What's New Friday Aug 8, 2008

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 8 Aug 08   Washington, DC

1.  GAS: MIT CHEMIST INVENTS THE HYDROGEN ECONOMY.
You may recall that in his 2003 State-of-the-Union Address President 
George W. Bush promised energy independence with Freedom Car, 
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN03/wn013103.html , "powered by hydrogen 
and pollution free."  He forgot to say where the hydrogen would come 
from.  MIT chemist Daniel Nocera said last week in Science online that he 
has the solution: "artificial photosynthesis."  Did he invent artificial 
photosynthesis, you ask?   Not exactly, evolution "invented" 
photosynthesis.  Nocera isn’t about synthesizing anything; he wants to 
break up water using electric power from solar cells.  So he invented 
solar cells?  No, other people did that.  Nocera wants to use solar cells 
to do electrolysis.  Nocera invented electrolysis?  Not quite, that was 
invented by Lavosier before his beheading in 1794; Nocera found a catalyst 
that he says does electrolysis better.  Does it?  We don’t know; it hasn’t 
been replicated.  MIT says it’s a "major discovery."

2.  SCIENCE EDITORIAL: "SCIENCE IN MUSLIM COUNTRIES."
I recommend to everyone the important and courageous guest editorial in 
today’s edition of Science.  The author, Ismail Serageldin, is director of 
the Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt.  The Muslim world was the 
cradle of rationality and tolerance when medieval Europe was mired in the 
dark ages.  Today the Muslim world is "driven by self-appointed guardians 
of religious correctness," Serageldin writes.  "They increasingly force 
dissenting voices into silence and conformity with what they consider to 
be acceptable behavior."  He calls on the scientific and academic 
communities in Muslim countries to challenge accepted views.  And he 
points out that a similar battle rages in the U.S over evolution, and I 
would add, over contraception, and stem cell research.

3.  STEM CELLS:  TIME TO BRING OUT A NEW LINE?
Remarkable progress has reportedly been made with induced pluripotent stem 
cells (iPS) as an alternative to stem cells derived from embryos (ES).  
When a Japanese researcher announced two years ago that he had cultivated 
colonies of pluripotent cells from mouse skin cells that mimicked ES 
cells, it was believed it would be years before it could be done with 
human cells but it was done in a year, which can be taken as a measure of 
the pressure from a research community that is making remarkable 
progress.  For a variety of reasons, researchers would prefer to work with 
new human ES lines than any of the 21 aging lines the President has 
approved.  Both Obama and McCain have vowed to make new lines available, 
but why is it an issue for any president to decide? 

4.  LHC: START DATE IS SET FOR SEPTEMBER TENTH.
It took 14 years and $8 billion to build and will accelerate protons to 7 
TeV, collide them, and examine the debris.  Readers often ask what it will 
do for the world.  It’s the greatest adventure of our lives.  It won’t 
cure disease, or fight wars, or make us wealthy.  We are tracing our way 
back through the law of cause and effect in a search for the first cause.  
Can we tiny specks of matter on an insignificant planet really do that?

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
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