Entropy and Immortality: An Interview with Miguel Coelho

Dr. Coelho at the Murray Lab, Harvard University. Image Source.

Today, Histories of Things to Come is very pleased to interview biochemist Dr. Miguel Costa Coelho, a Postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University, who has done ground-breaking research in the field of ageing. He is based at the Lab of Professor Andrew W. Murray and the FAS Center for Systems Biology at Harvard; and he is also affiliated with the Human Frontier Science Program.

Coelho's doctoral research at the Max Planck Institute in Germany traced the way a type of yeast actually gets younger as it ages. He found that when a stressed mother cell divided, it passed on all cellular junk associated with accumulated damage (the process we know as ageing) to one daughter cell, which died shortly thereafter. This left the other daughter cell pristine. Normally, both daughter cells would inherit cellular junk, allowing damage to accumulate in both over time. Coelho likened the outcome in this study to "the eternally young and beautiful Dorian Gray, and his corrupt and damaged portrait in the attic" (public access here; the full article is here).

There we have it, published 17 June 2014: under certain conditions, these yeast cells can grow toward immortality via compartmentalization, segregation and consequent elimination of progressive cellular damage as they divide over time. This finding was widely reported in the international press.

Arctic Oil's Distant Early Warning

Image Source: Arctic Institute.

Recently, there was an upswing in French linguistic nationalism in Quebec. Commentators have drawn parallels between Quebec separatism and Scottish calls for independence. The vote on whether Scotland will stay in the UK draws near: 18 September 2014. The calls for separation, the conflict in the Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East all have something in common: Arctic energy.

Sanctions against Russia over the Ukrainian conflict happen to block Russia's progress in Arctic oil exploitation. In the Arctic, a 2008 United States Geological Survey estimated that there are likely 90 billion barrels of oil and 44 billion barrels of natural gas. From the Russian Geographical Society:

While most offshore areas have not been surveyed for resources, the extensive continental shelves in the region are believed to hold huge reserves of oil and gas. In 2008 the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) completed the most comprehensive assessment of potential hydrocarbon reserves to date, using computer modeling to evaluate 25 Arctic geological provinces. From this, the USGS estimates that the “undiscovered, technically recoverable” stores of petroleum include 90 billion barrels of oil, 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 44 billion barrels of natural-gas liquids. These figures suggest the Arctic may hold about 22 percent of the undiscovered conventional hydrocarbon reserves untapped worldwide.

Roughly 85 percent of these potential reserves are thought to occur offshore at depths of 450 meters or less. The majority of untapped natural gas probably lies within Russian territory, while most of the oil is located offshore of Alaska. The assessment indicates that more than 70 percent of the petroleum stores are concentrated in only five geological provinces: Alaska; the Amerasian Basin (underlying the Arctic Ocean); and the East Greenland Rift, East Barents, and West Greenland–East Canada basins.

That amount of energy resources is sufficient to redraw the whole picture of geopolitical power and global conflict, and gives a glimpse of the future. From Ernst and Young: A "USGS study estimated that the Arctic could hold about 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil reserves and as much as 30% of the world’s undiscovered natural gas reserves." Russia claims around 50 per cent of potential Arctic oil and gas resources. The USA claims approximately 20 per cent; Norway 12 per cent; Greenland 11 per cent; and Canada claims roughly 5 per cent of these resources. Other estimates place Canada's share at a much higher 20 per cent. There are disputed Arctic areas which determine these countries' relative wealth and power in the region. Metro:

“It’s the opening chapter of what’s going to amount to be a very long story, and people are playing nice and working together — for now,” says Robert Huebert, a University of Calgary professor and expert in circumpolar relations and defence policy.

Non-Arctic powers also stake claims in polar regions: "As the Arctic ice melts, the area is predicted to become a center of strategic competition and economic activity. Last year [in 2013], China signed a free trade agreement with Iceland and sent an icebreaker to the region despite having no viable claims in the Arctic."

To put this into the Middle Eastern perspective: OPEC states that the Middle East, Africa and South America have an estimated 1.2 trillion barrels of proven oil reserves. The Economist predicts that demand for oil in some developed countries will fall, due to technological and sustainable energy innovations.

But in developing countries, consumption of oil is rapidly increasing, as is the population. A 2013 BP study projected energy needs up to 2030:

• Population and income growth are the key drivers behind growing demand for energy. By 2030 world population is projected to reach 8.3 billion, which means an additional 1.3 billion people will need energy; and world income in 2030 is expected to be roughly double the 2011 level in real terms.

• World primary energy consumption is projected to grow by 1.6% p.a. from 2011 to 2030, adding 36% to global consumption by 2030. The growth rate declines, from 2.5% p.a. for 2000-10, to 2.1% p.a. for 2010-20, and 1.3% p.a. from 2020 to 2030.

• Low and medium income economies outside the OECD account for over 90% of population growth to 2030. Due to their rapid industrialisation, urbanisation and motorisation, they also contribute 70% of the global GDP growth and over 90% of the global energy demand growth.

By 2035, global demand is expected to reach 101 million barrels of oil per day.

In 2011, The Economist estimated the world's total proven oil reserves (reserves that can be extracted with current technology) of around 1.38 trillion barrels would run out over the next 100 years. Most analysts foresee a decline of output and corresponding importance of the Middle East, with a turning point around 2030. Real Clear World: "There may be as many as 7.9 trillion barrels of potentially recoverable oil [i.e. unproven reserves] left in the world from all sources, according to the IEA, with more than 90 percent of it outside the Middle East."

Click to enlarge map. Image Source: Global Research.

Photo of the Day: Lion's Head, Cape Town, South Africa

Image Source: Twitter.

History in the Echo Chamber

Erasures from history are hallmarks of dictatorships. Image Source: Business Insider.

History is up for grabs. In the malleable global media, parts of history are being denied, erased or changed beyond recognition to suit new agendas. What is being changed, by whom, and where it is happening, all foreshadow coming trends in politics and daily life.

The Trap of Prometheus

Section from Nocturnal Figure Composition (2004) by George Condo.

In the American television show, Rectify (2013), one character describes the basic instincts of human nature which endure across thousands of years, "Just don't let all this technology lull you, son. If you think we're in modern times, watch yourself." Those of you clutching your glowing iPhones, beware the undertow, because some things don't change. From the Russian film Nightwatch (Ночной дозор 2004): "It is easier for a man to destroy the light inside himself than to defeat the darkness around him."

That film depicts a comforting mythical battle between light and dark; but the more common Millennial experience is shades of grey. Even when progress is progressive, it comes at a terrible cost. The price is paid at unexpected moments, because everywhere there is a gap between action and consequences.

Bitcoin: Economy of the Eternal Now

De Oude Beurs, Antwerp, Belgium (Urbex photo of the ruins of the world's first modern stock exchange, Antwerp).

In May, I chatted with Chris Ellis, aka ChrisJ of Feathercoin, about how cryptocurrencies could change global economics and society (see my earlier related post here). What follows today is not exactly an interview, but reflections on some of the things we discussed. We talked mainly about Bitcoin. But one senses that it is Ellis's work on Feathercoin - an altcoin established on 16 April 2013 and originally developed by Peter Bushnell at Brasenose College, Oxford - that brings Ellis to some of Bitcoin's biggest questions, and indeed, to some of the biggest questions surrounding all cryptos.

For Ellis, an economy is a system of how we define ourselves in relation to time. In a June 2014 interview, he noted Mike Maloney's remark that the ultimate form of money is time, the ultimate irreversible transaction.

Bitcoin is above all a technology of its blockchain, a time-stamped ledger either of economic transactions, or of interactions in Bitcoin's non-currency applications. According to Ellis, Bitcoin is really "a great big unstoppable clock." And that means that Bitcoin represents a watershed moment, the start of a change in how we understand time technologically, economically, socially and culturally.

Photo of the Day: Persistent Saturnian Auroras

Image Source: J. Clarke (Boston U.) & Z. Levay (STScI), ESA, NASA.

From NASA:

"Persistent Saturnian Auroras - Are Saturn's auroras like Earth's? To help answer this question, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Cassini spacecraft monitored Saturn's South Pole simultaneously as Cassini closed in on the gas giant in January 2004. Hubble snapped images in ultraviolet light, while Cassini recorded radio emissions and monitored the solar wind. Like on Earth, Saturn's auroras make total or partial rings around magnetic poles. Unlike on Earth, however, Saturn's auroras persist for days, as opposed to only minutes on Earth. Although surely created by charged particles entering the atmosphere, Saturn's auroras also appear to be more closely modulated by the solar wind than either Earth's or Jupiter's auroras. The above sequence shows three Hubble images of Saturn each taken two days apart."

Historic Present Superimposition

Image Source: Sungseok Ahn/Sony World Photography Awards via Yahoo.

Yahoo reports on a Gen Y South Korean artist, Sungseok Ahn, who superimposes past photographs over present views and then photographs the resulting scenes:

Sungseok Ahn's Historic Present questions the memory of past from the fast changing scenery of today. By overlapping a historical location with an old image of that exact place, he questions the way we treat our history and explores the dynamics.

Historic Present was short-listed for the 2014 Sony World Photography Award. The concept and technique are nearly identical to that of the pinterest group, Dear Photograph (see my blog post on that project, here). The inclusion of more people in Dear Photograph photos enhances the message of the superimposition.

For more photos from Historic Present, all reproduced from Sungseok Ahn's Website (here), see below the jump; copyright remains with the artist and photos are reproduced here for non-commercial discussion only.