Our Own Little Solar Farm

For those living in Columbia who venture over to West Ash Street once in a while, you may have noticed a curious property that sits across the street from the rear fence of Shelter Gardens. There, in the midst of mall-area hustle and bustle is an open grassy expanse. And nestled into one corner of this city-owned field are two solar panels. There is a sign that reads 'Columbia Solar Initiative' or 'Columbia Solar Plant' or some such thing. Avid readers of this blog (a joke of course...I'm not entirely sure I have a single reader, let alone avid readers) will know by now that I have a particular interest in renewable energy and climate change, and so this strange property has always fascinated me. Why did the city plop two solar panels in the middle of Columbia-proper? Why are there only two solar panels in an area that could hold dozens? Why are they hidden in the corner? I've pondered these questions for months now, and as it turns out, so have the semi-competent reporters at the Columbia Missourian.

An article appearing in the Missourian in early 2008 indicates that Dow Chemical Co received a small grant to undertake feasibility studies of integrating solar energy into city power grids. So Dow partnered with the City of Columbia, and with the help of Missouri Solar Applications, built a rather puny 'solar power plant.' In another article later that same year, the Missourian reported that the city had begun selling power to residential households for a somewhat nominal fee. The project, which goes by the name of Solar One, allows a small number of Columbia residents to receive a portion of their energy from the source on West Ash, along with energy purchased by the city from a small array of solar panels on the roof of the Quaker Oats facility on Highway B. According to their website, it is anticipated that the project will continue to grow as other businesses add solar collection capabilities, after which the city will purchase a portion of the energy produced and distribute it to subscribing residents. If you're interested and would like to know more about this project, there's a pretty good video that can be found here.

After learning about the project, I'm pretty excited about it and I hope that they're able to meet their goal of producing 1% of Columbia's entire energy portfolio from solar by 2023. But their goal, while I'm sure is substantial and probably quite a challenge, seems a bit meager to me. Rather than relying on purchasing power from local residents, it seems like the city might be better off requesting funding via grants and other sources to expand their own solar power capabilities. I realize that the panels and auxiliary equipment are quite expensive, but the ideal vision that I see for Columbia's future is to turn the property on West Ash into a fully functioning solar farm, filled corner to corner with solar panel arrays. I can think of other city-owned locations where solar panels could be erected, too. Sure, 1% is great, but let's shoot for 10%...20%...50%. Go big or go home!

I know this won't happen anytime soon, but as the technology becomes cheaper and simultaneously more efficient, it could happen sooner than most of us think. In fact, I think I'll keep an eye on the West Ash Street property for signs of construction. Who knows, maybe the folks at Solar One and I are on the same page.

Sure, Things Are Bad. But They Could Be A Lot Worse.

Today I think I'll mention a few important points in the news. First of all, if you haven't heard about the results of the Cop15 climate conference, and are interested in such matters, it's worth noting that what came out of the summit was the framework of an international non-binding treaty. I know that combining terms like 'non-binding' and 'treaty' sounds a little oxymoronic, and I find myself thinking 'what's the point?' But the point is this: like the health care reform bill that is being worked over by the House and Senate, a non-binding treaty is still a legal deal that can be refined and added to over time. It's a start (sort of), and that's what we should focus on. According to a brief article on ScienceNews.org, the Copenhagen Accord will establish, among other things, a trust fund that will be financed by industrialized nations to provide monetary aid to poorer nations to help them cope with the effects of climate change, and is a much needed continuation of the Kyoto Protocol. I, personally, am not happy with it, but I'm glad that it's been drafted.

In other news, in the aftermath of the earthquake that absolutely devastated Haiti, I've been hearing lots of stories - mostly on NPR, because I'm a total public radio nerd - about the slowness of aid coming from the US. Here's one such story that I found with a quick Google search. I agree that the US was beginning to look a bit unconcerned about the people of Haiti, considering that at the time when aid workers from Venezuela, China, France, and Iceland were already touching down at the Port au Prince airport, the only thing we had done was send a military plane over the country to examine the destruction and plan what to do. However, in the last 24 hours or so, the US has been able to mobilize or is preparing to mobilize a fairly impressive armada. Popular Mechanics has broken down the rescue effort quite nicely, which will include four Coast Guard Cutters, a C-130 cargo plane with aid supplies and personnel, flocks of urban rescue teams, an 894-foot Navy hospital ship, and the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson. The most important thing to consider here is that this appears to be a well thought-out support plan. The ships and plane should be able to reach their targets quickly and the Coast Guard cutters contain desalinization equipment, providing the clean water that will be needed to stave off diseases like dysentery. In general, I'm please with the US government's actions. Although they were somewhat sluggish, I think the aid workers and supplies that reach Haiti will be effective, and problems that plagued Katrina relief will be avoided. Mainly, I'm thinking of the horror stories about aid workers reaching New Orleans and not having supplies or not being allowed into the city. And I hope that, as disaster relief reaches full force, history will show that the United States was responsible for an effective response to the earthquake in Haiti.

But time will tell.

The Triumphant Return of the Cellular Biosensor

Cell-based biosensors kind of get a bad rap. And the reason for this is pretty simple: cells die. They're delicate little creatures that have to be continually monitored and cared for. And, when used as the basis of a sensing technique, if your cells die, your sensor doesn't work. That's why most sensing schemes use more hearty methods, such as antibodies or synthetic receptors or chemical reactions. This is the reason that I was surprised to see a cell-based sensor grabbing lots of attention in the media recently. In fact, I picked up the story initially from BBC news, but found via a quick internet search that the story had been published on news websites ranging from Science Daily to the India Report.

At any rate, the rationale behind the study was to examine the way in which a popular drug for treatment of schizophrenia works. It is known that the drug causes an increase in production of acetylcholine, but it had also been shown to block the receptors for acetylcholine. Without knowing which dichotomous action was prevailing within the interior of cells, it was impossible to deduce the action of the drug on the brain.

The research team then devised a cell-based biosensor to study the exact effect that the drug had on cells in the brain. The group began with embryonic kidney cells and genetically modified them so that the receptor for acetylcholine was directly coupled with a common G-protein downsteam intracellular signaling cascade. This cascade was then linked to calcium ion upregulation, which activated a calcium-sensitive fluorescent reporter. The fluorescent reporter, then, was fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET)-based, meaning that it consisted of two distinct fluorescent molecules. When exposed to calcium, the two fluorescent molecules move closer together, causing one of the molecules to donate more energy to the other, producing a visible color change. This means that when the cells bind acetylcholine, they produce calcium, which causes the color of their fluorescence to shift. When these cells were implanted into rat brains and the rats exposed to the schizophrenia drug, they found no change in the fluorescence of the sensor cells, meaning that the receptor blocking activity of the drug was its primary function.

At least, all this is what I gathered from their most recent publication in Nature. There you can take a look at the team's data as well as a more detailed description of their methods. Really, this is pretty exciting stuff. Utilizing cellular biosensors in this way could be a major player in future drug discovery research. No more guessing as to the function of drugs based on studies on cells in a petri dish. Implant the genetically modified sensor cells, give the rat the drug, and visually see the effect that the drug has on the cells.