Recently in Meetings & Conferences Category

Sifting through the vast library here at the American Institute of Physics Publishing Center, I often come across pristine copies of amazing little books that nobody, it seems, has read. My favorite example, is "Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics, and Science Fiction," by Paul J. Nahin. Nahin comes across with a kid-in-a-candy store enthusiasm that reminds me (in an endearing way) of Doc Brown, the genius yet obviously insane time travel inventor in Robert Zemeckis's Back to the Future films.

So, there are some little treasures to be dug up in the libraries around the office. Another more relevant find is "Climate Change & Energy Policy," by Louis Rosen and Robert Glasser. The most intriguing part about reading this book—which is a collection of presentations from the International Conference on Global Climate Change held at Los Alamos in October 1991—is the kind of time travel effect (and you thought that intro was all fluff... I was setting you up the whole time!) you experience by reading the views the world's leading climate scientists had 18 years ago.

Here are a few quotes I think are especially notable:

From "Assessing Global Climate Change: When Will We Have Better Evidence?" by J.D. Mahlman, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, NOAA:

...scientifically, much was known about this problem 15 years ago, while much will remain uncertain 15 years from now.

I find this especially poignant since we're basically 15 years in the future and here we are... indeed there are still uncertainties.

"When Will We Have Better Evidence for Climate Change Due to Anthropogenic Emissions?" by G.S. Golitsyn, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, USSR Academy of Sciences, concludes with:

So if you are in government, business, or education, do not ask, when will we have better evidence? The evidence is enough to start moving in the right direction of conserving natural resources and using them in a more efficient way.

From "National Energy Strategies and the Greenhouse Problem" by Irving M. Mintzer, Stockholm Environment Institute:

If current policies and strategies continue unchanged, and if the resulting trends in the emissions of these gases continues, there is a significant risk of rapid and disruptive climate change in the decades ahead. To reduce the risks of rapid climate change while preserving the prospects for economic development, national energy strategies must be modified to increase the efficiency of energy use and to develop cleaner, safer, and less carbon-intensive supplies of energy.

From "Global Trends in Energy Use: Indications for Research" by Robert N. Schock, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory:

Even conservative world-energy scenarios show the need for more energy from clean sources beyond what coal and nuclear are likely to provide. We must invest financial resources now in a broad range of technologies to ensure that these sources are available.

From "The Greenhouse Effect: Political Decision Making and the Application of Upwelling/Diffusion Models" by Peter Laut, Engineering Academy of Denmark:

...grave difficulties are likely to arise for the political decision maker, especially because of the long time delay between the investment now of national resources in order to counter climatic change, and the resulting benefits, which may first materialize in the distant future in the form of a somewhat more moderate rise of global temperatures.

From "Energy Policy in the Light of Global Climate-Change Uncertainty" by Alan T. Crane, Office of Technology Assessment, U.S. Congress:

Some want to increase energy supply, in particular by allowing drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge or by expediting nuclear reactor licensing... Most consider it a low-priority issue as long as energy supplies are adequate and prices low.

From "Session Two of the Panel Discussions and Conclusions on Integrating Climate-Change and Energy Policy" by Virginia Oversby, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory:

I get a feeling that we're putting emphasis on changing from coal to renewable energy technologies or non-carbon energy production technologies and using global warming as an excuse for doing this... This should be a first-principles argument. We should separate the climatic effects, which are important to discuss, from this more fundamental issue.

From the "Concluding Observations: Integrating Climate-Change and Energy Policy from Charles Keller and Robert Glasser"

The task before us is to determine how we can improve the dialogue between the climate scientists and the people responsible for contributing to the science of energy production and transportation and the energy-policy makers.

And finally, from Louis Rosen's (Los Alamos National Laboratory) "Summary Talk and Concluding Remarks:

Serguei Kapitsa coauthored, some years ago, an innovative book that dealt with the insanity and futility and danger of the arms race. In it was argued the thesis that we must learn to think differently and behave differently. This, I gather from our conference, must now be done with respect to environment and energy. Old habits, old assumptions, and old value systems must be reexamined. Some must be abandoned, others altered. This is terribly difficult. But the peoples of the USSR and Eastern Europe are showing us that it is not impossible to recast one's vision of the world, and in a relatively short time.

There are a couple of striking things about this quote. The first: Rosen's speech was given on October 24, 1991. On December 8, 1991, the Belavezha Accords were signed, declaring the Soviet Union dissolved and replacing it with the Commonwealth of Independent States. Of course, Rosen and the rest of the world had already seen independent states form within the Soviet Union, so the signs were already there, but I think that the bigger point is clear: there are more important things than power struggles between nations—the world will need to work together to solve our real problems.

And finally, it's notable that Louis Rosen passed away on August 15 of this year. There's not much I can say about Rosen that the New York Times hasn't already said, so I'll leave it at that.

The Road to Sustainability (Physics World)

George Crabtree from Argonne and John Sarrao from Los Alamos give a us a view of what technology looks like when it's sustainable; they proceed to lay out an outline of what hurdles researchers need to overcome to achieve a truly sustainable energy economy.

Democrats Unveil Ambitious Draft Climate Change Bill To The US Senate (WorldChanging.com)

Led by Senators Barbara Boxer (CA, D) and John Kerry (MA, D), the Democratic congress has set before the Senate a bill that pushes for a 20% reduction of CO2 from 2005 levels by 2020 and an 83% reduction by 2050. Kerry and Boxer are stressing that the bill could create 1.9 million new jobs by 2020 and that decreasing the reliance on foreign oil will increase the security of the United States.

Energy Awareness Month 2009 (DOE)

October is Energy Awareness Month, a national effort to empower citizens to reshape the energy economy and be part of the solution to climate change. This year, the theme is "A Sustainable Energy Future: Putting All the Pieces Together."

1st International Conference on Materials for Energy (Dechema.de)

The program of this conference will cover current topics and recent progress in the science and technology of energy and new materials, including the nanoscale origin of macroscopic properties. All aspects of materials for energy production and conversion, energy storage, energy transport, and energy saving will be addressed.

Texas Completes $1 Billion Wind Energy Complex (CNET.com)

A couple hundred miles west of Dallas, 100,000 acres of land are covered with wind turbines. One of the world's biggest wind farms was completed and is now operational near Roscoe, Texas. The 627 wind turbines will provide 781.5 Megawatts to 230,000 Texans.

The gray color of a giant city. Standing in the middle of downtown New York, one can see the many hues of cement that color the world of massive building construction. It's a consequence of the color of Portland Cement. Gray slabs of concrete have defined our skylines, bridges, runways, and highways. (To be more precise, the characteristic gray to brown color of ordinary cement derives from a number of transitional elements in its chemical composition. These are, in descending order of coloring effect, chromium, manganese, iron, copper, vanadium, nickel and titanium.)

But imagine a slightly prettier world where our cement was white, instead. Of course, there is a such thing as white cement already, but it's a little pricey and a lot of energy goes into reducing the presence of certain beneficial elements.

One solution, was presented by R.K. Vempati and his colleague Prasad Rangaraju from Clemson University, at the 13th ACS Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference in College Park, Maryland. The researchers propose using rice hull ash (RHA) to dramatically whiten cement. RHA is made from the controlled combustion of rice hulls—the hard outsides of rice that must be removed before we can cook and consume rice.

Drs. Vempati and Rangaraju had managed to substitute 20% by mass of cement with RHA. They saw significant compressive strength as well as a substantially whiter end product (thanks to biogenic silica from the rice hull). The end product is described as carbon neutral, which is of course, of great importance to today's modern building infrastructure. The researchers point out that the production of one ton of regular cement produces one ton of CO₂ and that there is 1 yard³ per person of cement produced every year—making concrete the second most widely used material on earth (water is the first). So by taking a second look at how we use and produce building materials, there's much more to gain than just the beautification of our cities and highways.

Way back in May 2007, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) Act was created to promote outside-of-the-box thinking for energy and climate related research. The excitement quickly died, though, as the Bush administration lost focus and never funded the project (there was never even real office space created).

Now, though, ARPA-E is back on track. Funding in the amount of $400 million was explicitly set aside in the recent stimulus bill (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act), and on April 27, President Obama annuonced at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.:

My administration will pursue, as well, comprehensive legislation to place a market-based cap on carbon emissions. We will make renewable energy the profitable kind of energy.  We will put in place the resources so that scientists can focus on this critical area.  And I am confident that we will find a wellspring of creativity just waiting to be tapped by researchers in this room and entrepreneurs across our country.  We can solve this problem.

In addition to funding new research, the President promised to further science education: "...my administration has set a goal that will greatly enhance our ability to compete for the high-wage, high-tech jobs of the future... we've provided tax credits and grants to make a college education more affordable." He also announced that the new budget triples the number of National Science Foundation graduate research fellowships.

As Obama has done so in the past, he ended with an allusion to the Apollo Project for which John F. Kennedy spurred funding and motivated a generation to strive for; quoting Kennedy: "The challenge, in short, may be our salvation."

Click here for a full transcript of President Obama's NAS speech.

MRS meetings attract researchers from a broad range of fields—bringing with them their unique perspectives into one place. There is always a significant interest in materials related to sustainable energy, though, and this year's Spring meeting was no exception.

Everybody wanted to know more about the journal—even researchers not working in the related fields have an interest in this area. Energy is suddenly on everyone's mind. It seems to be on department heads' minds as well, as many people were interested in learning about the journal because they're either in—or planning on being in—a department that has a research group in renewable energy. As a bonus, JRSE's co-editors, John Turner and P. Craig Taylor, were at the booth to talk directly to potential authors, reviewers, and future editors.

In addition to the business of science, there was some fun: a bamboo bike (or a "Bambucicleta") and a local caricature artist in the exhibit hall.

The exhibit hall entrance (left) and a quiet moment at the JRSE booth.

In addition to the crowds of researchers stopping by, JRSE also had a few mentions on the web. Check out the MRS blog for a very positive review of the journal and a flattering shoutout to our editors. Also in the social networking world, don't forget to fan the JRSE and MRS facebook pages, and keep your eyes open for tweets about JRSE from AIP's twitter feed (hash tag: #AIP_JRSE).

The 2009 AAAS/AAPT meeting was held in Chicago last week (Feb 12-16), and the theme was "Our Planet and Its Life: Origins and Futures."

Downtown Chicago, the Wrigley Building, and the Chicago River

Adding to that theme were a few presenters concerned with the direction of renewable energy research. Kicking things off on Friday morning, Nate Lewis from Caltech spoke about the immense potential of solar, proclaiming that "he that cannot store will not have power after 4," adding that Johnnie Cochran would be proud of this rhyming proclamation.

Lewis' efforts are guided by the intricacies of photosynthesis. In fact, his team has achieved the production of hydrogen (H₂) at an efficiency greater than any plant in nature has. The problem, Lewis notes, is that the production is too expensive—one needs to be able to use cheaper and more readily available materials to create a viable product. Lewis warned that despite the promising results, we still have a long way to go to match what nature does. Lewis ended his talk by saying "We need to change the paradigm by which we can use and exploit sunlight."

Next up at the same session, Paul Alivisatos gave a presentation. After Steven Chu left the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to become the 12th United States Secretary of Energy, he was replaced by Alivisatos, who is now the Deputy Director of the Laboratory. Alivisatos spoke briefly about the need for more renewable energy research at what he calls "an unprecedented scale of production.

Alivisatos went on to describe his own team's research using arrays of nanoparticles as solar materials. He showed that by reducing the size of the grain boundary to less than about 5 nanometers, electrons begin to travel in a more quantum fashion, that is, tunneling through these boundaries. This effectively creates an extremely "non-perfect" crystal, but because of how the electrons are now travelling through the crystal, conduction actually becomes more efficient.

Of all the lectures at AAAS focused on energy technology and research, Daniel Nocera's keynote lecture on "Harnessing the Sun and Oceans To Meet the World's Energy Demands" was a big highlight. Nocera, from MIT, made the case for solar energy, showing that only energy from the sun can come close to fulfilling our planet's energy needs, which Nocera estimates will approach 35 terawatts by 2050.

Nocera then showed video for the audience his team's breakthrough experiment from last summer, where he used a cobalt catalyst that produces oxygen gas from water; and another platinum catalyst that produces valuable hydrogen gas. Combined, the system duplicates the water splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis.

Nocera's talk concluded with his design of "personalized energy," wherein each household would collect and store their own energy needs, theoretically doing away with the need for an energy grid.

The event's most well known speaker was without a doubt former vice president Al Gore.

One other notable speaker was Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute Cofounder, Chairman, and Chief Scientist. Lovins insisted that America move away from foreign fuels, all the while brimming with optimism that we have good ideas and great opportunities in research—we only need to convince the public that we need to focus on creating a more efficient society. Lovins added, "We are plotting the nonviolent overthrow of bad engineering."

The 2009 AAAS meeting was jam-packed with meetings. In addition to the energy-related talks mentioned above, other speakers of interest included AAAS President James J. McCarthy, Astronomer and President of the Royal Society Lord Martin Rees, Physicist and occasional New York Times guest columnist Lawrence Krauss, and Nobel-prize winner Leon Lederman, among many others.

As a final note, here, from AIP is (L to R) Yvonne Reyes, Brandon Miller, and Catherine O'Riordan at the JRSE-branded booth at the AAPT/AAAS exhibition.