E Coli Hydrocarbon Production Engineered

We are finally getting something from the biology boys that is convincing. They have shown it is possible to engineer E coli into a microbe that can break down cellulose into sugars that are then converted directly into hydrocarbons    It is the possibility of been an energetic efficient one step process that makes it all promising.

It is still early days but the promise is now clear.  Organic waste unsuitable as feed stock for biochar can be transformed directly into fuel oil.  We are a long way from such a blanket solution but we are now going there.

Hydrocarbon fuels will continue to be popular in agriculture even after the personal transportation industry is handled.  It will also continue to be used in heavy transport.  Sometimes you really need the energy density.  Thus a natural market will exist for the production of hydrocarbons by agricultural operations.

Bacteria Transformed into Biofuel Refineries

January 27, 2010

Synthetic biology has allowed scientists to tweak E. coli to produce fuels from sugar and, more sustainably, cellulose

By David Biello   

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=bacteria-transformed-into-biofuel-refineries&sc=CAT_ENGYSUS_20100128

The bacteria responsible for most cases of food poisoning in the U.S. has been turned into an efficient biological factory to make chemicals, medicines and, now, fuels. Chemical engineer Jay Keasling of the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues have manipulated the genetic code of Escherichia coli, a common gut bacteria, so that it can chew up plant-derived sugar to produce diesel and other hydrocarbons, according to results published in the January 28 issue of Nature. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)

"We incorporated genes that enabled production of biodiesel—esters [organic compounds] of fatty acids and ethanol—directly," Keasling explains. "The fuel that is produced by ourE. coli can be used directly as biodiesel. In contrast, fats or oils from plants must be chemically esterified before they can be used."\

Perhaps more importantly, the researchers have also imported genes that allow E. coli to secrete enzymes that break down the tough material that makes up the bulk of plants—cellulose, specifically hemicellulose—and produce the sugar needed to fuel this process. "The organism can produce the fuel from a very inexpensive sugar supply, namely cellulosic biomass," Keasling adds.

The E. coli directly secretes the resulting biodiesel, which then floats to the top of a fermentation vat, so there is neither the necessity for distillation or other purification processes nor the need, as in biodiesel from algae, to break the cell to get the oil out.

This new process for transforming E. coli into a cellulosic biodiesel refinery involves the tools of synthetic biology. For example, Keasling and his team cloned genes from Clostridium stercorarium andBacteroides ovatus—bacteria that thrive in soil and the guts of plant-eating animals, respectively—which produce enzymes that break down cellulose. The team then added an extra bit of genetic code in the form of short amino acid sequences that instruct the altered E. coli cells to secrete the bacterial enzyme, which breaks down the plant cellulose, turning it into sugar; the E. coli in turn transforms that sugar into biodiesel.

The process is perfect for making hydrocarbons with at least 12 carbon atoms in them, ranging from diesel to chemical precursors—and even jet fuel, or kerosene. But it cannot, yet, make shorter chain hydrocarbons like gasoline. "Gasoline tends to contain short-chain hydrocarbons, say C8, with more branches, whereas diesel and jet fuel contain long-chain hydrocarbons with few branches," Keasling notes. "There are other ways to make gasoline. We are working on these technologies, as well."

After all, the U.S. alone burns some 530 billion liters of gasoline a year, compared with just 7.5 billion liters of biodiesel. But Keasling has estimated in the past that a mere 40.5 million hectares of Miscanthus giganteus—a more than three-meter tall Asian grass—chewed up by specially engineered microbes, like the E. coli here, could produce enough fuel to meet all U.S. transportation needs.* That's roughly one quarter of the current amount of land devoted to raising crops in the U.S.

E. coli is the most likely candidate for such work, because it is an extremely well-studied organism as well as a hardy one. "E. coli tolerated the genetic changes quite well," Keasling says. "It was somewhat surprising. Because all organisms require fatty acids for their cell membrane to survive, if you rob them of some fatty acids, they turn up the fatty acid biosynthesis to make up for the depletion."

E. coli "grows fast, three times faster than yeast, 50 times faster than Mycoplasma, 100 times faster than most agricultural microbes," explains geneticist and technology developer George Church at Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in this research. "It can survive in detergents or gasoline that will kill lesser creatures, like us. It's fairly easily manipulated." Plus, E. coli can be turned into a microbial factory for almost anything that is presently manufactured but organic—from electrical conductors to fuel. "If it's organic, then, immediately, it becomes plausible that you can make it with biological systems."

The idea in this case is to produce a batch of biofuel from a single colony through E. coli's natural ability to proliferate and, after producing the fuel, dispose of the E. coli and start anew with a fresh colony, according to Keasling. "This minimizes the mutations that might arise if one continually subcultured the microbe," he says. The idea is also to engineer the new organism, deleting key metabolic pathways, such that it would never survive in the wild in order to prevent escapes with unintended environmental impacts, among other dangers.

But ranging outside of its natural processes, E. coli is not the most efficient producer of biofuel. "We are at about 10 percent of the theoretical maximum yield from sugar," Keasling notes. "We would like to be at 80 to 90 percent to make this commercially viable. Furthermore, we would need a large-scale production process," such as 100,000 liter tanks to allow mass production of microbial fuel.

Nevertheless, several companies, including LS9, which helped with the research, as well as Gevo and Keasling-founded Amyris Biotechnologies, are working on making fuel from microbes a reality at the pump—not just at the beer tap.

*Erratum (1/28/10): This sentence was edited after publication to correct a measurement conversion error in the number of hectares stated.

Sushi Chef on Sustainability

Without question it is the consumer and his agents the sushi chefs who are able to demand changes in the harvesting of sea food.  So much of this has gone on out of sight and certainly with operators who are inured to piratical behavior.

Sushi and conventional fisheries presently harvest a handful of species and do so in a mostly unregulated manner. It is clear from this article that this is an artificial classification and that the advent of regulation and sustainable practices will likely increase availability.

Today, what is not harvested for shippable product undoubtedly is reprocessed into feed or simply dumped.  Since harvesting is using a wild feedstock, it is not surprising that only a fraction is presently used as human food.  The same is true for land based husbandry.

My point is that we as customers are simply not equipped to even ask for changes for problems we know nothing about. Only the tuna today is attracting belated attention.  It is the sushi chefs who can bring real pressure on the industry.

In fairness, the industry is in its infancy in terms of resource management and most attempts have been disappointing.  I have posted from time to time on this problem but do believe we will master the issues, although I think that the first issue to repair is resource ownership.

Yet the sushi chefs do represent the premium market for the fishing industry and it is a fair bet it is most of their profit.  Thus the industry will struggle to keep them happy.

Folks complain about factory farming, yet the practices of factory farming aim to optimize productivity which can only be achieved by minimizing the stress applied to the animals.  It is visually not pretty but I am sure within the narrow circumscribed world the animal is at least comfortable.

Sea food harvesting is not farming but outright triage with little spent to protect or release the by catch.  So exploiting much more of the by catch is something that sushi chefs can strongly promote.  The consumer is certainly ready for it.

We all need to support this type of initiative.

A Seattle chef proves that traditional sushi and healthy oceans go hand-in-chopstick 

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-01-29-a-seattle-chef-proves-that-traditional-sushi-and-healthy-oceans

Growing up in small-town Montana, two things just made no sense: vegetarians and sushi. Why eat tofu, or raw fish, when you could just as easily have a big juicy steak? Coming from generations of cattle rancher stock, I read Jonathan Safran Foer’s ringing defense of vegetarianism, Eating Animals, with trepidation. But the only beef I ended up having with Foer was that he ruined my ability to enjoy the raw and the rolled—right after I had moved to sushi paradise, Seattle.

“Imagine being served a plate of sushi. But this plate also holds all of the animals that were killed for your serving of sushi. The plate might have to be five feet across,” Foer writes. At current rates of fishery depletion, scientists predict the demise of most seafood by 2048.

Foer describes modern fishing as warfare. Hajime Sato has a similar take: “[It’s] like someone is beating somebody and I’m just walking by and noticing it but not doing anything about it.”

But Sato isn’t an environmentalist author or even a vegetarian. He’s chef and owner of Mashiko, a Seattle sushi restaurant. Not wanting to throw punches himself anymore, he revised his menu to include only sustainable fish last August.

Sato, who not only serves sushi but teaches others how to prepare it, knew the dreadful truth about certain fish. For a time, however, he served them anyway. But then he met Casson Trenor, author of Sustainable Sushi.

Trenor knows just about everything that’s wrong or right about what can end up between your chopsticks. For instance, the most disgusting thing about shrimp isn’t even their visible poop veins: “Some shrimpers have been known to discard more than ten pounds of unwanted sea life for every pound of shrimp they keep,” he writes.

After talking to Trenor about sustainability, Sato said, “Okay, within three months, I’ll change it [the menu] entirely.” Trenor didn’t believe Sato. But, Sato recalls, “I said ‘No, when I say I’ll do something, I’ll do it. That’s me.’” And he did.

 “Don’t do anything mediocre,” he says. Not a surprising personal motto from someone who races motorcycles and whose diners are greeted by a sign that reads “Please wait to be seated. Unless you’re illiterate.”

Sato took a big risk with his 15-year-old, award-winning restaurant.

The first few months were rocky; Sato couldn’t sleep for worrying. “Should I go back? Am I doing the right thing?” he asked himself, “People don’t get it.”

But business rebounded and he continues to be resolute about sustainability. He finds careless pescatarians’ logic odd and is incredulous that there are international laws against eating cheetahs, but Bluefin tuna have only very limited protection. “You can basically wipe the entire species out in a week and say okay, next ...”

Although the plight of the Bluefin tuna has made headlines recently, Sato points out that eel (unagi) is the worst fish to serve. “Eel is actually [at] the category of extinction. It’s not even endangered anymore. But people are still eating it,” he says.

The spooky thing about eels, besides their mean mugs, is their mysterious breeding habits. It’s not just that eel lovin’ is an unpleasant subject: “They [eels] go back and forth between fresh water and salt water about four or five times in their life. And we have no idea how they mate, how they reproduce at all. So let’s not really touch the eel.”

Wild or farmed, eating unagi is never a good idea. In eel farms, they take the young from the wild and fatten them up. Those eels never even get the chance to do whatever only God knows they do in the dark.

Eel is classified as a red fish in Trenor’s book. Helpfully, he divides fish into three color categories.  Green means chow down: “These fish and shellfish are caught or farmed in ways that don’t have any major adverse effect on the environment.” Nimbly nibble yellow fish: “Animals in this category are from fisheries that are either poorly understood or have some troubling characteristics. Limit your consumption of these animals.” And red, of course, means by all means stop: “Fish and shellfish are caught or farmed in a manner that is inordinately deleterious to the health of the oceans.”

Sato mostly serves green fish, but he serves some yellow, too. Occasionally a customer will ask him, “Are you 100 percent okay with this?” “No,” he replies, “I eat the same as any other practice I do. I drive a car.”

But what if every fish out there was classified red tomorrow?

Then I’m not going to serve. I’m going to have a vegetarian restaurant. Which is totally fine. But I’m trying to prevent it. I’m trying to prevent it so we can do this. People tend to wait wait wait until the last moment and then freak out. Let’s freak out just a touch more right now.

Keeping up to date on the status of each fish he serves takes a lot of time. “You cannot just stop learning about it,” he insists.

Trenor and Sato’s relationship continues. Sato reads Japanese publications on sustainability and Trenor reads English sources. They talk three times a week to share what they’ve learned.

Sato, the first traditionally trained sushi chef to go sustainable, can’t understand Japanese aversion to sustainable sushi: “The reality is, if you really read the history of sushi, tuna actually was not in there, [nor] toro, unagi ... I’m basically going back to what traditional is. They didn’t have a huge fleet of boats.”

Though he doesn’t intend to challenge veteran sushi chefs (“They’d kill me with a knife”), Sato hopes to promote sustainable sushi and bring more chefs into the fold. He understands the difficulties of switching to and finding sustainable fish, but he’s willing to share his experience and support those who face the same hardships.

I had to say goodbye to distributors that I’d been using for 15 years, which is really tough. They sometimes helped me out when I was in financial trouble,” he says. He went from having four or five distributors to nearly 20 in order to fill out his menu.  He sees this as a plus for his diners, giving them choices far beyond the standard fare. “There’s so many other fish. But some people don’t get that,” he says. Sato recommends diners relax and expand their tastes. “Today eat this, tomorrow eat that. It’s good for the ecosystem, economy, everything.”

In the past, his business philosophy was to make sushi affordable for everyone. He’s kept his prices low and his sushi delicious, but his philosophy has changed to something he calls egocentric: “I’d like to keep my business longer than the next five years.”

Ultimately, Sato believes the fate of the fish and our ability to eat them in the future is up to the consumer. He hopes we choose wisely.

If you’re not in the Seattle area, bring Trenor’s book with you to your favorite restaurant, the grocery store, the fish market. Ask questions.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a good, simple pocket guide as well. And you can see how your local seafood restaurants measure up at Fish2Fork. Finally, check out Mashiko’s website sushiwhore.com, where you can read Sato’s blog about sustainability, peruse his mouth-watering menu, and watch silly sushi videos. (And it’s pointed out that sake is sustainable.)

Elba Tablets

So much has been written about the contents of the Bible that it is excusable to think that it somehow operated in a vacuum.  In fact this was a world of city states built around a palace culture that provide the community a form of communal economy able to support metal buying and large scale trade.  That religion was codified in most such centers is obvious and that such was made somewhat unique to each city state was surely necessary.

 

The material on the Elba tablets arose in the two centuries preceding the appearance of the sea peoples along the Mediterranean littoral. Thus the material dovetails nicely into the biblical narrative.  That a common language dominated along the Levant is also reasonable.  That it changed throughout the region with the advent of the sea peoples is also likely.  Then again, without a system of common education, language drifts seriously within five hundred years.

 

In short the time frame fits the biblical sources admirably.  Elba is clear evidence of a common language and culture throughout the Levant.  Having only one source has raised the prestige of that particular source. It is much more reasonable that all the polities maintained their own records and histories and that the Bible is but an example of current custom.

 

Again Elba is a snapshot of the Levant before the advent of the culture of the sea peoples who would shortly own the coasts of these lands first as a foreign imperial power able to project force by sea and later as occupiers of coastal enclaves that largely integrated and intermarried with local clans after the empire itself disappeared in 1159 BCE.

 

The Mystery Of The Ebla Tablets

http://unexplainedmysteriesoftheworld.com/archives/the-mystery-of-the-ebla-tablets

http://unexplainedmysteriesoftheworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Ebla-Tablets-200x300.jpg

Ancient Ebla was located in Northern Syria, approximately halfway between the modern cities of Hamath and Aleppo.  Excavations at that site began in the 1960s, and in the 1970s a series of extraordinary tablets was discovered among the ruins of an ancient palace.  These tablets became known as "The Ebla Tablets", and they were originally discovered under the direction of two professors from the University of Rome - Dr. Paolo Matthiae and Dr. Giovanni Petinato. At this point, about 17,000 tablets from the ancient Eblaite Kingdom have been recovered.  These tablets appear to have been written during the two last generations of ancient Ebla.  This means that they probably come from some time around 2300 to 2250 B.C.  But what is remarkable about the Ebla tablets is not how old they are, but rather the amazing parallels to the Bible that they contain.

For example, one scholar was very surprised at just how close much of the language on the tablets is to ancient Hebrew....

The vocabularies at Ebla were distinctively Semitic: the word "to write" is k-t-b (as in Hebrew), while that for "king" is "malikum," and that for "man" is "adamu." The closeness to Hebrew is surprising.

In addition, a vast array of Biblical names that have not been found in any other ancient Near Eastern languages have been reported to have been found in similar forms in Eblaite (one of the two languages found on the tablets).

For instance, the names of Adam, Eve, Abarama/Abraham, Bilhah, Ishmael, Esau, Mika-el, Saul and David have been found on the tablets.  Now, it is important to note that the tablets are not necessarily referring to those specific people.  Rather, what it does demonstrate is that those names were commonly used in ancient times.

In addition, quite a few ancient Biblical cities are also mentioned by name in the Ebla tablets.

For example, Ashtaroth, Sinai, Jerusalem, Hazor, Lachish, Megiddo, Gaza, Joppa, Ur, and Damascus are all reportedly referred to by name in the tablets.

Giovanni Pettinato says that he also found references to the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in the tablets.  In fact, one key discovery appears to relate directly to Genesis chapter 14.  Some Bible skeptics have long tried to claim that the victory of Abraham over Chedorlaomer and the Mesopotamian kings in Genesis 14 was fictional and that the five "cities of the plain" (Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Zoar) referred to in that chapter are legendary.  But it turns out that the Ebla tablets refer to all five of the "cities of the plain", and on one tablet the cities are listed in the exact same order that we find in Genesis chapter 14.

Amazing.

But that is not all.

Even more extraordinary was the discovery of "a creation hymn" in the tablets.

In fact, three different versions of the Eblaite "creation hymn" were discovered. One of the creation hymns was translated by Pettinato as follows....

Lord of heaven and earth:

the earth was not, you created it,

the light of day was not, you created it,

the morning light you had not [yet] made exist.

This clearly parallels the Biblical account.  In the Bible we also find a "Lord of heaven and earth" who created the earth and everything around it out of nothing.

However, it is important to note that Ebla was primarily a pagan culture.  Pagan gods such as Dagan, Baal and Ishtar were very important to the people of that time.  But the truth is that these tablets do confirm quite a few historical details found in the Scriptures. 

There is probably much more to be discovered about the ancient Eblaite people, but in recent decades progress has been slowed by religious and political conflicts.  Perhaps we will never know for certain where the people of ancient Ebla came from, how much they actually knew of the true God of the Bible, or why their language had such similarities to Hebrew.

Biochar Production for Industrial Agriculture

In my last post on biochar we discussed the best way to accumulate a sufficient inventory of corn stover.  It must be kept dry in a large bulk storage shed and allowed to continue air drying to produce a uniform and predictable feedstock.  The next challenge is to produce the biochar itself.

My suggestion is to build a modified incineration device that is rigged for top down charging unto a well raised grill.  The maximum temperature will be 600 degrees.  The idea is to allow the heat to break down the organics allowing the produced carbon to crumble and fall through the grill.  The operating temperature brings this about.  Some ignition may occur but it is minimized by a lack of oxygen.

As the charge roasts off, it dramatically compresses on a one for ten ratio and is easily shaken through the grill allowing recharging through the top loading device.  One can envisage a ten ton charge, been recharged five tons at a time as the produced carbon passes the grill. Thus once established, the process becomes fairly continuous although there will be variation in the produced gases.  We are avoiding significant ignition within the chamber as much as possible and using heat to reduce the plant waste.  This will be a slow process taking some time and may be as much as half a day, though The nature of the plant waste suggests that it may be much quicker.

The produced carbon can be built up in the chamber underneath the grill and should be designed to store a fair amount.  The lower portion of the carbon will cool down, perhaps with an assist from a little water or steam.  However the lower layers of carbon powder should naturally cool to allow an auger to remove the lowest layers.  The main danger is that if the temperature is too hot, it is capable of spontaneously igniting.  Thus removal must be monitored and preferably kept in an airless environment during the process.

The heat is produced by the process gas itself which contains all the produced volatiles and is passed into a second chamber for combustion at high temperature at around 2000 degrees.  This is high enough to reduce all the components safely and produce a hot flow of CO2 loaded air that is partially fed back into the main chamber under the grill.  This delivers high quality process heat into the charge from the bottom up.  Once established, I see no reason to introduce oxygen at this stage.  Even it the charge climbs well past the 600 degree mark, the lack of oxygen will keep it under control.

I suspect that operating experience will suggest lower temperatures closer to 400 degrees as sufficient and even preferable in terms of product quality.  This design allows such experimentation.

Also such a system might be operated automatically after final charging and allowed to cool down over night in order discharge the carbon in the morning.  After all it will simply run out of fuel in the form of process gas.

This becomes a simple system.  The first chamber handles the bulk and operates at a fairly low temperature range so it can be constructed with low cost fire bricks and ordinary sheet steel.  It is really a large wood stove.  The main thing is to keep it fairly air tight.  This prevents any of the produced carbon from burning unnecessarily.

The second chamber receives production gases at a temperature of 600 degrees.  It is blended with air and burned immediately bringing the temperature to 2000 degrees.  Some of this well oxygenated output gas to fed back into the first chamber to deliver heat.  The remainder is sent through a boiler to strip the excess heat out of the gas before it is vented.  That heat may be used then to produce power or operate a greenhouse.

In fact, the needs of green house operations suggest that this can be best integrated with biochar production.  Green houses need hot water during the fall, winter and early spring.  The corn stover is delivered during September and October, and its consumption is easily fitted into the winter schedule of the greenhouse.  The system can then be left idle during the growing season when plant waste is not available, temperatures are high and no biochar is needed for planting.

Greenhouses are always looking for energy sources that are outside the hydrocarbon regime, and most never quite solve the problem.  I think that this is a solution in corn growing country.

I have not discussed the possibility of developing a cash economy around this whole process.  I first had to make it internally profitable for each participant.  For the farmer, he trucks his ten tons of chopped and gathered corn stover to the biochar facility in exchange for at least a ton of biochar in the winter in preparation for spring sowing.  He solves a disposal problem and way more importantly, he receives a powerful soil amendment in sufficient quantity to do some good and encourage repetition.

The operator has the capital cost of the plant and storage shed.  He does not have the cost of building up inventory.  He gains a revenue stream from power production and that should be significant and also attract financing support.  If the heat is additionally fed into a greenhouse operation, it is reasonable that the whole process will turn out to be profitable.  Again, it is all working regardless of the biochar market itself.

The operator will also produce a surplus of biochar depending on his terms of trade.  It could be as much as is handed back to the farmer.  There is presently no market, but one should evolve rather quickly as farmers see the value of blending it with fertilizer.  Farmers not producing corn will quickly begin buying up the surplus for their fields.  Thus we develop a biochar market.

Los Lunas Decalogue Stone

This item lets me return to the subject of the biblical Bronze Age.  Because the Bible is essentially our only intact text from the era and is central to a classical education, a huge amount of human effort has gone into piecing together as much as is possible of related histories.

 

I have argued that the core narrative of the Bible can be placed during the two centuries preceding 1159 BCE with overlap.  I will not chase all details here, but it is sufficient to recognize the ascendancy of the Sea Peoples who sported the right number of tribes and were represented in Palestine by the Philistines.

 

I have accepted that the Sea Peoples were the Atlanteans based out of the delta city of Atlantis established near Gibraltar.  Recent work has located evidence of the city itself.  The Sea Peoples were a confederation of mostly coastal palace based states that controlled the market for bronze.   They came to dominate not just the Atlantic seaboard but also the Mediterranean littoral as demonstrated by the reports of the Philistines. The rise of Tyre as a Phoenician city is likely contemporaneous but may simply have been conquered.

 

In fact it is likely that all coastal cities at this time came under the effective control of these European Sea peoples as they secured markets for their bronze.

 

I also accept the thesis that the Homer’s world is situated in the Baltic and that the events possibly took place in the generation preceding 1159 BCA.  This has been confirmed from the text itself by Da Vinci a couple of years ago.

 

The bronze itself came from North and South America and left a deep archeological record behind just about everywhere it was possible to mine copper and also tin.  Lake Superior and Petosi are the two most spectacular examples.  Atlantis was the natural port of entry as Seville was in a later age and also the natural choke point to control the trade.

 

New Mexico is copper country of course and access by sea is much easier than say Lake Superior.  Thus I am not surprised to find an artifact like the Los Lunas Decalogue stone.

 

What this article informs us of is that the Judaic Yahweh and much of the material may well be derived from Atlantean sources rather than Mesopotamian sources or Egyptian sources.  In fact it is obvious that the confederation of Atlantis adopted the idea of an alphabet and this emerged in many unique forms to adapt to the various tongues spoken.  That the Greek version emerged in improved form makes it look inevitable, but it was not.

 

There was likely never a tribe of Atlanteans but there certainly was a dominant city that managed the bronze trade.  Hekla’s blast in 1159 BCE, destroyed the Atlantic littoral and Atlantis.  The Bronze Age ended there and then as no new copper flowed out of the Americas.  The tributary cities and colonies such as the Philistines withered with exceptions such as the Phoenicians.

 

This was followed by a dark age, particularly in Northern Europe as agriculture collapsed with the collapse of the bronze market.  This triggered movement of refuges southward which wiped out exposed place states such as Mycenae.

 

Please note the surety of the date 1159 BCE.  All other related dates have a huge margin of error and should not be trusted at all.  Classical Greek history begins to properly emerge around five hundred years later and the only records on hand appear to be in whatever passed for the Athenian library.  Athens had been founded as a palace city and had survived down to classical times.  Thus whatever we have retained of Atlantean culture has been passed down to us by the Athenians directly or by the Bible indirectly.

 

Los Lunas Decalogue Stone

http://unexplainedmysteriesoftheworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/The-Los-Lunas-Decalogue-Stone-200x300.jpg

Most people have never even heard of the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone, but it is truly one of the greatest historical mysteries of North America.  If you tried to tell most history teachers that the Ten Commandments arrived in North America long before Christopher Columbus did, most of them would tell you that you are absolutely nuts.  But that is apparently exactly what happened.   The existence of the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone suggests that there is a whole lot more to the history of North America than we have been told.  So just what is the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone?  It is is a huge flat stone on the side of a mountain in New Mexico.  The mountain is known as Hidden Mountain, and it is located near Los Lunas, New Mexico - approximately 35 miles south of Albuquerque.  It is what is written on this massive stone that is so remarkable.  This very large stone actually has the Ten Commandments inscribed on it in ancient paleo-Hebrew script with a few letters of ancient Greek mixed in.

Paleo-Hebrew (which the Phoenecians also used) is a language that nobody in the world speaks anymore.  It is substantially different from the modern Hebrew that the Jewish world uses today.

So where in the world did these Ten Commandments written in paleo-Hebrew come from?

Back in 1996, Professor James D. Tabor of the University of North Carolina-Charlotte was able to interview Professor Frank Hibben about the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone. Hibben, who passed away in 2002, was a retired University of New Mexico archaeologist. According to Tabor's account, Hibben was absolutely "convinced that the inscription is ancient and thus authentic. He reports that he first saw the text in 1933. At the time it was covered with lichen and patination and was hardly visible. He was taken to the site by a guide who had seen it as a boy, back in the 1880s."

http://unexplainedmysteriesoftheworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Los-Lunas-Decalogue-Stone-300x191.jpg

The scholars who have delved into this great mystery estimate that the stone is anywhere from 500 to 3000 years old. There are other native American inscriptions nearby that are estimated to be approximately 2000 years old.  Most who have studied the stone are almost certain that the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone pre-dates the arrival of Christopher Columbus in North America.

So how in the world is it possible that a copy of the Ten Commandments written in paleo-Hebrew showed up in North America long before Christopher Columbus "discovered" America?

One key to this great mystery may be the Phoenicians.

You see, the Phoenicians were the greatest seafaring people of the ancient world. The Phoenicians originally lived in what is known today as Lebanon, and they founded a vast array of settlements all around the Mediterranean during the course of their travels. In fact, they founded the great city of Carthage in North Africa and they also founded the great Etruscan civilization in Italy. It is historically documented that the Phoenicians got as far as Spain during their voyages, and many scholars now believe that the Phoenicians ultimately were able to cross the Atlantic and arrive in North America.

The reality is that if any ancient civilization would have been able to cross the Atlantic ocean, it would have been the great seafaring Phoenician people.

So who exactly were the Phoenicians? Well, the truth is that they were Israel's next door neighbor to the north.  Israel tended to war with all of the other nations surrounding it, but history tells us that they had good relations with the Phoenicians.  The great ancient cities of Tyre and Sidon were Phoenician cities.  In fact, Phoenicians greatly helped in the building of Solomon's Temple.  The relationship was so close that the Greek historian Herodotus (484-425 A.D.) actually referred to the Israelites as the "Phoenicians". It is also a fact that the ancient paleo-Hebrew language and the ancient Phoenician language were virtually identical.

That is why the inscription on the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone is often referred to as a "Phoenician" inscription.

It is also documented that the Phoenicians carried their religions with them wherever they traveled.  In fact, one scholar discovered that the Phoenicians actually brought the worship of the Lord God of Israel with them to Italy....

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http://www.british-israel.com/Ancmigr_files/Ancmigr.htm

Early 19th century noted antiquarian scholar, Sir William Betham, studied the Celtic origins of Europe, and his studies of early Italy were published in a two-volume work, "Etruria Celtica." Betham reproduced ancient coins from the kingdom of Utruria, in Italy, known as the Etruscan civilization. Interestingly, several of the Utrurian coins discovered were minted in honor of their deity, which was none other than Yahweh, God of the Hebrews!

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So did Phoenicians bring the Ten Commandments with them to North America?  Could it have been Israelites who were traveling with Phoenicians?  Nobody knows.  It is still a great mystery.  But it does appear that the most reasonable answer is that the greatest seafaring people by far of the ancient world, the Phoenicians, came to North America and brought the Ten Commandments with them.

When investigating this stone, many people begin to wonder if it has anything to do with Mormonism.  The truth is that it has absolutely nothing to do with Mormonism.  Instead it has everything to do with the scattering of the people of Israel - just like God said that He would do.

You see, the Los Lunas Decalogue stone is yet another clue about what happened to the ten lost tribes of Israel.  These ten lost tribes are known in the Scriptures as the northern kingdom of Israel or sometimes they are simply referred to as "Ephraim".  Ephraim was one of the most dominant tribes in the northern kingdom, and just as God said in His Word, He scattered Ephraim (the northern kingdom) over the face of the entire earth. The Los Lunas Decalogue stone is evidence that they may have even been scattered as far as North America.

http://unexplainedmysteriesoftheworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/The-Los-Lunas-Decalogue-Stone1-300x212.jpg

For even more information about the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone, check out the short YouTube video posted below....

Shock Blocker

This is an innovative idea.  Shock and blood loss has always appeared a losing combination for the victim and certainly a swift killer.  Having an intervention able to halt and stabilize the process now appears plausible.

Weapon injuries are obvious but car accident injuries are as difficult because we often get a lot of internal damage.  Having a pill or injection available to a first responder is a certain lifesaver and should be applied even as a precaution until the patient reaches full facilities.

Anyway, this is a very important trick that will save lives by buying time.  The sooner it is broadly available the better.

Drug could turn soldiers into super-survivors

27 January 2010 by Linda Geddes

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527454.200-drug-could-turn-soldiers-into-supersurvivors.html

A LUCKY few seem to be able to laugh in the face of death, surviving massive blood loss and injuries that would kill others. Now a drug has been found that might turn virtually any injured person into a "super-survivor", by preventing certain biological mechanisms from shutting down.

The drug has so far only been tested in animals. If it has a similar effect in humans, it could vastly improve survival from horrific injuries, particularly in soldiers, by allowing them to live long enough to make it to a hospital.

Loss of blood is the main problem with many battlefield injuries, and a blood transfusion the best treatment, although replacing lost fluid with saline can help. But both are difficult to transport in sufficient quantities. "You can't carry a blood bank into the battlefield," says Hasan Alam of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. "What we're looking for is a pill or a shot that would keep a person alive for long enough to get to them to a hospital."

We're looking for a pill that would keep a person alive for long enough to get them to hospital

When the body loses a lot of blood, it tries to compensate by going into shock. This is a set of emergency measures to raise blood pressure and conserve energy, such as increasing heart rate and shutting down expression of some proteins. However, if the body stays in shock for more than a short time, it can lead to organ failure, and death soon follows.

Recent studies have suggested that around 6 or 7 per cent of genes change their expression in response to shock, via the removal of "epigenetic", chemical additions to the genome called acetylations. As histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors can prevent the removal of such acetylations, Alam wondered if these drugs might improve survival after blood loss.

His team previously showed that valproic acid, an HDAC inhibitor already used to treat epilepsy, increased survival rates in rats that had lost a lot of blood. It seemed to be doing this by preventing acetylation, causing certain "survival pathways" to remain switched on.

Now Alam has repeated the study in pigs. He anaesthetised the animals, drained 60 per cent of their blood, and subjected them to other injuries before giving them a saline transfusion. He then injected some of the pigs with valproic acid, gave others a blood transfusion and left the remainder untreated.

Just 25 per cent of the pigs receiving only saline survived for 4 hours - the typical time it takes to get hospital treatment - while 86 per cent of those injected with valproic acid survived. All those that had a blood transfusion lived (Surgery, DOI: 10.1016/j.surg.2009.04.007).

Alam is currently repeating the trial to make sure valproic acid does not hinder survival in the longer term. If so, he will apply for permission to do human trials by the end of the year.

"It's exciting," says John Holcomb of the Center for Translational Injury Research at the University of Texas in Houston. "They're looking at resuscitation in a different way."

Earlier studies by Alam's team showed that rats that naturally survive traumatic blood loss also experience fewer changes in gene expression than those that die or suffer complications. He thinks the same might be true in humans. "Every person has this capacity to survive a huge insult, but most of the time it's dormant," he says. "That's why the same insult kills some people while others laugh and move on. What we're trying to do is make you super-resistant using the pathways and proteins that already exist."

However, Graham Packham of Southampton General Hospital, UK, who is investigating the use of HDAC inhibitors to treat cancer, says it isn't yet clear how valproic acid, which reacts with a wide range of molecules, is actually prolonging survival. "It's not clear whether this is driven by valproic acid's epigenetic activity," he says.

Biochar Collection for Industrial Agriculture

The one problem that I have had with Biochar, was how to adapt its production to the needs of industrial farming.  I think that we can now make some progress.

First off, biochar is elemental carbon reduced by the application of heat to plant material usually drawn from crop wastes.  The waste should not include woody material because it retains structural integrity and preserves difficult to reduce gross structure.  We have determined that the likeliest feed stock is corn stover for several good reasons:

1                    It produces at least ten tons per acre of material and often much more.

2                    Unless converted to silage when green it is unsuitable for feed or for plowing back into the soil and is normally burned.

3                    Once ripened, the water is drawn back down the stalks making the stover fairly dry.

4                    It can be chopped or bailed for handling easily enough and its coarse nature encourages further drying under cover.

5                    I have reason to believe it was the primary crop used by the Amazonian Indians to produce terra preta over a two thousand year span.

In short, we do not need to promote a new crop in order to produce biochar.

A lot has already been discussed about collecting plant waste for some form of power plant type facility.  Let us cover the handling problem first.

I think it makes a lot of sense for a facility to accept chopped corn waste in exchange for a one for ten biochar load.  A farmer would at his expense truck in typically chopped corn stover to the processing facility and receive back a chit for a load of biochar on a one in ten basis.  A water content measure would be conducted and a penalty applied.  Some time later (perhaps weeks) the farmer would return to pick up a load of biochar in the form of powdered elemental carbon.  This process integrates smoothly into a farming operation without incurring significant costs but clearly defraying haulage and direct purchase costs for the processor.

The farmer has disposed of his waste for the cost of trucking it to the plant and he receives in return the produced biochar which he stores in fertilizer tanks.  Before using the biochar, he can blend in fertilizer and apply the combined blend as he would fertilizer.  It should be far gentler on the machinery also.

We know that a field of corn should produce at least a ton of biochar per acre, so this is a significant contribution even in its first year of operation.  Obviously over many years, the carbon content of the soils will become dominant and worked deep into the soils.

Even at this initial level of amendment the crops will respond because fertilizer is been retained.  Over several years the fertilizer needs will continue to decline freeing the farm from the need to supply heavy fertilization at all. Recall that in the tropical rainforest, such terra preta soils have been observed cropped continuously over sixty years without any amendment beyond the return of waste to the soil.

Thus we have shed the collection costs for our processing plant and have stored huge amounts of plant waste under cover so that it will continue to air dry.  The next step is the plant itself.