Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. ”
— President Eisenhower

It is possible, even likely, that this university is cherry-picking American citizens, who are easier to fund; my university is located in a major urban metropolis, making it more cosmopolitan and possibly more attractive to top European scientists. My undergraduate university (still very good, but not as good) had a graduate program in chemistry which seemed to consist of about equal parts Indian, East European, and American students.

So, as long as we’re comparing anecdotes, mine is much less worrisome on this front than yours. I think.

With math in this pathetic state, it doesn’t surprise me that science, to which it is handmaiden, is suffering too.

I think we are being forced to show up to the Green / Energy Crises now and often and I believe it will Take a nanotechnology to do it.

In the face of the often cheaper, better, more efficient and cleaner Alternatives, many still turn to nuclear power generation, even with the risks and downfalls associated with it.

We must understand the alternative that is Hydrogen and the nanoextraction of it from water sources. Already many developments have been achieved in this feild and many more to come. With investment and research many synergies also come about, such as the production of clean fresh water and oxygen, liquid or gas. The Hydrogen Synergy Future is upon us and we must act to make it so.

NGen WA

No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.
Socrates

Your theory is crazy, but it’s not crazy enough to be true.
Niels Bohr

MIT’s Belcher uses engineered virus to split water

By Christine Peterson, on April 16th, 2010

Angela Belcher and team at MIT have tweaked a bacterial virus to serve as a scaffolding to:

attract and bind with molecules of a catalyst (the team used iridium oxide) and a biological pigment (zinc porphyrins). The viruses became wire-like devices that could very efficiently split the oxygen from water molecules.
Belcher says that

within two years she expects to have a prototype device that can carry out the whole process of splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen, using a self-sustaining and durable system.
This is just a very early taste of what we can expect someday from more extensively designed molecular machine systems.

-Chris Peterson

http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3868

Green Energy is Blue; Hydrogen Nanoextraction from Water Sources for the production of Clean Water and Energy

Fresh Water And Energy Service
by ~Automutt

Fresh Water Production By-Product of Hydrogen Nanoextraction Techniques

The ability to produce clean fresh water as a leading by-product of the nanoextraction of hydrogen from sea water via reverse engineering and associated practices is a goal of many involved in this exciting field of science. The confluence of providing energy and water for our growing cities and towns available to us at the initial engineering of our nanoextraction facilities, ground up infrastructure investments at energy / water establishments shall provide profound synergies for the full production of hydrogen for energy and clean fresh water for all. So far an Australian, American and Japanese research project is underway to prove the viability of such techniques and synergies available to us. The production of Oxygen and LOX or liquid oxygen is also of interest to us available as a synergy. Further discussion and research must take place to bring about the hydrogen synergy plans of our future.

DRB @ NGen

Nano catalysts, and the death of Coal

With the advent of Nano-catalysts and Viral Scaffolds the extraction of hydrogen has became much cheaper and more efficient. According to Gridshift, cheaper than gasoline. Surely a new appreciation for this resource will come about and new technologies utilising hydrogen should now be evaluated.

http://www.grid-shift.com/white_papers/

Fuel for Cars, Energy for Homes,

With the advent of nano-extraction techniques, the extraction of
hydrogen from sea water for the use of power generation and fueling
of cars is a step closer. NGEN’s proposed conversion of coal and gas
fired power stations to hydrogen and the supply of hydrogen for cars
will revolutionise the worlds energy sector.

Due to developments in the nanoextraction of hydrogen from sea water, the hydrogenerator has been revised with this cheaper and more efficient system.

It is no oddity that people do not go into science and engineering in an environment where they are vulnerable, and there is so much real hostility to “the technical fix” by the academic/political community. Major political groups are in the habit of accepting *only* the results of science and technology that fit into their previous world-view, by which they intend to gain, whether money or power or both. The most active at the moment are the Deep Ecology wing of the environmental movement here in Oregon, but there are others as well.

As an example, between 1979 and 2004 the entrepreneurs who were prominent in trying to commercialize spaceflight found their financial backers evaporating once they came to the attention of groups inside NASA. It was no accident. As early as 1979, Max Hunter (head of the “Thor” missile project in the 1950s, and in many other aerospace programs till his death) has told me, he was buttonholed by leading people who were then still in NASA about Space Services Inc. who were, according to his persuaders, “rank amateurs who’ll destroy confidence in spaceflight”, who “must be shut down”. After he dismissed them, his job prospects dwindled. A number of similar instances occurred till the Columbia disaster, and the retirement of some NASA control freaks, when private commercial space groups began to get at least formal WH approval, but now have electoral politicians to fight.

Politicians, whether electoral or bureaucratic, have long sought levers to steer the directions of technical endeavor, and have found enough that they are beginning to distort it badly enough that even those not in it for the money are beginning to look elsewhere for fulfilling work. We should not be surprised. Till we are able to break open the political community’s oligopsony/monopsony on science and technology funding that has developed in the US, we will have worse and worse problems with this.

Secondly, regarding the Kaku book, I have his latest book and I have read his stuff for a long time. I like the book and his views overall on this, but, what disappoints me is that, unlike people like say the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, he seems to think serious assembler based nano factories will not be developed until the late 21st century, if I read him correctly, and beyond. I think an at least primitive assembler system is doable in the next 10-20 years or so.

IF invested in and orchestrated correctly!