Charles T. Maxwell, senior energy analyst at Weeden & Co., has been analyzing the oil industry for longer than most of us have been alive. Well connected and respected within the industry, his opinions can not be portrayed as coming from the fringe. Maxwell believes world oil peaks by 2015 and we are headed for a 10-12 year financial downturn as a result.
A lot of people have said that the year 2015 is too far out for the peak. But I built a big margin in there because I thought we might have two recessions. I didn’t dream that we would have one really big one. So I’ve still got 2015 out there. But if you said to me last July, when do you really believe the peak is going to come, I would have said 2013. I started years earlier by estimating 2015 and I happily held to that view as I saw the recession begin to develop because I could see that we would probably push it off a little bit.
For your purposes, I’ve got 2008 for the peak of non-OPEC-not really a peak, it’s a plateau, but we’re falling off it now. And then 2011 for the peak of the top 50 listed companies, the ones that dominate the stock market, so the stock market investors will say the oil industry has peaked because their stocks have peaked. And then I’ve got 2013 for the peak of black crude oil and then 2015 for the all-liquids peak, which I take to be ultimate peak oil. And that would include gas-to-liquids, coal-to-liquids, NGLs. And it would include both synthetic and natural crudes.
Solar costs too much, ethanol is a loser (I totally agree), and Maxwell even thinks ultimately we are going to be disappointed by wind.
If you look at solar power, it’s terrific, so terrific, so fast growing….that without a subsidy, no one will use it. So it’s not very attractive, and people don’t admit that. And I think it’s the same thing with ethanol, which was a loser from the start. And I think it’s the same thing with wind energy. I think wind energy is going to turn into a huge disappointment because so many hopes are being pinned on it.
I have two main questions about wind: How fast will wind's costs fall? Also, how much can long distance DC power lines allow wind from different areas to back each other up? The second question really has two components. The first relates to the cost effectiveness of really long range (thousand or more miles) transmission of electricity. Will superconductors help? If so, how soon? The other component relates to wind: how uncoupled are wind patterns in areas many hundreds of miles apart? I think the jury is still out on that and I've yet to see the published study using real world data from enough locations far enough apart from each other and over years of measurement. I'm taking a skeptical view of large scale baseload wind power.
A partial shift toward electric cars will lessen the problem with wind's intermittency. But we still need baseload power. We could free up more natural gas for use in transportation by building up more baseload nuclear power. Granted, nuclear power won't help us in the 2010s. But it could make a much bigger contribution in the 2020s.
In the second part of his interview Maxwell looks at the fuels we have to turn to as major sources when oil production starts declining yearly across the globe. He sees natural gas, coal, nuclear, and conservation as the main energy sources we can hope to turn to as substitutes. Note that he doesn't see wind and solar as major alternatives in the 2015 time frame. Leave aside the long term potential. What happens in 2015, 2016, 2017? We all eat in the short run.
In effect, by 2015 we’ve got five fuels that we’re talking about here: oil, gas, coal, and nuclear. And the fifth one we’ll call a “fuel,” which is energy efficiency and conservation. It acts like a fuel. It gives you more work done at lower energy volumes. So in that situation you have really got Hubbert’s peak operating to keep you from using the oil alternative. The obvious easy answer politically is to import more oil, but there’s not going to be any place to import more oil from. And the costs are going to be higher and higher, so we’re stalled out on that one. But you go on with oil; you don’t stomp on oil because that would increase the size of your problem immensely, very quickly, and without any reasonable basis. You just can’t emphasize it because it isn’t a solution; it’s just a maintenance story.
Maxwell correctly sees the main problem with nuclear is build times.
So then you go over to nuclear and you don’t have the time. You can try to summon up anything you want but if you don’t get it for 10 years…the vulnerability is going to be right here between 2011 and 2021. That decade is going to, I think, be the maximum vulnerability; that’s when we’re going to take it on the chin. So nuclear can’t get there in time. We should be doing something on nuclear for days ahead, but it won’t help us during the upcoming decade unless we started it today and we aren’t going to start it today because the public is not yet ready for it.
France is really in the best position to assure affordable electric power going to the Peak Oil era. Already 80% of France's electric power comes from nuclear power and the French are building another nuclear reactor at Flamanville. For a variety of reasons few of the French oppose nuclear power. On nuclear power I think the French are wiser than Americans overall.
Maxwell sees a bright future for nautral gas from shale fields. Maxwell is responding to the much brighter prospects for extracting the massive amounts of natural gas in the shale plays. The Haynesville shale in Louisiana, Barnett shale in Texas, Marcellus shale in the US Northeast and other shales can be accessed with horizontal drilling and hydrofracturing. I'm beginning to think that the T. Boone Pickens Plan for powering cars with natural gas makes sense. Electric cars will have a role too. But existing cars can be converted to natural gas (especially if legislative and regulatory bodies decide to allow it) pretty quickly and for far less money than existing cars can be converted to electric power.
In a nutshell, I do not see a viable alternative to natural gas powered cars. Biodiesel algae looks too long term. The energy returns from corn ethanol are too low (and we do not have enough land to grow enough corn anyhow). Conversion of coal to liquid costs much more and is too dirty. A shift to more electric powered cars makes sense. But the time to make the transition is too long and the costs too high for electric powered cars to be the main transportation response to Peak Oil.
I do not see mass transit as a solution for most people because even in Europe with much higher fuel costs and more subsidized mass transit 85+% of passenger miles traveled are still by car. Mass transit takes more time because it is not door-to-door. For people with lower budgets or shorter distance traveling needs conversion of bicycles to electric power could pretty cheaply keep a lot of people going to work.
Maxwell expects an economic crisis that lasts from 10 to 12 years as we start to respond to Peak Oil too late. That sounds about right to me. The economy will shrink as the amount of oil available to drive it declines every year. To do the massive capital investments needed to develop alternatives a larger fraction of a shrinking pie will need to be allocated (whether by market mechanisms or government fiat) toward developing alternatives and investments in efficiency. One can claim we already have many of the technologies we need to adjust to Peak Oil. I would agree. But capital build lead times are long and turn-over in auto fleets and other equipment that uses energy takes many years. Few people or companies can afford to just junk all their cars, trunks, and other equipment and replace it with stuff that runs on electric power and natural gas.
Maxwell sees $300 oil as inevitable. I am less sure. Writing from Switzerland Francois Cellier argues that demand destruction will keep oil below $200 per barrel in the long run. Though even if that's a long term upper limit one can still imagine spikes above that price. So when world oil production starts declining at 4-5-6% per year how high will prices go? Possibly if the US dollar goes into a major decline against some other currencies $300 per barrel would be possible. Though I suspect that the dollar's value will be a lot less if and when that happens.
What do the alternatives cost? Electric power derived from a number of sources is going to play a larger role as in energy-intensive applications as oil gradually fades from the scene. The Institute for Energy Research has a report Levelized Cost of New Electricity Generating Technologies which you can view as a graphical of expected comparative costs for the main methods of generating electricity in 2016. Note they have wind and solar as still far more expensive than natural gas or coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS). But if low carbon dioxide emissions at the lowest possible cost is your goal then nuclear beats fossil fuels with CCS.
Some of my own policy recommendations:
- Regulatory agencies should make conversion of cars to run on natural gas easier to do legally. The cars will probably pollute less on natural gas. So let people pay aftermarket suppliers to make the conversions and then do spot tests to see if any models of cars are problematic on natural gas. Encourage car companies to provide engine calibration files where necessary for conversions.
- Governments should start buying natural gas powered cars and hybrids for their fleets. Phase out the purchase of plain gasoline vehicles.
- Use loan guarantees to restart the nuclear power industry.
- Utility regulators should prod electric utilities to convert remaining oil-fired electric power plants to the most efficient coal or natural gas designs.
- The US Department of Agriculture (and similar departments in other countries) should look for policies that will bring natural gas to more farms to replace diesel and gasoline for water pumps, crop drying, and other energy intensive applications.
- Mass transit money from governments should go to natural gas, hybrid, and electric powered buses and trains. Phase out less efficient vehicles and migrate to electric power to the extend practical.
- Standards for home and commercial building energy efficiency should allow people to build and buy homes certified to higher energy efficiency levels. Then mortgage providers can factor in lower utility costs when considering ability to make mortgage payments.
Got any good energy policy ideas?
Even if you do not have multiple sclerosis (MS) or know anyone who has MS the research into how to repair myelin sheath (nerve insulation which gets damaged in MS) matters for your own brain's future. As we age our myelin sheath degrades and this contributes to cognitive decline experienced as people get older. Therefore I always cheer on MS research more than research in most diseases. Work at USCF and U Cambridge put to a regulatory pathway as key for telling oligodendrocyte cells to make more myelin.
In this study the researchers have identified the Wnt pathway, which plays an active role in the maintenance and proliferation of stem cells, as a crucial determinant of whether oligodendrocytes can efficiently make myelin. Their studies demonstrate that if the Wnt pathway is abnormally active, then the process is inhibited. This opens up the exciting possibility that the repair can be enhanced in MS patients by drugs that block the Wnt pathway.
Professor Robin Franklin from the University of Cambridge, a co-senior author of the study, explained the significance of their findings: "The pathway we identified plays a critical role in whether repair to the damaged cells will or will not occur. Interestingly, mutations in this particular pathway are also involved in several cancers. In this regard, drugs that inhibit this pathway from signaling have been sought which might suppress tumour growth. These same drugs may also find a role in promoting repair in MS."
Regulatory pathways that control growth are always of interest to cancer researchers. So cancer research work has helped build up information about the Wnt regulatory pathway that helps MS researchers in their own investigations. More generally, cancer research into cell growth regulation helps to build up the knowledge we need to develop a large assortment of cell therapies.
To find out which genes were contributing to three key stages in the repair process – the recruitment of oligodendrocyte precursors to the site of injury, the maturation of those cells into functional oligodendrocytes, and the formation of a new myelin sheath -- they measured the activity of 1,040 genes. All of the genes they studied encode transcription factors, which regulate the activity of other genes. Their experiments showed that 50 transcription factors are working during key steps in myelin repair.
One of the reasons I expect a revolution in biomedical treatments over the next 20 years is the development of chips that can do massively parallel manipulations and measures with cells and cellular components. Biotechnology now benefits from the same shrinking of scale that has done so much to double computer power many times.
The researchers were able to focus on a single gene that might make a good target for drug development.
The team then honed in on a gene called Tcf4, because its expression was strong in damaged areas where repair attempts were under way.
Tcf4 is involved in a cascade of biochemical events known as the Wnt (pronounced "wint") pathway, whose importance has been well recognized in normal development of many tissues, including the brain. Until now, however, Wnt had not been linked to myelin production or repair.
"This is the first evidence implicating the Wnt pathway in multiple sclerosis," says lead author Stephen P.J. Fancy, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Rowitch lab. "We consider this an exciting development in our efforts to understand why the repair process often fails in the disease."
Some of us alive today will live long enough to see tissue repair to become commonplace throughout the body. Development of this capability will slow and eventually reverse the aging process.
Receding gums are repairable with a gel that uses platelets to restore gum tissue over teeth.
Traditional gum grafting surgery requires surgically excising tissue from the roof of the mouth (the palate) to replace the gum tissue lost around the teeth. Unfortunately, removing tissue from the roof of the mouth extends recovery time and is a major source of patients’ discomfort or pain. According to the American Academy of Periodontology, periodontal disease is the primary cause of tooth loss in adults aged 35 and older. Periodontal disease includes gum recession, also called gingival recession, which can result in tooth root decay and tooth loss.The new tissue regeneration application from Tufts uses platelet concentrate gel applied to a collagen membrane as the graft instead of using tissue from the roof of the mouth. The graft is soaked in the patient’s platelets, using blood drawn in the same visit. Placed over the receding tooth root, the graft is then surgically secured.In order to examine three-year efficacy of the treatment, measurements were taken from six patients in the gum recession area at baseline, 6, and 36 months after surgery. At six months, 24 out of 37 teeth from the six patients had complete root coverage (65 percent). At 36 months, 21 out of 37 teeth from the six patients had complete root coverage (57 percent). The authors said that the recession over three years was minimal and that the results are comparable to traditional gum grafting surgery.
We need methods for engineering tissue to get it to grow where we want and to become the types of tissue we need for repair. Success stories like the one above demonstrate that guided tissue growth isn't only in our distant science fiction future. It is in our short term future as well.
Bored of the same old hormones for boosting your muscle mass? Wnat to try a new trendy buffing hormone? Mechano Growth Factor (MGF) could become the next rage for athletic dopers.
Scientists in the UK and Denmark have shown that if elderly men were given growth hormone and exercised their legs showed an appreciable muscle mass increase. Dr. Geoff Goldspink (Royal Free and University College Medical School, UK) says: "This raises the question: Can age-related loss of muscle strength and increased fragility be ameliorated by the therapeutic application of mechano growth factor (MGF)?". There is hope that MGF can also help sufferers of diseases such as muscular dystrophy, ALS, renal disease or cancer, for whom intensive exercise is not an option. It may even prove useful to ameliorate muscle loss resulting from long periods in zero-gravity conditions during space travel. Dr. Mark Lewis (University College London, UK) will present their latest results on how MGF exerts its effects during his talk at the Society of Experimental Biology Annual Meeting in Glasgow on Wednesday 1st July 2009.
When muscles are stretched during exercise, they produce a specific substance known as mechano growth factor (MGF) that activates stem cells already present in the tissue. Once activated, these progenitor cells begin to divide, creating additional muscle fibres and increasing the size and strength of the muscle. In addition to intensive exercise, muscles need to be stimulated by growth hormone (GH) in order to release MGF. Since there is a natural decrease in the levels of this hormone as we age, this may combine with the lack of intensive physical activity to cause muscle wasting in elderly people. "The downside", warns Dr. Goldspink, "is that MGF has great potential for doping in sports. A synthetic version is already available over the internet, and although it is still very expensive, it is expected that new technologies will bring down the price to make it comparable to that of human insulin".
The downside? I hear negativity coming from Dr. Goldspink when optimism seems more the order of the day. New ways for athletes to boost their performance? Don't we want them to improve? Don't we want continuous improvement leading to the perfection of human bodies? Aren't we hearing the march of transhumanist progress? Isn't progress good? Don't we need the prospect of stronger bodies to boost our spirits as Peak Oil approaches?
My bottom line on drug doping by athletes: Why should we care? Why should we only want to see natural wild type bodies compete? That would be tantamount to saying that car races should only be done with standard mass produced factory cars. But we expect more from our race cars, much more. Why not expect more from humans?
The way I see it: Some people get the luck of the genetic draw and have incredible athletic bodies. If lucky genetic naturals want to compete only with each other, fine. Have contests for genetic naturals. But why not other contests between those boosted athletes who can strut with the latest that biomedical science and technology have to offer?
Want to make your teeth last longer? University of Rochester Medical Center researchers find that tooth whitening with hydrogen peroxide does little damage to the teeth as compared to the acidity of orange juice.
Eastman Institute’s YanFang Ren, DDS, PhD, and his team determined that the effects of 6 percent hydrogen peroxide, the common ingredient in professional and over-the-counter whitening products, are insignificant compared to acidic fruit juices. Orange juice markedly decreased hardness and increased roughness of tooth enamel.
Unlike ever before, researchers were able to see extensive surface detail thanks to a new focus-variation vertical scanning microscope. “The acid is so strong that the tooth is literally washed away,” said Ren, whose findings were recently published in Journal of Dentistry. “The orange juice decreased enamel hardness by 84 percent.” No significant change in hardness or surface enamel was found from whitening.
Weakened and eroded enamel may speed up the wear of the tooth and increase the risk for tooth decay to quickly develop and spread. “Most soft drinks, including sodas and fruit juices, are acidic in nature,” Ren said. “Our studies demonstrated that the orange juice, as an example, can potentially cause significant erosion of teeth.”
Your teeth and gums age and wear out just like the rest of your body. Think about what you drink and eat with the idea of slowing your dental aging. I've stopped using my teeth to crack open ice cubes and otherwise have become more conscious of stresses one can inflict on teeth by choice which foods one eats.
The brains of methamphetamine abusers take over a year after they stop using before they develop the ability to ignore distractions and concentrate on a task. This disability makes it a lot easier for them to be tempted to start using again.
In a study published online by the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, UC Davis researchers report that it takes at least a year for former methamphetamine users to regain impulse control. The results tell recovering substance abusers, their families and drug-treatment specialists that it can take an extended period of time for the brain functions critical to recovery to improve.
"Recovery from meth abuse does not happen overnight," said Ruth Salo, lead author of the study and a UC Davis assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. "It may take a year — or even longer — for cognitive processes such as impulse control and attentional focus to improve. Treatment programs need to consider this when monitoring recovering addicts' progress during their early periods of abstinence."
I see this as further evidence that drug addicts have very impaired free will.
What would help them: A way to totally remove them from access to meth for long enough time for their brains to partially recover (and I say partially because some of the damage is permanent). Put them on an isolated island for over a year where the supplies to the island are highly controlled. For example, have a ship that offloads goods monthly at a port and use a purchasing agent who hides from the sellers where their food and other supplies are really going. Reduce the number of people in the supply chain so that the odds of illicit drugs reaching the island go way down. Freed from drug access for a long enough time they'd have a much better chance for their brains to partially heal to the extent that they'd have a chance of controlling their impulses once released back into society.
Meth uses do poorly in the Stroop attention test for the ability to concentrate on a task and not get distracted.
For the current study, Salo used the widely-validated, computer-based Stroop attention test to measure the abilities of 65 recovering methamphetamine abusers to use cognitive control — or direct their attention to specific tasks while ignoring distractors. Study participants had been abstinent for a minimum of three weeks and a maximum of 10 years, and they had previously used the drug for periods ranging from 24 months to 28 years. The data for the 65 individuals were compared to Stroop attention test data from 33 participants who had never used methamphetamine.
"The test taps into something people do in everyday life: make choices in the face of conflicting impulses that can promote a strong but detrimental tendency," Salo explained. "For meth users, impairments in this decision-making ability might make them more likely to spend a paycheck on the immediate satisfaction of getting high rather than on the longer-term satisfaction gained by paying rent or buying groceries."
MRI studies also show partial return to normality after a year of not using meth.
According to Salo, the new study mirrors previous magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies she and her colleagues published in 2005 showing a partial normalization of chemicals in selected brain regions after one year of methamphetamine abstinence.
Stem cell and gene therapies will some day offer prospects for much faster and more thorough recovery. Imagine a stem cell therapy that gives people greater ability to concentrate than they had even before they started using. Imagine a therapy that reduces cravings and makes people feel more calm. The brain is going to be the most difficult to repair organ because it is so incredibly complex. So I'm holding out earlier hope for heart repair or liver repair for example. But I expect brain damage from addiction will become at least partially repairable with stem cells and other new wave treatments that repair tissue.
Assisted Reproduction Technologies (ART) keep getting better. In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) has a very bright future.
Amsterdam, The Netherlands: A new test examining chromosomes in human eggs a few hours after fertilisation can identify those that are capable of forming a healthy baby, a researcher told the 25th annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology today (Monday 29 June). Dr. Elpida Fragouli, from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of Oxford, UK, and Reprogenetics UK, said that her team's work had already enabled seven ongoing pregnancies in a group of older women with a history of multiple failed IVF attempts.
I would not be surprised if some women in their late 30s go traveling between continents to go to Oxford to get access to this method of embryo selection.
"Out of 35 patients who had embryo transfers after the test, we achieved a pregnancy rate of 20%, which is exceptional considering the extremely poor prognosis of the women involved." she said. "This represents a doubling of the usual pregnancy rate for women who fall into this category, which is otherwise, at best, under 10% and, at worst, zero. To date, we have two live births from this group, and all the other women who became pregnant have maintained their pregnancies. The study is continuing, and we believe that we will achieve more pregnancies with the help of this technology in the future."
The scientists used the Comparative Genomic Hybridisation (CGH) technique to count the chromosomes in each egg. Unlike conventional screening strategies, using the fluorescent in situ hybridisation (FISH) method, which allows less than half of the chromosomes of an embryonic cell to be examined, CGH enables the evaluation of the entire chromosome complement. CGH was used to examine the fertilised eggs by looking at polar bodies, tiny cells that are a by-product of egg development. The chromosomes of polar bodies provide an indication of whether the corresponding egg is normal or abnormal; if the polar bodies have the wrong number of chromosomes, so does the egg.
Better tech for doing IVF embryo testing will make IVF more appealing as a way to create babies as compared to plain old-fashioned sex. We'll still have sex. It just won't be for making babies. Cheap genetic testing which yields lots of details about embryo genetic profiles will cause people to personally practice eugenics on a massive scale and the great human evolution acceleration of the last 10,000 years will pale next to the massive human evolution of the next 100 years.
At some point I expect IVF baby creation to become less risky than conventional sex as a way to start pregnancies that turn out well. That point is probably approaching in the next 10 years. Granted, women in their late 30s starting pregnancies will still run bigger risks of bad outcomes as compared to women in their early 20s. But the total risk will go down for all women using IVF and eventually genetic testing of embryos will become so powerful that IVF will yield smarter, healthier, better looking, and otherwise - dare I say it? - superior babies. Yes, I dare.
Guys know what they want and they pretty much agree with each other on who is hot.
There is much more consensus among men about whom they find attractive than there is among women, according to a new study by Wake Forest University psychologist Dustin Wood.
The study, co-authored by Claudia Brumbaugh of Queens College, appears in the June issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
"Men agree a lot more about who they find attractive and unattractive than women agree about who they find attractive and unattractive," says Wood, assistant professor of psychology. "This study shows we can quantify the extent to which men agree about which women are attractive and vice versa."
Unfortunately the press release does not provide any quantitative results. Here is the abstract which also doesn't provide much details. You can buy the article at that link.
The pictures of men and women were only between the ages 18 and 25. I would like to see a study using a wider age range. My expectation is that female attractiveness will be seen as dropping off with age a lot faster than male attractiveness. Also, I'd like to see a study that uses psychometrics to compare attractiveness of women and men based on both the IQ of the viewer and the viewee. Do smart people find smart people more attractive? Do dumb people find smart or dumb people more attractive? Also, I'd like to know how the physical traits and character traits of men and women affect what they see as attractive. For example, does a guy with more masculine physical features and dominant personality feel greater attraction to the most feminine-looking women or to less feminine-looking women?
More than 4,000 participants in the study rated photographs of men and women (ages 18-25) for attractiveness on a 10-point scale ranging from "not at all" to "very." In exchange for their participation, raters were told what characteristics they found attractive compared with the average person. The raters ranged in age from 18 to more than 70.
Before the participants judged the photographs for attractiveness, the members of the research team rated the images for how seductive, confident, thin, sensitive, stylish, curvaceous (women), muscular (men), traditional, masculine/feminine, classy, well-groomed, or upbeat the people looked.
Breaking out these factors helped the researchers figure out what common characteristics appealed most to women and men.
Men's judgments of women's attractiveness were based primarily around physical features and they rated highly those who looked thin and seductive. Most of the men in the study also rated photographs of women who looked confident as more attractive.
As a group, the women rating men showed some preference for thin, muscular subjects, but disagreed on how attractive many men in the study were. Some women gave high attractiveness ratings to the men other women said were not attractive at all.
The press release doesn't indicate whether the pictures were full body or just face. Do ratings of just faces predict ratings of full bodies? I'd expect fat distribution to have a big impact on that. A buxom woman will pick up points in a full body shot while a pot belly will decrease attraction.
So why are men more consistent in their judgments? Do women differ from each other more than men do in their mating strategies? Or is the study picking up on greater variation over time in terms of what women want in men? In particular, how much of the female difference was due to the women being at different stages of their menstrual cycles? See my post Ovulating Women Prefer Smell Of Dominant Men and also my post Nursing Women More Attracted To Higher Pitch Male Voices. Monthly hormonal variations are going to cause women to feel more attraction to alpha men with more masculine features when the women are ovulating and then toward beta men to help raise the kids.
Another possible cause of the greater female difference might be due to age of the females. Does a 35 year old woman on average want different physical features (perhaps less masculinity) than a 20 year old woman? Maybe the full article gets into this. If anyone reads it post in the comments.
Update: Following up on comments made by bbartlog and David Friedman: If the pictures of men showed clearer signs of status (e.g. wearing a medical uniform with an MD on the name tag versus clothing for a lumberjack) would the female choices line up more closely? Or maybe in the pictures used some of the pictures showed status indicators which only some of the women noticed? How consistent are women in their status rankings?
Get yourself a running wheel and start running like a mouse. Aged mice exercising on a running wheel get more stem cells in their brains as a result.
In research published in Stem Cells, Dr Daniel Blackmore and his colleagues at the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) have shown that moderate exercise directly increases the number of stem cells in the ageing brain.
Stem cells and new neuron generation decline with age. So anything that reverses or slows this trend might slow brain aging.
However, it has also been known for more than a decade that the number of new neurons we produce slowly declines with age.
According to QBI neuroscientist Dr Blackmore, researchers are interested in finding ways to stimulate the production of neurons to negate any decline brought about by age or disease.
"Our findings suggest that moderate exercise, from early to late in life, can have a very positive effect," Dr Blackmore said.
Some people look for pills to take to slow or reverse aging. But you should first get the low tech basics right. Eat more fruits and vegetables. Get more exercise.
PolyPlus claims to have solved a key problem for lithium air batteries.
A company based in Berkeley, CA, is developing lightweight, high-energy batteries that can use the surrounding air as a cathode. PolyPlus is partnering with a manufacturing firm to develop single-use lithium metal-air batteries for the government, and it expects these batteries to be on the market within a few years. The company also has rechargeable lithium metal-air batteries in the early stages of development that could eventually power electric vehicles that can go for longer in between charges.
Lithium metal reacts extremely rapidly with water and this poses practical and safety problems. You can click through and read the article about how PolyPlus has developed layering to try to protect the lithium from water. I can see this working in ocean autonomous vehicle applications they are pursuing since failure isn't a safety hazard for humans. I wonder if it can be made reliable enough for use in cars.
The lithium metal oxygen approach is also what IBM chose to pursue to make practical electric car batteries.
With Nissan aiming to produce a pure electric vehicle in Smyrna Tennessee, Ford bringing out the pure electric Transit Connect in 2010 and pure electric Focus in 2011, and Chinese car maker Hafei (state-owned - just like GM) and Coda bringing an electric car to market in California in fall 2010 we are about to have lots of real consumer choices for pure electric vehicles. Now, the Coda is going to cost $45k. Electric vehicles are not yet cheap. But the many battery development ventures might bear fruit in a few years and make lithium batteries a lot more affordable.
Since I see Peak Oil as coming Real Soon Now (though we might get away with Robert Rapier's Peak Oil Lite for several years) I see the development of electric vehicles and better batteries as urgent matters. How fast can we develop substitutes for oil? The answer to that question will determine how far down our living standards drop when yearly world oil production declines become the norm.
Guys worried about prostate cancer risk: Should you take selenium or eat Brazil nuts to boost your blood selenium? The benefits or risks of selenium depend at least in part on genetic variants of the enzyme manganese superoxide dismutase (SOD2).
BOSTON--Higher selenium levels in the blood may worsen prostate cancer in some men who already have the disease, according to a study by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute the University of California, San Francisco.
This is a pretty dramatic demonstration of the future value of nutrigenomics where you'll be able to tailor your diet to fit your genetic endowment. What would be a beneficial diet for some men looks to be harmful to others.
25% of the population have two copies of the A variant of the manganese superoxide dismutase (SOD2) gene and for them higher selenium probably lowers their risk of prostate cancer. But those with one or two copies of the V version of the gene are at greater risk from prostate cancer if they get more selenium.
A higher risk of more-aggressive prostate cancer was seen in men with a certain genetic variant found in about 75 percent of the prostate cancer patients in the study. In those subjects, having a high level of selenium in the blood was associated with a two-fold greater risk of poorer outcomes than men with the lowest amounts of selenium. By contrast, the 25 percent of men with a different variant of the same gene and who had high selenium levels were at 40 percent lower risk of aggressive disease. The variants are slightly different forms of a gene that instructs cells to make manganese superoxide dismutase (SOD2), an enzyme that protects the body against harmful oxygen compounds.
This result calls into question the wisdom of taking selenium if you already have prostate cancer.
The research findings suggest that "if you already have prostate cancer, it may be a bad thing to take selenium," says Philip Kantoff, MD, director of Dana-Farber's Lank Center for Genitourinary Oncology and senior author of the study that is published by the Journal of Clinical Oncology on its website now and later will be in a print journal. The lead author is June Chan, ScD, of the University of California, San Francisco.
So if you have SOD2 in AA form you probably would benefit from higher selenium. Personal genetic profiles are starting to become useful in daily life.
Simply having a high level of selenium was associated with a slightly elevated risk of aggressive prostate cancer. But the risk was much more strongly affected by the interaction of selenium levels and whether the patient had a certain variant of the SOD2 gene. Men with the highest selenium levels and the "AA" form of the SOD2 gene were 40 percent less likely to have been diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer than the men with same gene form but low levels of selenium.
But for men carrying the "V" form of the gene, selenium had the opposite effect. In these men, those with the highest levels of selenium in their blood were about twice as likely to have an aggressive type of prostate cancer as their counterparts with low selenium levels, says Kantoff, who is also a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
This isn't the only gene which influences whether a food is beneficial or harmful. Some people have genes that cause them to retain too much iron. Others lack enough of the enzyme lactase for breaking down lactose sugar in milk. We aer going to see a big flood of genetic research findings about many more genetic variants that change which foods best fit individual needs.
People who carry gene variant NRXN3 have a 10-15% increased risk of obesity.
June 26, 2009 - (BRONX, NY) - A variation in a gene that is active in the central nervous system is associated with increased risk for obesity, according to an international study in which Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University played a major role. The research adds to evidence that genes influence appetite and that the brain plays a key role in obesity.
Robert Kaplan, Ph.D., associate professor of epidemiology & population health, helped direct the international study, which involved 34 research institutions and is published online in PLoS Genetics. Dr. Kaplan and his U.S. and European colleagues found that people who have inherited the gene variant NRXN3 have a 10-15 percent increased risk of being obese compared with people who do not have the variant.
The researchers examined data from eight studies involving genes and body weight. These studies included more than 31,000 people of European origin, ages 45 to 76, representing a broad range of dietary habits and health behaviors.
After analyzing more than two million regions of the human genome, the researchers found that the NRXN3 gene variant ─ previously associated with alcohol dependence, cocaine addiction, and illegal substance abuse ─ also predicts the tendency to become obese. Altogether, researchers found the gene variant in 20 percent of the people studied.
NRXN3 has also been implicated in addiction.
Since NRXN3 is active in the brain and also implicated in addiction, these traits may share some neurologic underpinnings.
Central abdominal fat is a strong risk factor for diabetes and cardiovascular disease. To identify common variants influencing central abdominal fat, we conducted a two-stage genome-wide association analysis for waist circumference (WC). In total, three loci reached genome-wide significance. In stage 1, 31,373 individuals of Caucasian descent from eight cohort studies confirmed the role of FTO and MC4R and identified one novel locus associated with WC in the neurexin 3 gene [NRXN3 (rs10146997, p = 6.4×10−7)]. The association with NRXN3 was confirmed in stage 2 by combining stage 1 results with those from 38,641 participants in the GIANT consortium (p = 0.009 in GIANT only, p = 5.3×10−8 for combined analysis, n = 70,014). Mean WC increase per copy of the G allele was 0.0498 z-score units (0.65 cm). This SNP was also associated with body mass index (BMI) [p = 7.4×10−6, 0.024 z-score units (0.10 kg/m2) per copy of the G allele] and the risk of obesity (odds ratio 1.13, 95% CI 1.07–1.19; p = 3.2×10−5 per copy of the G allele). The NRXN3 gene has been previously implicated in addiction and reward behavior, lending further evidence that common forms of obesity may be a central nervous system-mediated disorder. Our findings establish that common variants in NRXN3 are associated with WC, BMI, and obesity.
Another paper from the same issue of Plos Genetics finds still more genes that influence obesity and fat distribution.
Here, we describe a meta-analysis of genome-wide association data from 38,580 individuals, followed by large-scale replication (in up to 70,689 individuals) designed to uncover variants influencing anthropometric measures of central obesity and fat distribution, namely waist circumference (WC) and waist–hip ratio (WHR). This work complements parallel efforts that have been successful in defining variants impacting overall adiposity and focuses on the visceral fat accumulation which has particularly strong relationships to metabolic and cardiovascular disease. Our analyses have identified two loci (TFAP2B and MSRA) associated with WC, and a further locus, near LYPLAL1, which shows gender-specific relationships with WHR (all to levels of genome-wide significance). These loci vary in the strength of their associations with overall adiposity, and LYPLAL1 in particular appears to have a specific effect on patterns of fat distribution. All in all, these three loci provide novel insights into human physiology and the development of obesity.
Expect to see a continued acceleration of the rate of gene searches looking for genetic variants that cause behavioral and health differences. Genetic sequencing and genetic testing costs have fallen so fast that the full effect of the price drops hasn't filtered through to published papers. The price drops continue because the technology continues to advance rapidly. So the amount of data available for gene searches keeps going up faster. This flood of data is going to lead to a flood of findings. The most dramatic consequence will be a big acceleration in human evolution.
On June 23, IBM announced a multiyear effort to increase the performance of rechargeable batteries by a factor of 10. The aim is to design batteries that will make it possible for electric vehicles to travel 300 to 500 miles on a single charge, up from 50 to 100 miles currently. "We want to see if we can find a radically different battery technology," says Chandrasekhar "Spike" Narayan, who manages the Science & Technology Organization at IBM Research's Almaden lab in San Jose, Calif.
To do that, IBM (IBM) is leading a consortium that will create batteries using a combination of lithium and oxygen rather than the potentially combustible lithium-ion mix that now dominates advanced consumer electronics and early electric-vehicle batteries.
Good luck to IBM in their attempts develop better electric car batteries. With Peak Oil approaching we need great battery tech to enable a transition away from oil.
Hoping that Tesla Motors will deliver the cost effective electric car? Elon Musk of Tesla says they've gotten their production cost down to $80k per car. Highly affordable to all neurosurgeons and star sports players.
Due to the low production rate, the Roadster cost will never be what Eberhard promised, but an incredible effort by the development, supply chain and manufacturing teams has brought the Roadster material cost down from $140k to approximately $80k as of this month. Combined with a steady production volume of 20 to 30 per week in the third quarter this year and a good take up rate of the higher priced Roadster Sport, we expect to cross over into profitability next month.
This is a small vehicle.
Do you mentally function well when sleep-deprived? I personally make more spelling mistakes when writing blog posts after midnite. Given the right variant of the gene PER3 the human mind becomes more active in response to reduced sleeping.
New imaging research in the June 24 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience helps explain why sleep deprivation affects some people more than others. After staying awake all night, those who are genetically vulnerable to sleep loss showed reduced brain activity, while those who are genetically resilient showed expanded brain activity, the study found. The findings help explain individual differences in the ability to compensate for lack of sleep.
"The extent to which individuals are affected by sleep deprivation varies, with some crashing out and others holding up well after a night without sleep," said Michael Chee, MBBS, at the Duke–National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School, an expert on sleep deprivation who was not affiliated with the study. However, studying how the brain produces these behavioral differences is difficult: researchers usually do not know whether their study participants will be vulnerable to sleep deprivation until after a study is complete. Previous studies have shown conflicting results, perhaps because the study subjects differed widely in vulnerability to sleep deprivation.
In the current study, the researchers, led by Pierre Maquet, MD, at the University of Lìege in Belgium and Derk-Jan Dijk, PhD, at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom, avoided this problem by selecting study participants based on their genes. Previous research showed that the PERIOD3 (PER3) gene predicts how people will respond to sleep deprivation. People carry either long or short variants of the gene. Those with the short PER3 variant are resilient to sleep loss — they perform well on cognitive tasks after sleep deprivation. However, those with the long PER3 variant are vulnerable — they show deficits in cognitive performance after sleep deprivation. Now the new study explains why.
Do the people with the short PER3 variant get any advantages over those with the long variant when they are well rested? It could be that lowered cognitive performance when tired also reduces harm to the brain when it is not well rested. Some of the genes that provide advantages in some environments also come at a cost in the same or other environments.
Heavier people get pancreatic cancer at younger ages.
HOUSTON - In reviewing the weight history of pancreatic cancer patients across their life spans, researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center have determined that a high body mass index in early adulthood may play a significant role in an individual developing the disease at an earlier age.
The study, published in the June 24 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, also found that patients who are obese the year before diagnosis have a poorer outcome than those who are not.
While excess weight is a known risk factor associated with pancreatic cancer, before now, few studies have looked at patients' body mass index (BMI) throughout their lifetime rather than simply at adulthood and/or year of disease diagnosis.
Of course there's the possibility that genes that boost obesity risk also boost cancer risk. Or heavier weight reduces exercise that somehow boosts cancer risk. But there's a decent chance here that obesity more directly boosts pancreatic cancer risk. Eat accordingly.
The researchers found that individuals who were overweight (a BMI of 25-29.9) from the ages of 14 to 39 years or obese (a BMI of 30 or greater) from the ages of 20 to 49 years had an associated increased risk of pancreatic cancer, independent of diabetes status. The association between average BMI (per 5-unit increase) and risk of pancreatic cancer was stronger in men than in women. The association was statistically significant for each age group from 14 to 69 years in men but only from ages 14 to 39 years in women. The estimated association of average BMI (per 5-unit increase) with cancer risk also was slightly stronger in ever smokers than in never smokers. It was estimated that 10.3 percent of never smokers and 21.3 percent of ever smokers had pancreatic cancer attributable to being overweight or obese at an early age prior to cancer diagnosis (i.e., from the ages of 14-59 years).
Individuals who were overweight or obese from the ages of 20 to 49 years had an earlier onset of pancreatic cancer by 2 to 6 years (median [midpoint] age of onset was 64 years for patients with normal weight, 61 years for overweight patients, and 59 years for obese patients). Compared with those with normal body weight and after adjusting for all clinical factors, individuals who were overweight or obese from the ages of 30 to 79 years or in the year prior to recruitment had reduced overall survival of pancreatic cancer regardless of disease stage and tumor resection status.
The problem with applying this result to your life is that most dieters gain back their lost weight. Conscious weight control is very difficult and most people fail at it.
In my mind the main purpose of cancer risk reduction is to delay getting cancer until when it becomes curable.
Interventional studies provide stronger evidence than population studies that just find correlations bewteen two factors. Well, with that thought in mind if you doubt that weight reduction can cut cancer risk consider a new study from Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Sweden,which found that in women (though curiously not in men) bariatric surgery (e.g. stomach staples) cut the incidence of cancer in women.
New evidence suggests that obese women could lower their risk of cancer over 40 percent by undergoing weight-loss operations that involve stapling the stomach or small intestine.
So a good appetite suppressant drug will probably some day cut the incidence of cancer.
Update: Parenthetically, the mortality rates from bariatric surgery are now pretty low.
DURHAM, N.C. -- Advances in weight-loss surgery have made it as safe as any routine surgical procedure, according to a Duke University Medical Center researcher who reviewed data from nearly 60,000 patients and found it resulted in low complication and mortality rates.
The analysis, compiled from the largest repository of bariatric surgery patients ever recorded, indicates complication rates hover around 10 percent – with the most common complaint being nausea/vomiting. Total mortality rate was under one percent (0.135%) with 78 deaths reported among 57,918 patients.
Note that surgeons who perform a procedure frequently make fewer mistakes. So if you are considering bariatric surgery look for a surgeon who specializes in it.
Not all the components of the Mediterranean Diet are equally important in extending life.
Eating more vegetables, fruits, nuts, pulses and olive oil, and drinking moderate amounts of alcohol, while not consuming a lot of meat or excessive amounts of alcohol is linked to people living longer.
However, the study also claims, that following a Mediterranean diet high in fish, seafood and cereals and low in dairy products were not indicators of longevity.
While several studies have concluded that the Mediterranean diet improves chances of living longer, this is the first to investigate the importance of individual components of the diet.
Professor Dimitrios Trichopoulos at the Harvard School of Public Health explains that they have surveyed over 23,000 men and women who were participants in the Greek segment of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC).
So try harder to avoid red meat than dairy. Eat more fruits, nuts, and vegetables. I'm personally eating olives almost every day.
Update Here is the research paper.
The contributions of the individual components of the Mediterranean diet to this association were moderate ethanol consumption 23.5%, low consumption of meat and meat products 16.6%, high vegetable consumption 16.2%, high fruit and nut consumption 11.2%, high monounsaturated to saturated lipid ratio 10.6%, and high legume consumption 9.7%. The contributions of high cereal consumption and low dairy consumption were minimal, whereas high fish and seafood consumption was associated with a non-significant increase in mortality ratio.
Eat accordingly.
A couple of studies suggest green tea delivers a protective effect against prostate cancer.
Cardelli and colleagues conducted this open-label, single-arm, phase II clinical trial to determine the effects of short-term supplementation with green tea's active compounds on serum biomarkers in patients with prostate cancer. The biomarkers include hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and prostate specific antigen (PSA). HGF and VEGF are good prognostic indicators of metastatic disease.
The study included 26 men, aged 41 to 72 years, diagnosed with prostate cancer and scheduled for radical prostatectomy. Patients consumed four capsules containing Polyphenon E until the day before surgery — four capsules are equivalent to about 12 cups of normally brewed concentrated green tea, according to Cardelli. The time of study for 25 of the 26 patients ranged from 12 days to 73 days, with a median time of 34.5 days.
Findings showed a significant reduction in serum levels of HGF, VEGF and PSA after treatment, with some patients demonstrating reductions in levels of greater than 30 percent, according to the researchers.
Cardelli and colleagues found that other biomarkers were also positively affected. There were only a few reported side effects associated with this study, and liver function remained normal.
Results of a recent year-long clinical trial conduced by researchers in Italy demonstrated that consumption of green tea polyphenols reduced the risk of developing prostate cancer in men with high-grade prostate intraepithelial neoplasia (HGPIN).
Mushrooms,, promegranate juice and vitamin D might all cut prostate cancer risk. Cutting carbs might help. You can read about still more dietary factors for influencing prostate cancer risk.
