Announces $150 Billion Investment Over 10 Years in Clean and Renewable Energy Research
March 23, 2009
Today I am proud to witness history. I am proud of my country, and excited about the new direction it will be taking us. As Secretary of Energy Steven Chu made his very first visit to a national laboratory since taking office, I was lucky enough to be sitting in the audience during the presentation at BNL (Brookhaven National Laboratory). His visit was accompanied by a major announcement regarding massive new investments in funding for clean and renewable energy research and experimentation as per the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This will have a large impact on our economy in both the near and short term. Secretary Chu’s talk was both bright and funny, serious and sobering, uplifting and inspiring. He showed many examples of global climate change- examples where increases of just a few degrees could completely alter the natrual landscape, ruining ecosystems for many of its inhabitants. He talked about the history of the Department of Energy and of Brookhaven, and our role in the nation’s energy plan. As I sat in Berkner Hall, taking notes during the talk I was quickly becoming extremely excited and inspired. Right now I feel as if something big is coming, and that real change in this field will happen during my lifetime. Here, I share my personal notes with you from the meeting.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
“Science for the 21st century”
As Representative Tim Bishop began the introductions, Secretary Chu sheepishly fixed his tie off stage. Still visible to the audience, this small gesture was enough for me to realize that yes, indeed this politician of monstrous importance was truly human, and a modest one at that. A renowned thinker, a Noble Prize winner, and importantly a scientist- Chu actually grew up on Long Island. Living in Garden City, NY from age 3-18 Secretary Chu actually admits never made it to Stony Brook University during that time- but as he acknowledged “I am here now”.
Secretary Chu speaking at Brookhaven National Laboratory
“This is an exciting time to be in science”
The Secretary described the stimulus bill as a method of moving the nation forward and putting people to work. This step moving forward “underscores the President’s wisdom”, demonstrating his understanding of the dire need for research, investment, and implementation of fundamental technologies in the energy sector. This will be accomplished by a pledge to double the budget for the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science over the next ten years. Specifically, the Office of Science will receive at least $1.2 billion thru the act. Secretary Chu’s main points were:
$15 billion per Year for Clean and Renewable Energy Research
Permanent Tax Credit for Cleantech Research and Experimentation
Important details of the Act and how they affect the DOE can be found here. Jeff Sherwood of at DOE headquarters has published a concise and accurate description of the specific investments and funded projects in a press release here.
This will include $90 million to support PhD and grad students in the sciences, creating thousands of new jobs. Chu’s presentation really started to snowball now as he began describing the prestigious history of the DOE, commenting on human environmental impact and importantly- energy consumption. He begain describing the prestigious history of the Department of Energy which has funded 88 Noble Prize Winners, research at over 300 universities and 17 national laboratories.
Secretary Chu Tours the STAR Detector
It is the largest funding source of physical science in the world. He begins reminiscing about the high energy physics research days of yore, which are incredibly fascinating. He describe the work of famous physicists, many of who worked simulaneously at AT&T Bell Labs while Chu was there, on world changing projects such as the transister: the fundamental unit of every modern electrical device. The problem was that the current state of the art, vacuum tubes, would burn out after one year. With the advent of quantum mechanics, a solid state replacement known as the transister was invented. One of his more humorous remarks targeted the NSLS II, now under construction. As the former Director of Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, Secretary Chu expressed concern when he was admiring the specs of NSLS-II, that perhaps we would provide a friendly rivalry for our west coast neighbor. Now, as Secretary of Energy, Chu must leave these competing interests aside and come to the east coast and promote our accomplishments, and he did so happily and gracefully.
Tomorrow I shall continue my report of the Secretary’s visit to BNL with more details. Thanks for reading and enjoy!
President Obama repeals ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cells – March 9, 2009
On March 9, 2009 President Barack Obama removed the ban prohibiting the use of federal tax dollars for embryonic stem cell research. Specifically, on Monday a memorandum was signed allowing the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to begin designing a strategy for carrying out this research. The earlier ban, enacted by former President Bush prevented all federal government funding for the use and development of embryonic stem cells. During this time individual states were vying to raise capital for this work on their own via private/state joint institutes. California was the leader in this, creating a $3 billion bond to support the state universities. Unfortunately, these funds were generally witheld following the ensuing political turmoil. Developments at the local level actually point towards the probability that individual states would eventually have begun financing this research, whether or not the federal government supported it.
Bush’s federal ban on embryonic stem cell funding resulted in the use of private monies for these experiments, and drastically cut down the number of academic labs studying the system. At least 6-7 years of more rapid progress was probably lost during this time. However, it did stimulate a large body of research on the use of adult derived stem cells and new technologies for generating ES cells without destroying the embryo. Without this ban, researchers at Advanced Cell Technology may never have speant so much time attempting to isolate ES cells from living embryos using biopsies, which is does not harm the embryo and is commonly performed during preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). In a nutshell, PGD allows one to geneticly test embryos for disease markers before they are implanted. This is especially useful during in vitro fertilization, in which many embryos are fertilized, screened, and then transplanted into the uterus. Those embryos which carry the disease marker are not implanted.
Many new findings were made during this time period from 2001-2009, including the discovery of stem cells in the brain and other tissues. Also, the ‘reprogramming’ of adult and menenchymal stem cells into nerves or other specialized cells will have definite long term implications for disease therapy. Will it be possible to use adult derived stem cells for regenerative medicine and treating patients? Probaby not. Was it necessary to increase the research support of ES cells if we ever hope to treat Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease or diabetes with this technology? Definitely. With the removal of this ban, universities may once again begin receiving grants and carrying out work on these totipotent cells. Importantly, it opens the door for more clinical trials and human testing in the United States. The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, have all been reporting on this issue. Yet very few articles have actually addressed the true ethical or scientific implications of the memorandum.
Truthfully, this decision opens up a massive can of worms regarding the ethical use of embryos and ES cells during our time. Part of the root cause of this is the fault of previous administrations which neglected to address the technological advancements and fully dissect their moral implications. Instead, what amounted to an academic moratorium on ES cell research was put into effect, while other issues such as national security, defense, and wartime tactics took precedence. Some of the critical moral and scientific questions that need to be addressed are: (1) Can ES cells be generated without destroying embryos, and of so, is this as benefical in the clinic and is it efficient? (2) Is the destruction of an embryo universally considered to be an ethical objection? For instance, one may create a cloned embryo of an existing human patient using donated eggs and a cell from that patient. The embryo can be grown in vitro and potentially used to treat his/her disease. If the embryo is killed during this process, is this objectionable? The embryo came into life purely for the purpose of saving that of another. That is more useful, and productive than what is currently allowed under existing abortion law. Abortion is considered legal (but perhaps unethical) in many cases. In some cases it is ethical, for example to save the mother’s life. Therefore, is the destruction of an embryo for saving one’s life always ethical?
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley published 1932
In reality, I do not believe we are so far away from the ‘Brave New World’ scenario. Current technologies allow one to clone thyself and simply implant said embryo into the womb. Gestation of these embryos can give rise to cloned human beings, which is currently an unethical endeavor. This is due to the unknown side effects of cloning on human beings. It is expected that cloned humans, as with other mammals such as cows, pigs, and sheep would develop age related diseases more rapidly and die prematurely. In the future, it may be possible to overcome these obstacles by using DNA from the umbilical cord, but what would be the point? In my eyes, it is imperative to set ground rules and regulations preventing these types of experiments from ever happening during our era, which may or may not have much to do with embryonic stem cell therapy. However, it must be considered as the difference between therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning is simply the implantation of an embryo.
Announces Construction of 50 MW Solar Power Plant and NSLS II
Today was an extremely interesting day to be an employee at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Governor David Paterson made a special visit and announced some extremely good news on site to the laboratory employees. The core elements of his talk focused on the funding, development and construction of the National Synchrotron Light Source II and the construction of a new 50 Megawatt (MW) solar panel plant at the laboratory. These are both exciting new developments and display a strong commitment by the federal government to researching and deploying new technologies. There was also mention of a possible additional 400 MW solar power plant to be funded by private investors. Governor Paterson was accompanied by Senator Brian Fowley (NYS Senate), Assemblyman Mark Alessi , Brookhaven National Laboratory Director Sam Aronson and a representative from LIPA. According to past state audits, NY has been directed to implement alternative energy technologies to provide electricity for the region, and this solar power plant will accomplish that. Specifically, a solar power plant will be used to providing power to the new NSLS II, though I beleive there is potential for expansion in the future. This is a major breakthrough and will provide thousands of jobs for the Long Island regional economy in construction, real estate, retail sales, science, education and alternative energy research and development. Much of the engineering and construction will be accomplished my local firms who are hiring individuals form New York and Long Island to do the work.
Last week on Wednesday, February 4th 2009 the Stony Brook University Center for Inclusive Education, Graduate Student Organization (GSO), and the Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate hosted highly a successful event at the Stony Brook University, Charles B. Wang Center. The occasion was a film screening of the documentary “Naturally Obsessed” made by Richard and Carole Rifkind. I had seen this film a few months prior at Brookhaven National Laboratory at the NSLS where I work, and spoke to the Rifkinds afterwards. I told them it would be great to come to Stony Brook University and do a screening for the grad students who would really love it.
It was a fairly large project, and required a lot of communication and advanced planning. Three months prior to the event I had requested $650 funding from the GSO to provide food for the event and an honorarium for the Rifkind’s. Here is a copy of my proposal to the GSO.Working with the CIE was a true pleasure and they provided almost unlimited support. Their director helped me advertise all over with a campus wide email, a posting on the University’s front page, the career center’s website, and emails to all the GSO senators. I sent personal invites to many professors and several of them came. Michael Hadjiargyrou from the Department of Biomedical Engineering was able to participate in our discussion following the showing along with Dean of the Graduate School, Lawrence Martin. In the end, it was a huge success and a lot of fun. We had over 130 attendees come in for the movie and discussion afterwards.
There was one glitch, which was out of our control. The DVD froze two times when it was playing, and on the second time, it did not start again. Everyone was left hanging! So finally someone went back there to see what was happening and they guy just hit the skip forward track button and went to the next scene so we missed like 10 minutes. I was pretty crushed by that, especially since for me, every minute of that movie is like amazing. And the scene it jumped to came a little bit out of nowhere, but everyone understood what was going on. The Q&A session was also a little nerve racking, but I had prepared before hand with Richard Rifkind and had questions lined up. They went over well and the discussion was thought provoking.
I asked one question that everyone loved: “If you were pretending President Obama was sitting here with us, what are five things you would tell him that you think are important regarding the future of science and education”. We got some great responses which I hope to post later.
This week, I am writing the final portion of my PhD Qualifying Exam for the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Stony Brook University. The topic requests that I develop a source of stem cells which can be delivered into the brain of Parkinson’s disease patients using an engineered biomaterial. Right now, I am doing fairly well on page 25 with about 10 pp left to write. There is a lot still to do. In summary, the project involves creating a new lines of embryonic stem cells from cloned blastocysts generated by somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). Briefly, SCNT involves removing the genetic material from an unfertilized egg and inserting a donor cell and applying electric voltage inducing parthogenesis – the spontaneous fertilization of embryos. From here, one can dissect the parthogenetic SCNT embryo and extract embryonic stem cells. These can be differentiated into dopaminergic neurons and implanted into the brain. That is the part I’m working on now!
The recent snowstorms in the American Northeast have left thousands without power during the holidays. How did one man solve this problem? John Sweeney, of Harvard, MA. was able to use his hybrid electric vehicle as a highly efficient generator. The Toyota Prius can output about 3 Kilowatts of constant electrical power, enough to provide electricity for his basic home needs such as refrigerator, wood stove fan, radio and even television. Using an inverter, which are found on all home solar powered systems and can be had at Radioshack, John ran the car’s battery and fed the current into his home’s electrical grid. The battery is charged by running the gasoline engine, which the car automatically starts when the battery is low. After 3 days of running most of his essential household appliances, John used only 5 gallons of gasoline. Amazing!
Hybrid technologies have been getting a huge boost, even marketing ads on television. The Toyota Prius in particular has proven especially popular with over 1,028,000 units sold worldwide as of May 2008. Reports of hybrid cars, such as the Ford Escape in NYC, reaching 175k miles have been found in cities with hybrid taxi fleets. These cars did not even require replacement batteries. The U.S. supply of available Priuses for sale is at its lowest point in two years and retail and resale values are rising quickly. If you are interested in buying this car you better move fast.
