User:Giovanni Lostumbo

Welcome to my OWW page.

I am interested in starting an OpenWetWare lab project in bioengineering, solar utilities, and RepRap[1][2][3], three developments which are mutually inclusive towards an energy and climate project.

My first project will document, using multimedia (high-resolution images, video tutorials, and protocols) on how to harvest melanin (and later, polyaniline+other organic conductors: http://openwetware.org/wiki/Image:Organic_batteries_w-annotations.pdf.pdf) from bacillus atropheus, b. thuringiensis, or b. subtilis for use in OLEDs, capacitors, organic solar photovoltaic panels, batteries and other electronics.

Introduction

Energy comes in several mediums. The consumption of energy usually involves the combustion of fuel to generate heat to spin motors for the purpose of kinetic energy[4] or to spin turbines to generate electricity via electromagnetic induction [5] for the purpose of potential energy[6] when stored in a battery or capacitor. The ability to develop an energy generator utility that is accessible and affordable could come with advanced research and development efforts towards RepRap technology and bioengineering of microbes for the purpose of yielding abundant organic solar voltaic panel raw materials[7]. World energy consumption is heavily based on non-renewable fossil fuels and a new solution could be developed faster through a decentralized effort similar to how the Linux GNU/GPL operating system was developed [8][9] and adopted with varying "market share" (with mild to moderate popularity) since the early 1990s. Linux software is stored in online repositories such as FTP servers [10] and via p2p [11] file-sharing[12]. Computer-aided design (CAD) stores 3D manufacturing blueprints in electronic medium as well. Efforts such as those by http://gnusha.org/skdb/ for hardware and http://biobricks.org/ for biological molecules allow both an electronic repository and an organization for physically replicable parts that could be accessed for research and applied towards hardware and biotech instruments. The same type of organization inspired from http://www.gnu.org/ led to the development of digital sharing content/media with http://creativecommons.org/ and Open Farm Tech [13]. Furthermore, there are incentives such as the Gada Personal Manufacturing Prize[14]:

"Grand Personal Manufacturing Prize

The Grand Prize would seek to make the technology more rapidly scalable by increasing the productivity of the
replication process. As a bonus, the Grand Prize may additionally be helpful in recycling material waste (such as
plastics) into material suitable for RepRap use. Plastics such as HDPE and Polypropylene, of which millions of tons  
exist as waste matter, may be suitable candidates, and recycling of such waste material would be viewed favorably by 
the judging panel.

The Grand Prize is expected to be funded at $80,000 before launch (it is presently not funded). There are three  
parameters that will be used to judge the efforts of the teams participating in the competition.

   * That the cost of the material used for printing does not exceed $4/kilogram.
   * The capacity to print a full set of parts for a complete replica of itself within 7 days, including the 
   * time for reloading, and clearing of printer head jams.
   * Maintain a total materials and parts cost under $200 and that 90% of the volume of the printer parts be 
   * printed.

The judging committee envisions a variety of technologies which might be deployed to achieve this end including:

   * Software to drive and manage banks of RepRap printers
   * Hardware and software systems to automatically unload printed parts from RepRap printers
   * Hardware and software systems to sort, clean and package or assemble printed parts
   * Innovations in plastics recycling, and development of a suitable grinder and extruder"

This could accelerate the development of RepRaps that could be used towards decentralized, mass-production of progressively efficient solar panels that would generate enough electricity to be "too cheap to matter"[15]

However, since that hasn't happened yet, or there is no incentive to pass that energy barrier, here are some more informational resources that could be used to integrate and realize the potential of solar power towards further development.

"The available solar energy resources are 3.8 YJ/yr (120,000 TW)[86,000 TW in link]. Less than 0.02% of available resources are sufficient to entirely replace fossil fuels and nuclear power as an energy source." [16]

from: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/World_energy_consumption#Solar_power Also of reference:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Insolation

To demonstrate how rapidly a freely distributable RepRap and solar utility kit could be developed, several affiliated projects could be developed simultaneously in an ad-hoc[17], self-organizing[18], hologenomic [19] superorganism[20]: an international effort to engineer microbial strains that yield durable, organic semi-conductors for the purpose of progressively efficient (5->40%+?) capture of insolation into organic solar photo voltaic panels and energy storage which could be integrated into a modular[21], future version[22] of a RepRap to develop a multiversal[23][24] battery, connector [25] and a compatible PV frame set [26] using a format similar to that of ISO standards and IEEE-SA specifications. Recharging a battery, auto, and home could be as fast as Wall-E [27] at sunrise as he gets ready for compacting trash of the long-departed humans orbiting space and surviving easily from space-ship automation.

"The proper tool for a task, Not every nail needs a hammer. Are we too fixated on Exotitech?" "Connectors and Batteries. Designing them to be society wide." (above links)

A comprehensive analysis and research center for global annual energy consumption, the source and endpoint of that energy, and its effects (both natural and anthropogenic) on climate change and the environment: http://gcep.stanford.edu/research/exergy/flowchart.html

"All things good on this Earth flow into the City" -Pericles

And all good things flow from...farms. Vertical polyculture[28] farms [29] using microbially-synthesized and RepRap'd OLED [30] grow lights [31] for food, and bioreactor farms for energy. Microbes can harvest conductors which can then yield solar energy for renewable power. Solar utilities and energy independence is a right[32], not a privilege. GPL and post-scarcity[33] can make that possible.

References

Links to papers: "Formation of melanin pigment by a mutant of Bacillus thuringiensis H-14" http://mic.sgmjournals.org/cgi/reprint/139/10/2365.pdf (free)

"Isolation, purification and physicochemical characterization of water-soluble Bacillus thuringiensis melanin." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15760342

Texts: Metabolic Engineering of Bacillus: for Enhanced Product and Cellular Yield [Paperback] http://www.amazon.com/Metabolic-Engineering-Bacillus-Enhanced-Cellular/dp/3639172345/ref=sr_1_20?ie=UTF8&qid=1306085527&sr=8-20

Dissertation by Zhiwei Pan, PhD, on Metabollic engineering of Bacillus product yields: http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-05302007-093344/unrestricted/ZhiweiPan_ETD2007.pdf http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-05302007-093344/unrestricted/ZhiweiPan_ETD2007.pdf

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Organic_solar_cell

Top recorded solar efficiency of an organic solar cell: about 5%: http://openwetware.org/wiki/Image:Organic_Polymer_efficiency_as_solar_voltaic.png from:

Progress in Photovoltaics: Research and Applications, Volume 18, Issue 5, Solar Cell Efficiency Tables (version 36), Wiley 2010 [34] 5-7.9% for organics

Illustrative and informative Nanosolar video: http://nanosolar.com/nanosolar-technology-overview

11/2009: "How (not) to resolve the energy crisis" [35]

03/2011: "UN report: Cities are Climate Change battleground" [36]

Publications

Li Q, Jagannath C, Rao PK, Singh CR, Lostumbo G. Analysis of phagosomal proteomes: from latex-bead to bacterial phagosomes. Proteomics. 2010 Nov;10(22):4098-116. doi: 10.1002/pmic.201000210. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21080496

Li Q, Lostumbo G. Proteomic Analyses of a Variety of Intracellular Bacterial Species Infecting Different Host Cell Lines. Current Proteomics Volume 7 Issue 3 ISSN: 1570-1646 pp.222-232 (11) http://www.benthamdirect.org/pages/content.php?CP/2010/00000007/00000003/009AS.SGM

Contact

Email address can be found at my Google Groups profile (I frequent OpenManufacturing and DIYBio (they're also here:[37]): https://groups.google.com/groups/profile?enc_user=UfVTNBsAAAAUop8qaq9-N_EijEqGqhzdvS6NllHqJt6FvmRxWW9AJg (the squiggly phrase has to be typed in the box to confirm you're hue-man. Alternatively, the following sentence can be interpreted: first name (above) dot last name at gmail dot com.

Feel free to make edits to the project ideas and references and send me links/publications that I can also post for you on this page. If you would like to start an online lab on OWW regarding this specific project or a related one such as RepStrap printing [38] or plasmid/bacteriophage development, also please message me. Thanks!

About

I live in the postmodern world[39], rather than just reading novels about it and living in the modernist one, out of empirical observations that led me to accept scientific fact rather than a complete/initial interest in it. I've been compared to a human thesaurus, which accurately suggests that I purposely have abandoned all context and most primary sources for the purpose of reflecting the world as it exists and not as a bubble that is artificial and inconsequential to society's ability to adapt by moving on from outmoded, unhealthy, and environmentally unsustainable modernist/ethnocentric thought.

I was an English major for a year and a half when I started college, but then I moved into Biology, not because I didn't find English important but because I was seeking to understand something universal to human life in contrast to the current (post-modern) literary era's soulless thematic conclusion-that realities are metaphysical and not quite universal. What I learned from Biology and evolutionary phylogenetics is that DNA might be somewhat universal (Arsenic DNA backbone pending but even then-still), but the phenotypic nature of life itself varies so much at the microbial scale that I reached the conclusion that the reason so much conflict exists in human society is because people can't deal/adapt with their differences. Yet microbes do a lot better job at symbiosis, based on the vast majority of mutualism in the biosphere[40] and systems ecology[41]. Fortunately, at least some evolutionary sociobiologists[42] and psychologists[43] see a bigger picture. The rest depends on society's willingness and/or ability to adapt.

Lateral thinking[44] (of memes) and horizontal gene transfer[45] seem to have a lot in common for the purpose of evolutionary equilibrium[46] and survival.

Future Projects/Additional Interests

Bioremediation-based climate change solutions [47]

Other

links of interest: https://www.multiswap.net/about/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/cmb/ https://twitter.com/ks91020 http://www.media-art-online.org/iwat/home.html http://mediagoblin.org/ The importance of electricity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XckB846wRCI (@04:30) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shQXKmxsnCY

The stitching of this wiki was made possible by ontological [48] systems and their self-organizing, recursive[49], node-centralizing [50] gravity.