Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

S. W. Lawrence, MD @swlawrence.bsky.social · 10h

Volts: “Super-deep geothermal drilling … with microwaves, A conversation with Carlos Araque of Quaise Energy.” Quaise .. “Quaise is an out-of-the box geothermal startup which aims to go deeper—as in [more than] several miles down.”

Testing millimeter device before drilling starts. Trying to conventionally drill to that depth fails as progress grinds to a halt in as little as 10 hrs per drill bit. And the bit replacement rate goes up. A long drill string can take days to pull it out and put it back in. And the cuttings are too deep to remove conventionally with a flow of drilling mud.
Quaise’s solution is to conventionally drill to a reasonable depth, then push on with a metal casing from 4″-8″ diameter as a guide for “millimeter wave” radiation or “maser” without any further use of a drillstring. A kitchen microwave oven is ~1,000 watts tuned to 2.5 gigahertz, a frequency coupling to typical food molecules in food. Quaise tunes to interact well with rock with 100 gigahertz radiation, in typical range of radar. CEO Carlos Araque says rock is “thirsty” + absorbs this energy, pulverizing to tiny particles blown out of the advancing hole with air or nitrogen—like a kid playing with the straw in a milkshake.
What about the supercritical water? We are all familiar with water as ice, a liquid + a vapor we call steam. At great depth + pressure, water at 375ºC reaches an inflection point of supercriticality, like your English teacher in the 10th grade. Temperature + energy content go up exponentially. The maser device at the surface uses about a megawatt of power, equal to a thousand kitchen microwaves. But when drilling ise completed + your water can reach 300-500ºC, you will get back the energy consumed by a thousand-fold over the lifecycle. Araque says, “we need to unlock geothermal at economic and power parity with oil and gas or better.” His target is ‘cost parity with gas at $3 per million BTU—that’s disruptive to the core because you have no fuel cost.’ A single power plant could be surrounded by 4 or 5 boreholes.
Globally the resource is 1,000 terawatts; current energy use is 20 TW. And you can drill almost anywhere, even next to sites of demand, not requiring long-distance transmission.

S. W. Lawrence, MD @swlawrence.bsky.social · 2d

YaleClimateConnections: “Fact-checking a Trump administration claim about climate change and crops.” A draft report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy [DOE] misleadingly claims that increasing levels of carbon dioxide could be beneficial for agriculture.

Healthy wheat field. “In fact, mainstream climate experts have found that rising CO2 levels, by causing climate change, are harmful to agriculture overall—and likely to cause food prices to increase.” The DOE’s claim was directly derived “from a draft “critical review” report commissioned by DOE and written by fringe experts. The DOE subsequently disbanded that group when faced with a lawsuit alleging that it violated a law requiring that such federal advisory committees must be transparent and unbiased.”

Unforunately, the Environmental Protection Agency cited the DOE report in a proposal to reverse its Obama-era determination that carbon pollution poses a threat to public health and welfare. “In response to the DOE report, a group of 85 climate experts and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine each published comprehensive reviews of the scientific literature and…found that rather than boosting agricultural productivity, the body of scientific evidence indicates that increased extreme weather resulting from climate change will instead reduce crop yields, making food more expensive.” Rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere trap extra heat like a blanket, causing more frequent extreme weather like heat waves, droughts, and floods, which stress plants and hamper their growth and productivity. It is estimated that each additional 1°C of global warming in 2100 will reduce crop yields by the equivalent of 4.4% of each person on Earth’s recommended daily calorie intake. Many staple crops, such as wheat, corn, and soybeans, will see significant yield declines.

“Another 2025 study found that thanks to more efficient farming practices, the amount of global land devoted to agriculture could have decreased 2% over the past 30 years—while growing the same amount of food. “Instead, global croplands expanded by nearly 4% during that time because climate change slowed the growth in agricultural productivity.”

S. W. Lawrence, MD @swlawrence.bsky.social · 3d

CleanTechnica: ‘New “Salt Battery” Proves Energy Storage Exists, Again.’ US startup Aslym Energy just launched its a new safety-forward, sodium-ion battery into the marketplace, with the aim of accelerating the renewable energy transition.Graph

S. W. Lawrence, MD @swlawrence.bsky.social · 4d

UtilityDive: “Losing power, losing billions: How offshoring grid materials weakens America.” Jargon first. In electromagnetism, a dielectric medium is an electrical insulator with a high polarisability—which can be used a a [stabilizing] store of energy.

Graphic of dialectic manufacture. Dialectric capacitor film is “a highly engineered, ultra-thin plastic that enables power stability and distribution for our grid—is almost entirely made overseas, and 75% is made in China, which dominates the global supply.” Whew. The rest is relatively easy.

“Electrification, AI, data centers, [electric vehicles of all types], and extreme weather are driving unprecedented demand for energy and grid reliability.” What we need is real-time monitoring, rapid integration of renewables and far less energy lost in transmission, which today can waste an unhealthy 8-12% of power generation. At the heart of grid reliability are magnets, rare-earth minerals and dielectric films. The latter are “used in capacitors that condition power, convert AC/DC power, keep power flowing steadily and even help manage spikes in demand to keep the grid stable and secure.”

Unwisely, the U.S. has outsourced its ability to replace failing transformers, capacitors and other critical grid components. No American manufacturer even builds the equipment to make dielectric films, + we spend nearly $200 billion overseas for this film and other critical materials. This represents a ‘huge strategic liability threatening our national security and stifling innovation at the moment our nation needs it most to drive AI and defense.’ If we lost our source of dialectic films, ‘consequences would be immediate and severe, triggering blackouts, crippling industries, compromised reliability during peak events like heat domes, extreme weather and surging data center loads.

The author of this article, Jim Welsh, is CEO of Peak Nano, so he is both knowledgeable about this issue plus has no doubt some self-interest. But he is “talking about a global film capacitor market that stood at $4.1 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $10.3 billion by 2030.” Showing off his conservative bona fides, he trumpets the following: “Dominion Energy is investing in fusion."

S. W. Lawrence, MD @swlawrence.bsky.social · 5d

ClimateCentral: "Fall Warming, by Average Temperatures." Forget the autumnal equinox, which this yr occurred on September 22nd at 2:19 p.m. EDT, marking the official start of calendrical autumn in the Northern Hemisphere.

On this day, day and night are approximately equal in length as the Sun 'crosses' the celestial equator heading south.

Time for an 'alternative fact.' September 1st is the start of what is called meteorological fall. "The season has warmed in every county across the contiguous U.S. since 1970—and is warming fastest in the Southwest." Fall has warmed in 237 U.S. cities—by 2.8°F on average from 1970 through 2024. "Unusually warm fall days now happen more often in 238 cities, or 98% of the 243 cities analyzed."

Logically, a warmer fall season prolongs risks of heat-related illness, wildfire, smoke exposure, allergies [including ragweed pollen for those poor sufferers], poor set for fruit + nut trees, drought, persistance of mosquitoes, ticks + other vectors of infection and more. Meanwhile, offshore coral bleaching is affecting 84% of corals worldwide. Fish, crab + other species are migrating, disrupting ecosystems.

How about a little soul-searching. Ask yourself what you have done to wrestle climate change to a pin. And ask your friends the same question.

This Climate Matters analysis is based on open-access data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

S. W. Lawrence, MD @swlawrence.bsky.social · 6d

CanaryMedia: “Why did Newsom veto California’s virtual-power-plant bills?” Last wk California Governor Gavin Newsom blocked three bills aiming to boost the use of virtual power plants, undermining an opportunity to decrease the state’s fast-rising electricity costs + increase its grid reliability.

Gavin Newsom. He vetoed AB 44, AB 740, and SB 541, which were passed by large majorities in the state legislature last month. “Each bill proposed a distinct approach to expanding the state’s use of rooftop solar, backup batteries, electric vehicles, smart thermostats, and other customer-owned energy technologies.”

But he claimed in three separate statements that the bills would complicate regulators’ ongoing efforts to use those technologies to meet clean energy and grid reliability goals. “The moves come as utility costs reach crisis levels in California; its residents now pay roughly twice the U.S. average for their power.” One response he did accomplish was to sign into law a package of bills aimed at combating cost increases at the state’s three major utilities: Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, + San Diego Gas & Electric.

“But some supporters of the virtual power plant (VPP) bills speculated that these same utilities were to blame for Newsom’s vetoing legislation that could have further driven down costs, as the governor has received significant campaign contributions from PG&E and the policies would have eaten into utility profits.” Think tank GridLab + grid-data analytics startup Kevala collaborated to release a report in August arguing ‘that California could cut energy costs for consumers by between $3.7 B and $13.7 B in 2030 by [promotion of] home batteries, EV chargers, and smart thermostats to reduce summertime grid demand peaks that drive an outsize portion of utility grid costs.’ Finally, the Brattle Group—another well-regarded energy consultancy—found in a 2024 analysis that VPPs could provide more than 15% of the state’s peak grid demand by 2035, delivering $550 M in annual utility customer savings.

“Simply put, paying homes and businesses for the grid value of devices they’ve already bought and installed is cheaper than the alternative of utilities building out new poles and wires and substations to serve peak demand.’

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S. W. Lawrence, MD @swlawrence.bsky.social · 7d

CleanTechnica: “IEA Report Claims Fossil Fuel Imports Have Declined In More Than 100 Countries.” The executive summary of their valued annual report includes this projection: “Global renewable power capacity is expected to double between now and 2030, increasing by 4,600 gigawatts.

Graph depicting countries stopping fossil fuels imports. This is roughly the equivalent of adding China, the European Union, and Japan’s power generation capacity combined to the global energy mix.” This is astounding; in half a decade the world will up electrical capacity equivalent to adding 4,600 nuclear power plants. Unbelievable. Topping this off is that solar gets credit for almost 80% of this explosion of capacity, followed by hydropower, bioenergy, and geothermal. In a supermajority of countries worldwide, renewable power capacity is set to grow faster between 2025 and 2030 than it did over the previous half decade. “However, challenges including grid integration, supply chain vulnerabilities, and financing are also increasing.”
This 2025 Renewables report shows > 100 countries have curtailed dependence on fossil fuel imports and saved hundreds of billions of dollars by continuing to invest in renewables. You don’t need to guess at the sole industrialized country flailing + falling behind, because the US is obviously engaging in a global full court press in favor of expanding the use of fossil fuels. “The UK, Germany, and Chile have reduced their need for imported coal and gas by around a third since 2010, mainly by building wind and solar power. Denmark has cut its reliance on fossil fuel imports by nearly half over the same period.” These fuel importing countries saved more than $1.3 trillion between 2010 and 2023 that would otherwise have been spent on imported fossil fuels.
“In total, the IEA identified 107 countries that had reduced their dependence on fossil fuel imports for electricity generation because of their transition to renewables other than hydropower.” The IEA report emphasizes renewables “inherently strengthen energy supply security,” because they generate electricity domestically, while also “improving…economic resilience.” The effect is seen most strongly in countries that previously relied on methane gas exports from Russia.

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S. W. Lawrence, MD @swlawrence.bsky.social · 8d

MIT News: “Printable aluminum alloy sets strength records, may enable lighter aircraft parts.” The new printable metal is made from an alloy of aluminum and other elements that the team identified using a combination of simulations and machine learning .

$Graphic of nanostructure of new Al alloy. “While traditional methods would require simulating over 1 million possible combinations of materials, the team’s new machine learning-based approach needed only to evaluate 40 possible compositions before identifying an ideal mix for a high-strength, printable aluminum alloy.” As an example, the material scientists envision that the new alloy could allow lighter fan blades in jet engines. “Fan blades are traditionally cast from titanium—a material that is more than 50 percent heavier and up to 10 times costlier than aluminum—or made from advanced composites.” 3D printing can fabricate complex geometries + save on materials, with potential for use in advanced vacuum pumps, high-end automobiles, + cooling devices for data centers,” claimed John Hart, head of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. The smaller and more densely packed its microscopic constituents, or “precipitates,” the stronger the alloy can be. Colleague Taheri-Mousavi found that, using just 40 compositions mixing aluminum with different elements, their machine-learning approach quickly homed in on a recipe for an aluminum alloy with higher volume fraction of small precipitates, and therefore higher strength, than what the previous studies identified. Then 3D printing, also know as additive manufacturing, used a rapid technique to cool + solidify the aluminum alloy. Laser bed powder fusion (LBPF)—is a technique by which a powder is deposited, layer by layer, on a surface in a desired pattern and then quickly melted by a laser that traces over the pattern. The printable powder based on the new recipe resulted in a product 400% stronger than a casted counterpart and 50% stronger than alloys designed using conventional simulations without machine learning. “The new alloy’s microstructure also consisted of a higher volume fraction of small precipitates, and was stable at temperatures of up to 400ºC [752ºF]—a very high temperature for aluminum alloys.”$

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S. W. Lawrence, MD @swlawrence.bsky.social · 9d

AAAS: “First approved drug for mitochondrial disease could pave way for more treatments.” A typical human cell [also in plants + fungi] has thousands of mitochondria.

Electron micrograph. AAAS: “First approved drug for mitochondrial disease could pave way for more treatments.” A typical human cell [also in plants + fungi] has thousands of mitochondria, organelles that have a double membrane structure and use aerobic respiration to generate adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is used throughout the cell as a source of chemical energy. They ‘also help cells synthesize key molecules, control calcium levels, manage stress, and perform other essential tasks.’ So it is unsurprisingly to realize that “when mutations cause mitochondria to malfunction, the consequences can be serious, ranging from fatigue and weakness to seizures and occasionally death.”
Mitochondrial diseases have seemed intractable, but last month the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) licensed the first treatment targeting a mitochondrial flaw. It is called elamipretide, developed to treat Barth syndrome, an extremely rare condition that kills some babies within their first year. “This is a very important step for mitochondrial disease physicians and patients,” says pediatric neurologist Mary Kay Koenig of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Just a few weeks before, FDA rejected a therapy for another often-fatal mitochondrial disease, pyruvate dehydrogenase complex deficiency (PDCD), asking its manufacturer to run an additional clinical trial. ‘Elamipretide, too, was rejected twice, and only greenlit after more than a year of back and forth with the manufacturer.’ “At least seven other treatments for mitochondria-related illnesses are in clinical trials, and academic researchers and a host of new biotechs are pursuing more potential therapies.”
Mitochondrial diseases are multitudinous. And all are rare. “Barth syndrome affects about 150 people in the United States, and TK2d is even less common—only about 250 people in the world suffer from it.”

S. W. Lawrence, MD @swlawrence.bsky.social · 10d

MiamiHerald: “King tides in South Florida: Getting worse and a sign of sea level rise to come.” The Moon’s closest approach of the Earth in its elliptical orbit is called “perigee” + is associated with higher or “king” tides.

Sunny day flood. The annual spate of the highest tides of the year brought coastal flooding, but fortuitously not coinciding with intense rains, a storm surge or a hurricane. “In the last 80 years, sea level…has risen about a foot, with 8 inches of that total in the last 30 years, said Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science.” But the second foot will only take 30 yrs, + the third foot only 10 yrs after that. Subsidence of coastal Florida, slowing of the Atlantic Meridian Overturning Circulation or AMOC, + global sea level rise are the 3 main causes.
“Property value dropping is a big worry for civic leaders and residents alike in South Florida…however, even in some of the region’s most flood-prone neighborhoods, prices have either held steady or risen, as experts say the benefits of living waterside still outweigh the costs of an occasional flooded garage or home—for most people. “Cathy Sutter, a 15-year resident, said the seasonal floods seem to be getting worse each year, but residents of the waterside complex have learned to adapt, moving their cars to higher ground in advance of the flooding.”
In response, “South Florida governments have sunk tens of millions into infrastructure investments to keep their streets and residents dry in the face of encroaching tides. Miami Beach has spent hundreds of millions elevating roads. Fort Lauderdale has raised sea walls. Miami-Dade has installed permanent new stormwater pump stations to fight gravity and force the water back into canals.” Yet experts say it will take billions more to fully prepare the region for the onslaught of water.
October 8th was “the tenth year of Florida International University’s Sea Level Solutions Day, where volunteers are trained to scoop up water samples, snap pictures of depth and report it back to the scientists running the show.” World turned topsy-turvy when ocean is coming for the lemmings.

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S. W. Lawrence, MD @swlawrence.bsky.social · 11d

AAAS: “Well-exercised male mice appear to pass fitness to their male offspring.” Traditional genetics relies on the long-established role of DNA. Human DNA and its associated proteins [primarily histones] have carried information through billions of years of evolution.

Male mouse training. Epigenetic bits of RNA can also bind to DNA + affect its functions.
“You can inherit a talent for athletics from your parents, but physical fitness—which is determined in large part by exercise and other lifestyle choices—doesn’t seem like it can be inherited.” Now there is a paper which suggests male mice that exercise can pass newly gained fitness on to male offspring. “Some acquired traits can alter the chemical packaging of the DNA and affect the properties of the offspring, [the] phenomenon known as epigenetics.” Recent research has show that so-called microRNAs (miRNAs) in sperm cells as one way epigenetic information can be passed on. Previously, ‘scientists have shown that diet, stress, and toxins can have an impact on the embryo through miRNAs.’
Xin Yin, a reproductive biologist at Nanjing University, often noticed that athletes’ children “seemed to be naturally better at sports.” He wondered if athletes’ endless hours of training confered a benefit as well. Yin + his team made male mice run on a treadmill for 2 weeks, then mated them with female mice that didn’t get any forced extra exercise. The male offspring could run for a longer period of time than the controls. “The fitter offspring also had a higher proportion of oxidative muscle fibers and didn’t become obese or diabetic when exposed to a high-fat diet, the team reports in a paper published on Monday in Cell Metabolism.” Sequencing the RNA in the sperm + in fertilized eggs demonstrated higher levels of 10 types of miRNAs that might explain how the increased fitness is conferred. A protein called PGC-1 alpha in muscle switches on genes that build mitochondria, the tiny energy-producing organelles residing inside cells. “The team also collected sperm from eight human men who trained regularly [jocks] and 24 others who didn’t [nerds], and found that human equivalents of seven of the 10 miRNAs were elevated in the sperm of trained men.”

S. W. Lawrence, MD @swlawrence.bsky.social · 12d

CanaryMedia: “Trump’s push to keep coal plants running could cost consumers billions.” Emergency stay-open orders from Trump’s Department of Energy for aging fossil-fuel plants are forcing unanticipated + excessive costs onto utilities + their customers.

Tennessee coal plant slated for close in 2026. “An April executive order from…Trump tasks the Department of Energy with taking unilateral authority to obligate power plants to keep operating, even after utilities, states, and regional grid operators have spent years making sure they’re safe to close.” Then last wk, in response to the president’s order, “the DOE released a report [claiming] current power plant retirements and additions put the country at massive risk of blackouts by 2030,” calling for “decisive intervention” to prevent that outcome.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright is ignoring that fact that hundreds of gigawatts of new generation—almost all of it solar, batteries, and wind power—are slated to come online in the near term. ‘Ordering aging fossil-fueled power plants to stay open would force utility customers to pay billions of dollars for some of the least efficient and least reliable power plants on the grid—not to mention those worst for the climate and the health of nearby communities.’ RMI ran a hypothetical “100% self-commitment” analysis to calculate the increase in customer costs that would come from running all coal plants at “maximum availability” throughout the year, using 2024 data. “Nationally, running coal plants more often last year would have increased customer costs by $15 billion,” or a roughly 3% increase in total annual U.S. power-sector costs. “All told, think tank RMI estimates that this kind of “uneconomic dispatch” of coal plants has already put U.S. electricity consumers on the hook for $24 billion in excess expenditures from 2015 to 2024.”
At this point, 108 power plants remain set to close by the end of Trump’s term, including 25 coal plants, according to a June analysis by The New York Times. “It’s unclear if the DOE intends to permit those closures to move ahead.” Lacking a crystal ball, all I can project is the likelihood is Trump will go with the worst option.

S. W. Lawrence, MD @swlawrence.bsky.social · 13d

More exciting than a rocket taking off from Cape Canaveral, burning a hole in a cloud. Something I actually saw when I was 19—working in a summer camp on Lake Ocala in central Florida. We took busloads of our campers to see Apollo 11 take off, ferrying the first astronauts to walk on the Moon.

Soapbox speaker on left, Greek myth Cassandra on right. But my launch is for a book, CLOUD DRAGON, with an event at Village Bookstore in Lynden, WA on the 15th of November [a Saturday] at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Here is the link for information + tickets: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/1680961794979

Cost is $5 for entry, taken off the price of a book if you purchase one. Which of course you will be excited to do. And yes, I do autographs on request. The photo is of the first slide that I use in the presentation, offering two unique perspectives. The first figure manifests the idea that a book may be constructed as a soapbox, whether fiction or nonfiction. The second figure is Cassandra, whose curse was the gift of prophecy from her father Apollo, but the endless torment of struggling to persuade people of the truth of her predictions. So, as they say, come one + all if you live in the northwest corner of Washington State.

S. W. Lawrence, MD @swlawrence.bsky.social · 14d

CanaryMedia: “Plug-in solar bills are in the works in New Hampshire and Vermont.” “Lawmakers and advocates in both states are preparing legislation that would make these plug-in solar systems accessible to residents who don’t have space, money, or inclination to install a larger, rooftop array.”

Balcony solar. Also called “portable” or “balcony” solar, these systems generally come in kits even a novice can install. They plug into a standard 110V exterior outlet, but send electrons into the home instead of sucking them out. “Unlike rooftop arrays, plug-in systems don’t generate enough power to meet all, or even most, of a household’s needs, but they offset enough consumption to pay for themselves within four or five years, even without incentives like tax credits or net metering.”
Current models start at about $2,000, but as they become more popular + prices come down, while retail electricity prices go up relentlessly, the payback period will improve. “You don’t need any subsidies to make this work…the pure economics are so attractive, it’s one of the best investments you can make.” Witness how these systems have taken off in Germany, where more than a million have been deployed. “In March [deep-red-state] Utah lawmakers, working with Bright Saver [nonprofit that advocates for the adoption of plug-in solar], unanimously passed a law authorizing and regulating the equipment, making it the first state to lay out the welcome mat for plug-in solar.” Playing catchup, “last month, a Pennsylvania state representative announced plans to introduce a similar law, and Bright Saver is having conversations with lawmakers in about a dozen additional states about possible legislation.”
All these laws define a new class of small, portable solar systems, + establish the right of households to use the systems without submitting applications or paying fees to the state or utilities. “They also define safety standards for the systems, including that they be certified by Underwriters Laboratories, or UL, a company that sets standards and provides safety certifications for a wide range of products.” Bright Saver and other plug-in solar supporters have been working US on this issue and expect a standard to be released in the next month or two.

S. W. Lawrence, MD @swlawrence.bsky.social · 15d

CanaryMedia: “US hydropower is at a make-or-break moment.” Relicensing for hydropower dams is a yearslong, often extremely expensive process. “Nearly 450 hydroelectric stations totaling more than 16 gigawatts of generating capacity are scheduled for relicensing across U.S. over the next decade.”

Fish ladder. The government owns about half the hydropower stations in the U.S., but the 450 figure represents about 40% of the nonfederal fleet. Dams provide multiple purposes including dispatchable power. With booming electrical demand, relicensing could help supply multiple facilities, including data centers + aluminum smelters. Such “tech and industrial giants could even help pay for the costly relicensing process with deals like the record-setting $3 billion contract Google inked with hydropower operator Brookfield Asset Management in July for up to 3 gigawatts of hydropower.”

Or, as has been happening for years, the U.S. could continue to lose gigawatts of power as hydroelectric facilities shut down rather than absorb the high costs of relicensing—especially with cheaper competition from gas, wind, and solar.” Starting in the late 1800s, hydropower has provided the second-largest share of the country’s renewable power after wind, and by far its most firm. “But the average age of U.S. dams is 65 years, meaning the bulk of the fleet wasn’t built with newfangled infrastructure to enable unobstructed passage for fish and other wildlife.” The cost of such upgrading can soar into the tens of millions of dollars—on top of the expense of upgrading custom-built equipment for each plant. Furthermore, 1 mark of industrial decline in the US is that ‘after decades of decline in the hydropower sector, the manufacturing muscle for turbines and other hardware that make a dam work has largely atrophied in the U.S.’

Passed in 1920 to regulate hydroelectric facilities, the Federal Power Act does not give any single agency full authority over hydropower the way the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has over nuclear energy. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission or FERC issues key permits on the federal level. “The Fish and Wildlife Service…may require a National Environmental Policy Act review to examine a dam’s effects on a specific fish species.”

S. W. Lawrence, MD @swlawrence.bsky.social · 16d

AAAS: “Does drinking beer make you more attractive to mosquitoes?” “Researchers asked attendees at [a] Lowlands music and arts festival in the Netherlands to place their arms against an acrylic box full of mosquitoes to see how many of the bugs [sic] attempted to land on them.”

Mosquito imbibing blood. Captive-reared mosquitoes employed were Anopheles stephensi There was a ‘perforated divider separating the participants’ arms from the insects, so they could only attempt to land on the revellers.’

Study is only a one-off. Second, only volunteers were tested. Third, a number of these subjects were under the influence of one or more of a variety of mood-altering agents affecting their judgement, richly implying selection biases. Fourth, some attendees may have erred in reporting their blood type.

For their Mosquito Magnet Trial, Sara Lynn Blanken at Radboud University Medical Centre in Netherlands and her colleagues asked 465 attendees to complete a questionnaire about their health, diet, hygiene, sunscreen application, any substance use, blood type and whether they had slept alone the night before. “Beer drinkers were 44% more attractive to the bloodsuckers than people who had abstained from suds for at least 12 hours, cannabis users were 35% more attractive, and those who had slept with someone else the night before were 46% more attractive, the team reports in a preprint on bioRxiv.” On the other hand, festivalgoers who had showered and put on sunscreen were 48% less attractive [to mosquitoes, one assumes]. “The researchers found no association with blood type, an oft-touted factor with mixed scientific evidence.” My bias is that a mark of civilization is a hot shower every day. Empirically, seems like indulging in cleanliness + applying mosquito repellant is not asking for a lot. May even prevent having to sleep alone.

While all this may sound a bit light-hearted, let’s remind ourselves that vector-borne diseases such as West Nile virus, dengue fever, zika, chikungungya + malaria are increasing their ranges globally. The photo, from the CDC, is a classic. The female mosquito still has her proboscis stuck in human skin, with a stream of blood visualized there, much of the abdomen filled with it, + excess fluid being excreted.

S. W. Lawrence, MD @swlawrence.bsky.social · 17d

AAAS: “Mysterious will-o’-the-wisps ignited by microlightning.” Electrical sparks from tiny bubbles offers a new explanation for the ‘fleeting flames of folklore.’ Myths attempted to explain the will-o’-the-wisp, the fleeting flames occasionally seen above swamps + graveyards in the dark of Moon.

Swamp gas. Scientists have long assumed the flickers arose from flammable methane gas produced by decaying organic matter, but could not explain its ignition. “Now, new research suggests that tiny lightning bursts jumping between microscopic bubbles can spark the phenomena [sometimes also called a jack-o’-lantern].” James Anderson, a chemist at Harvard, ‘says the power of microbubbles to trigger reactions could also help explain how essential biomolecules formed prior to the dawn of life.’ Several days ago the work was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Richard Zare, a chemist at Stanford, + his colleagues have studied how tiny bubbles, just nanometers to micrometers in size, can generate strong electric fields, sparking reactions. “When bubbles of different sizes form at the interface between water and air, charges on their surfaces separate, with negative charges accumulating on smaller bubbles, leaving larger ones more positively charged.” The potential difference or voltage creates electric fields across small distances that trigger what amounts to bursts of microlightning as the charges attempt to equalize. “Zare’s team designed a machine with a submerged nozzle that blew microbubbles of methane and air into water…[and, sure enough] high-speed cameras then caught tiny flashes of light as bubbles collided. They noted that flashes occurred even when only air was injected, suggesting the microlightning results from the charge separation, not from spontaneous ignition of the methane. “However, when methane bubbles were present as well as air, the amount of light increased and temperatures rose.” Zare’s team showed bubble-driven reactions can forge bonds between amino acids to make peptides, + as bonds between nucleic acids to make polynucleotides, which are essential building blocks for life. Conclusions remains a bit tenuous—just like the delicate flames of the will-o’-the-wisp. Arrives just in time for this month’s holiday.

S. W. Lawrence, MD @swlawrence.bsky.social · 18d

The parable of the prodigal son somehow appealed to me for this personal—not political or scientific post—though I have more enjoyed reading authors like Richard Dawkins + Daniel Dennet than reading the Bible.

Prodigal Son. Today I simply announce that my wife and I have returned from a couple of wks of vacation. Nothing exotic, but visiting friends + family in Missouri, Illinois, Ohio + finally the longest stretch in New York, where we had a celebration of life for my wonderful mother-in-law and matriarch of that large family. We then balanced that out with a wedding for one of our last unmarried nieces several days later. So life goes on. I will confess here I was hoping to round up another couple of wedding couples to parallel a certain movie, but that of course did not play out.
My policy has always been to not post while traveling, parting because I lack the large monitor which I use at home with my desktop computer. And partly because I am of retirement age + view vacation as a sacred right. As a penultimate note, I used to have the amount of hair you see in the photo, but that is only a memory. As a final note I will quote George Bernard Shaw: “I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.” [Perhaps a commentary on our current politics].
I pledge to return to regular posting tomorrow morning. See you then.

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S. W. Lawrence, MD @swlawrence.bsky.social · Sep 13

AAAS: “Scientists directly date dino eggshells for the first time.” In what is now Hubei province in China, in a site called Qinglongshan, from roughly 100 to 60 millions of yrs ago—the Upper Cretaceous period—dinosaurs of many species apparently found an ideal nesting site.

Fossilized dinosaur egg. The place abounds with fossilized eggs. “In a study out today in Frontiers in Earth Science, researchers report that they have directly dated these preserved eggshells, tightly constraining when the eggs were laid—a first for dinosaur eggs that promises more detailed study of the ancient creatures.” Eggs that failed to hatch were buried by slow processes rather than lava flow, hence encased in sedimentary rather than igneous rock.
Problem is igneous rock is easier to date by a host of radioactive elements whose gradual decay acts like ticking clocks. “Previously, researchers had narrowed the age of some fossils at Qinglongshan to between 83 million and 79 million years ago by matching magnetic polarity patterns in the rocks to known records of Earth’s periodic polarity reversals.” [Each time the polarity of Earth’s magnetic poles reverses, this creates a new band in the rock that corresponds to a particular time range].
But another technique made use of uranium incorporated into the calcite within the fossilized eggshells, which can be used to measure the decay of radioactive uranium into lead at a fixed rate. [Calcite is a carbonate mineral, the most stable polymorph of calcium carbonate (CaCO3), in medicine used as antacid or as a dietary supplement for bone health + other functions]. “After embedding four calcite samples from [an] egg in resin, they used a laser to free the uranium and lead atoms contained within.” A mass spectrometer revealed the ratio of those two elements, allowing researchers to calculate their age based on the decay rate of uranium into lead. “These efforts showed the eggs were laid 86 million years ago, during a global cooling period toward the end of the Cretaceous period.” And what species of dinosaur did this turn out to be? No drum roll here, not yet, so all we can say is that these are very old eggs. This is an excellent outcome, as every finding in science should lead to more useful questions.

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S. W. Lawrence, MD @swlawrence.bsky.social · Sep 12

AAAS: “Thawing permafrost is turning Arctic rivers orange—spelling trouble for fish.” In 1977 author John McPhee wrote that the Salmon River, in remote northwestern Alaska, had “the clearest, purest water I have ever seen.”

Melting permafrost leaching toxins into rivers in Alaska. But in 2019, ‘the river turned orange and yellow, reminiscent of acidic runoff from mining waste.’ Times change: “the river and many of its tributaries are now laced with toxic metals, leached from thawing permafrost, at levels that can harm aquatic life, scientists report today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.” The broader problem: “In 2024, scientists reported that at least 75 streams—including the Salmon—recently turned orange in the Brooks Range, the mountain chain that stretches east to west across northern Alaska.” Melting permafrost in some sites releases metals such as iron, in others thawing can expose bedrock rich in sulfides. “When the sulfides encounter water they can oxidize, forming sulfuric acid, which in turn dissolves metals trapped in the rock such as iron, aluminum, copper, and cadmium.” Paddy Sullivan, a University of Alaska Anchorage ecologist, ‘has found more than 500 places along the Salmon and surrounding watersheds where highly acidic water seeps from thawing permafrost, killing vegetation before flowing into waterways.’ He and his colleagues measured the abundance of 22 metals in water samples collected in 2022 and 2023 along the Salmon and 10 tributaries. “The river’s main stem and nine of its tributaries had at least one metal present above levels that would be toxic to water-dwelling organisms, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards.” At one spot along the main river, ‘levels of iron, aluminum, cadmium, copper, nickel, and zinc were between three and 37 times higher in 2023 than in samples from a decade earlier.’
Water acidity not increased due buffering from limestone.Places with higher levels of iron + aluminum often devoid of larval aquatic insects such as stoneflies + mayflies, a critical source of fish food. “Sullivan wonders whether the flush of toxic metals might be harming salmon populations, which began to decline in 2023.”

S. W. Lawrence, MD @swlawrence.bsky.social · Sep 10

This is no laughing matter. I’m way short of time this morning, so let me just say I’m almost done reading at great book entitled Waste Wars: The Wild Afterlife of your Trash, published this yr.

Tom Toro cartoon. Author Alexander Clapp has done excellent sleuthing to amass a trove of information, + I have several pages of notes in the back to be transcribed into my computer. Much of recycling is a scam pushed by the petroleum industries to think the approximately 100,000 types [not 7] of plastic are actually recyclable. And that they are shoving responsibility onto consumers for the plastification of the planet. This cartoon—with its ‘chasing arrows emblem’—seems apropos considering what revelations I am discovering.

S. W. Lawrence, MD @swlawrence.bsky.social · Sep 9

Guardian: "Climate crisis will increase frequency of lightning-sparked wildfires, study finds." > lightning-caused fires is 'probably making wildfires more deadly by producing more wildfire smoke + helping drive a surge in air quality issues from coast to coast, especially over past several yrs.'

Wildfire in article. My part of the country, "over the last 40 yrs, thunderstorms and other weather conditions favoring lightning have been happening more often across many parts of the US west, including western Washington, western Oregon, the California Central valley, and higher elevations throughout the Rocky Mountains." Europe has been drawn in as well. "This year’s fire season has been the worst in European history, driven in part by lightning-caused wildfires in Spain." In Canada, "huge fires this year have burned more than 200% of normal forest area, the vast majority of which were caused by lightning." Dmitri Kalashnikov, a climate scientist at the Sierra Nevada Research Institute at University of California-Merced, is the lead author of a study [https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EF006108] published last wk, the first to use machine learning techniques to tackle this problem. They examined data 'looking at future changes in lightning frequency and changes in weather variables like air temperature, humidity, wind and soil moisture that can predict how likely a fire is to spread.' Consonant with these projections, "thousands of lightning strikes this week have sparked at least 20 new fires and burned tens of thousands of acres across California’s Central valley and into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, with one fire destroying several structures in the Gold Rush-era settlement of Chinese Camp east of Modesto." In contrast, the study projects 98% more lightning-instigated wildfires in the western US “due to more lightning, or more fire weather, or both," but with the Pacific Northwest relatively spared because a 'moistening environment.' "Over a recent 15-year span, wildfire smoke killed about a thousand people in the US each year...a surge in lightning-caused fires could cause America’s smoke epidemic to take the lives of potentially more than 20,000 people a year by mid-century." Flash flood, mudslides, smoke particles on glaciers. Emergency response split.

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S. W. Lawrence, MD @swlawrence.bsky.social · Sep 8

CanaryMedia: “Trump admin blocks funds for farmers who want solar.” U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins doesn’t often star in the mainstream media, but she is critical impediment to rational agricultural policy, including use of solar arrays to support farmers + their income.🧪

Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins. “The Rural Energy for America Program [REAP] has for years helped thousands of American farmers pay for solar panels that lower their energy bills and earn them extra income.” Gotta love that acronym for farmers. REAP is restricting funding as outlined in a recent internal Ag Department memo obtained by Canary Media. On Aug. 19, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced, “USDA will no longer fund taxpayer dollars for solar panels on productive farmland or allow solar panels manufactured by foreign adversaries to be used in USDA projects.” The internal memo stated that any 1 of 4 characteristics would make solar projects ineligible for REAP loan guarantees + thereby “disincentivized” in the point system used to award REAP grants. “Ground-mounted projects over 50 kilowatts will no longer receive loan guarantees, nor will projects on land certified as cropland by the Farm Service Agency.” Loan guarantees will be denied for plots that can’t show “historical energy use,” and for “systems consisting of any component made in a country named as a foreign adversary.” Loan guarantees are a powerful tool for financing farmers at ‘little cost to the federal government, since the loans are usually repaid without the financial institution needing to tap the guarantee.’ Large solar arrays are typically on open land that hasn’t previously consumed energy, “and smaller installations powering a farm might also be in that situation, so the requirement to show historical use could be a serious blow to eligibility.” Further, “almost all solar panels include components from China, which would run afoul of the final provision.” I have to give credit to the Ag Department for crafting such a Rubik’s Cube of bureaucratic stonewalling of efforts to help farmers. Shooting themselves in the foot.

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S. W. Lawrence, MD @swlawrence.bsky.social · Sep 8

Very sleek looking.

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S. W. Lawrence, MD @swlawrence.bsky.social · Sep 7

YaleClimateConnections: “U.S. mines are literally throwing away critical minerals.” America has dozens of active mines, some for copper, others for iron. The main targeted component is a small fraction of the rock extracted.

Abandoned Cu mine in New Mexico. Elizabeth Holley, a professor of mining engineering at Colorado School of Mines, in a study published by journal Science, found that, across 70 critical elements at 54 active mines, the potential for recovery is enormous. Enough lithium per yr to supply 10 million EVs. Enough manganese for 99 million EVs. “Those figures far surpass both U.S. import levels of those elements + current demand for them.” Critical minerals are also essential for production of batteries, solar panels, and other low- or zero-carbon technologies powering the clean energy transition. “Where the U.S. gets those minerals has long been a [geopolitically] fraught topic.” Almost all the lithium is derived from Australia, Chile, and China, for example, while cobalt predominantly comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In rare bipartisan unity, “former president Joe Biden’s landmark climate legislation, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, included incentives for domestic critical mineral production, and this year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order invoking wartime powers that would allow more leasing and extraction on federal lands.” Holley’s research indicates that increased domestic byproduct recovery—even at a 1% rate— would “substantially reduce” import reliance for most elements; recovering 4% of lithium would completely offset current imports.“We could focus on mines that are already corporate and simply add additional circuits to their process,” said Holley. “The Department of Energy recently announced a byproduct recovery pilot program…at same time…Congress recently slashed federal funding to the U.S. Geological Survey and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, among other research arms.” The Red Dog mine in Alaska appears to have the largest germanium potential in the country, while nickel could be found at the Stillwater and East Boulder mines in Montana. This is for the deniers who say the U.S. doesn’t have enough lithium.