Black Water Filtration Systems Could Be A Part Of The Hybrid Home Future

If you live in a urban area, chances are you are hooked up to the sewage purification system of your town. If you live in the USA and in the country, you may have a primitive septic tank or some sort of mound system. These systems strive to clear the water up before it enters into the local aquifer. During the 1980's under the Reagan administration, the Great Lakes and USA Shorelines Cleanup Initiative was De-funded. The effort was to have cities along shorelines restructure there sewer systems to handle the growth of the cities. Because improvements were not made to municipal sewage systems, when it rains over 1/4 inch many cities are forced to release excess raw sewage into water ways. Link to SAFE WATER Report that explains the extreme need for future change. The amount of overflow depends on the individual cities attempts to overcome this. Link to the the old way to get rid of black water in the USA non-urban areas.

As water becomes more valuable because of scarcity, the purification of water will become even more important. New technologies can be large efforts that urban areas are trying, to smaller individual home or building units. All units have to go through a series of processes to make the water usable again. Here is a detailed article on this process: Black Water Purification.

I would think that future waste transportation systems will use other methods to carry waste away. Maybe instead of a garbage disposal system in sinks, the waste material would be carried away by augers or  pressure to transport the waste to a composting container. The future homes will have to use ideology of aviation and space programs that have self-sustaining contained water/ sewage systems. Maybe chemicals and pharmaceuticals will need to use 50% less water to apply or transport the product to its needed function. Maybe the solids from the black water could be separated and burned for another home energy or heating source. Link to waste energy study.

European homes are already using in home black water /purification units. Public rest rooms can be built and not hooked to the grid. This may not mean much at first glance, however hooking to the grid costs all taxpayers over decades of use. Not to mention the actual cost  to hook the unit to the grid. Like cars that verge several different energy supply sources and different methods to achieve the transportation need, homes will have to become more complex as well. Smart homes will be equipped with sensors in the waste plumbing to determine matter density and decide to dispose or direct it in a manner most effective to achieve efficient process for water purification and/or usage . Link to Hybrid Homes

European Weather Predictions Excel Because Of Reanalysis

In the 1980’s movie, "Back to the Future," the date that Doc and Marty travel to in the future was April 13, 2013. In the movie the future of the vision was flying cars and weather forecasting to the second. In real life political elections can change what a future may look like. In the decade of US, 2000-2008, of Republican control, they defunded the NASA "Super Skyway" that killed the flying cars idea and also defunded the investment of the US weather forecasting plan. It sounds like we should have the time machine to go back and change the outcome of the Bush-Gore 2000 election! The super close election propelled the country into a very different future. The political position that killed weather prediction funding is tied to the element Europe uses to make its weather system work so well, “reanalysis”.  Forecasters pretty much agree that the USA weather forecasting is way behind the European forecasting model. Europe decided that weather was worth investing in when USA didn't. 

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) is an independent intergovernmental organization supported by 20 European Member States and 14 Co-operating States. The headquarters is in Reading, England, and has one of the largest supercomputer complexes in Europe that is linked by high-speed telecommunication lines to the computer systems of the national weather services of its supporting states. The Centre's computer system contains the world's largest archive of numerical weather prediction data. The information center accumulates all the data provided by the co-operating states and combines the information with reanalysis data. Together they are providing very accurate forecasts 15 day, 30 day and seasonal, annual forecasts. American television forecasters are checking their predictions against ECMWF whenever possible.

Understanding the reanalysis process is important. ECMWF makes significant contributions to support research on climate variability. ECMWF has pioneered an innovative approach known as reanalysis. Reanalysis is accumulated historical weather data to determine climactic changes that will affect present changes of weather. This becomes mathematical evidence of global climate change. This is why I believe there was a concern for the global climate change denying Oil Company backed Republicans who blocked the USA weather forecasting advancements.

The ECMWF combined satellite, super computer infrastructure and historic climactic trending to make great advancements in forecasting. You might say they were looking forward and backward. Maybe the saying could be said again, “When going forward never forget where you came from.” Still another thought could be when we are looking ahead for answers for innovation we can look for answers in previous findings. Thus giving us reason to reexamine the why, what and when that caused other innovations to fail.

New Hybrid Without Batteries, Another Step In The Evolution

In a earlier post, I talked about compressed air only vehicles. They had limitations of speed and distance. But  they worked well for city transportation, using no fuel. Why not verge the technologies to utilize the advantages of all technologies we know, to propel the human bodies to their destinations. Could we ever combine the solar, perpetual motion, compressed air/gasses, battery, hydrogen with a gasoline/ diesel backup? Maybe that will be the 2020 versions we see for transportation. As the ideas evolutionalize in front of us, the destination is less reliance of carbon based fuels at the demise of oil giants. It is more power, safety and speed without an adverse affect on our planet. It is style, design and acceptance for profit of entrepreneurial efforts of free enterprise.

 Compressed air with gas engines seem to be a common sense plan in stepping us closer to that goal, that does away with the battery concerns of other hybrid cars. Peugeot introduced their car that saves fuel by using gas powered engines assisted by compressed air. Read more at: Peugeot Introduces Air Assisted Cars

More information can be read at: More about the New Peugeot-Citroen and Bosch Drive Trains

Why Government Funding Is Important To Innovation

It is important to understand the challenges to funding large innovation projects. With my research of innovation it has become apparent that funding innovation is as important to success as the actual scientific and entrepreneurial exploration procedures. With some private and corporate funding the findings become the property of the fundraisers. It is either about profit or credit. If the money drops off, the progress of the innovation can be locked up, not to be shared. Right now we see some very impressive brain studies and brain function research. The problem is that a lot of the findings are not shared, which leads to a duplication of efforts to find answers to similar questions. Parts of the puzzle, not found or missing by others slow the assembly of the complete puzzle. Recently some larger efforts are being funded by trusts that where created by groups of scientists that are aware of the funding hurdles to innovative creations. Even these can be challenging. Deals have to be made ahead of time to confirm the intellectual property rights.

In April 2013, President Barrack Obama decreed he would pursue government funding of the mapping the functions of the human brain. This will be as massive an effort as was the human genome project. This effort like the study of outer space itself demands the direction and funding of a large government to make it even possible. The findings will be a tremendous asset to life on this planet and for the greater good of the USA. Not only will it be good for the economy but healthcare, technology, communication and human advancement. 

Making Animals Smarter Using Human Brain Cells

It sounds like something from a Disney family movie, but it is really happening. Some Canadian scientists planted some human brain cells into a baby mouse. The brain cells fully bonded with the mouse brain cells resulting in very mentally advanced mice. They were able to travel through a maze in two tries instead of the many tries that it would normally take a normal mouse. The brain cells they transplanted were largely ignored in brain studies before, because the focus was on the neurons rather than the gray matter. The human glial progenitors or glia gray matter was the material implanted into the brain.

What can we use this for in the future. Could the factories of the future be filled with monkeys assembling products. Could we use animals to fly, hunt, fish and entertain us even more than we do now. Is it moral? The future could literally go to the dogs!! One of many links on the finding: Mice get smarter audio and story! 

Harnessing The Power Of Lightening

The astronauts have often been astonished at the amount of visible lightening bolts that hit the earth each day around the world. It is estimated to be over 11,000 bolts flash everyday. Can we capture that energy? Can it be done? It is truly an area of untapped potential for a huge energy source for the whole globe. Towers around the globe take many hits to survive and disperse the energy by cables to the ground. Many have thought we could harness it to generate hydrogen.

I have not been able to find any confirmation that anything is underway with this idea. Everyone is looking at trying to use one individual device to capture lightening bolts. We do it to some degree when we put lightening rods on tall buildings. We have used small capacitors to capture and store energy in automotive points and ignition systems in older cars, before electronic ignition systems. We have millions of miles of electric infrastructure in all countries around the world. What if we use these lightening rods throughout the system hooked with capacitors. The network could use other nearby capacitors in the network to share and dissipate, then store the lightening charges. The capacitors in collaboration with transformers already used in the electrical infrastructure could release the electricity in a useable state. By using this idea, countries could discover green energy savings over time. It just seems to me that the theory is right. Could this be an idea for a innovation hub to confirm and design. It would take a massive manufacturing effort to equip the systems with the appropriate equipment.

Check out lightening spotted from a night orbit from space!

Building Innovation Hubs In the USA

In the last decade, the United States has lost over 1/3 of its manufacturing jobs. In the Presidential address the President mentioned an initiative to create innovation hubs to work on bringing back those manufacturing jobs. The idea isn't new. Many other countries are trying the same thing. This same manufacturing, job creating engine was one provided by NASA and the Defense department research spending. As these budgets have become cut drastically, so has the engine to discover and create USA manufacturing ideas. Governmental funding will instead be spent to get private enterprises to push the envelope of profits for ideas. I think the trick to that success will be in the patent controls so the research and development expenses will be recovered on the backside. After all private enterprises survive on profit only. More information on how this might work can be found at this link: Brookings Institute calls for 25 us innovation.