A Challenge to the Supremacy of DNA as the Genetic Material

About a month ago, a news release stood out among the many I get every day: “A challenge to the genetic interpretation of biology,” from a physicist and chemist from Finland, Arto Annila and Keith Baverstock. They’d just published “Genes without prominence: a reappraisal of the foundations of biology,” in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

One sentence from the news release grabbed me: “The result is evolution from simpler to more complex and diverse organisms in both form and function, without the need to invoke genes.” Instead, Drs. Annila and Baverstock invoke thermodynamics.

I was mesmerized, mostly because I am immersed in writing the 11th edition of my human genetics textbook and a non-DNA-centric view got me thinking. So I read the paper and asked the authors to guest post. Their idea brought me back to pre-1953 thinking that proteins are the genetic material, mostly because we knew more about them than the mysterious goop on soiled bandages that was DNA.

Then last week I posted here about the information from a dozen sequenced human genomes not being all that clinically useful, at the same time that the blogosphere trumpeted the not-very-surprising finding that a gene attached to obesity was actually controlled by another gene. The news last week seemed to validate Drs. Annila and Baverstock’s concern about genome sequencing entering the clinic when we don’t fully understand how genes interact at the level of their products, the proteins.

Dr. Baverstock kindly agreed to post. His impressive bio is here. Most notably, he brought to global attention the increased childhood thyroid cancer incidence in Belarus caused by radioactive iodine from the Chernobyl accident. (I had thyroid cancer although I’ve never been near a leaking reactor.) Here he shares his thoughts, lightly edited, subheads added:

A VIEW FROM PHYSICS

Arto Annila and I are making the seemingly outrageous claim that mainstream biology, since around the 1920s, has pursued a course that is deeply flawed. Critical to that course is the notion that genes are Mendel’s units of inheritance and that their material realization is a DNA base sequence. We propose instead that Mendel’s unit of inheritance is a process involving the interaction of mainly activated proteins contributing to an attractor state that represents the phenotype. Many will find this language of physics unfamiliar. However, cells are complex dissipative systems (CDS) in that they consume energy and thus operate according to the 2nd law of thermodynamics as it applies to open systems.

A lily cell dividing. (Andrew S. Bajer)

First, two irrefutable facts in justification of our position:

1. When cells divide they inherit the state of the cell. If this were not the case, cancer and differentiation would have to be one-step processes. The state of the cell cannot be encoded on the DNA base sequence: it is the active proteome.
2. Key biological processes, such as development, growth and aging, are irreversible in time, whereas standard textbook physics describes time reversible deterministic dynamics.

It is very well known that at cell division the cytoplasm is partitioned between the two progeny, but not emphasized, as we propose, that it contains a coherent complex process of interacting proteins. When this state is understood as the unit of inheritance, the epigenetic memory that enables processes, like differentiation, to take place over several cell generations is a natural manifestation. In addition, CDS physics supports the phenomenon of quasi-stability – that is, stability within limits: attractors are quasi-stable states formed by the interacting proteins. This would mean that inheritance at the cellular level is not after all a matter for the nucleus, but rather for the cytoplasm.

NOT JUST THE NUCLEUS

The nucleus/cytoplasm issue was hotly debated around the turn of the century – not the last one but the one before, and eventually resolved in favor of the nucleus by the geneticist T H Morgan in 1926. It’s clear that components of the egg cytoplasm are inherited at fusion, the mitochondria for example, but it has generally been regarded that the sperm delivers only genomic DNA. However, studies on male fertility have revealed that proteins essential for successful fertilization are present in the sperm and some of the chromatin is in a non-condensed state and thus, possibly even active. Therefore, we can assume that the sperm is capable of supporting a protein-based attractor state.

One experimental way to resolve the nucleus/cytoplasm issue is cross species nuclear transfer to enucleated eggs. This has not proved possible with mammals, but has been successful with fish. Enucleated goldfish eggs transplanted with nuclei from carp eggs develop with the outward appearance of the donor carp, but with a vertebral number (26 to 31) consistent with goldfish (26 to 28) rather than the genomic DNA donor carp (33 to 36). We assume that when two dynamic attractors are placed in a common environment, as in the case of the zygote, that they will “synchronize” as, for example, with Huygens’ clocks. Therefore, we argue that biology can explain inheritance on the basis of a sound foundation in the appropriate physics, without resorting to mechanistic narratives involving genes.

Furthermore, work in the 1970s demonstrated that enucleated HPRT-competent (HPRT is an enzyme whose absence causes the awful Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, an inborn error of metabolism-RL) fibroblasts in vitro could correct HPRT deficiency in fibroblasts with an intact nucleus, by transferring molecules via gap junctions, without the need for protein synthesis. In addition, erythrocytes (red blood cells) dispose of their nuclei at the last stage of differentiation, but retain, for example, the circadian rhythm function for their lifetime.

In fact, the evidence clearly points to routine cellular function (apart from cell division) and regulation in somatic cells being a matter for proteins without the intervention of genes. If, for example, the dark/light rhythm changes (travel over a few time zones) then intervention involving new transcription to adjust the circadian rhythm does occur, but otherwise circadian rhythm is taken care of by protein chemistry, as has been demonstrated in vitro.

The 17 Equations That Changed The Course Of History

Mathematics is all around us, and it has shaped our understanding of the world in countless ways.

In 2013, mathematician and science author Ian Stewart published a book on 17 Equations That Changed The World. We recently came across this convenient table on Dr. Paul Coxon’s twitter account by mathematics tutor and blogger Larry Phillips that summarizes the equations. (Our explanation of each is below):

 

Here is a little bit more about these wonderful equations that have shaped mathematics and human history:

1) The Pythagorean Theorem: This theorem is foundational to our understanding of geometry. It describes the relationship between the sides of a right triangle on a flat plane: square the lengths of the short sides, a and b, add those together, and you get the square of the length of the long side, c.

This relationship, in some ways, actually distinguishes our normal, flat, Euclidean geometry from curved, non-Euclidean geometry. For example, a right triangle drawn on the surface of a sphere need not follow the Pythagorean theorem.

2) Logarithms: Logarithms are the inverses, or opposites, of exponential functions. A logarithm for a particular base tells you what power you need to raise that base to to get a number. For example, the base 10 logarithm of 1 is log(1) = 0, since 1 = 100; log(10) = 1, since 10 = 101; and log(100) = 2, since 100 = 102.

The equation in the graphic, log(ab) = log(a) + log(b), shows one of the most useful applications of logarithms: they turn multiplication into addition.

Until the development of the digital computer, this was the most common way to quickly multiply together large numbers, greatly speeding up calculations in physics, astronomy, and engineering.

3) Calculus: The formula given here is the definition of the derivative in calculus. The derivative measures the rate at which a quantity is changing. For example, we can think of velocity, or speed, as being the derivative of position — if you are walking at 3 miles per hour, then every hour, you have changed your position by 3 miles.

Naturally, much of science is interested in understanding how things change, and the derivative and the integral — the other foundation of calculus — sit at the heart of how mathematicians and scientists understand change.

 
Isaac Newton

4) Law of Gravity: Newton’s law of gravitation describes the force of gravity between two objects, F, in terms of a universal constant, G, the masses of the two objects, m1 and m2, and the distance between the objects, r. Newton’s law is a remarkable piece of scientific history — it explains, almost perfectly, why the planets move in the way they do. Also remarkable is its universal nature — this is not just how gravity works on Earth, or in our solar system, but anywhere in the universe.

Newton’s gravity held up very well for two hundred years, and it was not until Einstein’s theory of general relativity that it would be replaced.

5) The square root of -1: Mathematicians have always been expanding the idea of what numbers actually are, going from natural numbers, to negative numbers, to fractions, to the real numbers. The square root of -1, usually written i, completes this process, giving rise to the complex numbers.

Mathematically, the complex numbers are supremely elegant. Algebra works perfectly the way we want it to — any equation has a complex number solution, a situation that is not true for the real numbers : x2 + 4 = 0 has no real number solution, but it does have a complex solution: the square root of -2. Calculus can be extended to the complex numbers, and by doing so, we find some amazing symmetries and properties of these numbers. Those properties make the complex numbers essential in electronics and signal processing.

 A cube.

6) Euler’s Polyhedra Formula: Polyhedra are the three-dimensional versions of polygons, like the cube to the right. The corners of a polyhedron are called its vertices, the lines connecting the vertices are its edges, and the polygons covering it are its faces.

A cube has 8 vertices, 12 edges, and 6 faces. If I add the vertices and faces together, and subtract the edges, I get 8 + 6 – 12 = 2.

Euler’s formula states that, as long as your polyhedron is somewhat well behaved, if you add the vertices and faces together, and subtract the edges, you will always get 2. This will be true whether your polyhedron has 4, 8, 12, 20, or any number of faces.

Euler’s observation was one of the first examples of what is now called a topological invariant — some number or property shared by a class of shapes that are similar to each other. The entire class of “well-behaved” polyhedra will have V + F – E = 2. This observation, along with with Euler’s solution to the Bridges of Konigsburg problem, paved the way to the development of topology, a branch of maths essential to modern physics.

 

The normal distribution.

7) Normal distribution: The normal probability distribution, which has the familiar bell curve graph to the left, is ubiquitous in statistics.

The normal curve is used in physics, biology, and the social sciences to model various properties. One of the reasons the normal curve shows up so often is that it describes the behaviour of large groups of independent processes.

8) Wave Equation: This is a differential equation, or an equation that describes how a property is changing through time in terms of that property’s derivative, as above. The wave equation describes the behaviour of waves — a vibrating guitar string, ripples in a pond after a stone is thrown, or light coming out of an incandescent bulb. The wave equation was an early differential equation, and the techniques developed to solve the equation opened the door to understanding other differential equations as well.

9) Fourier Transform: The Fourier transform is essential to understanding more complex wave structures, like human speech. Given a complicated, messy wave function like a recording of a person talking, the Fourier transform allows us to break the messy function into a combination of a number of simple waves, greatly simplifying analysis.

The Fourier transform is at the heart of modern signal processing and analysis, and data compression.

10) Navier-Stokes Equations: Like the wave equation, this is a differential equation. The Navier-Stokes equations describes the behaviour of flowing fluids — water moving through a pipe, air flow over an aeroplane wing, or smoke rising from a cigarette. While we have approximate solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations that allow computers to simulate fluid motion fairly well, it is still an open question (with a million dollar prize) whether it is possible to construct mathematically exact solutions to the equations.

11) Maxwell’s Equations: This set of four differential equations describes the behaviour of and relationship between electricity (E) and magnetism (H).

Maxwell’s equations are to classical electromagnetism as Newton’s laws of motion and law of universal gravitation are to classical mechanics — they are the foundation of our explanation of how electromagnetism works on a day to day scale. As we will see, however, modern physics relies on a quantum mechanical explanation of electromagnetism, and it is now clear that these elegant equations are just an approximation that works well on human scales.

12) Second Law of Thermodynamics: This states that, in a closed system, entropy (S) is always steady or increasing. Thermodynamic entropy is, roughly speaking, a measure of how disordered a system is. A system that starts out in an ordered, uneven state — say, a hot region next to a cold region — will always tend to even out, with heat flowing from the hot area to the cold area until evenly distributed.

The second law of thermodynamics is one of the few cases in physics where time matters in this way. Most physical processes are reversible — we can run the equations backwards without messing things up. The second law, however, only runs in this direction. If we put an ice cube in a cup of hot coffee, we always see the ice cube melt, and never see the coffee freeze.

 

Albert Einstein

13) Relativity: Einstein radically altered the course of physics with his theories of special and general relativity. The classic equation E = mc2 states that matter and energy are equivalent to each other. Special relativity brought in ideas like the speed of light being a universal speed limit and the passage of time being different for people moving at different speeds.

General relativity describes gravity as a curving and folding of space and time themselves, and was the first major change to our understanding of gravity since Newton’s law. General relativity is essential to our understanding of the origins, structure, and ultimate fate of the universe.

14) Schrodinger’s Equation: This is the main equation in quantum mechanics. As general relativity explains our universe at its largest scales, this equation governs the behaviour of atoms and subatomic particles.

Modern quantum mechanics and general relativity are the two most successful scientific theories in history — all of the experimental observations we have made to date are entirely consistent with their predictions. Quantum mechanics is also necessary for most modern technology — nuclear power, semiconductor-based computers, and lasers are all built around quantum phenomena.

15) Information Theory: The equation given here is for Shannon information entropy. As with the thermodynamic entropy given above, this is a measure of disorder. In this case, it measures the information content of a message — a book, a JPEG picture sent on the internet, or anything that can be represented symbolically. The Shannon entropy of a message represents a lower bound on how much that message can be compressed without losing some of its content.

Shannon’s entropy measure launched the mathematical study of information, and his results are central to how we communicate over networks today.

16) Chaos Theory: This equation is May’s logistic map. It describes a process evolving through time — xt+1, the level of some quantity x in the next time period — is given by the formula on the right, and it depends on xt, the level of x right now. k is a chosen constant. For certain values of k, the map shows chaotic behaviour: if we start at some particular initial value of x, the process will evolve one way, but if we start at another initial value, even one very very close to the first value, the process will evolve a completely different way.

We see chaotic behaviour — behaviour sensitive to initial conditions — like this in many areas. Weather is a classic example — a small change in atmospheric conditions on one day can lead to completely different weather systems a few days later, most commonly captured in the idea of a butterfly flapping its wings on one continent causing a hurricane on another continent.

17) Black-Scholes Equation: Another differential equation, Black-Scholes describes how finance experts and traders find prices for derivatives. Derivatives — financial products based on some underlying asset, like a stock — are a major part of the modern financial system.

The Black-Scholes equation allows financial professionals to calculate the value of these financial products, based on the properties of the derivative and the underlying asset.
 Here are some traders in the S&P 500 options pit at the Chicago Board Options Exchange. You won’t find a single person here that hasn’t heard about the Black-Scholes equation.

ORIGINAL: Business Insider
Andy Kiersz
Mar 13 2014

A Brief Note on Thermodynamics

ORIGINAL: Danielle Fong
by Danielle Fon. 
a wick for ideas

One of these days, I’ll try to write up the rules of thermodynamics so that people stop getting mislead. This is not a particularly well edited essay, but it should go up somewhere. Apparently there was a considerable armchair debate about what we are trying to do at LightSail on SciAm.com. Rebuttal below:

Ok, I’ll bite.

First of all if you’re actually looking for rebuttals, it’s usually easier if you post it to my email or some website I own (e.g. daniellefong.com) and have notifications for. We get an awful lot of media coverage and I don’t monitor everything.

Second, the efficiency we’re targeting is 70%. Not 91%. I don’t know where people got that from. We include all of the practical losses that people have mentioned —

• motor inefficiency (at our scale, typically 5% loss, not 10%, as some people seem to believe — it depends upon scale), 
• friction, 
• heat loss through our insulated tanks, etc. 

We are not actually there yet. If our first product is between 60% – 70% efficient we’ll be pleased, but we’re determined to push that as high as we can.

Third, it appears you are under some confusion about thermodynamics.

It is a slippery field, and I don’t blame you: both Bill Gates and his advisors made similar mistakes the first time through.

a) We’re not doing isentropic compression or expansion. The whole point of the water spray technique is to approximate an isothermal compression and expansion cycle — the water absorbs heat from the air rapidly. The correct first order approximation is that the heat capacity of the *mixture* is effectively added to the heat capacity of the air. Try deriving this from the 1st law, starting from T_water = T_air, and following the derivation of adiabatic compression without heat exchange to the outside that you see in any thermodynamics text.

Actual results have our output ∆T < 20 C and maximum hotspot ∆T = 60 C. Water spray actually cools. It is surprising how controversial this has been in the 21st century…

b) You’re using Carnot efficiency in an erroneous way. Compression and expansion are only part of the cycle. While it’s true using the generated heat alone in a heat cycle would grant you the efficiencies you describe, this is irrelevant, because we’re not doing that. There’s a whole other thermodynamic resource: *the compressed air* that this is wasting. So we’re not doing that.

Here’s an illustrative exercise.

A Carnot Cycle is perfectly reversible: run the cycle backwards, and 100% of the heat turns back into mechanical energy. How is this possible, one might ask, while at the same time being compatible with Carnot efficiency?

Several reasons: as a heat pump, the Carnot cycle turn W units of work into 1/(1 – Tc/Th) units of Th heat! There’s more heat, in joules, pumped than work put in.

This might seem to violate intuitions, but you can purchase heat pumps at any hardware store. You will notice that there are heat pumps and refrigerators with a coefficient of performance much greater than 1 widely available. This really works.

Now, draw a T-S diagram of a Carnot cycle for an ideal gas. It’s a rectangle in T-S space, the isothermal compression and expansion processes are horizontal lines, and the adiabatic processes are vertical.

Shrink the adiabatic processes to nothing, so that isothermal compression and isothermal expansion are at the same temperature. No heat is moved, and there is no net work. It is still a reversible Carnot cycle. But it doesn’t seem to do anything.

Why would you do a thermodynamic cycle if you get no net work energy out?

Answer: if you get energy out at a *better time*!

If you get 100% of the energy out that you put in, but at a different time, then this is an *IDEAL* energy storage cycle. You can’t get more efficient than that!

However, by your mathematics, you’ll have a 0% efficient heat engine.

The thermodynamic equations for a full heat cycle are *different* than for an energy storage cycle. You cannot just use them blindly. You have to go back to the first principles: the first and second law. (which, by the way, are never violated here — there is never entropy destruction in this or any other ideal reversible cycle).

—

All this said, this is an idealization. In fact there are losses in the process.

• Friction, for example. 
• Resistance in our motor coils. 
• Air turbulence running through valves. 

All this goes to heat.
What we do with this heat is that we collect it so that we expand air at as high a temperature as we can.

We don’t get as much energy out as if the energy never went to heat, but it is a small boost if we can get it. About 10% relative energy storage efficiency (E_out/E_in) for a 30 C heat increase if we’ve got it, nothing to sneeze at.

But even if we lose 100% of the extra heat, and have to expand at ambient temperature, our efficiency only goes down by that same 10% relative efficiency. It is not bad.

Also, it’s not so hard to insulate a large tank.

—

In general, while I applaud the efforts of people to work out things for themselves, you have to be extra careful that you’re not deluding yourself. It is worse to take a well known equation, misapply it, and declare impossibility, than it is to say that you heard about something but haven’t worked to complete understanding from the fundamentals yet.

It’s not actually working something from first principles if you get them wrong…

Cheers,

Danielle Fong
LightSail Energy

Energía del mar

ORIGINAL: ORNL

Innovación en la encrucijada entre la seguridad global y la energía verde

Los avances tecnológicos son generalmente los cambios incrementales que se deslizan sobre todo lo desapercibido en las prácticas empresariales, procesos industriales y las rutinas diarias. Aquellos que no son del tipo de avances científicos, son los que el Programa de Innovación Abierta de Lockheed Martin Corporation (LMC)  trata de abordar. Johnnie Cannon, quien encabeza la colaboración la Dirección de Seguridad Global de ORNL con el programa, dice que su objetivo es desarrollar "tecnologías que superen la competencia, en lugar de avanzar en forma gradual y predecible. En la actualidad el portafolio de colaboración de Cannon consiste en proyectos activos en una amplia gama de disciplinas, incluyendo materiales avanzados, la computación cuántica y la conversión de energía térmica oceánica.

"Una de nuestras colaboraciones de más alto perfil con el Programa de Innovación Abierta es la  de Conversión de Energía Térmica Oceánica", dice Cannon. "Esto representa una inversión sustancial por LMC durante varios años." OTEC se puede utilizar para atender las necesidades de energía de los militares de EE.UU. en algunas partes del mundo donde las largas filas de suministro o lejanía de los centros de generación de energía hacen que la generación de energía sea problemática.

Representación visual de un sistema OTEC. (Cortesía de Lockheed Martin) 

La energía del mar

El siguiente mapa muestra la diferenciación de temperatura en las aguas de nuestros mares. Las áreas resaltadas representan los lugares más óptimos para OTEC. ORIGINAL: Lockheed Martin Corporation

OTEC utiliza las diferencias de temperatura en los océanos del mundo para crear energía. En los trópicos, la temperatura superficial del agua es de unos 25 grados C, y a 3000 metros de profundidad es de unos 5 grados C. "Esa es una diferencia de unos 20 grados C, y puede ser utilizado para generar energía", dice James Klett de la División de Ciencia y Tecnología de  Materiales en el ORLN. El sistema de generación de energía OTEC trabaja mediante el uso de esta diferencia de temperatura para conducir una planta de energía de bucle cerrado de ciclo Rankine.

El ciclo Rankine comienza bombeando el agua superficial de 25 grados C a través de un intercambiador de calor para hervir el amoníaco. El amoníaco se convierte en un gas, que se utiliza para hacer girar una turbina-generador para producir energía. A continuación, los 5 grados C del agua se usan para enfriar el amoníaco, que se condensa a su estado líquido dentro de un intercambiador de calor llamado un condensador, y el ciclo comienza de nuevo.

ORIGINAL: Lockheed Martin Corporation

Dado el estado de la actual tecnología OTEC, una planta OTEC a escala comercial puede requerir al menos 20 intercambiadores de calor de gran tamaño. Ahí es donde entran los intercambiadores de calor de espuma de grafito desarrollados por Klett y su equipo de investigación. La espuma de grafito combina una enorme cantidad de superficie con una alta capacidad para conducir el calor, permitiendo a estos intercambiadores de calor para mejorar el rendimiento de las unidades estándar térmicamente conductoras mientras que reducen su tamaño y coste. Hacer que los intercambiadores de calor sean dos veces más eficaces significa que una planta de energía OTEC podría reducir el tamaño de sus intercambiadores de calor en la mitad, la reducción de los gastos de capital para la planta de OTEC y hacer una alternativa ecológica de energía mucho más práctica. Por otra parte, los intercambiadores de calor del mismo tamaño podría producir el doble de potencia por el mismo costo.

Los estudios han estimado que los intercambiadores de calor para una planta OTEC de 100 MW representaría una porción significativa de sus costes, y los intercambiadores de calor a base  espuma de grafito de tener el potencial para reducir esa cifra en un 50%. Debido a que los intercambiadores de calor son una gran parte de la huella de una planta OTEC, y las plantas OTEC están situados en las plataformas marinas como los utilizados para la perforación de petróleo y gas, reducir la huella es importante.

Energía abundante, confiable

"Hay varias ventajas de peso para el sistema", dice Klett. "En primer lugar, que produce energía totalmente verde, no hay subproductos También es muy parecida a la energía geotérmica, solar o eólica, ya que no asume ningún tipo de combustible fósil para conducir, lo que los costes se limitan a la construcción y el mantenimiento.". Además, Klett es particularmente enfático acerca de la disponibilidad de energía OTEC. Él señala que los consumidores no siempre entienden que el único tipo de energía "verde" que está disponible actualmente como "energía de base"- la energía que está disponible 24 horas al día, 7 días a la semana-es geotérmica. "Con otras energías renovables", dice, "cuando el viento cesa, usted no tiene energía. Si se trata de un día nublado, no hay energía. Incluso la energía hidroeléctrica está a merced de los niveles fluctuantes de agua. OTEC realidad puede ser utilizar para suministro de la base. " Las estimaciones sugieren que, en las latitudes tropicales, OTEC tiene el potencial de generar de 3 a 5 teravatios de energía sin afectar a la temperatura del océano o el medio ambiente del mundo. "Eso es más que la capacidad de generación eléctrica de este país", dice. "Si podemos suministrar una gran parte de nuestras necesidades básicas de energía con la energía verde, se puede revolucionar la generación de energía."

Espuma de Grafito de gran superficie y de alta capacidad para conducir calor es fundamental en el rendimiento de los intercambiadores de calor, mientras que reduce su tamaño y costo.

Klett y sus colegas de Lockheed Martin están construyendo un intercambiador de calor a escala de laboratorio que mide 3 metros de diámetro y 20 pies de largo y se envío a Hawaii para poner a prueba en el Laboratorio Nacional de Energía de la Autoridad de Hawai (NELHA). Hawai, que es también rica en recursos geotérmicos, se ha comprometido a eliminar su dependencia de fuentes externas de energía en un 40% en el año 2030. OTEC es visto como una alternativa muy atractiva para lograr este objetivo.

Las capacidades únicas

Klett señala que la tecnología utilizada para construir intercambiadores de calor para OTEC podría ser utilizado para aumentar la eficacia de otros tipos de centrales eléctricas. "Potencialmente, cualquier tecnología que utiliza intercambiadores de calor, bombas de calor, la desalinización, de regasificación de GNL para centrales eléctricas, podrían beneficiarse de este desarrollo", añade Cannon. Experiencia de ORNL en colaboración con Lockheed Martin a través del Programa de Innovación Abierta ha abierto la puerta a trabajar con ellos fuera del programa en otros proyectos de investigación y desarrollo, Klett, dice. "Cuanto más aprendemos sobre nosotros y las capacidades únicas que tenemos, vienen más a nosotros en busca de ayuda en áreas fuera del Programa de Innovación Abierta.

En cuanto al futuro de la tecnología OTEC, Klett, dice, "Creo que este es un caso en el que si lo construyes, vendrán. Si podemos construir una fuente de energía que no requiere de combustible y sólo requiere mantenimiento, entonces no vamos tener que preocuparnos por los altibajos del precio del combustible. El precio de la energía generada por una planta OTEC estarán ligados a los gastos de mantenimiento, y si nos topamos con maneras más baratas de mantener la planta, el precio de la energía OTEC en realidad podría ir hacia abajo, y esperamos que sea competitiva con las centrales eléctricas convencionales. "

"La demostración de que el proyecto está prevista para esta primavera en Hawai", dice Cannon. "Si todo funciona como se espera, podría ser un cambio de juego en términos de generación de energía verde."-Jim Pearce