Blog Comments

Kinetica Online is pleased to provide direct links to commentaries from our senior editor Dr. Steven Pelech has posted on other blogs sites. Most of these comments appear on the GenomeWeb Daily Scan website, which in turn highlight interesting blogs that have been posted at numerous sites in the blogosphere since the beginning of 2010. A wide variety of topical subjects are covered ranging from the latest scientific breakthroughs, research trends, politics and career advice. The original blogs and Dr. Pelech’s comments are summarized here under the title of the original blog. Should viewers wish to add to these discussions, they should add their comments at the original blog sites.

The views expressed by Dr. Pelech do not necessarily reflect those of the other management and staff at Kinexus Bioinformatics Corporation. However, we wish to encourage healthy debate that might spur improvements in how biomedical research is supported and conducted.

Energy

The Biofueled Military

With its Great Green Fleet demonstration, the US Navy has shown that it can run on alternative fuels, including diesel from algae and chicken fat, although the costs can be as high as $424 a gallon for biofuels. Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Tex.) questioned the value of this biofuels program supported by the Department of Defense. S. Pelech points out that as long as major populations continue to rely on fossil fuels to supply their energy needs, the potential risks of environmental damage as well as the costs to consumers will only increase at an accelerating pace. Alternative sources of energy will continue to be less competitive if there is a lack of political will and action to innovate and develop these options by military and civilian branches of governments world-wide. Biotechnology has a lot of offer towards these ends if societies chose to exploit it much more aggressively for such purposes. Read More...

Cellular Computations

Pankaj Mehta at Boston University and David Schwab at Princeton University in a paper posted online at arXivSimilar that suggested like computing on chips, the biochemical networks behind cellular computations are also constrained by energetic considerations. S. Pelech disagrees and explains that life is actually remarkably inefficient at the molecular level. While bacteria in general have evolved to become more energy efficient, with multicellular animals and microbes, improvements in the ability to predate other organisms more than compensate for deficiencies in biochemistry. Read More...