur in tandem, some experts believe that the two are intricately linked. The last known reversal of the magnetic poles occurred around three quarters of a million years ago. Scientists point out that since there were no mass extinction's at that time the effects on existing life must have been relatively benign. Even so a magnetic polar reversal would result in a lessening of the planets magnetic field allowing harmful solar rays to penetrate to the surface of the planet.

Catastrophic event.

It goes without saying that a full polar reversal, involving the geographic poles of the planet would be a much different proposition to the relatively tame magnetic reversal. A full polar reversal would be a highly catastrophic event, capable of destroying all life on Earth. It would also fall into that category of event over which we have absolutely no control whatsoever. In fact there are those who believe that full polar reversals are no more than a routine - if catastrophic event which happen according to regular cycles built-in to the Earth’s rotational mechanism.

Repeating cycle.

In many ways the ancient world understood this cycle of events far more intimately than we do today. They understood that as one day gives way to the next, there were periods when the Earth quite literally convulsed in a huge fit of turbulence that was no more than a routine element of the planet we live on. A destructive cycle that was repeated again and again.

Plato.

The ancient Greek philosopher Plato in his dialogue The Statesman adds further to the mystery saying: “At periods the universe has its present circular motion, and at other periods it revolves in the reverse direction.....Of all the changes which take place in the heavens this reversal is the greatest and most complete.” Plato warns this period of reversal is far from orderly: “There is at that time great destruction of animals in general, and only a

Unbalanced Earth.

The exact reasons behind polar reversals are not fully understood. What we do know is that they tend to happen when there is a wide divergence between the magnetic poles and their geographic equivalent, as is currently the case. Another possible reason is that the Earth is grossly unbalanced. The greatest north/south ( see here for pic) area of landmass is immediately opposite the greatest body of unbroken Ocean, stretching from pole to pole. Since land weighs more than water, this makes one side of the world very much heavier than the other. It also means that given the force of some unsettling influence - possibly an asteroid strike, the planet could quite literally topple over on its axis.

Magma tides.

Another plausible reason for a polar reversal are the effects of vast streams of magma that flow beneath the Earth’s crust. It is thought that when these undergo drastic changes to their rate of flow the resulting surge is enough to topple an already stressed planet on its axis. This could happen when melting polar ice lessens pressure at the poles leading to a surge of magma into the resulting cavity, with catastrophic results.

Few survivors.

From ancient and scientific sources we can accurately predict that the next polar reversal is solely a matter of time. When it does happen it will be a catastrophe of epic proportions that will leave few if any survivors. We must therefore hope that its onset continues to delay itself for as long as possible...more... "

Difference between NPN and PNP sensors

2010-09-02T04:40:00.000-07:00

PNP sensor:- This is a sensor whose output pulls up to the positive supply rail when it senses a metal target. Thus any attached load to the sensor output must be connected between zero volts & the output of the sensor to operate. This type of sensor is very vulnerable to short circuits to earth ( zero volts), a common fault if the wiring chafes/ becomes damaged. Often it will fry under this type of fault.

NPN sensor: - This is a sensor whose output pulls down to the negative ( 0 volts) supply rail when it senses a metal target. Thus any attached load to the sensor output must be connected between the Positive supply rail & the output of the sensor to operate. This type of sensor cannot survive a short up to the positive supply rail ( a very rare occurrence!). Shorts to the negative rail (zero volts) will not damage it at all & it can tolerate this indefinitely. NPN sensors are current sinking devices and PNP sensors are current sourcing devices. You can't connect a current sourcing sensor to another current sourcing input (like TTL for example), it just won't work unless you provide a path to ground. Likewise a current sinking sensor must be connected to a current sourcing input. So you have to know something about the input circuitry of the device you're trying to read the things with.

Sensor Connection with PLC:

Other factors affecting choice :- If there is a PLC attached then :-
a ] If the input device of the PLC registers a logic high/true state when left open circuit then this type of input is best served by an NPN sensor. This will pull the PLC input low when a target is sensed.
b ] If the input device of the PLC registers a logic low/false state when left open circuit, then this type of input is best served by a PNP sensor. This will pull the PLC input high when a target is sensed.

How to find sensor is NPN or PNP :

1) Power the sensor from (usually) 24VDC.

2) Connect one end of a (say) 10kohm resistor to the sensor output.

3) Connect the other end of the resistor to either 24Vdc or 24 VDC common.

4) Actuate the sensor.

5) If switching at the sensor output happens when the resistor is connected to 24 VDC, the sensor is NPN.

6) If the sensor output switches when the resistor is connected to 24 VDC common, the sensor is PNP.

One way to find out would be to look at the load the sensor is currently driving. If it is a relay, for example, the sensor output will go to one coil terminal and the other coil terminal will go to one of the power rails. If it is the low side, your sensor is PNP; if the other side of the relay is the low side, you sensor is NPN. If it is presently not connected, you will need to connect two resistors in series across the DC power rails. 3.3k, 1/4w should do if your supply is around 24VDC. Now hook the sensor output to the point between the resistors and activate the sensor. If the sensor is PNP, the sensor output point between the resistors will go high, if it's NPN, it will go low.

How to test NPN and PNP sensor

Things You’ll Need:

• 3 wire sensor (DC voltage)

• digital multimeter

Step1

Set the multi meter to DC voltage. This is indicated by either the letters "VDC" or "DCV" or by a symbol which looks like 3 dashed lines over a solid line. There are usually several levels within the DC voltage setting. Choose the "600" level.

Step2

The power will need to be ON to perform this test, so use caution when attempting the following. Connect two of the sensor wires to the power supply. If the color combination of the wires is blue, black, and brown, then normally, the blue wire connects to 0v and the brown wire connects to positive volts. Touch the black meter probe to the 0V wire of the sensor. Connect the red meter probe to the signal output wire of the sensor. This wire is normally black. The meter should read "0."

Step3

Force the sensor to output. If it is a photoelectric sensor, block the photoelectric beam. If it is an inductive proximity switch, introduce a small piece of metal in front of the sensor. For an ultrasonic sensor or a capacitive sensor, you can just use your hand to make the sensor output. Be sure that the sensor is detecting the object. Many sensors have a small LED that illuminates when the sensor detects it's target.

Step4

Watch the meter display as you force the sensor to output. If the readout changes to a number between 10 and 30, then the sensor output is a PNP type, also known as "sourcing." If the meter display remains at "0", then the sensor output is an NPN type, also known as "sinking."

Step5

If you believe that the sensor is NPN, there is an additional test that may be done to confirm. Remove the meter probes from the wires. Now place the red meter probe on the positive voltage sensor wire, normally a brown wire. Touch the black meter probe to the signal output wire of the sensor, normally black. When the sensor does not detect it's target, the meter display should read between 10 and 30. When the sensor senses an object, the display should drop to "0." This will confirm that the sensor has an NPN type output.

Tips Warnings

• Be sure to make solid contact between the meter probes and the wires.

• Do not handle the bare wires!

• Always use caution when working with any electrical device

7 Solar Innovators

2010-07-10T05:26:00.000-07:00

1. BrightSource Energy (formerly Luz) is building solar power plants for utility and industrial companies around the globe. Combining decades of experience in designing, building and operating some of the world’s largest solar power plants, BrightSource is contracted to generate 2.6 gigawatts of power using its solar thermal technology. BrightSource and Southern California Edison signed the world’s largest solar energy deal in February this year.

Founded by Arnold J. Goldman, the company’s mission is to minimize its impact on the environment and to help customers reduce their dependence on fossil fuels. With more than $160 million in financing, key investors and clients include Google, PG&E, Chevron, Morgan Stanley and Vantage Point Venture Partners.

2. ZenithSolar develops solar energy power plants based on the technology of Prof. David Faimon of Ben Gurion University in the Negev. The core technology is a large optical dish upon which multiple flat mirrors are mounted. The company says that the system will harvest more than 70 percent of incoming solar energy (compared to industry averages of 10% to 40%). ZenithSolar already has a solar farm on Kibbutz Yavne that is supplying energy and hot water to 250 families. Investors include private business people from the US and Israel.

3. AORA (formerly EDIG) has based its technology on the shape of a flower. Alarmingly beautiful, the company focuses heliostats into the “petals” of its massive solar collector, which was revealed recently at the pilot plant in Israel’s Negev Desert. The world’s first solar thermal gas-turbine power station is based on the research of Prof. Jacob Karni, director of the Center for Energy Research at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel, and has been funded by EZKlein.

4. Tigo Energy aims to take a stab at squeezing more power from existing power plants. The company has developed a box that renders these plants more efficient. Tigo Energy’s technology includes a real-time, always on monitoring system that it has devised so that power plant operators can receive constant updates on the performance of individual photovoltaic panels. Investors include Matrix Partners, OVP Venture Partners, and the IDB Group. Sales of the Maximizer technology are expected to begin within the next few months.

5. Solel is one of Israel’s most talked about solar energy companies, up there with BrightSource and ZenithSolar. Building solar thermal power plants in Spain and the US, Solel has invested 14 years’ worth of R&D to improve the annual electrical output of solar fields. German electronics giant Siemens has just purchased Solel for $418 million. It is currently building plants in Spain, and a 553-megawatt project, the Mojave Solar Park 1, in California’s Mojave Desert. Major investors and clients include PG&E, Ecofin and private Belgian investors.

6. Di.S.P. Distributed Solar Power holds promise for industrial rooftops. Although there hasn’t been much about them in the media, based on the technology of Prof. Avi Kribus from Tel Aviv University, the DiSP solar collectors are small, but reportedly pack a lot of punch. According to their estimates, they will be able to collect up to 75% of the sun’s power and convert it to electricity. The technology is novel because it combines both a micro-sized solar concentrator and a heat transfer system, meaning that the sunlight can be used to heat water thermally, while also providing electricity to turn on your air con. In 2006, ISRAEL21c featured DiSP as the first in a series of articles about alternative energy solutions from Israel.

7. Enstorage. Based on the research of Prof. Emanuel Peled at Tel Aviv University, Enstorage develops low-cost energy storage systems for solar and wind powered plants. While the way the sun shines throughout the day is variable, Enstorage’s technology helps generate an even flow transmission back to the grid. Current investors include Siemens, Wellington Partners, Canaan Partners and Greylock Partners.

Home Automation Saves Energy

2010-07-10T05:20:00.000-07:00

Energy costs more these days -- and consumers are looking for ways to save money without taking a big lifestyle or financial hit. One option is home automation, which can help homeowners take control of energy use and shave dollars off their bills.

- How can home automation reduce energy use?

Home automation devices, incorporated into a new home or retrofitted into an existing one, can help manage heating, cooling and lighting systems to keep costs down. Energy-saving automation devices run the gamut from the basic (programmable thermostats and lighting controls) to the sophisticated (whole-house systems operated by a computer).

They can monitor the home and make adjustments to the heating and cooling systems, as well as lighting, based on predetermined criteria or information provided by sensors located throughout the house.

- What about costs?

The best news is that, with the convergence of digital and wireless trends, automated systems are now available less expensively than you might think. Today, we see systems that cost a fraction of what they did a few years ago, yet they offer the same or even better functionality.

A typical programmable thermostat costs anywhere from about $30 US to about $100, depending on the functionality. Typical whole-house automation systems can range from about $5,000 US to about $30,000, though start-up packages are available from about $1,500.

When integrating a home automation system into a new or existing home, you want to evaluate the initial cost, the expected return on investment, the ability to upgrade or expand the system, and the ease of use.

- How much can I save?

Even the most basic device -- a programmable thermostat -- can cut energy costs. Programming to set the temperature back 10 to 15 per cent for eight hours a day (from 20 to 15 C, for example) can save up to 15 per cent annually on your heating bill.

Combining conditional events, like occupancy detectors and seasonal shifts of schedules with heating/cooling control, can push that figure higher.

- What's right for my home?

Since the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system is the biggest energy consumer in the home, any device that automates its operation will translate to savings on your energy bill. For example, by incorporating a programmable thermostat into your heating/cooling system, you can create regular or special events that will set back the temperature and reduce energy costs.

While stand-alone control devices can realize some money and energy savings, going the whole-house route makes the most sense -- and ultimately can give you the most bang for your investment buck.

Experts divide residential energy management systems into three categories:

- Individual control devices -- essentially thermostats, these devices are programmable and inexpensive, but they don't take advantage of data and events collected from other systems, nor do they react in concert with other systems. Without that interaction, the benefits of these devices are limited.

Distributed control systems -- these systems enable the homeowner to program and manage multiple heating/cooling zones from a single controller. They offer more options than individual control devices but lack the ability to communicate fully with other systems in the home.

- Centrally controlled systems -- these whole-house systems, managed via a touch pad, remote control, PC or similar device, integrate a variety of components and systems. These include lighting, security and irrigation in addition to the HVAC system. They also use data collected from sensors and systems throughout the home to make adjustments to maximize energy efficiency and comfort.

Creating ultimate Solar cell with increased efficiency

2010-06-20T17:22:00.000-07:00

The scientists have discovered a method to capture the higher energy sunlight that is lost as heat in conventional solar cells. The maximum efficiency of the silicon solar cell in use today is about 31 percent. That's because much of the energy from sunlight hitting a solar cell is too high to be turned into usable electricity. That energy, in the form of so-called "hot electrons," is lost as heat.

"The term 'hot carriers' refers to either holes or electrons (also referred to as 'hot electrons') that have gained very high kinetic energy after being accelerated by a strong electric field in areas of high field intensities within a semiconductor (especially MOS) device. Because of their high kinetic energy, hot carriers can get injected and trapped in areas of the device where they shouldn't be, forming a space charge that causes the device to degrade or become unstable. The term 'hot carrier effects', therefore, refers to device degradation or instability caused by hot carrier injection.

According to the 5th Edition Hitachi Semiconductor Device Reliability Handbook, there are four (4) commonly encountered hot carrier injection mechanisms. These are 1) the drain avalanche hot carrier injection; 2) the channel hot electron injection; 3) the substrate hot electron injection; and 4) the secondary generated hot electron injection.

The drain avalanche hot carrier (DAHC) injection is said to produce the worst device degradation under normal operating temperature range. This occurs when a high voltage applied at the drain under non-saturated conditions (VD>VG) results in very high electric fields near the drain, which accelerate channel carriers into the drain's depletion region. Studies have shown that the worst effects occur when VD = 2VG.

The acceleration of the channel carriers causes them to collide with Si lattice atoms, creating dislodged electron-hole pairs in the process. This phenomenon is known as impact ionization, with some of the displaced e-h pairs also gaining enough energy to overcome the electric potential barrier between the silicon substrate and the gate oxide.

Under the influence of drain-to-gate field, hot carriers that surmount the substrate-gate oxide barrier get injected into the gate oxide layer where they are sometimes trapped. This hot carrier injection process occurs mainly in a narrow injection zone at the drain end of the device where the lateral field is at its maximum.

Hot carriers can be trapped at the Si-SiO2 interface (hence referred to as 'interface states') or within the oxide itself, forming a space charge (volume charge) that increases over time as more charges are trapped. These trapped charges shift some of the characteristics of the device, such as its threshold voltage (Vth) and its conveyed conductance (gm).

Injected carriers that do not get trapped in the gate oxide become gate current. On the other hand, majority of the holes from the e-h pairs generated by impact ionization flow back to the substrate, comprising a large portion of the substrate's drift current. Excessive substrate current may therefore be an indication of hot carrier degradation. In gross cases, abnormally high substrate current can upset the balance of carrier flow and facilitate latch-up.
"

If the higher energy sunlight, or more specifically the hot electrons, could be captured, solar-to-electric power conversion efficiency could be increased theoretically to as high as 66 percent.

Creating ultimate Solar cell -

First, the cooling rate of hot electrons needs to be slowed down.
Second, we need to be able to grab those hot electrons and use them quickly before they lose all of their energy.

As for the first problem, a number of research groups have suggested that cooling of hot electrons can be slowed down in semiconductor nanocrystals. In a 2008 paper in Science, a research group from the University of Chicago showed this to be true unambiguously for colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals.

"A quantum dot is a semiconductor whose excitons are confined in all three spatial dimensions. As a result, they have properties that are between those of bulk semiconductors and those of discrete molecules. They were discovered at the beginning of the 1980s by Alexei Ekimov in a glass matrix and by Louis E. Brus in colloidal solutions. The term "Quantum Dot" was coined by Mark Reed.

Researchers have studied quantum dots in transistors, solar cells, LEDs, and diode lasers. They have also investigated quantum dots as agents for medical imaging and hope to use them as qubits.

In layman's terms, quantum dots are semiconductors whose conducting characteristics are closely related to the size and shape of the individual crystal. Generally, the smaller the size of the crystal, the larger the band gap, the greater the difference in energy between the highest valence band and the lowest conduction band becomes, therefore more energy is needed to excite the dot, and concurrently, more energy is released when the crystal returns to its resting state. For example, in fluorescent dye applications, this equates to higher frequencies of light emitted after excitation of the dot as the crystal size grows smaller, resulting in a color shift from red to blue in the light emitted. The main advantages in using quantum dots is that because of the high level of control possible over the size of the crystals produced, it is possible to have very precise control over the conductive properties of the material.
"

Hot electrons can be transferred from photo-excited lead selenide nanocrystals to an electron conductor made of widely used titanium dioxide. "The demonstration of this hot electron transfer establishes that a highly efficient hot carrier solar cell is not just a theoretical concept, but an experimental possibility." The researchers used quantum dots made of lead selenide.

" SEMICONDUCTOR nanocrystals offer the opportunity to study the evolution of bulk materials properties as the size of a system increases from the molecular scale. In addition, their strongly size-dependent optical properties render them attractive candidates as tunable light absorbers and emitters in optoelectronic devices such as light-emitting diodes and quantum-dot lasers and as optical probes of biological systems.

This intermittency is not apparent from ensemble measurements on many nanocrystals. The dependence on excitation intensity and the change in on/off times when a passivating, high-bandgap shell of zinc sulphide encapsulates the nanocrystal8 suggests that the abrupt turning off of luminescence is caused by photo-ionization of the nanocrystal. Thus spectroscopic measurements on single nanocrystals can reveal hitherto unknown aspects of their photophysics.
"

"Lead selenide thin films are prepared by thermal vacuum evaporation technique onto glass
substrate, at vacuum of 10-6 Torr. Lead selenide powder (Merk) is used with the purity of
99.99%.The experimental arrangement is permitted to prepare thin films samples under various conditions. The thicknesses of the films ranging 500, 1000 and 2000Ǻ are measured by a quartz crystal monitor method. The structural analysis of films is performed by X-ray diffractometer. The surface morphology of the films is investigated by means of atomic force
microscopy (AFM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The transmission and absorption spectra are recorded using FTIR spectrophotometer in the range of 2500-5000nm, at room temperature.

"

This is just one scientific step, and that more science and a lot of engineering need to be done before the world sees a 66 percent efficient solar cell. "If electrons are taken out from the solar cell that are this fast, or hot, there is also lose energy in the wire as heat.

Science in Photos

2010-06-11T05:26:00.000-07:00

Rat Neurons stained with chicken anti-NF-H (green). The NF-H antibody was used at a dilution of 1:100,000 using our standard fixation and staining procedure.

Neuro Science

Optical illusion

Nuclear Bombardment

Basic Science - Photosynthesis

2010-05-12T05:10:00.000-07:00

Photosynthesis is the process by which plants, some bacteria, and some protistans use the energy from sunlight to produce sugar, which cellular respiration converts into ATP, the "fuel" used by all living things. The conversion of unusable sunlight energy into usable chemical energy, is associated with the actions of the green pigment chlorophyll. Most of the time, the photosynthetic process uses water and releases the oxygen that we absolutely must have to stay alive. Oh yes, we need the food as well!

We can write the overall reaction of this process as:

6H₂O + 6CO₂ ----------> C₆H₁₂O₆+ 6O₂

The mosquito life cycle

2010-05-10T03:36:00.001-07:00

The mosquito life cycle has four stages – egg, larvae, pupa and adult.

Mosquito eggs are deposited singly or clustered in egg rafts on the water surface. Once the egg hatch, mosquitoes develop into the larval stage where they feed and grow. They then progress to a non-feeding pupal stage and finally emerge as an adult. The life cycle is complete in seven to 10 days in warmer weather and up to two months in cool, spring weather.

Igneous rocks

2010-05-10T03:34:00.001-07:00

Igneous rocks are aggregates of minerals that crystallize from molten material that is generated within the earth's mantle. The heat to generate this molten material comes from within the earth. The type of igneous rock formed depends on a number of factors, including the original composition of the magma, the rate of cooling, and the reactions that occurred within the magma as cooling took place.

Igneous rocks are widely studied for many reasons. First, many people live close enough to volcanoes to be killed by explosive eruptions or huge landslides triggered by eruptions. Geologists study the ancient deposits of volcanoes to understand their likely future eruptive style. Second, the bulk of the Earth's crust, both continental and oceanic, is made of igneous rocks. Third, igneous rocks commonly form at tectonic plate boundaries; hence, the study of ancient igneous rocks tells us a great deal about the history of the Earth. Finally, hot magmas drive circulation of a lot of hot water. These hot fluids pick up a number of important metals and can deposit them to create meta ore deposits.

Renewable Energy from Ocean

2010-05-01T20:56:00.000-07:00

Power is currently being harvested from the ocean in two different ways:

There are three basic ways to tap the ocean for its energy. We can use the ocean's waves, we can use the ocean's high and low tides, or we can use temperature differences in the water. Let's take a look at each.

Wave Energy
Kinetic energy (movement) exists in the moving waves of the ocean. That energy can be used to power a turbine. In this simple example, to the right, the wave rises into a chamber. The rising water forces the air out of the chamber. The moving air spins a turbine which can turn a generator.

When the wave goes down, air flows through the turbine and back into the chamber through doors that are normally closed.

This is only one type of wave-energy system. Others actually use the up and down motion of the wave to power a piston that moves up and down inside a cylinder. That piston can also turn a generator.

Most wave-energy systems are very small. But, they can be used to power a warning buoy or a small light house.

Tidal Energy

Pictures of La Rance Tidal Station Another form of ocean energy is called tidal energy. When tides comes into the shore, they can be trapped in reservoirs behind dams. Then when the tide drops, the water behind the dam can be let out just like in a regular hydroelectric power plant.

Tidal energy has been used since about the 11th Century, when small dams were built along ocean estuaries and small streams. the tidal water behind these dams was used to turn water wheels to mill grains.

In order for tidal energy to work well, you need large increases in tides. An increase of at least 16 feet between low tide to high tide is needed. There are only a few places where this tide change occurs around the earth. Some power plants are already operating using this idea. One plant in France makes enough energy from tides (240 megawatts) to power 240,000 homes.

This facility is called the La Rance Station in France. It began making electricity in 1966. It produces about one fifth of a regular nuclear or coal-fired power plant. It is more than 10 times the power of the next largest tidal station in the world, the 17 megawatt Canadian Annapolis station.

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC)

The idea is not new. Using the temperature of water to make energy actually dates back to 1881 when a French Engineer by the name of Jacques D'Arsonval first thought of OTEC. The final ocean energy idea uses temperature differences in the ocean. If you ever went swimming in the ocean and dove deep below the surface, you would have noticed that the water gets colder the deeper you go. It's warmer on the surface because sunlight warms the water. But below the surface, the ocean gets very cold. That's why scuba divers wear wet suits when they dive down deep. Their wet suits trapped their body heat to keep them warm.

Power plants can be built that use this difference in temperature to make energy. A difference of at least 38 degrees Fahrenheit is needed between the warmer surface water and the colder deep ocean water.

Advantages of Tidal and Wave Generators

Today’s most promising water-based generators operate something like floating wind turbines anchored to the sea floor. Moving ocean water creates pressure that turns a hydraulic turbine, which in turn is linked to a generator that converts the hydraulic energy into electricity.

Ocean-powered generators have important advantages over both conventional forms of power and other renewable energy alternatives, such as wind and solar power. Ocean-generated energy is:

* Clean. Unlike coal, oil, or nuclear energy, the electricity produced by tidal or wave generators is emission free. Powering houses with ocean-generated electricity could potentially save millions of tons of carbon emissions each year.
* Unobtrusive. Ocean-borne generators ride the waves without protruding above the water’s surface, so they don’t obstruct views the way today’s huge wind turbines can.
* Consistent. Waves and tidal movements are predictable and occur all year round, so ocean generators aren’t affected by clouds or seasonal changes as solar collectors are.

Moving from Experimental Technology to Commercial Reality

Wave and tidal generators are currently in advanced phases of testing or initial commercial operation in several locations around the world. A tidal current generator developed by Sea Generation Ltd. began operating in Northern Ireland’s Strangford Lough in June, 2007, with a potential capacity of 1.2 megawatts. A wave farm consisting of three generators built by Pelamis Wave Power opened off Portugal in September, 2008. Operating at full capacity, the farm can generate enough electricity to power more than 1,500 houses. Both of those projects, though, have been dogged by technical problems caused by the harsh ocean environment.

British company Checkmate Seaenergy developed a new, simpler generator, the Anaconda Wave Energy Converter, to help combat breakdowns caused by the corrosive effects of seawater. While the Seagen and Pelamis turbines are primarily made of metal, the Anaconda is made mainly from fabric and rubber.

A small-scale Anaconda generator has just completed testing in a tank in Hampshire, England. If the tests prove successful, larger versions of the power generator will be tested in the ocean. Checkmate Seaenergy, the Anaconda’s maker, hopes to have wave generators in commercial production by 2014.

Future Prospects for Renewable Energy from the Ocean

Many governments have set ambitious targets for generating electricity from renewable sources. The European Union plans to generate 20% of its electricity from renewables by the year 2020. The United States recently set a target of generating 25% of all electricity renewably by 2025.

As with many new technologies, getting the funding to overcome technical problems and test new installations is one of the major obstacles standing between ocean-power generation and commercial success. Even in a difficult economic climate, the new water-powered generators are promising enough that governments and private companies are pressing ahead with plans to generate a small but significant part of their electricity needs from the ocean.

Generating technologies for deriving electrical power from the ocean include tidal power, wave power, ocean thermal energy conversion, ocean currents, ocean winds and salinity gradients. Of these, the three most well-developed technologies are tidal power, wave power and ocean thermal energy conversion. Tidal power requires large tidal differences which, in the U.S., occur only in Maine and Alaska. Ocean thermal energy conversion is limited to tropical regions, such as Hawaii, and to a portion of the Atlantic coast. Wave energy has a more general application, with potential along the California coast. The western coastline has the highest wave potential in the U.S.; in California, the greatest potential is along the northern coast.

Energy

California has more than 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) of coastline, and the combined average annual deep water wave power flux is over 37,000 megawatts (MW) of which an upper limit of about 20 percent could be converted into electricity. This is sufficient for about 23 percent of California's current electricity consumption. However, economics, environmental impacts, land-use and grid interconnection constraints will likely impose further limits to how much of the resource can be extracted. Although technology is still at a relatively immature pilot project stage, economic projections indicate that ocean energy could become cost-competitive over the long-term.

Current Pilot Projects

In the spring of 2009, the Sonoma County Water District applied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for three wave project preliminary permits. The projects will be located in state waters offshore Del Mar Landing (the northwestern portion of the county) and off Fort Ross further to the south. Each of the three projects would begin as pilots in the two to five megawatt (MW) range, could potentially expand to commercial facilities in the 40-200 MW range, and would include substations, transmission lines, appurtenant facilities, and submersible electric cables.

With these applications, the total number of FERC permits and applications for wave and tidal projects in California waters totals twelve.

Wave Energy

Wave energy conversion takes advantage of the ocean waves caused primarily by interaction of winds with the ocean surface. Wave energy is an irregular and oscillating low-frequency energy source that must be converted to a 60-Hertz frequency before it can be added to the electric utility grid.

Although many wave energy devices have been invented, only a small proportion have been tested and evaluated. Furthermore, only a few have been tested at sea, in ocean waves, rather than in artificial wave tanks.

As of the mid-1990s, there were more than 12 generic types of wave energy systems. Some systems extract energy from surface waves. Others extract energy from pressure fluctuations below the water surface or from the full wave. Some systems are fixed in position and let waves pass by them, while others follow the waves and move with them. Some systems concentrate and focus waves, which increases their height and their potential for conversion to electrical energy.

A wave energy converter may be placed in the ocean in various possible situations and locations. It may be floating or submerged completely in the sea offshore or it may be located on the shore or on the sea bed in relatively shallow water. A converter on the sea bed may be completely submerged, it may extend above the sea surface, or it may be a converter system placed on an offshore platform. Apart from wave-powered navigation buoys, however, most of the prototypes have been placed at or near the shore

The visual impact of a wave energy conversion facility depends on the type of device as well as its distance from shore. In general, a floating buoy system or an offshore platform placed many kilometers from land is not likely to have much visual impact (nor will a submerged system). Onshore facilities and offshore platforms in shallow water could, however, change the visual landscape from one of natural scenery to industrial

The incidence of wave power at deep ocean sites is three to eight times the wave power at adjacent coastal sites. The cost, however, of electricity transmission from deep ocean sites is prohibitively high. Wave power densities in California's coastal waters are sufficient to produce between seven and 17 megawatts (MW) per mile of coastline

According to the European Union, "Among the different converters capable of exploiting wave power, the most advanced is unquestionably the Pelamis Wave Energy Converter, a kind of "undulating sea serpent" developed by Ocean Power Delivery. This technology is the object of a commercial contract for installation of a farm in Portugal. In 2007, three machines, with a total capacity of 2.25 megawatts (MW(, are in installation phase, and should be joined by 27 others in the years to come. Another 5 MW project is being studied for England this time."
None of these plants are located in California, although economic feasibility studies have been performed for a 30 MW wave converter to be located at Half Moon Bay. Additional smaller projects have been discussed at Fort Bragg, San Francisco and Avila Beach. There are currently no firm plans to deploy any of these projects

As of the mid-1990s, wave energy conversion was not commercially available in the United States. The technology was in the early stages of development and was not expected to be available within the near future due to limited research and lack of federal funding. Research and development efforts are being sponsored by government agencies in Europe and Scandinavia

Many research and development goals remain to be accomplished, including cost reduction, efficiency and reliability improvements, identification of suitable sites in California, interconnection with the utility grid, better understanding of the impacts of the technology on marine life and the shoreline. Also essential is a demonstration of the ability of the equipment to survive the salinity and pressure environments of the ocean as well as weather effects over the life of the facility

Permitting Issues. Some of the issues that may be associated with permitting an ocean wave energy conversion facility include:

* Disturbance or destruction of marine life (including changes in the distribution and types of marine life near the shore)
* Possible threat to navigation from collisions due to the low profile of the wave energy devices above the water, making them undetectable either by direct sighting or by radar. Also possible is the interference of mooring and anchorage lines with commercial and sport-fishing.
* Degradation of scenic ocean front views from wave energy devices located near or on the shore, and from onshore overhead electric transmission lines

Tidal Energy

Another form of ocean energy is called tidal energy. When tides comes into the shore, they can be trapped in reservoirs behind dams. Then when the tide drops, the water behind the dam can be let out just like in a regular hydroelectric power plant.

Tidal energy has been used since about the 11th Century, when small dams were built along ocean estuaries and small streams. the tidal water behind these dams was used to turn water wheels to mill grains.

In order for tidal energy to work well, you need relateivel large increases in tides. An increase of at least 16 feet between low tide to high tide is generally needed. There are only a few places where this tide change occurs around the earth. Some power plants are already operating using this idea.

According to the European Union:

"Ninty percent of today's worldwide ocean energy production is represented by a single site: the La Rance Tidal Power Plant (240 MW) that was commissioned in 1966. This type of installation has remained unique in the world and has only been reproduced at much smaller capacities in Canada (20 MW), China (5 MW) and Russia (0.4 MW).

"This type of project was abandoned for many years because of very high initial investment costs as well as the strong local impact that results from it. However, the present economic situation has encouraged South Korea to build a 260 MW dam closing off Sihwa Lake, which is set to be commissioned in 2009. Lighter new techniques, like hydro turbines, are being developed today to harness ocean currents. The leader in this field, the British company, Marine Current Turbine (MCT), should install 1.2MW in Northern Ireland following its 300 kW pilot project in Bristol Bay."

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC)

The idea of using the temperature of water to make energy actually dates back to 1881 when a French Engineer by the name of Jacques D'Arsonval first thought of OTEC. The final ocean energy idea uses temperature differences in the ocean. If you ever went swimming in the ocean and dove deep below the surface, you would have noticed that the water gets colder the deeper you go. It's warmer on the surface because sunlight warms the water. But below the surface, the ocean gets very cold. That's why scuba divers wear wet suits when they dive down deep. Their wet suits trapped their body heat to keep them warm.

Power plants can be built that use this difference in temperature to make energy. A difference of at least 38 degrees Fahrenheit is needed between the warmer surface water and the colder deep ocean water. The cold ocean water can also be used to cooling buildings, and desalinated water is often a by-product.

Micro images of Body Parts

2010-05-01T20:49:00.000-07:00

Get up close and personal with your innards with these 15 amazing 3D-body shots.

Almost all of the following images were captured using a scanning electron microscope (SEM), a type of electron microscope that uses a beam of high-energy electrons to scan surfaces of images.

The electron beam of the SEM interacts with atoms near or at the surface of the sample to be viewed, resulting in a very high-resolution, 3D-image.

Magnification levels range from x 25 (about the same as a hand lens) to about x 250,000.
Incredible details of 1 to 5 nm in size can be detected.

1. Red Blood Cells

They look like little cinnamon candies here, but they're actually the most common type of blood cell in the human body - red blood cells (RBCs). These biconcave-shaped cells have the tall task of carrying oxygen to our entire body; in women there are about 4 to 5 million RBCs per micro liter (cubic millimeter) of blood and about 5 to 6 million in men. People who live at higher altitudes have even more RBCs because of the low oxygen levels in their environment.

2. Split End of Human Hair

Regular trimmings to your hair and good conditioner should help to prevent this unsightly picture of a split end of a human hair.

3. Purkinje Neurons

Of the 100 billion neurons in your brain. Purkinje neurons are some of the largest. Among other things, these cells are the masters of motor coordination in the cerebellar cortex. Toxic exposure such as alcohol and lithium, autoimmune diseases, genetic mutations including autism and neurodegenerative diseases can negatively affect human Purkinje cells.

4. Hair Cell in the Ear

Here's what it looks like to see a close-up of human hair cell stereo cilia inside the ear. These detect mechanical movement in response to sound vibrations.

5. Blood Vessels Emerging from the Optic Nerve

In this image, stained retinal blood vessels are shown to emerge from the black-colored optic disc. The optic disc is a blind spot because no light receptor cells are present in this area of the retina where the optic nerve and retinal blood vessels leave the back of the eye.

6. Tongue with Taste Bud

This colour-enhanced image depicts a taste bud on the tongue. The human tongue has about 10,000 taste buds that are involved with detecting salty, sour, bitter, sweet and savoury taste perceptions.

7. Tooth Plaque
Brush your teeth often because this is what the surface of a tooth with a form of “corn-on-the-cob” plaque looks like.

8. Blood Clot

Remember that picture of the nice, uniform shapes of red blood cells you just looked at? Well, here's what it looks like when those same cells get caught up in the sticky web of a blood clot. The cell in the middle is a white blood cell.

9. Alveoli in the Lung

This is what a colour-enhanced image of the inner surface of your lung looks like. The hollow cavities are alveoli; this is where gas exchange occurs with the blood.

10. Lung Cancer Cells

This image of warped lung cancer cells is in stark contrast to the healthy lung in the previous picture.

11. Villi of Small Intestine

Villi in the small intestine increase the surface area of the gut, which helps in the absorption of food. Look closely and you’ll see some food stuck in one of the crevices.

12. Human Egg with Coronal Cells

This image is of a purple, colour-enhanced human egg sitting on a pin. The egg is coated with the zona pellicuda, a glycoprotein that protects the egg but also helps to trap and bind sperm. Two coronal cells are attached to the zona pellicuda.

13. Sperm on the Surface of a Human Egg

Here's a close-up of a number of sperm trying to fertilize an egg.

14. Human Embryo and Sperm

It looks like the world at war, but it’s actually five days after the fertilisation of an egg, with some remaining sperm cells still sticking around. This fluorescent image was captured using a confocal microscope. The embryo and sperm cell nuclei are stained purple while sperm tails are green. The blue areas are gap junctions, which form connections between the cells.

Future with BioFuels

2010-05-01T20:47:00.000-07:00

Unlike their fossil fuel counterparts — the cadaverous remains of plants that died hundreds of millions of years ago — biofuels come from vegetation grown in the here and now. So they should offer a carbon-neutral energy source: Plants that become biofuels ideally consume more carbon dioxide during photosynthesis than they emit when processed and burned for power. Biofuels make fossil fuels seem so last century, so quaintly carboniferous.

And these new liquid fuels promise more than just carbon correctness. They offer a renewable, home-grown energy source, reducing the need for foreign oil. They present ways to heal an agricultural landscape hobbled by intensive fertilizer use. Biofuels could even help clean waterways, reduce air pollution, enhance wildlife habitats and increase biodiversity.

Yet in many respects, biofuels are in their beta version. For any of a number of promising feedstocks — the raw materials from which biofuels are made — there are logistics to be worked out, such as how to best shred the original material and ship the finished product. There is also lab work — for example, refining the processes for busting apart plant cell walls to release the useful sugars inside. And there is math. A lot of math.

The only way that biofuels will add up is if they produce more energy than it takes to make them. Yet, depending on the crops and the logistics of production, some analyses suggest that it may take more energy to make these fuels than they will provide. And if growing biofuels creates the same environmental problems that plague much of large-scale agriculture, then air and water quality might not really improve. Prized ecosystems such as rain forests, wetlands and savannas could be destroyed to grow crops. Biofuels done badly, scientists say, could go very, very wrong.

“Business as usual writ larger is not an environmentally welcome outcome,” states a biofuels policy paper authored by more than 20 scientists and published in Science last October.

Many scientists have expressed concern that political support for the biofuels industry has outpaced rigorous analyses of the fuels’ potential impacts. Others see this notion as manure. Research needed to resolve that disagreement is now underway, as scientists in industry, national labs and universities across the country are assessing every aspect of these fuels, from field to tailpipe. Researchers are growing crops, evaluating yields and comparing harvesting techniques. Computer models are providing stats on each crop’s effect on environmental factors such as soil nutrients and erosion. The plant cell wall is under attack from several angles. And chemists and microbiologists are cajoling an expanding menagerie of microorganisms into producing higher fuel yields.

Green goals

Ideally, high biofuel yields come with minimal environmental baggage and maximum efficiency at every step. The raw materials for these fuels run the gamut from corn to municipal waste to algae, and each has its own benefits and headaches. To make fuels, researchers must first process the raw material to create fermentable sugars or a crude oil-like liquid. Further refinement yields fuels such as ethanol, butanol, jet fuel or biodiesel.

In some cases, such as algae-based biodiesel, the technologies are far from mature. Squeezing ethanol from crops such as corn, on the other hand, uses a technology as old as whiskey. An infrastructure already exists for growing and moving grain, and distillation and fermentation techniques work at large scales.

But grain-based fuels raise several environmental issues, such as emissions of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide from heavy fertilizer use. So, many scientists see corn ethanol as a bridging technology for use until the next-generation feedstocks fulfill biofuels’ real promise. Nonfood plants rich in cellulose or even residual waste diverted from landfills may define the biofuel future.

Several studies attest to the benefits of fuels made from such feedstocks, although the degree of benefit varies depending on what factors are included in the analysis. Overall, dedicated energy crops such as switchgrass and waste residues from sources like commercial logging fare better than corn-based ethanol, concludes a recent modeling analysis and literature review citing more than 100 papers. Published online May 27 in Environmental Science & Technology, the analysis reports that municipal waste-based ethanol production emits an estimated 60 to 80 percent less greenhouse gas than corn-based ethanol production. Dedicated energy crops, especially when grown on marginal land, also fare better than corn in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, and require less water and generate less air pollution, report researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., and E Risk Sciences in Boulder, Colo.

Biomass BenefitsView Larger Version | Greenhouse gas emissions drop, and air and water quality improve, when switchgrass and forest residues from logging replace corn as a raw material for fuel, suggests a recent life cycle analysis. The chart shows the improvement relative to corn for these two next-generation biofuel hopefuls.Williams et al./Environmental Science & Technology 2009

Research also suggests that these new fuels will be priced competitively with gasoline from petroleum. A new assessment coauthored by Lee Lynd, head scientist and cofounder of the Boston-based ethanol start-up Mascoma Corp., found that the production costs of cellulose-based ethanol, when made on a commercial scale, could be competitive with gasoline at oil prices of $30 or more per barrel.

Both of these recent big-picture studies, while optimistic, call for continued research to improve existing production processes and better define each fuel’s associated trade-offs.

Such research is in progress at the Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls, where scientists David Muth Jr. and Thomas Ulrich take part in a coordinated, national effort to watch grass grow. In partnership with scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and at several universities, Muth and Ulrich are keeping track of more than 50 field trials of various feedstocks across the country. The researchers are growing switchgrass and Miscanthus, an 11-foot tall perennial grass. Energy cane, an über-biomass relative of sugar cane, is also under study.

The research suggests that there is not one silver bullet source for biofuels. While there are some generally desirable plant characteristics — such as needing few nutrients and flourishing on degraded land — the future biofuels landscape will likely be a patchwork of different sources that work best in different regions.

Energy cane, for example, has “huge yields, but it is a water sink,” he says. So it may be best for water-rich Gulf Coast states. Miscanthus, which has been tested in Europe for several years, produces very high yields and has the genes to withstand cold climates.

Part of biofuels’ allure lies in the variety of ingredients from which the fuels may be spun. The Idaho National Lab is also investigating strains of algae that pump out oils as a raw material for biodiesel. At other sites agricultural and municipal waste, such as straw stalks, corn cobs and tree cuttings, are under investigation. Some researchers are focused on crops dedicated to energy, such as prairie grasses, and fast-growing softwoods, such as willow, poplar and eucalyptus. A pilot-scale system for growing the diminutive pond plant duckweed on wastewater is underway at North Carolina State University.

In Idaho, Muth is also using several computer models to calculate the effect that growing and removing the feedstocks has on factors such as soil’s nutrients, carbon and water content. This information, along with yields and quality of plant material, is all being entered into a database to help predict which plants will grow best where.

Biomass breakdown

Bioenergy is not just about growing crops up, though. It’s even more about tearing them down. Biomass must be harvested from the field or forest, perhaps stored, and then shipped to a refinery for processing. Harvesting equipment, travel distances and processing methods must all be considered to determine whether biofuels make economic and energy sense.

“What is becoming a bigger and bigger issue to people is the logistics of it all — that’s becoming a barrier to the whole thing,” says J. Richard Hess, the technology manager of the Idaho National Lab program.

Power from PlantsView Larger Version | Scientists are studying biofuels from the field to the pump to make each step more efficient and environmentally friendly. Here’s a typical blueprint for ethanol production.Newhouse Design

An essential part of biofuel logistics is the preprocessing of plants — cutting, baling and hauling the bales somewhere for storage before transporting them to a refinery. Those preprocessing steps pose problems with a material that isn’t very dense or evenly shaped. “It’s like moving air or feathers,” Hess says.

Ideally, preprocessing would provide an end product that is uniform and easy to handle, like grain — the biomass equivalent of crude oil. “We’re not aiming for a certain size, but a certain density that’s easy to ship, is flowable,” says INL’s Christopher Wright.

Wright and Neal Yancey, also of INL, are trying to achieve the optimal density by finding the right balance of shredding and compacting, ultimately producing something like the alfalfa pellets fed to pet rabbits, or perhaps Matchbox car–sized blocks. This crude can then be shipped to a refinery to be heated into an oil-like liquid or broken down by enzymes into the desired fuel.

Breaking biomass down into fuel is no small task. The dominant method is known as biochemical conversion: processes that use heat, chemicals or enzymes to turn the biomass into sugars that can be fermented by microbes such as yeast into ethanol. This ethanol is the same whether its origins are corn or other biomass. But it is currently a lot easier to get the fermentable sugars out of a starchy corn kernel than from something like wood chips or a weedy grass.

Plant cell walls are about 75 percent complex sugars, but getting at these sugars is a bit like trying to get the mortar and minerals out of a castle’s rampart. Cell walls, one of the defining features of plants as a life-form, were made to resist degradation. Even termites and cows need special microbes in their guts to get the job done.

That’s because those sugars are embedded in a complex architectural structure called lignocellulose — cellulose (long, unbranched chains of glucose) embedded in a matrix of more sugars (hemi-cellulose) embedded in the tough, gluelike lignin. (Biofuels researchers refer to the “recalcitrance” of the cell wall, as if it were an obstinate child.) Not only did cell walls evolve for strength, they also are a primary defense against microbial attack, and critters that are up to the task aren’t common.

“Lignin is a highly problematic polymer from the point of view of processing, but an exemplary evolutionary achievement,” researchers at the University of York in England commented in May 2008 in New Phytologist.

To prep for the cell wall attack, plant matter is usually pretreated: the shredded, chopped or pelletized biomass is typically mixed with dilute acids or ammonia. At a biofuels symposium held in May in San Francisco, scientists presented work describing pretreatment with proton beam irradiation, steam explosion and microwave reactors. Ionic liquids — basically liquid salts — are also under investigation.

“Cellulose doesn’t liquefy in minutes to hours — it’s hours to days,” says Jim McMillan of the national lab in Golden. This step is the main bottleneck in cellulosic fuel production, Lynd and several other researchers conclude in a February 2008 commentary in Nature Biotechnology.

Lignin is typically removed after pretreatment and then burned in the refinery’s boiler, replacing some fossil fuel use. The remaining plant matter is then broken into simple sugars, typically by a cocktail of microbial enzymes known as cellulases. Other microbes are then called in to ferment the sugars into ethanol.

Breaking down cellulose with enzymes is usually a separate step from fermentation — and a very costly one. But recent attempts to combine the conversion of cellulose to sugars with the conversion of sugars to fuel — called consolidated bioprocessing — have been successful. A strain of the soil-dwelling bacterium Clostridium phytofermentans will happily munch biomass such as wood pulp waste and will ferment it into ethanol. That discovery, by microbiologist Susan Leschine of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, led to the development of Qteros, a cellulosic-ethanol start-up in Marlborough, Mass. And in May, Mascoma researchers reported the engineering of a yeast and the bacterium Clostridium thermocellum to produce cellulases and ethanol in a single step.

At the San Francisco conference, posters reported on investigations of even more enzymes from various sources: bacteria that live in the deep sea, penicillin, diseased sea squirts, the bread mold Neurospora, a yeast that grows on wood-boring beetles and soil microbes from a Puerto Rican rainforest. Scientists are also fighting recalcitrance from the inside out by breeding lines of low-lignin plants.

Of course, getting a lot of ethanol in a benchtop flask is one thing. Scaling up to a silo-sized bioreactor is another. Industrial models exist — such as wringing pulp from trees for the paper industry or mass-producing cornstarch. “But we haven’t done it with cellulose yet,” says McMillan.

More than a dozen pilot plants for producing cellulosic ethanol are under construction and a handful are operating, with 2011 seen as the year for cellulosic technologies to walk the walk. The group at Idaho National Lab hopes to be able to demonstrate a system from field to refinery by autumn of 2010.

Environmental cost

Yet concerns remain that the environmental side of the biofuels equation is still not worked out. Some argue that the numbers are too fuzzy to proceed with confidence that environmental burdens and benefits have been fully considered.

“There are people who say we don’t have enough knowledge to move forward — to some extent that is true,” says Michigan State University’s Philip Robertson, coauthor of the Science policy paper. “But we do know a lot about sustainability — enough to implement logical science-based standards.” This includes things like the strategic use of cover crops, fertilizer and tilling.

There is also the consideration of land-use changes — if forests are cleared for biofuels production, far more carbon will be released than is saved by the nonpetroleum fuels, several studies suggest. Such findings have led to scrutiny that has stung many in the industry who argue that biofuels are being held to a much higher standard than fossil fuels. If the petroleum isn’t “charged” for the greenhouse gas emissions of the U.S. military keeping supply lanes open in the Persian Gulf, why should emissions from cleared forests be included in the biofuels ledger? asks Bruce Dale of Michigan State University in a recent editorial in the journal Biofuels, Bioproducts & Biorefining.

Congress is now considering legislation that may determine whether indirect land use can or cannot be a mark on the ruler used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to measure biofuels’ impacts. Eventually, many researchers hope, a more detailed picture will emerge of the benefits and costs across all stages of the life cycles of fossil and next-generation fuels.

“Some really interesting services are going to emerge from these crops,” says Muth, of the Idaho National Lab. Some biofuel plants help sequester carbon in the soil, for example. A 2002 analysis reported that by the second or third planting year, switchgrass plots experience far less soil erosion than annual crops such as corn. Species that do well near wetlands can act as filters, preventing nitrates and phosphates from getting into the water, Muth says. “If there is a value on carbon sequestration ... a value on clean water, there may be economic benefits for a lot of these crops.”

Robertson adds, “If certain practices were being promoted with incentives, it would ensure that we have a biofuels industry that is sustainable with a net benefit, not a cost. We don’t have that yet — I say ‘yet’ hopefully.”

With appropriate carrots and sticks, biofuels could play a big role in the energy portfolio of the future. There may even be a day when, Back to the Future style, garbage can be thrown into a personal-sized bioreactor that yields fuel. (Trash biomass in the form of sugar beet pulp, tomato pomace, cashew apple, grape pomace, sweet gum and coffee pulp are all being investigated.) Several lines of research are investigating biofuel “coproducts,” high-value molecules that can be extracted during processing, such as proteins for animal feed or aromatics for perfumes and drugs. These products will also bring the net costs of these fuels down, one of several variables that can help the biofuels math add up to success as a fossil fuel substitute.

“It’s difficult to compare the costs of not changing with the costs of changing,” Lynd said at the May meeting in San Francisco. “Asking is this or that realistic is well-intentioned, but all solutions involve changes — we don’t have an option. Business as usual? Well, we think of it as a baseline, but it is a fantasy — even if you don’t care about carbon — just as a supply issue. Fossil fuels will all be gone. They’ll all be gone.”

A researcher examining a sample of algal oil : Running on algae

Pond scum gets a bad rap. But microalgae — tiny, single-celled aquatic organisms — are rising stars in the renewable energy sector. They can provide oil that can be turned into liquid fuels such as biodiesel and jet fuel.

Algal oil is mostly triacylglycerides — long fatty acid chains with glycerol backbones — that can be converted to diesel and other fuels in relatively few steps. Algae’s potential lies in their speedy growth rate, efficient photosynthesis and flexible habitat preferences. Many strains can grow in saltwater or wastewater from treatment plants. In open ponds or closed bioreactors, the microorganisms can potentially make more than 50 times as much oil as land plants on the same area.

This potential fuel has a long history. In 1978 the Department of Energy launched the Aquatic Species Program to develop fuels from algae, but the program was shut down in 1996. In the intervening years, more than 3,000 strains were investigated, included species from Yellowstone National Park’s hot springs and the Caribbean Sea.

Now algae research is surging once again in both the private and public sectors. Problems still loom, including how to best extract the oil, scale up algae farms and control contamination by unwanted strains or tiny critters like rotifers that graze on the algal crop. But in June the algae-to-ethanol company Algenol Biofuels announced plans for a pilot plant with Dow Chemical Co. in Freeport, Texas. And in January, Continental Airlines conducted a 90-minute test flight of a Boeing 737 fueled in part by a blend derived from algae and Jatropha plants. Prospects for fuel from pond scum are starting to look up.

Photosynthesis

2010-04-23T02:52:00.000-07:00

We can write the overall reaction of this process as:

6H2O + 6CO2 ----------> C6H12O6+ 6O2

Photosynthesis takes place primarily in plant leaves, and little to none occurs in stems, etc. The parts of a typical leaf include the upper and lower epidermis, the mesophyll, the vascular bundle(s) (veins), and the stomates. The upper and lower epidermal cells do not have chloroplasts, thus photosynthesis does not occur there. They serve primarily as protection for the rest of the leaf. The stomates are holes which occur primarily in the lower epidermis and are for air exchange: they let CO2 in and O2 out. The vascular bundles or veins in a leaf are part of the plant's transportation system, moving water and nutrients around the plant as needed. The mesophyll cells have chloroplasts and this is where photosynthesis occurs.

As you hopefully recall, the parts of a chloroplast include the outer and inner membranes, intermembrane space, stroma, and thylakoids stacked in grana. The chlorophyll is built into the membranes of the thylakoids.

Chlorophyll looks green because it absorbs red and blue light, making these colors unavailable to be seen by our eyes. It is the green light which is NOT absorbed that finally reaches our eyes, making chlorophyll appear green. However, it is the energy from the red and blue light that are absorbed that is, thereby, able to be used to do photosynthesis. The green light we can see is not/cannot be absorbed by the plant, and thus cannot be used to do photosynthesis.

The overall chemical reaction involved in photosynthesis is:

6CO2 + 6H2O (+ light energy) C6H12O6 + 6O2.

This is the source of the O2 we breathe, and thus, a significant factor in the concerns about deforestation.

There are two parts to photosynthesis:

The light reaction happens in the thylakoid membrane and converts light energy to chemical energy. This chemical reaction must, therefore, take place in the light. Chlorophyll and several other pigments such as beta-carotene are organized in clusters in the thylakoid membrane and are involved in the light reaction. Each of these differently-colored pigments can absorb a slightly different color of light and pass its energy to the central chlorphyll molecule to do photosynthesis. The central part of the chemical structure of a chlorophyll molecule is a porphyrin ring, which consists of several fused rings of carbon and nitrogen with a magnesium ion in the center.

The energy harvested via the light reaction is stored by forming a chemical called ATP (adenosine triphosphate), a compound used by cells for energy storage. This chemical is made of the nucleotide adenine bonded to a ribose sugar, and that is bonded to three phosphate groups. This molecule is very similar to the building blocks for our DNA.

The dark reaction takes place in the stroma within the chloroplast, and converts CO2 to sugar. This reaction doesn't directly need light in order to occur, but it does need the products of the light reaction (ATP and another chemical called NADPH). The dark reaction involves a cycle called the Calvin cycle in which CO2 and energy from ATP are used to form sugar. Actually, notice that the first product of photosynthesis is a three-carbon compound called glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate. Almost immediately, two of these join to form a glucose molecule.

Most plants put CO2 directly into the Calvin cycle. Thus the first stable organic compound formed is the glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate. Since that molecule contains three carbon atoms, these plants are called C3 plants. For all plants, hot summer weather increases the amount of water that evaporates from the plant. Plants lessen the amount of water that evaporates by keeping their stomates closed during hot, dry weather. Unfortunately, this means that once the CO2 in their leaves reaches a low level, they must stop doing photosynthesis. Even if there is a tiny bit of CO2 left, the enzymes used to grab it and put it into the Calvin cycle just don't have enough CO2 to use. Typically the grass in our yards just turns brown and goes dormant. Some plants like crabgrass, corn, and sugar cane have a special modification to conserve water. These plants capture CO2 in a different way: they do an extra step first, before doing the Calvin cycle. These plants have a special enzyme that can work better, even at very low CO2 levels, to grab CO2 and turn it first into oxaloacetate, which contains four carbons. Thus, these plants are called C4 plants. The CO2 is then released from the oxaloacetate and put into the Calvin cycle. This is why crabgrass can stay green and keep growing when all the rest of your grass is dried up and brown.

There is yet another strategy to cope with very hot, dry, desert weather and conserve water. Some plants (for example, cacti and pineapple) that live in extremely hot, dry areas like deserts, can only safely open their stomates at night when the weather is cool. Thus, there is no chance for them to get the CO2 needed for the dark reaction during the daytime. At night when they can open their stomates and take in CO2, these plants incorporate the CO2 into various organic compounds to store it. In the daytime, when the light reaction is occurring and ATP is available (but the stomates must remain closed), they take the CO2 from these organic compounds and put it into the Calvin cycle. These plants are called CAM plants, which stands for crassulacean acid metabolism after the plant family, Crassulaceae (which includes the garden plant Sedum) where this process was first discovered.

Lunar Base

2010-04-19T04:10:00.000-07:00

The lunar base is expected to be permanently staffed by 2024. The outpost concept was chosen over a competing strategy similar to the 1960s and '70s Apollo program—a series of brief trips to the moon.
The plan includes returning humans to the moon no later than 2020. The goal is to take advantage of the moon's resources and to establish a launching point for further explorations.
Dale added that the space agency is looking to international partners in the private and public sectors to participate in the construction and use of the moon base.
Polar Base
Once Dale and more than a thousand experts from 14 countries had decided to build a base, the obvious question was where. The moon's poles are believed to be bathed in near constant sunlight, which should allow for solar power generation.
In addition, polar temperatures are relatively moderate. Other lunar regions tend to fluctuate between extreme heat and cold. Furthermore, the poles contain craters whose slopes may be permanently in the shadows—an indication that water ice and other potentially useful chemicals may be available.
It's also interesting to note that we know very little about the poles on the moon. In fact, we know more about Mars. And it is adjacent to a permanently dark region where there are potentially volatiles—substances such as water ice, which would likely evaporate if exposed to much sunlight—"that we can extract and use," .
The potential site, he added, is about the size of the Washington Mall, which measures about 0.9 square mile (2.4 square kilometers).
Moon Lander
NASA envisions using an all-purpose lander that maximizes the amount of cargo that can be shipped to the moon in a single trip.
The current plan envisions incremental base construction beginning in 2020 with four-person crews making seven-day visits to the moon until their basic necessities are in place. It will probably take several years—probably into the 2024 timeframe—before you see a fully functional base where you could have a continual presence with rotating crews like we have on the International Space Station today.

Chinese Lunar Base
Beginning in 2000, Chinese scientists began discussing preliminary work on a Chinese manned lunar base. Although not funded, it remains a long-term objective of the Chinese space program for the second quarter of the 21st Century.
Beyond the initial Project 921 programs for development of a manned earth orbit capability, Chinese scientists began talking during the course of 2000 of more ambitious plans for a lunar base. At Expo 2000 at Hanover the centre piece of the Chinese pavilion was a display of two Chinese astronauts planting the flag of the People's Republic on the lunar surface. On October 4, 2000 Associated Press reported that Zhuang Fenggan, vice chairman of the China Association of Sciences, declared that one day the Chinese would create a permanent lunar base with the intent of mining the lunar soil for Helium-3 (to fuel nuclear fusion plants on Earth). On October 13, 2000, Xinhua News Agency reported a more definite timetable. These seemed to be the dreams of academics rather than a definite funded program, but at least indicated the expected course of development during the 21st ('Chinese') Century:

* Chinese astronauts would begin landings on the moon in 2005. An initial lunar station would be built up with pressurized modules, electrical generators, and roving vehicles.
* The station would be completed by 2010, allowing stays of several weeks for extended science experiments.
* Beginning in 2015, construction of a small permanent Moon base would begin. The objective would be for a self-sufficient lunar base to be in operation by 2020. This would be a bridgehead for construction of a network of solar power generating plants. The power would be transmitted back to Earth via microwave to meet Chinese power needs without adding to earth greenhouse gases. The base would also process the lunar regolith for metals and gases needed to support the base. The natural high vacuum would be used for research and production of new materials for export to Earth.
There was no funding for lunar projects in the ten-year space plan approved in 2001. By July 2001 a Chinese aerospace magazine indicated that Chinese scientists had drafted a much more modest four-phase long term plan.
* Phase 1, by 2005: Lunar flyby or orbiting satellite missions, perhaps using the DFH-3 bus.
* Phase 2, by 2010: unmanned soft-landing missions. Phase 3, by 2020: Robotic exploration using surface rovers. Phase 4, by 2030: Lunar sample return missions.
The Shenzhou manned spacecraft provided the Chinese with the required hardware to pursue a lunar program whenever they make the decision to go. The configuration of the re-entry capsule of the Shenzhou was the same as that of the Russian Soyuz. This was designed and flight qualified in the 1960's specifically for return to the earth from the moon. Using proven Chinese Lox/LH2 technology, a lunar-lander using the Shenzhou spacecraft could have a mass of under 40 metric tons. A Lox/LH2 stage of the about the same size would be required to propel it toward the moon.
Launch of such payloads into low earth orbit would be within the capability of an upgraded version of the CZ-5-5.0 booster using 8 x 3.35 m diameter strap-ons. This could be available as early as 2010. Two such launches of a CZ-5-5.0 - one of the lunar injection stage, and one of a Shenzhou-derived lunar lander - could place the necessary payload into earth orbit. After docking with the booster stage, the Shenzhou would be boosted to a direct landing on the moon. The direct landing approach was shown in Russian studies of the 1970's to be the most practical method for emplacement and support of a lunar base (since lunar orbit rendezvous methods restrict possible base locations to a narrow band around the lunar equator).
A lunar landing stage developed for a Shenzhou-derived return vehicle could also be used on a one-way trip to place moon base payloads of about 11 metric tons on the lunar surface. The breakdown of such a vehicle (using Lox/LH2 propellants with a specific impulse of 460 seconds in all stages) would be as follows:
* Trans-lunar injection stage: This would have a gross mass of 39 metric tons at ignition, an empty mass of 4 metric tons, and a specific impulse of 460 seconds. It would place the Shenzhou lander into a highly elliptical orbit around the earth. It would use the 40 metric ton thrust engine planned for the CZ-5 family.
* Shenzhou-derived direct lunar lander, total mass 39 metric tons. This would consist of:
o Lunar landing stage, 28 metric tons gross / 4.5 metric tons empty (including landing gear). This would land the spacecraft on the lunar surface and form the launching platform for the return spacecraft.
o Shenzhou-derived return spacecraft / ascent stage, 11 metric tons gross / 5.5 metric tons empty. This would consist of a 1 metric ton orbital module (adopted for use as a cockpit for the crew during the landing maneuver), the 3 metric ton Shenzhou re-entry module (for 2 to 3 crew) and a modified service module (7 metric tons including 5.5 metric tons of propellants).
This would be a marginal design - a more robust concept using two 39 metric ton boost stages and a 39 metric ton lander could deliver a 16 metric ton payload to the surface or use the existing storable propellant engines in the Shenzhou return stage.
Russian Lunar Base
Early proposals
In Russia, Konstantin Tsiolkovskiy, a visionary of space exploration, suggested use of the Moon as a source of raw materials for the human quest into space.
Project Horizon
In June 1959, Wernher Von Braun and his group working at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala., issued the first part of the study of a "Lunar Military Outpost" for the US Army, called Project Horizon. Saturn-I and Saturn-II rockets, whose development started about a year earlier, were to resupply the base. The study estimated that total 245 tons of construction materials, hardware and supplies had to be shipped to the lunar surface.

Korolev studies
In the 1960s, Sergei Korolev, the father of the Soviet space program, was one of the first leaders in the country's space industry, to raise the possibility of building a long-term outpost on the surface of the Moon. In 1960, in the wake of the first Soviet successes in sending unmanned probes to the Moon, Korolev published an article in Pravda, the official publication of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In the article, bylined "Professor K. Sergeev," Korolev outlined in general terms his plans for space exploration, including lunar expeditions: "The opportunity for direct exploration of the Moon causes a particular interest, first with the landing of automated scientific probes... and later by ways of sending researchers and constructing a habitable scientific station on the Moon."
In 1962, Korolev further discussed the idea of the lunar base in the "Notes on Heavy Interplanetary Spacecraft and Heavy orbital Station," which were not been published until two decades later. In the "Notes" Korolev discussed developing infrastructure to support interplanetary travel, including a base to store consumables for interplanetary spacecraft.
The topic came up during a meeting of the Chief Designers Council, an informal governing body in the Soviet space industry, when it considered future tasks for the N1 moon rocket.
The consideration of a lunar base than reached the government level, which reacted with a decree on November 17, 1967, giving the green light to a "Galaktika" (Galaxy) project. The plan assigned the industry to evaluate a broad range of issues associated with human exploration of the Moon, Venus and Mars.

KBOM studies
Ironically, it wasn't Sergei Korolev's team, who started the first detailed studies of lunar outposts. It could be explained, perhaps, by the fact that in the 1960s Korolev's organization was overloaded with the immediate task of sending a man to the Moon.
Instead, the KBOM design bureau, the developer of launch complexes for Soviet rocketry and led by Vladimir Barmin, pioneered the in-depth studies of lunar outposts. Even before the November 1967 decree came out, KBOM design bureau established Department 29 led by A. P. Chemodurov. This group had the responsibility of evaluating potential scientific, economic and military goals which could be achieved with the lunar base.
Department No. 29 at KBOM started its activities by establishing contacts with a broad range of academic and research institutions throughout the USSR, specialized in such disciplines as biology, medicine, astronomy, architecture, nuclear technology and communications. A partial list of the institutions, which cooperated with KBOM on the study of the lunar base includes:
* The Crimean and Abastumansk observatories of the Academy of Sciences USSR
* The Institute of Space Research, IKI, of the Academy of Sciences USSR
* The Geology and Chemistry Institute, GEOKhI, of the Academy of Sciences USSR
* The Physics Institute, of the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences USSR
* The Kiev Research Institute of Theory and History of Architecture
* The Electronics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbek SSR
* The Research Institute of Electrical Sources
* The Research Institute of Thermal Processes
* The Institute of Medico-Biological Sciences
* The Research Institute of Nuclear Physics, NIIYaF, of the Moscow State University
On March 22, 1968, the Military Industrial Commission, VPK, issued Decree No. 62, authorizing the so-called "Tema: Columb" (Columbus study) within the Galaktika project. The document allowed KBOM to involve Design Department No. 15 and Theoretical Calculations Department No. 9 into the study of a prospective lunar base.
Combined, these groups evaluated different configurations of the lunar settlement, which would be able to provide working and habitation space for the crew and also to deploy equipment, sources of energy, astronomical observatory and oxygen-producing systems.
Energy
The KBOM team considered several types of power sources for the prospective lunar base, including:
* Nuclear thermo-emission systems
* Solar panels in combination with fuel cells
* Solar panels in combination with storage batteries
* Helio-concentrators
The group also evaluated different sources of light for the base, including some, which would take advantage of the natural sunlight on the surface of the Moon.

Life support
The study of different concepts of life-support systems, including both biological and chemical sources, led to the proposal to include following elements in the initial configuration of the base:
* A greenhouse which would be used to enrich the atmosphere of the base with oxygen, as well as a rest area for the crew.
* A waste recycling facility
* An oxygen and water recycling facility
Designers expected to use lunar regolith for the construction as well as for the a soil of the greenhouse.
Science equipment
Designers proposed the following science hardware to be deployed on the early lunar base:
* Drilling equipment to drill up to 3 meters in depth
* A soil heating and chemical analysis lab
* An X-ray emission spectrograph for age determination of the soil samples
* A magnetometer
* Gravitational sensors
* Equipment for active seismic studies
KBOM researchers also conducted a detailed evaluation of the moving vehicles, which were to be employed at the very early stages of the construction of the base.

In December 1969, in cooperation with its partners, KBOM issued a special report called Principles of the Construction of Long-Functioning Lunar Settlements. The document proposed a project of a base built in three phases with eventual increase of its crew from 4 to 12 people and the duration of their stay on the surface of the Moon at least one year.
The settlement included the main habitable section, a power-supply center, an astronomy lab, auxiliary facilities and transport vehicles.
The main facility included several pressurized modules, delivered from Earth and it was expected to be buried under the layers of regolith in order to protect it from meteorites and radiation.
The facility contained life-support, power, thermal control, communications and data-processing systems, a control room, a science lab, a repair shop, a habitation section, a kitchen and a gym.
The power supply facility was located on the surface in the protected blockhouse and contained radioactive sources of energy and power distribution unit.
Also on the surface were located an astronomy lab, a storage and a garage.
A lunar rover included in the project had a range of 250 kilometers and it could provide life support for three crew members during 14 days.
The project also included preliminary designs of lifting, construction and transport equipment.
The total mass of equipment, including consumables, which had to be delivered to the surface of the Moon during the construction was estimated at 52,000 kilograms. The N1 and Proton rockets were to be used for transport operations.
In the first half of the 1970s, the KBOM bureau built a full-scale mockup of a habitation module, which was used to test different technological and ergonomic solutions for the prospective lunar settlements. However, with the cancellation of the Soviet lunar landing program in 1974, the module had to be dismantled and further studies of the permanent lunar settlement at KBOM ceased.
NPO Energia studies: The Zvezda project
In 1974, the Soviet government appointed Valentin Glushko, a longtime critic of the ill-fated N1-L3 program, to lead NPO Energia, the prime developer of the manned spacecraft. In one of his early steps at the helm of the organization, Glushko advocated cancelling the development of the troubled N1 rocket, and replacing it with an entirely new line of heavy-lift launchers. Valentin Glushko hoped that the creation and support of a permanent lunar settlement would be one of the primary applications of the future vehicles. If program was approved, the first Soviet cosmonauts would be able to land on the Moon around 1980.
By the end of 1974, NPO Energia made first technical proposals for the lunar expeditionary complex, dubbed Zvezda (Star). The Vulkan heavy-lift rocket, proposed by Glushko, would launch the system. A single Vulkan booster would be able to deliver 230 tons to low-Earth orbit, 60 tons to lunar orbit and 22 tons on the surface of the Moon.
The payload would consist of the Lunar Expeditionary Craft, or LEK, and a transport craft, both developed under the leadership of K. D. Bushuev, the leading spacecraft designer at NPO Energia. I. S. Prudnikov was responsible for the hardware of the permanent base itself.
Lunar Expeditionary Craft, LEK
A three-seat LEK spacecraft was designed for a "direct" flight to the Moon, without separation between the lander and the orbiting spacecraft and the consequent docking in Earth or lunar orbit.
The craft consisted of the landing stage, which provided the descent on the surface of the Moon; the ascent stage, which would be used to take off from the lunar surface; and the reentry craft to bring the crew back on the surface of the Earth. The LEK had a mass of 31 tons on the surface of the Moon, 22 tons at the moment of takeoff and 9.2 tons during the flight to Earth. The reentry vehicle of the LEK had a mass of 3.4 tons.
Laboratory-Habitation Module, LZhM
The lunar expeditionary complex also included a 21.5-ton laboratory-habitation module, providing accommodation for three people. Its pressurized volume reached 160 cubical meters consisting of 25 square meters of lab space and 35 square meters of living space. Resting on its non-returnable landing platform, the module stood nine meters tall and had a width of eight meters. The module carried its own 3.2-ton solar panel power unit, generating 8 KW of electricity.
Laboratory-Production Module, LZM
The third element of the Zvezda base was a 15.5-ton laboratory-production complex, serviced by a single cosmonaut-operator. The module stood 4.5 meters tall and included 100 cubical meters of pressurized volume, providing access to a 950-kilogram biotechnology lab, a 1.92-ton physics and technology lab and a 3.2-ton oxygen-generating facility.
Lunar Rover (Lunokhod):
A 8.2-ton rover conceived for the Zvezda base was expected to have a range of 200 kilometers, a speed of 5 kilometers per hour. Its crew of two people would have 25 cubical meters of space inside the vehicle. Carrying up to 200 kilograms of consumable resources and a 2.25-ton solar panel-based power system, providing 8 kVt of electricity, the rover would be able to conduct "drives" along the lunar surface of up to 12 days long. The rover had a length of 8 meters, a width of 4.5 meters and a height of 3.5 meters. It would be carrying drilling and soil-moving equipment.
Finally, the hardware of the lunar base also included a nuclear power unit, supplying energy to all modules.
Zvezda base construction plan
The deployment of the lunar base planned for the 1980s, would be preceded by detailed mapping of the Moon conducted by an unmanned lunar spacecraft developed at NPO Lavochkin.
The construction of the base would be accomplished in three phases:
Phase I (three launches of the Vulkan rocket):
* Laboratory-Habitation Module;
* A two-seat rover, science equipment and consumables for 1.5 years;
* Lunar Expeditionary Craft with a crew of three during three launches of the Vulkan booster;
Phase II (two launches of the Vulkan rocket over a six-month period):
* The Laboratory-Habitation Module and a light-weight rover;
* The Lunar Expeditionary Craft;
Phase III (three months after completion of Phase II):
* Laboratory-Production Module and science equipment;
Zvezda base capabilities
The total crew of the Zvezda base at the end of Phase III would reach six people and it would be rotated once a year. By the end of the deployment, all power-generating facilities of the base would be able to produce 300 KW of electricity. The mass of the hardware on the surface of the Moon, not counting landing stages would reach 130 tons. Around 21.5 tons would be science hardware and other payloads.

Energia-based short-term lunar expedition
Glushko's proposals for lunar settlements did not come at the right time. In the mid-1970s, the US Apollo program wrapped up after seven lunar expeditions, without establishing any long-term American presence on the surface of the Moon. As a result, the expert commission of the Soviet government, rejected Glushko's proposals about lunar settlements in favor of the development of the Soviet equivalent of the US Space Shuttle.
Undeterred Glushko tried to adapt his lunar plans to the development of the Energia rocket, which had the primary goal of launching the Buran reusable orbiter, the Soviet equivalent of the US Space Shuttle. Glushko scaled down his previous ambitious plans for a permanent lunar base to a short-term expedition to the Moon. Still, if completed, the scenario would have overshadowed the scale of the Apollo program.
Two Energia heavy-lift rockets were to launch an unmanned Lunar Lander, LK, and a manned Lunar Orbiting Spacecraft, LOK, carrying five people. Two 29-ton craft would rendezvous in the lunar orbit and three crew members would board the LK. The craft then would descend on the lunar surface, where its weight would reach 14.5 tons. The expedition would be able to stay on the lunar surface between 5 and 12 days, depending on the amount of consumables delivered to the site by unmanned landers.
The 8.5-ton ascent stage would then blast off from the surface of the Moon, heading toward rendezvous and docking with the LOK spacecraft. The LK crew would transfer to the LOK spacecraft for a trip back home. The crew would reenter the atmosphere onboard a 4.9 vehicle, resembling the enlarged reentry capsule of a Soyuz spacecraft.
End of a lunar dream
In the 1980s, some optimistic prognosis expected to see several long-term settlements on the Moon in 2005 built by the Soviets, the European Space Agency and the US and manned by 6-15 people. Around 2010, the lunar population was expected to grow to 100-500 people! By that time, private enterprises were expected to join researchers in the quest to explore the Moon and use its resources.
The capabilities of the Energia rocket and the US Space Shuttle to launch lunar expeditions and to maintain lunar bases had been widely discussed in the press in academic forums during the 1980s, however, in reality such plans had never gone beyond conceptual studies. In fact, any prospects for not only lunar base, but any manned space flight beyond Earth orbit all but dissipated by the end of the Cold War.
In 2001, Arthur Clarke's famous novel, set in that year and picturing lunar bases and manned missions to Jupiter, reads like a naive and overly optimistic dream.

The moon base will allow for sustained human presence on the moon's surface and help the agency prepare for future missions to Mars and beyond. It also enables global partnerships, allows for maturation of in situ resource utilization, and results in a path that is much quicker in terms of future exploration.