Footprints

Yesterday I spent the end of the day on two debates related to the development. I collected many memorable quotes and had the pleasure to encounter people with opinions totally different from mine.

Today I want to share with you three ideas, two graphs and one link:

• The notion that we are abusing our environment on a global scale is at least 30 years old, but today it is becoming mainstream. Nowadays the voguish term is "Ecological footprint"; in simple terms: how much resources a person uses, measured as an area of the Earth surface. This new term is essentially the inverse of the traditional "Carrying capacity" notion (persons per area instead of area per person).

• The biocapacity of different regions varies by a factor of five (that surprises me), the ecological footprint too (that does not surprises me). This situation is illustrated in the graph below (click to see larger version).

• If we want to help creating sustainable happiness we need to work on two aspects: 1) making underdeveloped countries developed, 2) making developed countries sustainable. This idea has been on the back of my mind for some time now, but yesterday I discovered the graph that illustrates the situation. Below a copy of it (click on it for larger version).

Finally the link I want to share is the source of this graphs, the Living Planet Report 2006.

Autogyros powerup !

So if you read the news Google.org is comming up to save the world with they new RE<C project.

In they initial move they are investing in two energy forms: solar energy and high altitude winds (5~10 kilometers).

Solar energy is "classic", high altitude winds; not so much. Looking around I found this 2006 article on the topic.

Essentially there exist (as divulged to the public) three methods for harvesting this energy:

• Make kites move around and use the movement on the tether to generate electricity,
• Hang up rotating elements in the air [1,2],
• Take a windmill and make it fly !

As you can guess the last one is a little more "intriguing".

Well first you have to remember the old times, when airplanes and helicopters were born. At that time an hybrid appeared: the autogyro. An airplanes without wings, an helicopter without a motor on the rotor.

Take an helicopter, push it foward fast enough and it will flight. If you do it the other way around, take an helicopter, blow wind on it and it will flight too ! That is a "rotary-wing kite", or as WWII German liked to call it, a Focke Achgelis Fa 330 Bachstelze.

All of this may sound totally incredible, but you can check the previous Wikipedia links, the 2007 paper and the 2002 patent.



So why is all of this interesting ? Well first because now you have a great "do it yourself" project to create your own rotary-wing kite that will really show off [1,2, 3].

More importantly there are good arguments towards using high altitude wind: less nuissances, two times more reliable wind, almost five times power densities, easier to install "anywhere" and, a priori, not considerably more expensive than ground winds.

Citing the previously mentioned paper:

"""
This is the highest power density for a large renewable energy resource anywhere on Earth. It exceeds the power densities of sunlight, near surface winds, ocean currents, hydropower, tides, geothermal, and other large-scale renewable resources [reference].
[...]
Wind power is roughly 100 times the power used by all human civilization.
[...]
Removing 1% of high altitude winds' available energy is not expected to have adverse environmental consequences.
"""

Reading this arguments and the general information it seems that today the best two candidates energy sources are high altitude winds and nuclear fusion energy (either by magnetic confinement or by the less known inertial confinement methods).

Since the first is sun based instead of the fuel based as the nuclear fusion, it seems to be the best of the two. More importantly high altitude winds methods does not require any physics breakthroughs, only engineering.

The drawbacks ? There will be noticeable maintance costs, airplanes not allowed in high altitude farms areas, if you live near the equator or the poles no high winds for you, if a flying windmill crashes on your house...

Anyway, it is an adventure that seems worth the faillure risk !

Today we have Canadian, American and Australian companies working on this. Europe is well placed on the ground windmills market, but I still have not found windmills flying around here (if you do, please add a comment).

Update: Google seems to have invested in a technique of the second style, building huge kites and hanging windmills to them.

Papers review

PhD comics, the source of all truth in the PhD life usually made fun of the papers creation and review process [1,2,3,4, 5]. However today I found some shocking real world evidence on this process. Sensible souls, abstain yourself of seeing this video. The video comes from a very respectable robotician who's anonymity I will preserve.

No more fish ? Let us warm up the crickets oven !

This morning I saw the earth raise above the horizon

Thanks JAXA.

The dream

After three weeks in California, going back to France, on an airplane to Atlanta, sited on the side of a nice looking young woman from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Engaging a simple, polite discussion:

Her: "Oh, so it was your first time in USA. So what do you think about it ?"
Me: "Well, I think you sell a dream that is just... not real"
Her: "Ah..."

And she turned her face back to the window, looking to the horizon above the clouds.

Applied neuroscience

Psycho Test - video powered by Metacafe

Can someone please explain me this one ?!

Gringolandia

Starting my 3 weeks in USA. Up to now I only have discussed with "dissident americans" (americans who think like europeans).

I just found a good analogy on how the americans see the world, they are focused on the black cross.