Funding strikes back

In a previous post, Fuel cell energy, I debate a new product by Bloom Energy, the Bloombox. In a nut shell, it is a giant box full of fuel cells that run on natural gas operating as a small electrical generator. Online Fortune magazine has an update on the Bloom boxes' debut. Their view of the technology is similar to mine with many downfalls. Without 30 % state economic subsidiaries, the box would not compete with more traditional electrical sources on the grid. No surprise. In the end after the fanfare, it is all about the money and pleasing investors. Two patterns emerge from this story reflecting the current state of research and development towards product commercialization in the US. The cruel cycle of funding and the half truths concerning the current state of alternative energy.

To put the record straight, I like the concept of fuel cells generating electricity. The technology is NOT ready for prime time yet. It needs more development. We should have an army of scientists and engineers working on this technology. It will have twofold benefits:
1. Add to the US economy through employment
2. Viable product to sell in the end.
This is where the first ugly reality shows its face, the current state of research funding.

In a way I feel for the inventor, K.R. Sridhar, and the decision he was forced to make when founding his company. Venture capitalist (VC) invested in his company. VC have high expectations. Companies will demonstrate progress towards a product with an actual deliverable product by a certain date. What if the product is not ready in this time frame? The VC funding goes away. End of game. If Sridhar wanted his dream to come to fruition, he took the money with terms. In many cases, successful product development time is longer than allotted, the final product flops. Darn if you do, darn if you don't.

I propose investing more capital into long term research and development laboratories (national labs or corporate) to develop these technologies. Yes, I know over along time R&D loses money, but nothing significant will ever be developed again without extensive research. What about universities? Universities are in the business of producing researchers and most projects end with Ph D students graduating. The same short term issue as VC funded projects. Our technical competitive edge depends on long term research and development funding in appropriate venues.

Second, the development stage most alternative energy currently stands lacks commercial viability. Even with economic subsidiaries, most alternative energy sources will not eliminate our dependence upon foreign oil. Click here for a more complete argument. One exception comes to mind, wind turbines. Wind turbines are commercially viable. They share the similar drawback of low energy density through. No one ever mentions another obvious problem, what happens when the wind stops? Solar, geothermal and various other alternative energy sources are just not at a development stage that will displace more conventional fossil fuel based technologies.

I repeat, this post's intention is not about bashing venture capitalists or alternative energy, it is to inform about the current reality. Venture capitalists have a vital role in the US economy in funding successful technology start ups. The VC success key is funding technologies that are close to production stage, not products that require a significant amount of engineering. As for alternative energy, I would love to see solar panels on every roof. Commercialized economically competitive versions of the fuel cells would be outstanding. The new technology has significant potential. As we currently stand though, the lack of funding and efforts to develop alternative energy sources will doom them to failure. We as a society need to accept the situation's reality.

Fuel cell energy

The vast majority of modern energy sources require fuel combustion in the process. Fossil fuels are the most common fuels using this principle. This inventor, K.R. Sridhar, is supposed to launch his company's, Bloom Energy, new fuel cell based generator called the Bloom box in the next couple of days. The main website is even having a countdown to product launch. What is so spectacular about this new product? I will discuss that below.

Fuel cells are nothing new. They are basically electrochemical cells that work similar to batteries. The main difference is fuel consumption occurs in the fuel cell creating exchangeable electrons and protons for the anode and cathode, respectively. Several issues with fuels cells have prevented their widespread use:
1) The catalyst are expensive making electricity production cost prohibitive.
2) Hydrocarbon fuels (carbon based) foul the cathode leaving hydrogen as the only source of fuel. Hydrogen is not found in elemental form in nature. Significant amounts of energy is required to obtain hydrogen even before the fuel cell has energy output.
3) The low energy density often makes the exercise a mute point in practical terms.

The inventor claims one of these boxes (however big that may be) can power a house? I am skeptical. The inventor once worked for NASA where he developed an oxygen generator that was scrapped from space flights. My guess is this oxygen generator is being used to increase the production efficiency of the best currently available fuel cell technology. This is in comparison to more traditional fuel cells obtaining oxygen from the surrounding environment. The new fuel cells would work better with pure oxygen, but the technology still faces the three hurdles above.

I am skeptical. It seems like a bunch of hype. Unless other significant improvements were engineered into the box, this is going to be a flop. What is driving the coming out party is the $400 million investment by venture capitalists. Time to deliver goods or lose the funding.

Market observations

In a prior post, Markets and psychology, I mentioned a market theory known as Elliot wave principle. Elliot wave principle states the markets move in five wave fractal shapes dependent upon investor sentiment. It is a tool based upon probabilities estimating future outcomes. The theory gives investors windows of buying and selling opportunities.

I have encountered difficulty using this theory within the last week. If one examines stock charts over long periods of time, the wave can be easily identified in the data. Sometimes, the waves are not clear as they are being formed. For example, on February 9 I predicted we were on this step in the current Cycle:

Primary = 3 of 5
Intermediate = 1 of 5
Minor = 2 of 3
Minute (not sure)

After about a week of market action, this stage in the Cycle has yet to be fulfilled. My current guess as of today's close (2/17) is:
Primary = 3 of 5
Intermediate = 1 of 5
Minor = end of 2
Minute (still not sure)
I was assuming the Minor 2 of 3 was unfolding as we had entered into the 3rd Minor wave. Further market action completed a nice rebound 2nd Minor wave demonstrating we were not that far into the overall wave structure yet. The 3rd Minor is coming at a later date.

What went wrong? Two things come to mind.
1. I had my investments ready for a 3 of 3 Minor movement. My bias.
2. Other more experienced bloggers I follow came to the same conclusion. The waves were unclear as they were being traced.

It is now obvious what the wave patterns are, not so in real time. Stock market investing in general follows this unknown path. Mr. Market will move as Mr. Market chooses. As Yogi Berra said, "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future."

Religion and science

We as scientists often like to believe that we are truly neutral in evaluating experimental data and theories. Reams of legitimate literature exists that remains relatively neutral in results discussion, always giving several explanations to experimental outcomes. Unfortunately, literature appears that is driven by philosophical or religious (the two concepts are the same) motivations and are not true scientific inquiry. This kind of literature embarrasses the entire scientific community, invalidates the studies within this biased literature and creates mass public confusion.

This post is about one poorly written book from the vegan philosophy camp, The China Study, by T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M Campbell II. I started reading the book and made it through the 4th chapter before giving up. Obviously biased information within the first 81 pages is enough to repudiate anything else within the book.

First, the book is written by a father/son team. This immediately casts a shadow on the results. Why do you need your son to coauthor a book? I will tell you why. No other respectable scientist who needs a careers would put his/her name on such a piece of work.

Second, and more importantly, is science depends upon addressing other findings from within the scientific community and giving appropriate responses to their theories. The author talks about other scientists not giving "open-minded" intercourse to his ideas. This "open-minded" discussion runs two ways and there lies the problem. Everyone is supposed to just accept his simplified animal based protein is the cause of Western disease theory as a fact. Other scientific views backed by years of research are not relevant. Campbell even arrogantly makes the comment in Chapter 1,

....we scientists focus on details while ignoring the larger context. For example we pin our efforts on and our hopes on one isolated nutrient at a time, whether it is vitamin A to prevent cancer or vitamin E to prevent heart attacks. We oversimplify and disregard the infinite complexity of nature.

This entire book is a simplification of three studies stating that animal based protein is the cause of all degenerative diseases like heart disease and cancer (referred to as Western disease). What makes your simplistic idea any better than other scientist's? Did God have a direct communication with you? This is double-speak my friends and shows tremendous bias towards a philosophical idea.

Third, the book's premise are based upon experiments that lack any serious analysis. I could personally rip each of the poorly executed experiments to shreds, but for brevity sake they all have one conclusion without any thorough discussion. Thousands of factors could lead to the found results like nutrition, genetics and other biological mechanisms instead of one simple answer, his anti-meat explanation. This saddens me the most, because anything useful to be gained from the various studies was wasted among the dishonest conclusions. Other deep flaws litter the experiprocedures. It raises a further question, are the results repeatable?

Finally, the author contradicts himself in Chapter 4. The basic premise I outlined in an early blog posting, Supplementing what?, is long term veganism is not found in any large human populations worldwide. It results in malnourishment from lack of certain vitamins and minerals. Poor health is the result. Of course he could not find one of these vegans for his study (they would not live long enough), but he goes on to attack the closest thing. He describes one of his studies' subjects in China as consuming about 1/10 the amount of animal protein than in American diets and his results were on page 80,

We expected that when animal protein consumption an d blood cholesterol were as low as they are in rural China, there would be no further association with Western diseases. But we were wrong.

Maybe the exclusive cause of "Western disease" is not animal protein consumption?

I will stop here because I could fill several posts on this horrendous book. What I am pointing out is sometimes science is distorted with the purpose to sway a select audience. Often, it is for religious or philosophical reasons. In worst case scenarios, it is for outright fraud. In both cases, it is unethical.

Markets and psychology

This post covers a topic of interest to me, the stock market. I mentioned in a previous post, driving with the rearview mirror, about some basic concepts of the stock market. Several months have passed since my last market posting. Accordingly, I have been studying and stock trading resulting in both failure and success. The more I watch the market, the easier it is to understand that investor psychology drives the market.

One technique that I am studying is Elliot wave principle (EWP) developed in the 1930's by Ralph Nelson Elliot. Elliot observed that markets move in 5 distinct sets of waves according to prevalent market psychology. When in a bull market, impulse waves move the market up. In a bear market, impulse waves move it down. Waves 1, 3 and 5 are the impulse waves, while 2 and 4 are the corrective waves. Impulse waves are further subdivided into smaller sets of 5 fractal waves. Corrective waves have an a-b-c wedge like pattern and are also subdivided into smaller waves. The time span of the waves are from decades to hours on ticker charts. To be honest, the larger waves on the order of days (Minute) up to years (Primary) follow this pattern making distinctive patterns on ticker charts. Time spans greater than several years and less than several days tend not to fit into exact scenarios. It is just wishful thinking putting noisy or irrelevant data into such a pattern in my opinion. The take home message is Elliot wave principle follows what truly drives a market, investor sentiment.

Elliot wave principle is a loose theory, it has multiple outcomes during any given situation. Market timing and wave amplitudes are based upon Fibonacci numbers. Exact values fit into a range. Here is where EWP is useful, it tells us approximately when the market will turn and to the approximate degree a rally or sell-off will carry a market. It determines buying or selling windows ahead of time. I suggest using other technical indicators (MACD, stochastic and etc.) as complimentary tools when waves are not clear, which often waves are unclear. Investigation of the stock's price movement (who owns it and why) will further help an investor.

In practical application, I believe as of February 9, 2010 we are in a bear market at the following point in a Cycle. This means the overall market movement is downward.
Primary = 1 of 3
Intermediate = 1 of 5
Minor = 2 of 3
Minute (not sure)
Using this, I made a successful and unsuccessful trade. The unsuccessful trade occurred because of undesired price movement premarket. My blunder even as the stock moved in the desired predicted direction. This is why the system is not going to make anyone rich without following good trading practices.

I will post further on this topic to see if my evaluation and Elliot wave principle holds true.

Dr. Coffee blog's updates

This post is a continuation from two past posts with new observations. Both topics are on human health and diet.

First update stems from the previous post Supplementing what? in which I warn about the dangers of long term strict veganism. This weekend, I had the luck of meeting an individual who became a Vegan within the last couple of weeks after being a practicing lacto-ovo vegetarian for about a year. It was a sight to see. She was about 10-15 pounds underweight. Her complexion was similar to a ghost, pale white. She is obviously intelligent, but the mental sharpness was not present. This on top of being sick with a cold or flu. Her friend (she was also present) who just started practicing veganism (same time) after being lacto-ovo vegetarian even longer was in the same physical state. I wish both of them would realize they are destroying their own healths'. It seems that these extreme vegetarian types have a cult like following. This trend is very disheartening in the least.

One argument that I read from a vegan propaganda publication this past week concerned the actress Alicia Silverstone. Her source of Vitamin B12 comes from Miso soup. I was not aware of this vitamin source, but I rather doubt the concentration is enough to fulfill an individual's daily requirement without eating several bowls of the soup. This is the very basic problem with veganism. Yes, you can find these necessary vitamins in certain vegan approved sources, but they will not provide enough of the vitamins to an individual for healthy living. I repeat once again, healthy, long term, strict vegan adherents do NOT exist. It is a dangerous lifestyle. One other quirky thing about the article was her description of feeling holistic (??????). I am coming to the conclusion that this general "feeling" comes from a lack of energy and mild hallucinations. Yeah, you feel holy, but what is it really?

The other update is on my own health and is a follow up to the post, Give me a D, Vitamin D, where I discuss a potential Vitamin D deficiency in my own diet during winter. I would my overall feeling as constantly tired even though I am not sick and been sleeping quite well. After taking about 2000 IUs of Vitamin D from store bought vitamins, I felt better the following day. After one week of the supplements, I felt back to normal or similar to summertime. My guess was right, I was lacking Vitamin D in my diet and it was manifesting itself as symptoms similar to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. From now on, I am going to start taking lower doses (~800 IUs) starting in November to prevent this problem from hitting me in the middle of winter again. I am sure this is a very common problem in our modern society that lives indoors during daylight winter hours because of employment.