Solar-powered electrolysis, using a bioengineered protein.

Cool. Brings a whole new meaning to the (stupid) phrase “no blood for oil.” In this case, it’s blood to replace oil.

This isn’t particularly profound, but it’s interesting to see a growing awareness of transhumanism and its implications among the non-technical commentariat. Mona Charen on life extension:

Let’s stipulate that for those wealthy enough to take advantage of it (i.e., most Americans), science will make it possible for people

Building a better nail.

Glenn writes about a new book on traffic congestion, and how it’s a bigger problem than people realize.

I’ve often thought that it is a massive economic waste. I also think that there are things that could be done about it that would be relatively low cost, and don’t involved construction of new highways or relaning the roads. As I’ve noted before, if I were king, I’d launch a massive public education campaign on lane discipline, and enforce it with tickets. I’d be harder on left lane hogs than on speeders.

Were nanotubes the secret of Damascus blades?

Phil Bowermaster (who’s not the man he once was) has a some musings on virtual children. His co-blogger responds.

Though he doesn’t say it explicitly, Randall Parker explains why we’ll have to eventually settle space.

SciAm reports a potentially interesting breakthrough in biofuels:

Dreyer and his colleagues built a reactor capable of producing hydrogen from soybean oil, biodiesel or sugar water without any of the buildup that would have resulted from a conventional process. To get the reactor warmed up, the researchers ignited a mixture of methane and oxygen in order to bring the catalyst to a searing 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Addressing concerns about keeping the process carbon-neutral, Paul Dauenhauer, another graduate student working on the project, notes that while methane is a fossil fuel, there are other ways to heat the catalyst that don’t involve burning petrochemicals. What’s more, once the reaction is running, it’s self-sustaining, and methane and oxygen are no longer required.

A fuel injector like those used in a car atomized the biofuels into tiny droplets that landed on a hot rhodium-cerium catalyst, which converted the fuel to syngas. This reaction released energy and heated the catalyst. The heat and ratio of carbon and oxygen in the reaction kept the buildup from sticking to the catalyst. For each type of biofuel, nearly all the fuel was converted and about 70 percent of the hydrogen bound up in the fuel molecules was given off as gas, the researchers report in this week’s Science. “We find we reach the theoretical maximum,” says Dauenhauer.

Cool.

A liver grown from umbilical cord blood. Leon Kass can’t be happy about this.

Virtual worlds?

One of the arguments against space tourism as a long-term market is that as the VW technology advances, the real thing may actually be viewed as boring compared to the possibilities offered by programmable realities. I suspect that this will be true to some limited degree (particularly given the cost differential of doing things in cyberspace as opposed to meat space), but I’m sure that there will always be “Luddites” who refuse to hide in virtual worlds, protected from real consequences, but will prefer to go out and test their bodies and senses against the real thing.