How much sillier can Muslims get? Are they insane or just completely defective in their thinking? I believe it is the latter. To think they want to execute Gillian Gibbons, a British school teacher in Sudan who allowed her students to name a teddy bear of all things, Mohammed. WTF????
Muslims are the sickest people on Earth. Every time they open their mouths, or riot, or make these insane demands – the world comes closer to realizing Islam is not compatible with humanity.
I am not sure how much people understand the problem that is being posed by China’s cavalier attitude to product and environmental safety. If you think the toys your children are playing with are the only threat for toxicity you are wrong. Hidden problems exist.
Exactly what do you think is being done with the millions of tons of toys being recalled from lead and other heavy metal contaminants? I can tell you it will be one of two things. First, the toys will get distributed into countries with no standards for toxicity. Second, the products will be recycled. Now that may sound like a good option, but truthfully, it is not. The recycle process will separate and segregate the various parts for reprocessing. Metal pins and rods will get melted down and reformed. The plastic will get be reground and put back into the raw material supply chain.
The lead in these parts will not disappear by reheating and remolding into a new product.
On the plastic side, it is possible some of the regrind will be used for seemingly inert products, like dimensional plastic lumber. But others will be sold to plastic producers who will make who knows what with them. Most likely a lot of it will get molded into black plastic parts. Why black? Because black is the only color that will mask ALL other colors. I know this because I’m a plastic manufacturer. Internally, we reuse our scrap by regrinding and introducing small amounts back into the production process on certain parts. When making black parts we’ll increase the use of regrind. Because we are selective on the parts we will use our regrind on, we don’t use as much scrap as we make and sell it on the open market. So trust me, this is happening in China too.
The potential for toxicity is still very high and will require even more diligence on companies who are purchasing the finished products to test for heavy metal additives. There are lead test kits that home-owners can purchase, but what about all the other heavy metals such as Arsenic, Beryllium, Cadmium, Hexavalent Chromium, and Mercury.
Again this goes back to survival strategy. How will China’s disregard for human and environmental safety affect your personal survival, let alone the human species? This is something each of us needs to address on an individual level before contamination spirals out of control.
If there is any reason to end our use of oil for fuel it should be situations like what we’ve seen happen this weekend in the Black Sea. Fortunately, people are working on new technologies that will help us move away from our oil dependence for fuel.
I am in a bit of a rush to get to the airport so if you call could just read this article I cut from Science Daily.
Microbial Fuel Cell: High Yield Hydrogen Source And Wastewater Cleaner
ScienceDaily (Apr. 24, 2005) — Using a new electrically-assisted microbial fuel cell (MFC) that does not require oxygen, Penn State environmental engineers and a scientist at Ion Power Inc. have developed the first process that enables bacteria to coax four times as much hydrogen directly out of biomass than can be generated typically by fermentation alone.
Dr. Bruce Logan, the Kappe professor of environmental engineering and an inventor of the MFC, says, “This MFC process is not limited to using only carbohydrate-based biomass for hydrogen production like conventional fermentation processes. We can theoretically use our MFC to obtain high yields of hydrogen from any biodegradable, dissolved, organic matter — human, agricultural or industrial wastewater, for example — and simultaneously clean the wastewater.
“While there is likely insufficient waste biomass to sustain a global hydrogen economy, this form of renewable energy production may help offset the substantial costs of wastewater treatment as well as provide a contribution to nations able to harness hydrogen as an energy source,” Logan notes,.
The new approach is described in a paper, “Electrochemically Assisted Microbial Production of Hydrogen from Acetate,” released online currently and scheduled for a future issue of Environmental Science and Technology. The authors are Dr. Hong Liu, postdoctoral researcher in environmental engineering; Dr. Stephen Grot, president and founder of Ion Power, Inc.; and Logan. Grot, a former Penn State student, suggested the idea of modifying an MFC to generate hydrogen.
In their paper, the researchers explain that hydrogen production by bacterial fermentation is currently limited by the “fermentation barrier” — the fact that bacteria, without a power boost, can only convert carbohydrates to a limited amount of hydrogen and a mixture of “dead end” fermentation end products such as acetic and butyric acids.
However, giving the bacteria a small assist with a tiny amount of electricity — about 0.25 volts or a small fraction of the voltage needed to run a typical 6 volt cell phone — they can leap over the fermentation barrier and convert a “dead end” fermentation product, acetic acid, into carbon dioxide and hydrogen.
Logan notes, “Basically, we use the same microbial fuel cell we developed to clean wastewater and produce electricity. However, to produce hydrogen, we keep oxygen out of the MFC and add a small amount of power into the system.”
In the new MFC, when the bacteria eat biomass, they transfer electrons to an anode. The bacteria also release protons, hydrogen atoms stripped of their electrons, which go into solution. The electrons on the anode migrate via a wire to the cathode, the other electrode in the fuel cell, where they are electrochemically assisted to combine with the protons and produce hydrogen gas.
A voltage in the range of 0.25 volts or more is applied to the circuit by connecting the positive pole of a programmable power supply to the anode and the negative pole to the cathode.
The researchers call their hydrogen-producing MFC a BioElectrochemically-Assisted Microbial Reactor or BEAMR. The BEAMR not only produces hydrogen but simultaneously cleans the wastewater used as its feedstock. It uses about one-tenth of the voltage needed for electrolysis, the process that uses electricity to break water down into hydrogen and oxygen.
Logan adds, “This new process demonstrates, for the first time, that there is real potential to capture hydrogen for fuel from renewable sources for clean transportation.”
###The Penn State researchers were supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Penn State Huck Life Sciences Institute and the Stan and Flora Kappe Endowment. (Penn State (2005, April 24). Microbial Fuel Cell: High Yield Hydrogen Source And Wastewater Cleaner. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 13, 2007) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/04/050422165917.htm
In addition, please go visit the Microbial Fuel Cells website that has more information and news on turning waste into power.
Yesterday I wrote about whether human actions are in concordance with our survival. I am not sure if I was clear enough though. While I do not believe humans are impacting global climate change, I do believe we are impacting our ecology. A perfect example are the two oil spills this weekend; one in San Francisco and the other along the Black Sea.
The San Francisco spill is downright puny at 58,000 gallons compared with 560,000 spilled in the Black Sea. So far 30,000 birds and an uncountable number of fish have been killed from a Russian oil tanker splitting open in bad weather. In addition, several humans have been killed. The damage to the ecology in the Black Sea will be devasting. It will take decades to cleanup. This type of occurence is the best reason to stop using oil for fuel.
If you’ve read the first page of this website you will know one of our tenets is for humans to live in balance with our environment. This is an interesting task. You have to remember, people are as much a part of nature as all the other animals, minerals and vegetables. So for us to dominate and decimate our environment is nothing new…from a species point of view. It is a part of our survival strategy. However, with that said, because we are humans and because our only natural enemy is ourselves and to a greater extent - bacteria and virus’ - it behooves us to question if our impact on the rest of nature is in fact concordant with survival. I am not a big believer in humans impacting global climate change. We are not that big of a threat when it comes to the big Kahuna in the sky, the Sun. The Sun has more influence on Earth than anything us lowly humans can think up. And the Earth itself packs quite a punch as well. Just think back to the tsunami from three years ago in the Indian Ocean. Earth has other surprises in store for us too. Such as super volcanoes and methane hydrates locked into the ocean floor that could bubble up into our atmosphere one day, as they have in the past.
So getting back to the question: Are we only taking what we need from the Earth or are we pigging out on our resources? Unfortunately, there really is no way of knowing. All we can do is look at our current resources, contrast them with past levels and extrapolate. We know that commodities such as oil, gas, copper, helium are all finite and are quickly dwindling. We know that the seas are being emptied of fish in a relatively short period of time. We know people inhabit every single ecosystem on the planet. And with every new habitation we are like an invasive species, disrupting the ecological balance that was once there. But because we are only looking at the environment over a short span of time, one or two generations, we are not capable of accurately predicting our true impact. We have no way of knowing if this is in fact natural. And to be frank, it is.
If our species does not survive, it will not be at the hands of man. It will be due to a force of nature itself. This does not mean we should be free to eat all the fish, chop down the forest, smelt all the copper, consume all the helium, burn all the coal, oil and gas, drink or pollute all the fresh water; it means we need to strike a balance. I say this because while these things are plentiful now, they will not be in a few thousand years. And I’d like to see humans live at least as, if not longer than the dinosaurs did, for several hundred million years. I’d like to see us evolve further and that will require us to live in concordance with our environment as we continue to drive the most powerful force in life — survival of the fittest.
Aloha readers,
The following is an article sent to me a few weeks ago by Franz. I should have posted it when he first sent it, but better now than never.
In many countries, cement is crucial for growth but an enemy of green
By Elisabeth Rosenthal International Herald TribuneSunday, October 21, 2007In booming economies from Asia to Eastern Europe, cement is the glue of progress. The material that binds the ingredients of concrete together, cement is essential for constructing buildings and laying roads in much of the world.
Some 80 percent of cement is made in and used by emerging economies; China alone makes and uses 45 percent of global output. Production is doubling every four years in places like Ukraine.
But making cement creates pollution, in the form of carbon dioxide emissions, and the greenest of technologies can reduce that by only 20 percent.
Cement plants already account for 5 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming.
Compounding the problem, cement has no viable recycling potential, as the abandoned buildings that line roads from Tunisia to Mongolia demonstrate. Each new road, each new building, needs new cement.
“The big news about cement is that it is the single biggest material source of carbon emissions in the world, and the demand is going up,” said Julian Allwood, a professor of engineering at Cambridge University.
“If demand doubles and the best you can do is to reduce emissions by 30 percent, then emissions still rise very quickly.”
Worse yet, green incentives may be allowing the industry to pollute even more. The European Union subsidizes Western companies that buy outmoded cement plants in poor countries and refit them with green technology.
The emissions per ton of cement produced do go down. But the amount of cement produced often goes way up, as does the pollution generated.
Many of the world’s producers acknowledge the conundrum. “The cement industry is at the center of the climate change debate, but the world needs construction material for schools hospitals and homes,” said Olivier Luneau, head of sustainability at Lafarge, the Paris-based global cement giant.
“Because of our initiatives, emissions are growing slower than they would without the interventions.”
Cement manufacturers have invested millions of dollars in programs like the Sustainable Cement Initiative, yet many engineers like Allwood see “sustainable cement” as something of a contradiction in terms, like vegetarian meatballs.
Lafarge, a leader in introducing green technology to its field, has improved efficiency to reduce its emissions from 763 pounds, or 347 kilograms, of CO2 per ton of cement in 1990 to 655 in 2006. Its goal is to get to 610 by 2010, but it expects it will be difficult to get much below that number.
Lafarge, which bought 17 cement plants in China in 2005 and has holdings throughout eastern Europe and Russia, acknowledges that its emissions are growing year by year.
“Total emissions are growing because the demand is growing so fast and continues to grow and you can’t cap that,” Luneau said. “Our core business is cement, so there is a limit to what we can change.”
Cement is certainly a good investment these days.
“The construction market is booming in Eastern Europe, so cement factories are booming,” said Lennard De Klerk, director of Global Carbon, a Budapest firm that arranges investments in Ukraine, Russia and Bulgaria. “All the big cement companies, like Lafarge and Heidelberg Cement, have bought existing facilities there that generally use fairly outdated technology and that waste a lot of energy.”
Carbon trading schemes - green incentives created by the European Union and the Kyoto Protocol - encourage such purchases. But they also allow manufacturers to increase overall cement production, both in the developing world and at home.
The European Union effectively limits production of European cement makers in their home countries by capping their allowed yearly emissions. In places like Ukraine, meanwhile, there are no limits, so cement production can increase there without regulatory caps.
Moreover, European companies get allowances known as carbon credits to pollute more for use at home by undertaking green cleanup projects elsewhere. So buying an old Soviet factory and investing in converting it to green technology can bring multiple paybacks.
“They can invest in Ukraine and Russia, clean up, and earn carbon credits - the investment is much more attractive than it used to be,” said De Klerk, whose company brokers such “carbon” investments. Factoring the value of the carbon credits into the cost of refitting a factory in Ukraine, the predicted rate of return rises from 8.8 per cent to close to 12 per cent, he said.
Once outmoded plants are refitted with “clean technology,” their emission per ton of cement produced does decline. The Podilsky plant in Ukraine is being refitted with greener kilns - financed by the Irish cement manufacturer CRH to earn carbon credits - and energy consumption per ton of production is forecast to drop 53 percent.
But even that sharp drop may not be enough to stop the inexorable growth in cement emissions in the aggregate, or compensate for the new lease on life that refitting provides old factories that otherwise might have shut their doors. Production went up over 10 percent in Ukraine in 2005 and again in 2006. At Heidelberg Cement’s Doncement plant in Ukraine, output soared 55 percent in the first nine months of last year.
Old factories that for years were running at half capacity are now churning out cement as never before, propelled by booming economies and foreign investment.
And cement, which used to be produced and used locally, is increasingly shipped long distances. On the Internet, cement brokers are now selling relatively cheap Ukrainian cement to all corners of the world. Demand is particularly high in the Middle East.
Unlike many industries, cement has a basic chemical problem: The chemical reaction that creates cement releases large amounts of CO2 in and of itself. Sixty percent of emissions caused by making cement are from this chemical process alone, Luneau said.
The remainder is produced from the fuels used in production, which may be mitigated by the use of greener technology. So to “go green,” cement makers try to cut the fuel side of the equation.
When they buy plants in the developing world they often turn from a water-intensive system to a more energy efficient “dry” system. Ten percent of the fuel used by Lafarge is biomass and alternative fuels.
One industry project called the Cement Sustainability Initiative suggests that concrete should be mixed using smaller portions of cement to reduce emissions, and that cement buildings be given better insulation so that they are more energy efficient. But there is less incentive for cement manufacturers to take on fundamental changes in how to make buildings and roads.
Western cement manufacturers emphasize that the emissions problem cannot be solved until China and India and other booming economies realize that they must limit emissions as well. “Trying to solve emissions in the EU or G-8 will not solve the problem unless emerging economies and their cement production are included,” Luneau said.
Source: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/21/business/cement.php
I had wanted to contrast this with alternative building materials, such as clay and bamboo, but am concerned that nothing truly has the properties of cement. It is a bit of a conundrum. I will write more in a few days about the use of bamboo in construction. In the meantime I want to to say Mahalo to all of you!
It was on December 7, 1972 that Apollo 17 launched on a 12-day mission to the Moon. Settling into the dust along the northern rim of the Sea of Tranquility on December 11th and returning to Earth on December 19th, it marked the last of on the last of the lunar space missions for NASA. And the last time human’s walked the Moon. 
That was thirty-five years ago. Since that time, humans have sadly not ventured beyond a low Earth orbit, flying at the most 250 miles above Earth. To you put that into perspective, the Moon is 238,900 miles away.
In 1996, twenty-four years after the last manned mission to the moon, the X Prize Foundation was established in the hopes of sending humans back to the Moon and beyond. They established a competition, offering a sweet monetary reward to anyone who could create a viable space transport vehicle. If you’ve clicked on the link I provided for X Prize you might have been struck by their motto; Revolution through Competition. Now that is exactly how to get the blood moving in the right direction—through a desire to achieve by outwitting an d outlasting all others. Really, is there any other valid reason for living?
Last week, on October 26-28, the Lunar Lander challenge for the X Prize cup took place at Holloman Air Force base in New Mexico. 
All eyes were on Armadillo Aerospace. Unfortunately, they crashed. However, a check of their website shows they are jubilant in their failure because every failure is one step closer to success. 
If you are an engineer looking up into the heavens in the hopes of leaving Earth’s orbit and have a well thought out idea on how to accomplish such a dangerous mission, but are short on funding, you might want to speak to the people at Space Angel’s Network.
“Space Angels Network is the premier source of dealflow for investors and early-stage capital for space-related ventures across a wide spectrum of technologies, markets, and industries.”
If you have been reading my blog for a while you would know I view life as a series of opportunities leveraged by visionaries. Where better to begin formulating your vision than at an educational institution geared toward your exact field of study. If it is planetary science or a career in space travel and technology I would recommend a visit to the International Space University at the Isle of Man, U.K. From their website:
INTERNATIONAL SPACE UNIVERSITY is an institution founded on the vision of a peaceful, prosperous and boundless future through the study, exploration and development of Space for the benefit of all humanity.
ISU is an institution dedicated to international affiliations, collaboration, and open, scholarly pursuits related to outer space exploration and development. It is a place where students and faculty from all backgrounds are welcomed; where diversity of culture, philosophy, lifestyle, training and opinion are honored and nurtured.ISU is an institution which recognizes the importance of interdisciplinary studies for the successful exploration and development of space. ISU strives to promote an understanding and appreciation of the Cosmos through the constant evolution of new programs and curricula in relevant areas of study. To this end, ISU will be augmented by an expanding base of campus facilities, networks and affiliations both on and off the Earth.
ISU is an institution dedicated to the development of the human species, the preservation of its home planet, the increase of knowledge, the rational utilization of the vast resources of the Cosmos, and the sanctity of Life in all terrestrial and extraterrestrial manifestations. ISU is a place where students and scholars seek to understand the mysteries of the Cosmos and apply their knowledge to the betterment of the human condition. It is the objective of ISU to be an integral part of Humanity’s movement into the Cosmos, and to carry forth all the principles and philosophies embodied in this Credo.
THIS, THEN, IS THE CREDO OF ISU. For all who join ISU, we welcome you to a new and growing family. It is hoped that each of you, as leaders of industry, academia and government will work together to fulfill the goals set forth herein. Together, we shall aspire to the Stars with wisdom, vision and effort.
Furthermore, Live Science has reported the ISU “has made a five-year commitment to establish and host the International Institute of Space Commerce - conceived of as the world’s leading authority on space commerce.”
So there you have it; innovation boosted competition, leads to commerce, spurring growth and a renewed sense of achievement. As always: World, keep innovating so we can keep driving forward at the speed of 1670 km/hr – times - 30 km/sec.
I know a lot of you are wondering how we at Global Nation Organization can support democracy, but rail against Islam. Simple: Islam is not a religion, but a totalitarian ideology masked as a religion. It is no different from Communism or Fascism.
Tonight I spent most of the night looking over the American Congress For Truth website. I became intrigued by Brigitte Gabriel. Some where along the line I came across her video’s on YouTube. I realize it will take time for people to watch all seven of the videos recorded by The Heritage Foundation, but really…you must. Our freedoms are imperiled by Islamofascim, so please watch the videos. You can thank me later.
For the past five years the world has been consumed with news from Iraq. Daily, we receive the latest death tally. Daily, we are bombarded with Arab and more objective media reports on the U.S. invasion on Iraq, referring to U.S. presence there as an occupation. I do not particularly care for the use of that word. It resonates with fascism. I am sure that is the objective of those who use it; hoping to shape our thinking on the U.S. involvement. And truthfully, that is all it is, a long drawn-out involvement.
Instead of just invading Iraq to remove a tyrant who threatened local and global relations and then leaving once the job was done, the U.S. chose to stay. Further engaging in an internal struggle for control of a region whose name for the past 69 years has been IRAQ.
Unfortunately for the American military personnel, as well as the Iraqi people, George Bush did not quite understand how Middle Easterners think. He seemed to believe the Iraqi people were waiting around for someone to come liberate them. And once liberated they would become a free and active democratic nation. No, not possible. Not at that time. What do Iraqi’s know of democracy? No other Muslim nation in the Middle East is democratic, so where is their role model?
Now I cannot fault Bush entirely, he wanted to show the Iraqi’s how to govern with fairness and trust. Perhaps thinking they would model their free nation, on a properous western-styled republic. In the end though, the Iraqi war has demonstrated, Might is Right. Unfortunately, it took George Bush five years to understand that concept. Five years and thousands of lives later the troop deployment is nearly sufficient to controll the anarchy. George Bush is finally playing by Muslim rules, Might is Right. What choice does he have?
My hope is still that the U.S. will leave Iraq immediately. Leave them to manage their own mess. Leave them to choose whether they want to slaughter each other or hammer out an agreement to establish a nation with common values; even if that choice is to separate into three new countries. Truth be told, they are stronger as one nation, with three states, than three nations that might then fracture even further.
Let Fate or Insufficiency provide
Mean ends for men who what they are would be:
Penned in their narrow day no change they see
Save one which strikes the blow to brutes and pride.
Our faith is ours and comes not on a tide:
And whether Earth's great offspring, by decree,
Must rot if they abjure rapacity,
Not argument but effort shall decide.
They number many heads in that hard flock:
Trim swordsmen they push forth: yet try thy steel.
Thou, fighting for poor humankind, wilt feel
The strength of Roland in thy wrist to hew
A chasm sheer into the barrier rock,
And bring the army of the faithful through.
– George Meredith
I have always seen an invention as something that isn’t so much created out of nothing, but is there, waiting to be discovered. Now an invention can be the result of visionary thinking; seeing the invisible. Or as shown in the following article, it can be a valuable improvement on something that already exists. Applying the principle of evolution to tools, methods and objects other than a living thing, is a clever way of inventing. It is in and of itself evolutionary in thinking, resulting in a smarter way of making things work better.
Don’t invent, evolve
Oct 3rd 2007
From Economist.comThe inventor’s trial-and-error approach can be automated by software that mimics natural selection
“I HAVE not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” So said Thomas Edison, the prolific inventor, speaking of his laborious attempts to perfect the incandescent light bulb. Although 10,000 trial-and-error attempts might sound a little over the top, an emerging technique for developing inventions knocks even Edison’s exhaustive approach into a cocked hat. Evolutionary design, as it is known, allows a computer to run through tens of millions of variations on an invention until it hits on the best solution to a problem.
As its name suggests, evolutionary design borrows its ideas from biology. It takes a basic blueprint and mutates it in a bid to improve it without human input. As in biology, most mutations are worse than the original. But a few are better, and these are used to create the next generation. Evolutionary design uses a computer program called an evolutionary algorithm, which takes the initial parameters of the design (things such as lengths, areas, volumes, currents and voltages) and treats each like one gene in an organism. Collectively, these genes comprise the product’s genome. By randomly mutating these genes and then breeding them with other, similarly mutated genomes, new offspring designs are created. These are subjected to simulated use by a second program. If a particular offspring is shown not to be up to the task, it is discarded. If it is promising, it is selectively bred with other fit offspring to see if the results, when subject to further mutation, can do even better.
The idea of evolutionary algorithms is not new. Until recently, however, their use has been confined to projects such as refining the aerodynamic profiles of car bodies, aircraft fuselages and wings. That is because only large firms have been able to afford the supercomputers needed to mutate and crossbreed large virtual genomes—and then simulate the behaviour of their offspring—for perhaps 20m generations before the perfect design emerges.
What has changed, in this as in so much else, is the availability and cheapness of computing power. According to John Koza of Stanford University, who is one of the pioneers of the field, evolutionary designs that would have taken many months to run on PCs are now feasible in days.
The result is that the range of applications to which the principles of evolutionary design are being applied is growing fast. Among those revealed at the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference held in London this summer were long-life USB memory sticks, superfast racing-yacht keels, ultra-high-bandwidth optical fibres, high performance Wi-Fi antennae (evolved to avoid patent fees), cochlear implants that can optimise themselves to individual patients and a cancer-biopsy analyser that was evolved to match a human pathologist’s tumour-spotting skills.
How can evolution help improve a USB stick? It turns out that the storage transistors in these flash-memory devices are prone to being gummed up with electrostatic charge that they cannot dissipate. That prevents them being erased, limiting the stick’s useful life. A team at the University of Limerick in Ireland therefore evolved new signal-timing patterns that minimise the build-up of the disabling charge. The result: USB sticks that last up to 30 times longer than their predecessors. At the University of Sydney, in Australia, Steve Manos let an evolutionary algorithm come up with novel patterns in a type of optical fibre that has air holes shot through its length. Normally, these holes are arranged in a hexagonal pattern, but the algorithm generated a bizarre flower-like pattern of holes that no human would have thought of trying. It doubled the fibre’s bandwidth.
Meanwhile, Pierrick Legrand of the University of Bordeaux has used the method to optimise individual devices to the user. The devices in question are cochlear implants, which help those hard of hearing to hear better. One of the hardest tasks facing those who fit these devices is working out the precise choreography of the voltages and timings that need to be applied to the 20 or so electrodes embedded in the auditory nerve, in order to make them work properly. The signals required vary from patient to patient and some people go many years before an audiologist gets it right. Dr Legrand, however, has developed an evolution-based system that works on the fly. It co-evolves several channels at a time, allowing a patient to tell his doctor how each pattern of electrode stimulation is faring. Dr Legrand says that one patient, who had experienced a decade of trouble with his implant, had it fixed in a couple of days by the evolutionary method.
Perhaps the most cunning use of an evolutionary algorithm, though, is by Dr Koza himself. His team at Stanford developed a Wi-Fi antenna for a client who did not want to pay a patent-licence fee to Cisco Systems. The team fed the algorithm as much data as they could from the Cisco patent and told the software to design around it. It succeeded in doing so. The result is a design that does not infringe Cisco’s patent—and is more efficient to boot. A century and a half after Darwin suggested natural selection as the mechanism of evolution, engineers have proved him right once again.