Just because they use a clean fuel does not mean they lower greenhose gas emissions

Clean fuel worsens climate impacts for some vehicle engines: UBC study
[Via EurekAlert! - Biology]

(University of British Columbia) A pioneering program by one of the world’s largest cities to switch its vehicle fleet to clean fuel has not significantly improved harmful vehicle emissions in more than 5,000 vehicles — and worsened some vehicles’ climate impacts — a new University of British Columbia study finds.

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Compressed natural gas should be a better fuel than gasoline. But only if it is efficiently burned. This happens when used for cooking but does not appear to happen when used in 2-stroke engines.

Their particulate matter produced per kilogram is similar to diesel busses. And the inefficient burning  results in large amounts of methane being released to the atmosphere.

Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Personalizing lung cancer treatments

by bradley j

Study links vitamin D to lung cancer survival
[Via EurekAlert! - Biology]

(University of Michigan Health System) Recent research suggests vitamin D may be able to stop or prevent cancer. Now, a new study finds an enzyme that plays a role in metabolizing vitamin D can predict lung cancer survival.

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Low levels of vitamin D are found in people with lung tumors. Giving these patients vitamin D could be able to stop or prevent the cancer.

However, as with many things, it is not that easy.

An enzyme responsible for degrading vitamin D – CYP24A1 – can be elevated in lung cancer patients. More CYP2A1, the worse the cancer. The group with the largest amount of this enzyme, about 1/3 of the total, had only half the 5 year survival rate of those with the lowest levels.

So, knowing the levels of this enzyme would be useful in determining whether providing higher levels of vitamin D would be useful.

And  they can now look for inhibitors of this enzyme, hoping that reducing its ability to break down vitamin D would then allow them to use vitamin D as a treatment for everyone.

However, this is a complex pathway here that also involves calcium metabolism, so it may not be as simple as this but at least research has a model to examine.

Simply knowing which patients will have the best response to the therapy can make a big difference.

Fatty liver disease and endocrine disruption

from Wikipedia

UCSF researchers uncover hormone pathway to fatty liver disease
[Via EurekAlert! - Biology]

(University of California – San Francisco) Scientists at the UCSF Cardiovascular Research Institute have discovered how a change in growth hormone activity in mice leads to fatty liver disease, a condition whose human counterpart is of rising concern worldwide.

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Abrogation of growth hormone secretion rescues fatty liver in mice with hepatocyte-specific deletion of JAK2

Brandon C. Sos, Charles Harris, Sarah M. Nordstrom, Jennifer L. Tran, Mercedesz Balázs, Patrick Caplazi, Maria Febbraio, Milana A.B. Applegate, Kay-Uwe Wagner, Ethan J. Weiss

J. Clin. Invest. 2011; doi:10.1172/JCI42894

 

Endocrine disruptors are a major problem in our polluted environment. One aspect of these is the effect they have on several disease states. Diabetes  amongst young people is correlated with low levels of an important endocrine modulator, Insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1).

Now it turns out that another modern disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, may also be associated with a disrupted endocrine system involving IGF-1.

This paper describes research in an animal model. They find that disrupting a pathway that produces IGF-1 results in fatty liver disease. The IGF-1 levels plummet and the liver disease arises.

The low IGF-1 levels causes the pituitary to produce huge amounts of growth hormone, trying ti increase IGF-1 levels. But the disrupted system is unable to do that.

If they then produce mice that can not produce growth hormone at all , even disrupted endocrine systems did not result in fatty liver disease.

One of the outcomes of estrogen mimics and other endocrine disruptors is they result in much lower levels of IGF-1. If this happens, all sorts of disease become much more likely, from diabetes to obesity.

And now, it appears, fatty liver disease.

Who is actually suprised that BP plays Lucy to Louisiana’s Charlie Brown?

by NASA Goddard Photo and Video

BP reneges on deal to rebuild oyster beds, repair wetlands, Louisiana officials say | NOLA.com
[Via nola.com]

BP has reneged on promises made in November to negotiate early payments to Louisiana to help rebuild oyster beds, repair damaged wetlands and build a fish hatchery to allow the state to respond immediately to the collapse of commercial fisheries in the wake of the BP Gulf oil spill, state officials said Monday.

[More]

See, the state opened up the floodgates along the Mississippi River to keep the oil out, releasing large amount of freshwater to keep oil away from the oyster beds, but killing the oysters in the process.

So it needs millions to restart the oyster populations and BP’s response – there is no evidence any oil hurt the oyster beds.

When they had all those commercials about how they were in it for the long haul etc. they were really saying ‘See you in court.’

BP seems to feel that its role is done and nature will fix everything, even though the Exxon Valdez disaster is still affecting fishing in Prince William Sound.

Yet when barrier islands still need cleanup, with continuing appearance of tar balls from the disaster, BP says they have done all they need to do.

They had talked favorably about it, but it’s just another indication that they’re now going to take the position of saying no to everything and go to court,” [Department of Wildlife & Fisheries director] Barham said.

That’s what large corporations do. Twenty years on from the Exxon Valdez, Exxon has never paid the $5 billion punitive damages, and, due to recent  court rulings, will never have to (In 2008, Exxon had annual profits of $40 billion and paid no income tax to the US).

BP looks to be running a similar game. They know people have forgotten after a year and they can simply make the state go to court.

No real consequences for their bad corporate behavior. It’ll be the same thing here and the courts will still be dealing with this in 2030.

Apple’s capitalism broke wireless carrier’s Communism?

by Yaniv Golan

Angry Birds CEO: We really have Apple to thank; we got away from this carrier-dominated Soviet model
[Via MacDailyNews]

“Of the thousands of games available for download from the App Store, none has had the sustained popularity of Rovio’s Angry Birds, a 99 cent physics-based puzzler in which you use a slingshot to launch birds of various shapes and sizes at fortresses containing green pigs,” Peter Cohen reports for The Loop. “Rovio CEO Peter Vesterbacka spoke to a large crowd at this week’s Game Developer Conference (GDC) to explain his company’s success.”

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It took 12 people 8 months to create Angry Birds, a little long for the app economy but much shorter than the ones seen by 20th century game developers.

Rovio is a Finland company and know quite well the Soviet model – a top-down one where there would be only one type of toothpaste, determined by the central planning agencies.

The cell phone companies acted in a similar fashion. Which is probably why Apple has worked quite hard to remove itself from that model.

And, the app economy requires that the developer maintain contact with the user – something the cell phone companies prevented.

Rovio works hard on the marketing side,with plush animal sales exceeding 2 million. It stays in contact with its customers and continues to give them what they desire – such as more levels for free.

An interesting trend?

Former Apple exec: Steve Jobs could be replaced – by three people
[Via MacDailyNews]

Is Steve Jobs so unique that it would take three executives to fill his shoes at Apple? Despite the IT industry’s wealth of management talent, that’s what the company’s former executive VP for human resources claims in a soon-to-be released book that outlines a vision for Apple in the post-Jobs era,” Paul McDougall reports for InformationWeek.

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So, a triumvirate could be running Apple. Intriguingly, Google is also run by a triumvirate of executives. I wonder if large 21st Century Companies will adopt this sort of power-sharing? An example of collective leadership?

Microsoft’s many other operating systems

Microsoft Delivers Its ‘Other’ Tablet Operating System
[Via Daring Fireball]

Mary Jo Foley:

Microsoft officials have attempted to distinguish slates and tablets running full Windows 7 from those running Compact 7 by saying those running the Windows Embedded Compact OS are meant to be consumption devices, rather than consumption and creation devices.

Good luck with that.

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The article has this helpful figure:

Yep, each of them have the same sort of name but the OS is different from the PC/Slate models with Windows 7 on them. So, which one is a developer supposed to use to create applications?

See, according to MS, embedded is supposed to be used on devices that consume content while the full version is for those that create content. It would be nice if it was just that cut and dried.

Apple is selling tablets like they are computers while MS still sees those devices as some sort of fancy newsreader/video box.

As was highlighted yesterday:

One version is not just enough, it’s optimal from the customer point of view. Just ask Apple: It offers just one version of Mac OS X. It’s called Mac OS X. Not Mac OS X Media Center Edition or Mac OS X Arbitrarily Limited Edition. Just Mac OS X.

How many versions of Windows will the market really support?

The article also mentions that MS ‘real’ tablet OS will arrive sometime in 2012. Add another year or so if it follows MS normal timelines. IN either case, it may be just too late by then for any meaningful entry into the marketplace.

Only a 20th Century Company would think getting a product out 2 years after its competitors was a worthwhile effort. 21st Century Companies know that they have to react in the timeframe of months rather than years.

Samsung might not have a great tablet with its Tab but it responded quickly to the marketplace, using what it could to get a reasonable decent product out. It demonstrated some of the attributes of a 21st Century Company.

MS has not and that might make its future in this century, or even the next decade, parlous (because I like it better than perilous).

Ebooks, self-publishing and the app economy

E-Books and Successful Indie Writers
[Via Daring Fireball]

Speaking of buying lots of Kindle e-books, here’s an interesting story from Eli James:

Amanda Hocking is 26 years old. She has 9 self-published books to her name, and sells 100,000+ copies of those ebooks per month. She has never been traditionally published. This is her blog. And it’s no stretch to say – at $3 per book/70% per sale for the Kindle store – that she makes a lot of money from her monthly book sales. (Perhaps more importantly: a publisher on the private Reading2.0 mailing list has said, to effect: *there is no traditional publisher in the world right now that can offer Amanda Hocking terms that are better than what she’s currently getting, right now on the Kindle store, all on her own.)

Disintermediation, disruption, and independence.

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This has to scare major publishers. She sold over 100,000 copies in a month and keeps 70% of the proceeds. She is probably bringing home more money that major authors  from big publishing houses. Why would they continue to stick with these dinosaurs?

There are some similarities between game publishers and book publishers. One os the long lead to for publishing a work. Normally, a new game takes years and a new book can take almost as long, after the writer has submitted the final draft.

But in an app economy, things have month development timelines and get to the end user rapidly. That is what these types of books are becoming a part of – the app economy – with very little time between the act of writing and the act of publishing.

And, people are willing to try something at $0.99 they would never look at for $18.

Yeah. Some publishers have to be quaking. Penguin Books talked a good game last year but has it really been any sort of breakthrough.

I wonder when book reviewers will become like app reviewers, providing a rapid review of a work in a way to encourage reading. Could be interesting to see if they become ebook aggregators, the app equivalent of a publishing house, but with their own identity.