I am not an economist but I believe oil prices have risen beyond where the market should set the price. Why? It is undeniable that increased demand, the diminished value of the dollar and world wide instability have played a real and causal roll in the rapid increase in prices, but I believe there are other forces at work. Allen Greenspan described it as irrational exuberance, but some might call it market manipulation, and some day in the future it might be called the oil bubble.
Basically oil prices went up due to the factors listed above and institutional investors, freshly stung by the credit crunch, saw it as a way to make easy money to fatten up their bottom lines. The theory is that if they can keep oil prices rising they can keep making money, then once the prices get high enough they can spread the risk and start cashing out. By the way this is likely true for most commodities right now.
This will go really well until the market blinks. Once people can no longer afford products made from oil, then the bubble will burst. Prices will readjust, and the paper wealth created by the bubble will evaporate. However, by then the big guy’s will have spread the risk, so the pain will be felt by all.
Basically, the impatience of my generation has caused people to stop seeing investing as a long term plan to ensure your money grows at a rate that significantly out paces inflation, into a get rich quick scheme. Unfortunately history has shown that the young and arrogant will be taught a painful lesson, from Icarus to the shoeshine boy buying stock on margin in 1929, it is a universal truth.
The upside is that I believe the green movement, which will be spurred by the price of oil more than by concern over the polar ice caps, will be what brings us out of the coming recession. I have previously posted on this topic so I will not go over it again. Also while hard times suck, they prune the weak and poorly run companies, which allows niche’s to reopen giving the strong ones to room to grow.
I promised I would tell you how to make money on the oil bubble. This isn’t a get rich quick scheme; this is more of a die rich scheme, so it only works if you can wait several years, so it helps to be young. The price of oil is crushing the stock market, which means many companies’ stock is at a bargain price. Look for companies that have a viable business model during the bad times, a global strategy and price under what the P/E ratio suggests. Yes, the prices will get worse, but over time the price will recover. However, you can’t sit on your butt, you have to watch the companies, since as they grow things change. They can become imbalanced, or lose their focus. For example AMF, was once an industrial giant, but it lost it’s focus and now they make the pin setting machines at bowling alleys. Conversely, Monsanto was a huge chemical company with an Ag division, now it is an Ag giant and very profitable.
As the oil bubble (or commodity bubble) gets close to popping, (you will likely see this in an imbalance between the price of oil (high) and the stock price of energy companies (low)), start looking for strong companies that have been hurt by high energy prices. Once margins improve these companies will recover quickly, which will help fill in your bottom line. Once the bubble is fully popped unless there is a war or something start looking at cashing out of the stocks they are getting hyped, and use the money to buy stocks in the energy companies that should be cash rich, but beaten by the drop in energy prices.
I know I have just described something that is a mix of a hedge fund and Warren Buffet, but it should work.
Don’t be afraid to look off shore (if you live in the US).
In the mean time enjoy $4.50 a gallon gas, or $5 if there is a hurricane.
Friday, May 23, 2008
City Satellites
If you take a moment to think about it some of the major cities around the world are large enough to utilize their own satellite in geosynchronous orbit. Take LA for example, they could loft a satellite that they could use for regional high resolution weather prediction, traffic monitoring, tsunami spotting, vegetation analysis, a communications platform in times of crisis, etc. It would have a dedicated sensor package, and the city could pay for it in part by selling bandwidth on the satellites to companies, either for internal use or saleable content.
Yes, satellites aren’t cheap but London, Tokyo, LA, NYC, Chicago, Delhi, Beijing, etc, are all cities that are so large to really get the full perspective you have to be in space. Having access to regional and real time information, could allow the satellite to pay for itself, after only a couple minor disasters or freeway design projects. Privacy experts might say this is a bad thing, but honestly they can do all the same stuff with planes and helicopters.
Yes, satellites aren’t cheap but London, Tokyo, LA, NYC, Chicago, Delhi, Beijing, etc, are all cities that are so large to really get the full perspective you have to be in space. Having access to regional and real time information, could allow the satellite to pay for itself, after only a couple minor disasters or freeway design projects. Privacy experts might say this is a bad thing, but honestly they can do all the same stuff with planes and helicopters.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
The Mexican Canal
I was looking at a map and there is a point in Mexico between Coatzacoalcos and Salina Cruz, where there is a natural break in the mountains and there is less than 150 miles between the Pacific Ocean and Gulf of Mexico.
Ok the title is misleading since it would not be possible to build a canal across Mexico, but ports and hydrocarbon terminals on either side with railroad tracks and pipelines connecting the two could effectively connect shipping in the Gulf and Pacific.
Plus by only going that far South instead of all the way to the Panama cannel, ships could shave more than 2,000 miles off their trips, so even if getting containers off and on takes a day a piece the cargo still saves 3 days, versus the 5 of going through the Panama Canal. For the ships the savings are greater since if they can unload and reload in the same day they save 4 days.
Yes, this model required more ships, since you need two fleets, but the fuel savings, faster turn around times, and security should more than make up for the expense. (By security I mean if the Panama Canal gets blocked then ships have to go 20K plus miles around South America to get to their ports. For shipping companies a day waiting or otherwise lost costs millions of dollars.)
Unlike the Panama Canal the ports of Coatzacoalcos and Salina Cruz could be built to handle any size ship, and a well managed rail and pipeline system could get the goods between the two sides same day, and be more readily expandable, then a canal with locks. Also, unlike the Panama Canal, shipping via the C-SC route would not require good rains that year to keep the lake full.
This project would cost a lot of money and require unparalleled cooperation between of two of Mexico’s states and Federal government. However, if they pulled it off the C-SC transport system (or what I call the Mexican Canal) it would fundamentally change Mexico’s economy (for the better) and alter the very nature of cargo transportation in the Western Hemisphere.
Ok the title is misleading since it would not be possible to build a canal across Mexico, but ports and hydrocarbon terminals on either side with railroad tracks and pipelines connecting the two could effectively connect shipping in the Gulf and Pacific.
Plus by only going that far South instead of all the way to the Panama cannel, ships could shave more than 2,000 miles off their trips, so even if getting containers off and on takes a day a piece the cargo still saves 3 days, versus the 5 of going through the Panama Canal. For the ships the savings are greater since if they can unload and reload in the same day they save 4 days.
Yes, this model required more ships, since you need two fleets, but the fuel savings, faster turn around times, and security should more than make up for the expense. (By security I mean if the Panama Canal gets blocked then ships have to go 20K plus miles around South America to get to their ports. For shipping companies a day waiting or otherwise lost costs millions of dollars.)
Unlike the Panama Canal the ports of Coatzacoalcos and Salina Cruz could be built to handle any size ship, and a well managed rail and pipeline system could get the goods between the two sides same day, and be more readily expandable, then a canal with locks. Also, unlike the Panama Canal, shipping via the C-SC route would not require good rains that year to keep the lake full.
This project would cost a lot of money and require unparalleled cooperation between of two of Mexico’s states and Federal government. However, if they pulled it off the C-SC transport system (or what I call the Mexican Canal) it would fundamentally change Mexico’s economy (for the better) and alter the very nature of cargo transportation in the Western Hemisphere.
The second rise of the railroads
I was talking to a logistics guy on a plane the other day and he said the only thing keeping the railroads from coming back is that cargo has a tendency to disappear into limbo for a couple days before moving on. This means what is a 3 day trip by truck can be a 7 to 10 trip by rail. However, the price of shipping something by rail is a tiny fraction of what it costs by truck, so if companies can build into the logistics model the extra time they can save a bundle. They now even have “express” cargo trains which go from like LA to Chicago in 5 days, but they are closer to the price of trucks, and still take a couple of extra days.
What the railroad system needs to do is reinvent its self, and revamp the cargo handling, to match that of container ships and ports. Yes, certain items like heavy machinery aren’t easy to modularize, but most of the non-bulk goods are already in standard sized shipping containers. With a little redesign even some of the bulk goods like tanks could be modularized. Then each train is treated like a ship with cargo containers, to be loaded and off loaded in various “ports” (train yards) along the way. The cars are not removed or moved, large overhead gantry cranes move over the top of the trains taking containers off or putting them back on, or moving them to storage, or trucks for delivery. So a train becomes like a container ship that plies the country’s rails.
Trains would be for the most part made up of a single kind of car, that accepts standard modular container, and each container has redundant RFID systems that allow it to be recognized and tracked. This way cargo doesn’t get “lost” in a yard while the workers wait for the cars in front of it move. If the cargo needs to be moved to another train a crane moves it, and the whole operation takes a couple of minutes. This means that trains get in and out of the yards faster, and cargo gets to its destination faster as well.
With this system trains could pull right up to the dock sides in ports, take the cargo to be offloaded, and move it to an area away from the valuable dock side property, to a large purpose built yard to be sorted and put on other trains to get the cargo to the destination. The cargo could move on trains that would never go anywhere near it’s final destination. Companies could get reduced rates by letting their cargo go via a capacity-based route, like the packets that brought this information to your screen. Cargo from LA to Chicago that is priority would go straight to Chicago. But lower priority cargo might go via Tulsa or Houston, and come into the Chicago area on a less used North West track.
For most customers trucks would still be need for the “last mile” but a great deal more cargo could go by a timely rail system. The saving would help companies increase their margins, giving them a better cushion against rising energy prices, and the revisioning of the America rail system would help reduce the wear on the countries crumbling infrastructure, by more evenly spreading the transport burden between the roads and rails.
To pull this off will require some serious capital investment, billions of dollars would have to go into this and the trucking companies would scream bloody murder since they would lose huge amounts of revenue. Where the money will come from I haven’t a clue, but the depressed towns near major cities would be the obvious place to build the new port model rail yards.
What the railroad system needs to do is reinvent its self, and revamp the cargo handling, to match that of container ships and ports. Yes, certain items like heavy machinery aren’t easy to modularize, but most of the non-bulk goods are already in standard sized shipping containers. With a little redesign even some of the bulk goods like tanks could be modularized. Then each train is treated like a ship with cargo containers, to be loaded and off loaded in various “ports” (train yards) along the way. The cars are not removed or moved, large overhead gantry cranes move over the top of the trains taking containers off or putting them back on, or moving them to storage, or trucks for delivery. So a train becomes like a container ship that plies the country’s rails.
Trains would be for the most part made up of a single kind of car, that accepts standard modular container, and each container has redundant RFID systems that allow it to be recognized and tracked. This way cargo doesn’t get “lost” in a yard while the workers wait for the cars in front of it move. If the cargo needs to be moved to another train a crane moves it, and the whole operation takes a couple of minutes. This means that trains get in and out of the yards faster, and cargo gets to its destination faster as well.
With this system trains could pull right up to the dock sides in ports, take the cargo to be offloaded, and move it to an area away from the valuable dock side property, to a large purpose built yard to be sorted and put on other trains to get the cargo to the destination. The cargo could move on trains that would never go anywhere near it’s final destination. Companies could get reduced rates by letting their cargo go via a capacity-based route, like the packets that brought this information to your screen. Cargo from LA to Chicago that is priority would go straight to Chicago. But lower priority cargo might go via Tulsa or Houston, and come into the Chicago area on a less used North West track.
For most customers trucks would still be need for the “last mile” but a great deal more cargo could go by a timely rail system. The saving would help companies increase their margins, giving them a better cushion against rising energy prices, and the revisioning of the America rail system would help reduce the wear on the countries crumbling infrastructure, by more evenly spreading the transport burden between the roads and rails.
To pull this off will require some serious capital investment, billions of dollars would have to go into this and the trucking companies would scream bloody murder since they would lose huge amounts of revenue. Where the money will come from I haven’t a clue, but the depressed towns near major cities would be the obvious place to build the new port model rail yards.
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Targeted pesticides
There is all this talk about personalized and targeted medicines, but where are the targeted pesticides?
I have poison ivy near where I live, and I want to get rid of it, but thanks to root grafting if I spray the poison ivy with Roundup or a similar herbicide I am as likely to kill all of the trees as I am the poison ivy.
However, Monsanto makers of Roundup could easily make a spray that does not kill the poison ivy, would just inhibit one or more of the enzymes required for the production of urushiol. (Urusiol is the poison in poison ivy, and it isn’t actually a poison it just causes an autoimmune cascade.) By preventing the plant from producing urushiol it would no longer be poison ivy. If we got very lucky or planned very well the enzymatic inhibition would cause a toxic build up in the plant which would either kill it out right or make it less fit so other vines would out grow it.
A spray like this would free people up to enjoy the outdoors. If it wasn’t a general herbicide it could be sprayed from planes or trucks on nature trails, and summer camps. Kids would still need to be taught to avoid poison ivy, but if they couldn’t then this spray might let them avoid paying the price.
Similarly mosquitoes are vulnerable, since their saliva must contain special proteins that help them feed (they have to modulate the target’s immune system and prevent clotting) and recent research has shown that more than 20 of these proteins are not found in mammals. This means we can produce agents (as in a cocktail of drugs to prevent the mosquitoes from becoming resistant) that interfere with these proteins, and hinder the mosquitoes’ ability to feed. This won’t wipe them out but it will certainly reduce their fitness, which will reduce the size of the population. As long as the agents we create don’t have negative environmental impact (like DDT) we can spray them generally to control the population in wider areas. Similarly we could create drugs that people would take like malaria pills (or as part of malaria pills) to prevent the immuno-suppression caused by mosquito bites which some believe is why mosquitoes are such a good vector for illness.
This type of targeted approach could also work to make drugs that inhibit the production of critical proteins in tsetse fly saliva and break the chain of infection for Sleeping Sickness.
Targeted pesticides might not be as glamorous as personalized medicine but because the target is bigger, the money is there and stable. The benefits to humanity are greater as well, sure I want to sit on my patio and not be bothered by mosquitoes, but my desire for this adds voice to a product that could free huge parts of the world from the crippling grip of disease.
I have poison ivy near where I live, and I want to get rid of it, but thanks to root grafting if I spray the poison ivy with Roundup or a similar herbicide I am as likely to kill all of the trees as I am the poison ivy.
However, Monsanto makers of Roundup could easily make a spray that does not kill the poison ivy, would just inhibit one or more of the enzymes required for the production of urushiol. (Urusiol is the poison in poison ivy, and it isn’t actually a poison it just causes an autoimmune cascade.) By preventing the plant from producing urushiol it would no longer be poison ivy. If we got very lucky or planned very well the enzymatic inhibition would cause a toxic build up in the plant which would either kill it out right or make it less fit so other vines would out grow it.
A spray like this would free people up to enjoy the outdoors. If it wasn’t a general herbicide it could be sprayed from planes or trucks on nature trails, and summer camps. Kids would still need to be taught to avoid poison ivy, but if they couldn’t then this spray might let them avoid paying the price.
Similarly mosquitoes are vulnerable, since their saliva must contain special proteins that help them feed (they have to modulate the target’s immune system and prevent clotting) and recent research has shown that more than 20 of these proteins are not found in mammals. This means we can produce agents (as in a cocktail of drugs to prevent the mosquitoes from becoming resistant) that interfere with these proteins, and hinder the mosquitoes’ ability to feed. This won’t wipe them out but it will certainly reduce their fitness, which will reduce the size of the population. As long as the agents we create don’t have negative environmental impact (like DDT) we can spray them generally to control the population in wider areas. Similarly we could create drugs that people would take like malaria pills (or as part of malaria pills) to prevent the immuno-suppression caused by mosquito bites which some believe is why mosquitoes are such a good vector for illness.
This type of targeted approach could also work to make drugs that inhibit the production of critical proteins in tsetse fly saliva and break the chain of infection for Sleeping Sickness.
Targeted pesticides might not be as glamorous as personalized medicine but because the target is bigger, the money is there and stable. The benefits to humanity are greater as well, sure I want to sit on my patio and not be bothered by mosquitoes, but my desire for this adds voice to a product that could free huge parts of the world from the crippling grip of disease.
Ear candling
Where I am from they practice an insane sounding practice called ear candling to remove the wax from people's ears, it also supposedly cures ear infections. First off candling is a misnomer since the way I’ve seen it done is they don’t put a candle in your ears they put a cone of burning paper.
This is the insane part, your head and hair, plus your ear drum, vs. burning paper… Worse still it doesn’t actually remove the wax all it does is jam the wax further down. However there might be something to the candling helps ear infections part, since when paper burns incompletely it produces soot which settles everywhere. Soot contains DNA intercalculating compounds (generally poly-cyclic aromatics) which can be quit toxic especially to bacteria. (Bacteria have circular chromosomes, so the torsion induced by the agents must be removed enzymatically.) This is why they put coal tar in shampoo and skin cream because it kills bacteria and fungus.
So the soot settling in your ear as the paper burns might actually help kill bacteria, and give your immune system time to clear out the infection or if you are unlucky the soot could give you skin cancer, since it can damage your DNA too.
Please don’t think I condone sticking burning things in your ear as a medical treatment, I am just saying that there might be a reason people believe it works.
This is the insane part, your head and hair, plus your ear drum, vs. burning paper… Worse still it doesn’t actually remove the wax all it does is jam the wax further down. However there might be something to the candling helps ear infections part, since when paper burns incompletely it produces soot which settles everywhere. Soot contains DNA intercalculating compounds (generally poly-cyclic aromatics) which can be quit toxic especially to bacteria. (Bacteria have circular chromosomes, so the torsion induced by the agents must be removed enzymatically.) This is why they put coal tar in shampoo and skin cream because it kills bacteria and fungus.
So the soot settling in your ear as the paper burns might actually help kill bacteria, and give your immune system time to clear out the infection or if you are unlucky the soot could give you skin cancer, since it can damage your DNA too.
Please don’t think I condone sticking burning things in your ear as a medical treatment, I am just saying that there might be a reason people believe it works.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Memristors
My love of fast and exotic computers is hardly a secret, so it should come as no surprise that I am very excited about the invention of a practical memristor. If you don’t know what a memristor is, it is a resistor than can have its resistance altered and remember this new state once the power is turned off.
The reason I am so excited is that with memristors data no longer needs to be stored in a binary fashion. This means that more complex information can be stored as a single entity; this is prefect for effectively storing sequence data or other types of alphanumeric data.
Also memristors can allow the creation of robust non-purpose built hybrid computers, and artificial neural networks. These computers might not be “fast” in the traditional sense, but they could do things that digital computers cannot do effectively, like systems control or advanced adaptive logic.
From reading about memristors further I guess I should have been excited back in 2000 when IBM published an article showing how to build a memristor… Either way it’s still exciting stuff.
The reason I am so excited is that with memristors data no longer needs to be stored in a binary fashion. This means that more complex information can be stored as a single entity; this is prefect for effectively storing sequence data or other types of alphanumeric data.
Also memristors can allow the creation of robust non-purpose built hybrid computers, and artificial neural networks. These computers might not be “fast” in the traditional sense, but they could do things that digital computers cannot do effectively, like systems control or advanced adaptive logic.
From reading about memristors further I guess I should have been excited back in 2000 when IBM published an article showing how to build a memristor… Either way it’s still exciting stuff.
The Starbuck's alarm
With profits dropping Starbucks needs to find ways to make money without spending a lot of money. Well there are few pleasant smells that are as stimulating as the smell of coffee brewing. Just the smell of coffee wakes you up and reduces the likelihood of you hitting the snooze button, even if you don’t drink coffee. However, a lot of people don't brew their own coffee any more, which Starbuck's is ok with, so alarms have to be more and more aggressive to get people up.
I think Starbuck should make an aroma alarm clock that at the designated time fills the room with the smell of brewing coffee. Yes there would need to be a lot of R&D on how to fake the smell of coffee brewing, but once they figure it out Starbucks is up to their eye balls in the raw materials: spent coffee grounds. The upside is Starbucks gets to sell their waste and the people are primed for needing coffee!
I think Starbuck should make an aroma alarm clock that at the designated time fills the room with the smell of brewing coffee. Yes there would need to be a lot of R&D on how to fake the smell of coffee brewing, but once they figure it out Starbucks is up to their eye balls in the raw materials: spent coffee grounds. The upside is Starbucks gets to sell their waste and the people are primed for needing coffee!
Missing Post
I had a really sweet post that showed that there is possibly a common mechanism and therefore treatment for garbage collection diseases (MS, Alzheimer’s, RA, etc), but it was too close to what I do for a living, so it could not be posted. It is really cool too, but hopefully I can take the IP to a Phrama or Biotech company and they can actually do something with the information.
Personal Genomics: a cynical analysis
I was able to attend a panel discussion recently about personal genetics and open access medical records. The panelists were the top minds in the field and I found it to be a very sobering experience. I will say that I applaud their altruism and now that the box is open we can't close it again, so we have to deal with it, but I fear that for the foreseeable future personal genetics (PG) will do more harm than good. The general public sees PG as a panacea, and it's not. There are just too many uncertainties about what it all means, and whether or not knowing about risk factors will allow people alter the outcome.
The discussion about how information empowers the patient and how protections we put in place now assure safety. I admit that I am cynical but information is only empowering when you can use it for leverage. If we outlaw genetic discrimination then the insurance companies will just jack up the rates to match the risk profile then give good gene's discounts. Think about it innocent people rarely take the fifth, so if you've been sequenced and don't want to share the information what are you hiding?
Governments come and go, so the protections put in place now can disappear over night in a police state or if the company holding the info off-shores to a country without these protections. Also, anti-discrimination laws are very hard to enforce. Discrimination doesn't occur at the level of governments and companies, it occurs at the level of individual, and no law can prevent your kids from being teased because they come from less genetically superior stock.
Once you lose control of information it can never be secret again.
(Side note: I think the information people put on Myspace and Facebook will be what the young people of today grow to regret as they get older, the way people from previous generations regret tattoos when they are 40, 50... 80.) So think long and hard before you post you lab test results on you blog. Because when you are older you, your spouse, assorted family, kids, might not want the world knowing those things about you.Now that we have opened the box, we have to live with what comes out. As in the case of Pandora the box contained hope, but it also contained a lot of terrible things too. Imagine a future a where there is genetic blackmail, and I'm not just talking about Russian mobsters getting people's DNA and blackmailing women over paternity tests. I am talking about people's deepest secrets being held for ransom, by friends, strangers, the guy you told when you got drunk that time. "Who would marry you if you are at high risk for Alzheimer’s or whatever? Well for a “reoccurring fee” no one needs to know."Think about it how bad it is when a cybercrimal steals thousands of credit card numbers, imagine what happens when they steal thousands of people medical records. You can cut up your credit card and get a new number, but not your medical records or DNA sequence. It will happen, and it's foolish to pretend it won't.
Then there are sham therapies and what I call “sequence spam”. Right now PG technologies are in the hands of truly gifted and altruist people and companies, but that won't always be the case. There is a LOT of money to be made in the realm of personal genetics and medicine, and I can already see the business models for questionable firms to offer "free" for a small fee sequencing to determine, which of their as seen on late night TV weight loss, ED, etc products will be best suited to you. If they actually do the tests then have your information and your consent. As they roll out new "natural" drugs they can hit you up again, and use scare tactics. You get a phone call or certified letter saying you are at an increased risk for pancreatic cancer, which is a death sentence. However, if you take our product you everyday for the rest of you life at the low cost of $2 a day, you can "mitigate" the risk. But you should see our medical specialist for a scan and treatment, since you don't want to tell your insurance company about your "problem", but that means the visits and treatments are cash only. Worse still would be to prey on parents fears. "Mrs. Johnson, we have some disturbing news, from your results we have determined if you have a son, there good chance he will be short, retarded, sickly, or whatever. However we have something that will allow you to treat him before it becomes a problem..." That way if nothing bad happens the "treatment" appears to be working.
Even if you don’t share your personal information, sequence spam and social engineering can get you to reveal it. Think of the emails you get for V1a gra and other “drugs” now imagine you are getting email saying that some drug or another can improve some aspect of the mutation at site X’s life. You buy it, and now you’ve revealed that you likely have that mutation, then through linkage studies the seller can calculate the likelihood you have other mutations, which might not be as innocuous. Or my favorite since it is a twist on a classic. Mass emailing saying “You’re genetic tests show that you are the heir to a fabulous fortune, but we will need a payment to cover legal fees and a sample of your DNA before we can send you the money.” Heck I am surprised they haven’t already started doing this with the info from genealogy sites.
I realize I just provided a how to guide for tomorrow's biomedical criminal, but I doubt I am the first person who figured out how misuse medical or sequence information, so I take no responsibility for the actions of others. (I will happily take this post down if law enforcement asks me. I would also be happy to talk with the FBI or CIA about the potential for biomedical crime.)
I believe it is important for the well intentioned and naïve to see what they are enabling, since in a few years they will be seeing on the news. We might even have to wait for genetic crime to see the social implications of PG, the backlash after the first suicide of a PG company customer will be massive. I don’t believe PG will cause us to end up in a GATTCA like world, but the potential for bad things to happen as a result of this knowledge is there.
The discussion about how information empowers the patient and how protections we put in place now assure safety. I admit that I am cynical but information is only empowering when you can use it for leverage. If we outlaw genetic discrimination then the insurance companies will just jack up the rates to match the risk profile then give good gene's discounts. Think about it innocent people rarely take the fifth, so if you've been sequenced and don't want to share the information what are you hiding?
Governments come and go, so the protections put in place now can disappear over night in a police state or if the company holding the info off-shores to a country without these protections. Also, anti-discrimination laws are very hard to enforce. Discrimination doesn't occur at the level of governments and companies, it occurs at the level of individual, and no law can prevent your kids from being teased because they come from less genetically superior stock.
Once you lose control of information it can never be secret again.
(Side note: I think the information people put on Myspace and Facebook will be what the young people of today grow to regret as they get older, the way people from previous generations regret tattoos when they are 40, 50... 80.) So think long and hard before you post you lab test results on you blog. Because when you are older you, your spouse, assorted family, kids, might not want the world knowing those things about you.Now that we have opened the box, we have to live with what comes out. As in the case of Pandora the box contained hope, but it also contained a lot of terrible things too. Imagine a future a where there is genetic blackmail, and I'm not just talking about Russian mobsters getting people's DNA and blackmailing women over paternity tests. I am talking about people's deepest secrets being held for ransom, by friends, strangers, the guy you told when you got drunk that time. "Who would marry you if you are at high risk for Alzheimer’s or whatever? Well for a “reoccurring fee” no one needs to know."Think about it how bad it is when a cybercrimal steals thousands of credit card numbers, imagine what happens when they steal thousands of people medical records. You can cut up your credit card and get a new number, but not your medical records or DNA sequence. It will happen, and it's foolish to pretend it won't.
Then there are sham therapies and what I call “sequence spam”. Right now PG technologies are in the hands of truly gifted and altruist people and companies, but that won't always be the case. There is a LOT of money to be made in the realm of personal genetics and medicine, and I can already see the business models for questionable firms to offer "free" for a small fee sequencing to determine, which of their as seen on late night TV weight loss, ED, etc products will be best suited to you. If they actually do the tests then have your information and your consent. As they roll out new "natural" drugs they can hit you up again, and use scare tactics. You get a phone call or certified letter saying you are at an increased risk for pancreatic cancer, which is a death sentence. However, if you take our product you everyday for the rest of you life at the low cost of $2 a day, you can "mitigate" the risk. But you should see our medical specialist for a scan and treatment, since you don't want to tell your insurance company about your "problem", but that means the visits and treatments are cash only. Worse still would be to prey on parents fears. "Mrs. Johnson, we have some disturbing news, from your results we have determined if you have a son, there good chance he will be short, retarded, sickly, or whatever. However we have something that will allow you to treat him before it becomes a problem..." That way if nothing bad happens the "treatment" appears to be working.
Even if you don’t share your personal information, sequence spam and social engineering can get you to reveal it. Think of the emails you get for V1a gra and other “drugs” now imagine you are getting email saying that some drug or another can improve some aspect of the mutation at site X’s life. You buy it, and now you’ve revealed that you likely have that mutation, then through linkage studies the seller can calculate the likelihood you have other mutations, which might not be as innocuous. Or my favorite since it is a twist on a classic. Mass emailing saying “You’re genetic tests show that you are the heir to a fabulous fortune, but we will need a payment to cover legal fees and a sample of your DNA before we can send you the money.” Heck I am surprised they haven’t already started doing this with the info from genealogy sites.
I realize I just provided a how to guide for tomorrow's biomedical criminal, but I doubt I am the first person who figured out how misuse medical or sequence information, so I take no responsibility for the actions of others. (I will happily take this post down if law enforcement asks me. I would also be happy to talk with the FBI or CIA about the potential for biomedical crime.)
I believe it is important for the well intentioned and naïve to see what they are enabling, since in a few years they will be seeing on the news. We might even have to wait for genetic crime to see the social implications of PG, the backlash after the first suicide of a PG company customer will be massive. I don’t believe PG will cause us to end up in a GATTCA like world, but the potential for bad things to happen as a result of this knowledge is there.
A novel low cost way to desalinate water
Someone wise once told me that oil is a replaceable convenience but water is life. The sad fact is that we are running out of fresh water, so we will become increasingly dependent on desalination to meet our needs. Israel already has to use desalinated water for crops. The current technologies for desalination are distillation and reverse osmosis, with some plans for solar evaporation in warmer areas. The issue with these technologies is they require a lot of energy.While partial vacuum distillation in combination with cooling of nuclear or coal plants is efficient most distillation desalination methods are inefficient. RO while it is more efficient than distillation requires expensive membranes that are quickly destroyed by contact with seawater.My idea is to use ion exchange to desalinate or at least reduce the total dissolved solids in the water. When most people think of ion exchange they think of water softening, where resins trade Ca and Mg ions for Na ions. But desalinization is a totally different problem, since you have to get rid of the NaCl, and this is normally a deionization problem. Ion exchange resins have been used for direct desalination but to do this they exchange H for Na and OH for Cl, so they be regenerated with expensive chemicals and the salt quickly destroys the delicate resins needed for deionization.
My suggestion is indirect desalinization, where the Cl is replaced with CO2 and Na replaced with Ca. As long as there is an excess of CO2 present the Calcium Bicarbonate will remain in solution. This will prevent fouling. Then the magic happens, the water is purged of CO2 and the insoluble Calcium Carbonate (limestone) falls out of solution. The once the water is mostly de-ionized it can be used for non-drinking applications, or further polished and made potable. The limestone and CO2 are then mixed with a small amount of fresh water and pumped back into the resins to recharge them. The concentrated brine is flushed out and the resins can be used again. Since the Ca and most of the CO2 is recovered the system could be very efficient. The resins are exchanging the ions of solids they do not have to be that high grade, and can be designed to allow acid/base regeneration to restore them. It is possible that clays or minerals could be used in place of synthetic resins. However, I did some quick back of the envelope calculations and it should be possible to chemically modify recycled plastics for this application. I believe it should be possible chemically treat shredded HDPE and PP to serve as ion exchange resin. By using a very low cost resin this process could be a viable large desalination method. Someday old soda bottles could provide us clean drinking water.
My suggestion is indirect desalinization, where the Cl is replaced with CO2 and Na replaced with Ca. As long as there is an excess of CO2 present the Calcium Bicarbonate will remain in solution. This will prevent fouling. Then the magic happens, the water is purged of CO2 and the insoluble Calcium Carbonate (limestone) falls out of solution. The once the water is mostly de-ionized it can be used for non-drinking applications, or further polished and made potable. The limestone and CO2 are then mixed with a small amount of fresh water and pumped back into the resins to recharge them. The concentrated brine is flushed out and the resins can be used again. Since the Ca and most of the CO2 is recovered the system could be very efficient. The resins are exchanging the ions of solids they do not have to be that high grade, and can be designed to allow acid/base regeneration to restore them. It is possible that clays or minerals could be used in place of synthetic resins. However, I did some quick back of the envelope calculations and it should be possible to chemically modify recycled plastics for this application. I believe it should be possible chemically treat shredded HDPE and PP to serve as ion exchange resin. By using a very low cost resin this process could be a viable large desalination method. Someday old soda bottles could provide us clean drinking water.
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