Oasys Water, a company that has been developing a novel, inexpensive desalination technology, showed off a new development facility in Boston this week. The company, which has been demonstrating commercial-scale components of its system in recent months, plans to begin testing a complete system early next year and to start selling the systems by the end of 2011.
Monthly Archives: January 2011
A cure for baldness ‘could be available in 5 years’
For the first time, scientists in Germany have grown hair follicles from stem cells.
The feat has brought scientists a step closer to creating a cure for baldness.
The study used cells taken from animals, but researchers hope to create human hair follicles from human stem cells within a year.
bets on uranium production and nuclear power generation
a fabulous debate on the facts about uranium production…
Michael Dittmar wrote a series of posts about nuclear energy that was published on The Oil Drum in 2009. In the first post of the series, he said that uranium “civilian uranium stocks are expected to be exhausted during the next few years” and “the current uranium supply situation is unsustainable”. Basically lack of uranium production from uranium mines would cause lack of nuclear fuel which would result in steadily dropping nuclear power generation. I made a series of three bets with Dittmar
1. World Uranium production
2. World Nuclear power generation bets going to 2018
3. Uranium production in Kazakhstan
All three bets should be handily won by me this year and I should be winning by larger and larger margins for future years of the bets.
via Reviewing three bets on uranium production and nuclear power generation.
the year of OLED displays
“In 2011 we will all experience the decisive breakthrough of OLED technology in displays and lighting,” says Erich Strasser, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the online portal OLED-display.net. The OLED expert has thoroughly analysed market and insider information: by mid-2011 Strasser expects global OLED production to have multiplied tenfold and promises numerous new, exciting products in the future.
According to Strasser, windows with transparent OLEDs (Organic Light Emitting Diodes) will be commonplace in a few years time: during daylight hours they are transparent – in the evenings the OLEDs become a source of light. Windscreens in cars will function similarly, allowing navigation information to be transmitted through transparent OLEDs. Over the coming months, the publisher of OLED-display.net expects huge advances in OLED technology: “The lifespan of the OLEDs will double, and contrast and colours will improve significantly.”
OLED have already reached the mass markets in smartphones: companies like Nokia and Samsung have a few models with OLED displays on the market. “In the future, almost all smartphones will include OLED,” Erich Strasser says. Strasser has been focusing on OLED technology since 2004 and opened the first online portal on the topic in the same year.
The advance in technology will continue at a record pace in 2011. Strasser: “The manufacturers have recognised the future of OLEDs. LG Display and Samsung Mobile Display alone will be investing EUR13b in new OLED production sites over the coming five years. A similar sum was invested in LCD technology at the time. It’s clear: in the coming years, OLED will also conquer the Flat-TV market and will gradually replace LCD and plasma technology.”
Erich Strasser: “As soon as 2011, LG plans to offer a 31” OLED 3D TV. And Samsung is even planning rollable OLED TVs within the next 24 months.”
For more information on OLEDs go to http://www.oled-display.net/.
Honda Jet is faster and more fuel efficient
Composite image: The new jet from Honda, pictured here, is built largely of composite materials and features a unique over-the-wing engine mount.
Credit: Honda
A prototype of Honda’s light jet, which will seat five to six passengers and is scheduled to go on sale next year, made its first flight last month. The plane flies at 420 knots, or about 780 kilometers per hour—about 80 kilometers per hour faster than other planes its size. Fujino estimates that about half the fuel savings come from extending natural laminar flow, and most of the rest from the new GE engine and the placement of the engines over the wing. The plane is about 20 decibels quieter than other jets its size, in part because the wings block the engine noise from reaching the ground.
via Honda Jet has unique fuel efficient shape made possible by composites.
‘fountain of youth’ pill could restore aging immune system
UCSF researchers have identified an existing medication that restores key elements of the immune system that, when out of balance, lead to a steady decline in immunity and health as people age.
The team found that extremely low doses of the drug lenalidomide can stimulate the body’s immune-cell protein factories, which decrease production during aging, and rebalance the levels of several key cytokines A immune proteins that either attack viruses and bacteria or cause inflammation that leads to an overall decline in health.
The initial study, which was designed to define the dose range of such a therapy in a group of 13 patients, could lead to a daily pill to boost immunity in the elderly, the researchers said. Data will appear in the January issue of the journal Clinical Immunology, and can be found online at www.elsevier.com/locate/yclim.
The identification of a drug to reverse the immunological decline in aging, known as immunosenescence, is the culmination of years of research by Edward J. Goetzl, MD, at UCSF and the National Institute on Aging, into how cytokine levels change as people age, how that varies by gender, and which changes dictate whether someone will be healthy into their 90s or begin a downward cycle of decline starting in middle age.
“No one’s really talking about longevity and lifespan now, but about ‘health span,’” said Goetzl, director of UCSF Allergy and Immunology Research, which focuses on developing new diagnostics and treatments for allergic and immunological diseases.
“If, at age 50, your cytokine levels are the same as they were at 25, you’ll probably stay healthy as you age,” he said. “But if they’re heading downhill, we need to do something about it. If you could take a low-dosage pill with no side effects, wouldn’t you do it?”
via UCSF ‘fountain of youth’ pill could restore aging immune system | BreakThrough Digest Medical News.
budget gaps by state (nov 2009 data)
![[illinois+budget+gap.jpg]](https://obront.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/illinois2bbudget2bgap.jpg?w=300)
Gates’s Misconceived Trip to Beijing
China’s generals and admirals are wrong in every respect, but the important point is that we are oblivious to what they are thinking. Gates needs to recognize that Beijing is configuring its military to fight the United States, that its senior officers do not fear war, and that they think they can win one. To not recognize facts is reckless—and something that has led to every great tragedy involving Americans
via Gates’s Misconceived Trip to Beijing – Gordon G. Chang – New Asia – Forbes.
Remembering MUNI BASMAN
News of Muni’s death brought immediate warm accolades and memories from two close friends. We are including their tributes here as, on several occasions, Oraynu has been the grateful recipient of grants from the Leybel Basman Scholarship Fund, as mentioned below. Their reminiscences also provide an insight into earlier secular Jewish life in Toronto and how the three strove to keep the Yiddish language alive. To that end, Muni and his wife Carol produced a wonderful book/CD combo a few years ago called “Sing and Learn Yiddish.” Daughter Davida, her husband David and their kids (Oraynu members) were all involved in various stages of its production, with Zach and Rachel being the “guinea pigs.”
From Jerry Bain:
Muni Basman was bom in 1934 into a family that came from a great multifaceted secular-cultural European Yiddish tradition. His father was Leybel Basman, the widely-beloved Yiddish pedagogue who was the principal of secular Jewish schools in several Canadian cities, including the Morris Winchevsky school in Toronto. Muni grew up with Yiddish, and a passion for its language and culture . Muni had also been senior staff at the secular Jewish Camp Naivelt where Leybel was the Director. Despite some of the more doctrinaire aspects of life in the Jewish left, Muni was always his own man, marching to his own tune which was usually of his own creation. Muni was a bright articulate, tough-minded but gentle man who always presented himself with warmth and humour to his friends and family. He was also a brave man as he faced the inevitable outcome to the pancreatic cancer he was battling.
He didn’t whine. He faced life and then death with dignity and pragmatism and he was greatly supported in that approach to the inexorable end by his caring and devoted wife, Carol, his children, Ken and Davida, his family and his many friends. I had many personal and cultural connections to Muni and his family and there will be an irreplaceable void in my own life with Muni’s death. Men like Muni with such a breadth of intelligence and intellectual understanding are few and far between. He’ll be missed by Sheila and me and countless others who were touched by his wit, intelligence and friendship.
From Gerry Kane:
Muni was part of our “social” family for most of our lives. Kane, Bain and Basman all grew up in the “left” of the Morris Winchevsky Yiddish schools, of which Muni’s father was principal, and in the fresh air of Camp Naivelt. These venues gave us a love for the Yiddish language and helped form us as rebellious, questioning, secular humanist Jews.
He was a friend and my lawyer. As my friend he was tough as nails when he thought I was doing something stupid -and he told me so, in a manner that never insulted me…and always left me better. As my lawyer, he applied that same toughness, that same brilliant analysis to keep me from driving my business over a cliff.
Muni was always with a joke. Muni also told the worst jokes in the world. He relished them. And, when you phoned his office you had a choice – to listen to the joke he recorded as part of his answering service or to pass it by. I never passed the joke by. I was an addict. I needed the Muni “fix”… and I listened and said “never again.” But, I was weak….and I listened, again, and again, and again.
Muni loved the Yiddish language. Kane and Bain love the Yiddish language. On the death of Leybel Basman (Muni’s father), Jerry Bain and Gerry Kane formed the Leybel Basman Scholarship Fund, which raised money to help fund students who wanted to study Yiddish and also to fund Yiddish Cultural activities. Up until three months before his death, the three of us, and several other friends, used to get together at the “Arcadian Court” – a restaurant at the Bay’s downtown location. The Arcadian Court was once a bastion of the blue-rinse Rosedale dowager and Bay Street culture. It was there we chose to have loud, lively funny, lunches discussing Yiddish language and literature. We usually woke the other diners – and that was good, too. We wanted them to know there was more to life than chicken pot pie.
We will miss Muni for many reasons. Selfishly- because now I have one less person with whom to converse in Yiddish; selfishly because I loved his skewed humour and brilliant mind; selfishly in the loss of Muni, I’ve lost another thread to my mother’s background in Lithuania. Muni and I are Litvaks. My mother and Muni’s father both grew up in the city of Vilkomir – and knew each other as young people and selfishly, because Muni’s death is unfair to those of us who relish life and who enjoyed it tremendously when we were in his company.
via Oraynu, newsletter The Shofar Jan 2011
Hendry betting against China
Now, Hendry is focusing his rhetoric — and investing strategy — on a bigger target: China. He’s betting that growth in the world’s No. 2 economy will collapse because of rampant real-estate speculation, sending shock waves through Asia and beyond. The problem, Hendry says, is that China’s gross domestic product growth isn’t matched by wealth creation at home. In his doom-laden scenario, a plunge in Chinese stock prices and property values will be exacerbated by a softening demand for the country’s exports, triggering an extended period of global deflation and slower growth.
Hendry, a combative Scotsman, is betting against China in an unusual way, by snapping up credit-default-swap protection on bonds issued by Japanese industrial companies such as JFE Holdings Inc. and Nippon Steel Corp., which have benefited from China’s construction boom. Hendry is convinced that Japanese banks are selling such protection too cheaply. Nippon Steel CDSs, for example, cost 57.25 basis points on Jan. 7, about a quarter of their high of 215 basis points on Feb. 17, 2009. (A basis point is 0.01 percentage point.)
‘Nuclear Bomb’
“I see Japan as a nuclear bomb strapped onto the chest of the global economy,” Hendry says. “They’ve got uranium — which is, they sell credit protection: CDSs. I’m the other side of that.” If the Japanese corporate bond CDS spreads widen to equal or surpass their record highs of 2009, Hendry’s fund could rise by as much as 50 percent, he says.
via Eclectica\’s Hendry Turns Greece Profit Into China Failure Wager – Bloomberg.
This Too Shall Pass 
