Section 9

Ali Shakouri: Energy Fundamentals talk

Interesting:

• 12 Twatts worldwide <- perspective
  12 x 1,000,000^2 == 12 trillion joules per second, avg over year.
  If 6BB people, this is 2000 watts per person. 1722 kcal/hour
  2000watt is 2000joules/sec. Divide by 4.18 cal/j to get 478 cal/sec, times 3600 and divide by 1000 to about 1722 kcal/hr.
• hydroelectric issues: co2 costs, stagnant water, ecosystem effects
• wind: engineering interesting
  delivery from offshore
  Petroleum product infrastructure makes it hard for wind to improve its $/joule.
• Solar: High initial expense. And if our needs keep increasing, how long will today's solar solution work? Nasty materials for producing solar cells. 6 years to recoup nrg used to make the solar cell!
• Shortsightedness problem. Higher cost today might be justified, but will you/we be willing to pay now? (Credit cards.)
• If plants wanted max energy from sun, black.
• Algae:
  High energy storage (concentration) in oils we get from them.
  Don't displace land animals. Problem: containing growth, controlling growth
• Nuclear:
  Fusion: What sun does, compared to fission. No radioactive byproducts. Perpetually 50 years out.
  Fission: uranium hard to come by, and waste lasts many years.
• Economists: best at working with quantifiables, but this can make it difficult to assess unknown costs/benefits, e.g., price of oil in 5 years vs. benefits of solar today (though costly today to set up).

  Questions

  1. "What should the balance be between research and deploying something today?"
     Shakori responded: "Need a workforce for new technologies before find/improve any one of them."
  2. Tech problem (making energy) vs. social (changing our nrg expectations)
     Msg I got from talk is that very difficult to meet our energy needs with any of these technologies, at least individually. So question (of course) can be changed to: can/ought we to change our energy demands? . How would we do this? . Expectations of developing countries (China)? . What sacrifices should individuals be asked to make? Or is $$ the more effective way? . Incentives? Carbon cap-and-trade
  3. Saw above that if 12 trillion watts, that's about 1722 kcal/hr. Perspective, given our dietary kcals are a few thousand (right?). Clearly, much energy and disproportionate.
     How many watts should one get? Does this approach seem reasonable? Egalitarian?

  Stem cells

  Forsberg slides

  1. Understand the hierarchy.
  2. Self-renewal an differentiation are key concepts for SC.
  3. Mark's sc talk, reviewing Forsberg:
     
     • Focus of most stem cell research and SCNT is regen. med. Motivation: Overcome tissue rejection by host immune system.
     • Forsberg review by Mark: different expression profiles for different hema. SC types. For disease, compare, within type, disease vs. wild-type to know which genes misfunctioning (assoc with disease)
     • Slide 12 is great b/c shows other SCs in relation to hematopoietic.
     • FACS is amazing tech. Slide 19.
     • slide 21: experimental procedure. Explain irradiation.

  From last time:'More practice'

  ...and for discussion. The following excerpts are from from the Lawrence J. Nelson required reading. Try to lay out the formal structure as above.

  1. Embryos are morally considerable in part "because they are valued ... by sincere moral agents whose attributions of moral status must be given serious consideration as well as some deference and weight."
     Nelson's "principle of evaluative respect and accomodation."
  2. 1. "Embryos are in a morally unique relationship with the persons who deliberately used their gametes to bring them into existence. For those persons and only those persons, embryos are genetically a literal part of them and have the potential to become their children. Consequently, these embryos have some moral status due to their unique relationship with the gamete sources."
     2. "But this potential has moral significance only if the woman who provided the egg, or some other woman, voluntarily chooses to gestate the embryo with the consent of both gamete sources. Embryos do not have moral status simply because they have theoretical potential to develop into born persons. Embryos have true potential only if they are in the process of being gestated by some particular woman."
  3. "...there are sufficient scientific reasons to believe that research with stem cells could someday result in significant benefits for suffering and injured persons. This is a great moral good; it is not mere caprice or frivolity that underlies the promise of stem cell research. Therefore, it is ethically permissible for embryos, which have a modest moral status but not the status of persons, to be destroyed in the course of responsible stem cell research -- provided they are destroyed with a sincere attitude of respect, for there is a moral loss here -- something morally valuable is being destroyed, and provided they are used only with the voluntary, informed consent of both gamete sources."