Inside Science

EarthSavers Movement founding chair, and now Climate Change Commissioner Heherson T. Alvarez, announced the eight recipients of this year's Fr. Neri Satur Award for Environmental Heroism. The Award, given annually for a decade now in observance of International Earth Day, is co-organized by the EarthSavers UNESCO DREAM Center, the United Nations National Commission (UNACOM), the Philippine Center of the International Theatre Institute (ITI), and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) headed by Secretary Ramon Paje, with the blessings of His Eminence Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales.

 

Alvarez said Dr. Gerry Ortega is being posthumously honored as an environmental leader and media practitioner promoting climate balance and sustainable development, particularly his opposition to destructive mining activities in the Province of Palawan.

 

"The Award is also being posthumously bestowed upon Dr. Leonard Co for his significant contributions to Philippine botany and his lifetime dedication to plant biodiversity conservation in the Philippines," said Alvarez, a former senator and environment secretary.

 

Joining Dr. Ortega and Dr. Co as this year's Fr. Neri Satur Awardees are Fr. Pete Montallana OFM, chairman of the Save Sierra Madre Network in recognition of his group's efforts to protect and preserve the remaining forests in the country particularly one of our major carbon sinks (forests absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen), the Sierra Madre forest range while Albay Gov. Joey Salceda was honored for his pioneering leadership in climate adaptation in local government in his province.

 

The Award was also bestowed upon the PLDT-Smart Foundation Inc. for being a leader in eco-education through community service projects such as "Doon Po Sa Amin" which encouraged the use of computer and internet technologies, while The Manila Times was recognized for its continued effort in environmental education through media, especially on the global issue of climate change.

 

Negros-based Alternative Indigenous Development Foundation Inc. was awarded for its efforts to promote and adopt renewable technologies through its project "Hydraulic Ram Pump" in providing the basic needs for water, sanitation and energy in rural communities. Ram pumps convey water from streams and brooks to higher elevations without any power or moving parts, simply by using basic principles of hydraulics.

 

Finally, the Climate Institute of Washington D.C. was recognized as a global leader in promoting climate balance and international awareness of climate change through several international media including symposia and conferences, which provide decision-makers with adequate information that help shape global action on climate change. 

The Climate Institute is headed by John Topping Jr, a longtime friend of the Philippine climate community. Topping is a Yale and Dartmouth alumnus, receiving the first Martin Luther King award from Dartmouth. He was formerly the Staff Director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) office of air and radiation under the Reagan administration. Another key member of the Climate Institute is Dr. Mike McCracken, formerly executive director of the U.S. Global Change Research Program and connected with Lawrence Livermore and UC-Davis. Both Topping and McCracken are co-editors of the book Sudden and Disruptive Climate Change (UK: Earthscan, 2008).

One of their programs in the Philippines is an innovative black soot reduction program involving a modification of jeepney diesel engines financed by private carbon credit mechanisms (outside of the Kyoto Protocol). A description of this project done by an Australian company locally can be read in this YaleGlobal article by Topping.

 

The Fr. Neri Satur Award, named in honor of the late priest-environmentalist and deputized forest ranger who lost his life in the hands of illegal loggers in the forests of Bukidnon in 1991, is given to individuals, groups or entities from different sectors in recognition of their exceptional contribution to protect our environment. The award trophy, depicting Fr. Satur embracing a tree, was a masterpiece rendered by National Artist for Sculpture Abdulmari Imao.

 

Other past awardees include Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales, Archbishop Francisco Claver, Bishop Jose Manguiran, Bishop Ramon Villena, Fr. James B. Reuter, Fr. Ben Beltran, Sr. Aida Velasquez; eco-media writers Jerry Esplanada of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Katherine Andraneda of the Philippine Star; eco-friendly businesses like UNILEVER, SM Malls, MAP, GTZ; eco-entertainers-artists Francis Magalona, Kim Atienza, Richard Gutierrez; eco-advocates Architect Jun Palafox, Dr. Metodio Palaypay; science-educator Dr. Tomas Ongoco; and inventors Jun Catan and Ben Santos, among others.

Dennis Posadas is the author of Jump Start: A Technopreneurship Fable (Singapore: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009) and Rice & Chips: Technopreneurship and Innovation in Asia (Singapore: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007). A free audio excerpt of his latest ebook, Green Thinking: a business fable on clean energy, can be heard at http://greenthinkingfable.blogspot.com

 

So here we go again. We are being asked to switch off our lights for one hour this March 26, Saturday at 830pm and participate in Earth Hour, so that the Philippines will end up in the news as being one of its most avid supporters worldwide. Suddenly, companies are now on the bandwagon - after all, it is a cheap way to appear "green" to the public.

Do I have anything against Earth Hour? No, not at all. In fact, I do try to join in and turn off my lights, and participate in this symbolic exercise.

What I'm against is the hype machine that surrounds it. To top it off, people shutoff their 12W light bulbs yet drive off to attend an Earth Hour concert - thus generating more carbon in the process.

One thing you have to realize is that even if a large number of us shutoff our lights, it doesn't necessarily mean that a coal plant also shuts down for an hour - thus cutting off the carbon emission for an hour. No it doesn't work that way. One hour is really too short to shut down and restart an electric plant.

In the quest towards a low carbon economy, symbolism is fine - at the start. But if that's all you do year in and year out, you are just contributing to fueling the hype machine. Go beyond that. Go for permanent change.

When March 26 this Saturday 830pm comes, do join in and shutoff your lights. But after that, figure out a way how to permanently replace that light with an energy conserving one, and figure out how to reduce your waste lighting permanently. If you still have fluorescent bulbs, replace these with CFL's or better yet LED lighting. Consider investing in air conditioners, heat exchangers and other appliances with better energy saving ratios.

Unfortunately, it is cheaper for companies to be Earth Hour sponsors than to actually make permanent changes to their operations to allow them to consume less electricity.

Want to make Earth Hour better? Figure out what you are doing this year that makes you use and generate less carbon from last year.

Is Earth Hour just hype? It really depends on how you observe it. Symbolism that leads to action is fine. Symbolism that remains just that is simply hype.

Dennis Posadas is the author of Jump Start: A Technopreneurship Fable (Singapore: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009). A sample of his new Green Thinking fable ebook on clean energy can be read at http://greenthinkingfable.blogspot.com 

The failure of the cooling system at one of Japan's aging nuclear plants (built during the 70's) particularly the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant after the recent earthquake illustrates some of the considerations when designing backup and failsafe systems. We want a system to be "fail safe" because there is a potential for harm or injury if the system does not perform as intended.

Typically, there are two schools of thought on systems failure. One is to determine the physics of failure of a system, and try to mathematically model it then design it in a way that makes it robust. This makes sense for single components, but becomes difficult if you are dealing with complex systems (e.g. airplanes, automobiles, nuclear reactors) that are built from many different components - often coming from different suppliers.

So a Boeing 747 may have an engine coming from GE, Pratt and Whitney or Rolls Royce, or a Toyota may have an airconditioning compressor coming from Sanden and tires from Bridgestone. In these cases, it would probably be almost impossible to model everything, so another school of thought is to design the system with enough engineering safety margins and redundancy to perform adequately to assumed worst case scenarios and to use statistics (e.g. Weibull and other distributions) to model failure rates and predict safety margins.

Test engineers often try to stress existing components before they put them into critical systems and try to verify that they will fail at a certain point, then tell the users to only use the component way below where it normally fails. So if a motor oil is designed to last for 15,000 km, you can assume that the test engineers have verified that many cars had been tested until the oil brokedown possibly at 20,000 km or greater, giving the guaranteed figure some margin of safety.

Aside from the safety and reliability factors built into systems by the design engineers, the operating engineers also try to make improvements even when the systems are already operational. These can include changes they make as the years go by, and new technologies are developed that are better or more reliable than older systems. Techniques that operating engineers can use include Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) and Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA). These are basically systematic discussion and mind mapping tools to allow engineers to share and discuss potential problems openly and propose changes. There is always a conflict between the engineers who wish to make safety changes, and management who often have to weigh the cost versus benefit of these changes. But it is always good to have your imaginative and creative thinking hats on when doing these activities.

For example, instead of having the need to manually push cooling rods on reactors when there is an emergency, some systems have them drop because of gravity. In the case of the Japanese reactors, motors and pumps had to be on to keep the water going. Another possible improvement is to have the coolant automatically drop by gravity because the valves open when power is lost. In this way, a system is designed to fail safely.

One important target that design and operational engineers need to spot is the danger of a single point failure. This is when you only have one component (e.g. a screw, a motor, a bearing, etc.) that can be the only thing separating you from safety and disaster. The obvious single point failures are easy to spot, the less obvious ones need to be worked on. If engineers know that a particular component could be a single point failure mechanism, they either build a redundant backup (e.g. an extra post on a building) or make the component more reliable (e.g. make the post stronger).

There are two approaches we often take when it comes to the reliability of components or systems. We speak of improving the component reliability rate (e.g. make microchips, jet engines, nuclear cooling systems, etc. more reliable) versus adding redundant (or backup) systems. Think of owning just one car that doesn't breakdown (or hardly breaks down) versus having two less reliable cars, but knowing that the likelihood that both will breakdown at the same time is unlikely. This was the consideration that Boeing engineers considered when they only put two engines on their 777 model, instead of four engines like in the 747. However, the individual engine reliability in the 777 is extremely high.

Things to remember: if you have two or more components operating in parallel (e.g. you have two cars, or two houses), the reliability of the combined system is greater than each component taken individually. So if you have two houses, and one falls down in an earthquake, you still have another house you can move into. Of course, redundancy is always expensive. Another thing to remember is if you have two or more components that are operating in series (e.g. to get to work you need to take the train and the airplane), the total reliability is less than each of the components. If one of the components fail, automatically the entire system fails because they are in series.

There are also what are called k out of n systems. For example, if the Titanic had hit the iceberg head on, only the front bulkhead would have been damaged. If it had eight bulkheads, and one was damaged, it could have reached port with 7 out of 8 bulkheads intact.

However, because the sailor on watch was looking at Leonardo de Caprio and Cate Winslet, the Titanic veered too late and the iceberg sliced through the side of the ship, damaging several bulkheads in the process.

When the disaster doesn't strike, it is often thought to be a statistically improbable scenario - until it happens. But if we begin to take all scenarios, even highly unlikely ones seriously, we will end up with very impractical and expensive systems.

Striking a balance - not compromising human health and safety, without ending up with a structurally engineered doghouse, is in everyone's interest.

Of course, if an unforeseen disaster strikes, and our favorite dog lies crushed in the rubble, we all wish we had spent the little extra time and money to make the system a little bit more safer and stronger.

Dennis Posadas is the author of Jump Start: A Technopreneurship Fable (Singapore: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009) whose latest ebook, Green Thinking fable (http://greenthinkingfable.blogspot.com) deals with clean energy. He was formerly at one time in his professional career, managing equipment system reliability in the semiconductor industry.

Agence France-Presse

PARIS--Astronomers have for the first time analysed the atmosphere of a "super-Earth," the name given to rocky exoplanets only a few times larger than our own, according to a study released Wednesday.

The breakthrough is a key step in the quest to identify planets in other solar systems that could potentially host forms of life we might recognise, the researchers said.

"We've reached a milestone on the road toward characterising these worlds," said lead author Jacob Bean, a professor at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

The exoplanet in question, dubbed GJ 1214b, is some 42 light years -- four hundred trillion kilometers, or 250 trillion miles -- from our corner of the universe, with a radius about 2.6 times that of Earth.

Discovered last year, GJ 1214b circles a small, faint star, making it that much easier for scientists to tease out data about the atmosphere by analysing starlight as it passes the rim of the planet on its way to us.

Depending on the chemical composition and weather of the atmosphere, specific signature wavelengths of light are absorbed.

Using the European Space Agency's Very Large Telescope in Chile, Bean and colleagues were able to narrow the range of possibilities from three to two.

The first is that GJ 1214b is shrouded by water which -- given the nearness to its star -- would be in the form of steam.

It could also be a rocky world with an atmosphere consisting mostly of hydrogen, but with high clouds or haze obscuring the view.

What the exoplanet is not, the observations prove, is a "mini-Neptune" with a small rocky core and a deep, hydrogen-rich atmosphere.

"Although we can't say yet exactly what that atmosphere is made of, it is an exciting step forward to be able to narrow down the options for such a distant world to either steamy or hazy," said Bean.

In either case, it is more than unlikely that GJ 1214b hosts life forms.

"This planet is much too hot to be considered habitable," Bean told AFP. "In the regions of the atmosphere with pressures similar to what are seen at sea level on Earth, the temperatures are estimated to be more than 500 degree Celsius (930 degrees Fahrenheit)."

It circles its star every 38 hours at a distance of only two million kilometers, seventy times closer than Earth's orbit of the Sun.

Despite this, GJ 1214b is smaller, cooler and more Earth-like than any other known exoplanet.

Most of the more than 500 exoplanets discovered to date are "hot Jupiters", so-called because of their large, gaseous masses and extreme temperatures.

But as observational tools become more powerful, astronomers have begun to identify more and more rocky orbs similar to our own.

"We are working to discover and eventually characterise the atmospheres of planets that would be habitable," said Bean.

"We aren't there yet, but the goal is obtainable within the next decade," he said by email.

No exoplanet discovered so far falls within its solar system's "Goldilocks zone," where temperatures are not so hot that water evaporates, nor so cold that it freezes, but just right for the stuff of life to exist in liquid form.

Earth's atmosphere is 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen and one percent other gases, including carbon dioxide.