Scotland's Cars Could Soon Run on Whiskey Byproducts

[Nick the DSM]

It's very possible. I mean drag cars can run on alcohol, I don't see why passenger cars can't as well. Ofcourse, the compression ratios would need to be changed a bit.

[Pleater]

Something like the plot of Jurassic Park eh?

Whenever (in a film) someone in a white coat says 'we have ensured that they cannot breed' - you just know that in the next ten minutes there are going to be eggshells, seed pods or cute squeaky infant monsters discovered.

With all the genetic research and DNA analysis going on there have been some odd discoveries, such as plants containing bits of DNA which resemble parts of animal genes. Some red colouration in plants is the result of there being mammal type blood redness in their genes.

That defies normal theories of evolution - unless - somewhere, there was a pale plant at the point of producing seed, spattered with mammal blood which somehow got involved in the process. Altered seeds which produced plants which were redder in some way that might have then been more attractive to insects - resulting in more altered seeds and - eventually some perplexed people in white coats.

It isn't just the magnets that bothers me - have you ever seen/smelt a battery recycling plant?

Bleugh!!

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

QUOTE=Bugbear;905656]Yes, Pleater, I understand, and I think we are mostly on the same wave length.

1. Where does a lot of the "rare earth" materiel for the magnets for all the electric cars et al come from?
2. They say they are now able to put a termination gene in the GM crops that keeps the pollen from being viable, or something like that. However, plants do swap genes through parasites, and more importantly, introducing a gene into the gene pool of an ecosystem can cause alleles to arise a little like a sympathetic vibration, or filling gaps created by the expantion of the gene pool.


It is all very, very complicated and unpredictable.[/QUOTE]

[Mike_Oettle]

Thanks for posting that great story, Jeeper. Just one problem: in copying the article you also inserted an extra letter that turned the (Scotch) whisky under discussion into (Bourbon or Irish) whiskey!
It would be great if a similar programme were introduced in the US, or in Ireland, in which case it would be whiskey that was contributing to the environment.
But for the moment it’s only Scotland, and only whisky.
Perhaps something similar could be done with the waste products of South Africa’s wine farms. I’m sure pressed grapes and stalks (known in Afrikaans as doppe) have more uses than feeding pigs (as we used to on our farm).
Regards,
Mike

[Bugbear]

Just so you all don't think Pleater is crazy, here are a couple of short articles on the subject of plant hemoglobin. And I note that the first article points out that the plant hemoglobin may have lead to animal hemoglobin when they diverged into their different kingdoms. So we inherited our blood from our ancient vegetable or pre-vegetable ancestors. The second article shows the importance to agriculture that the plant hemoglobin may play; just think if crops like wheat could be engineered to fix their own nitrogen like beans do.

"Hemoglobin may be common in plants," Science News (Jan 16, 1988).
"Plant hemoglobins: Oxygen handlers critical for nitrogen fixation," (EurekAlert! Public News List/AAAS March 28, 2005).

In my view, humans are part of the world genom, part of nature, and we are the only part, so far, that has the potential to preserve samples of large parts of the world genom's microbial underbelly beyond the time when the sun toast the earth: billion or so years. So we ain't that bad.

[Pleater]

Your concerns for my apparent sanity are much appreciated, but the bit of research I noted was concerned with what appeared to be a bit of DNA from an mammal managing to migrate into the plant cells and alter the appearance of the adult plant.

I think it was mentioned in a radio program where somone was explaining using viruses to introduce DNA into Human cells where there is a defective gene. When challenege about the effectiveness of the process the theory about the red colour was quoted.

When it comes to managing to reproduce itself DNA is pretty much the one that wrote the book.

The feature which makes butanol so interesting is that it can be mixed into petrol and the average car engine of today will burn it without any major alteration - a slight adjustment in the mixture within normal tolerences maybe - but there is no significant cost to begin to use it.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

[Bugbear]

Your concerns for my apparent sanity are much appreciated, but the bit of research I noted was concerned with what appeared to be a bit of DNA from an mammal managing to migrate into the plant cells and alter the appearance of the adult plant.

I think it was mentioned in a radio program where somone was explaining using viruses to introduce DNA into Human cells where there is a defective gene. When challenege about the effectiveness of the process the theory about the red colour was quoted.

When it comes to managing to reproduce itself DNA is pretty much the one that wrote the book.

The feature which makes butanol so interesting is that it can be mixed into petrol and the average car engine of today will burn it without any major alteration - a slight adjustment in the mixture within normal tolerences maybe - but there is no significant cost to begin to use it.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

Ya, that can happen too, Pleater, there is a crown gall bacteria that can be fed DNA and then used to infect a plant to cause the mutation, however DNA can be directly blasted into the sells of a plant on microscopic pieces of tungsten,* kind of like a shotgun. I would not be at all surprised if there are many other ways in which this gene swapping could happen.
I'm still thankful to my ancient vegetable ancestors for hemoglobin, though.

Lynn Margulis, et al, have pretty much shown that there was a symbioses of single celled critters that formed the branch that became plants and animals; the mitochondria and the cell nuclei being different organisms that ended up in a third single celled organism, and possibly a fourth for the wiggly parts.

Yes DNA is a master "boot strapper," however, Seth Lloyd, of MIT and the Santa Fe Institute, in his book, Programming the universe: a quantum computer scientist takes on the cosmos, (New York: Random House/Knopf, Borzoi Books Ebook version 3.0, 2006), points out that sub atomic particles and quantum systems transfer or copy their bits of information about states of entropy between each other as they interact. The gist of the book is that the universe is a quantum computer that is calculating itself; I think you would find the book very interesting, Pleater. There's even discussions of monkies typing computer programs...

Being usable in "off the shelf" engines is a mager plus for the butanol; alcohol or ethanol has an issue with it's hygroscopic tendencies. I think there's other issues, too.

The tie in to Scotland, thus kilts?

James Clerk Maxwell's second law of thermodynamics, and James Watt's improved steam engine.



* I looked at a few of my plant biology and horticulture textbooks, and there are several other ways of injecting DNA into plant cells. Also, Harry Home (Lord Kames) dabbled in the agricultural sciences back during the Scottish Enlightenment, and the lead singer of "Jethro Tull," Ian Anderson, is Scottish, as well as, runs a salmon fishery.
"Jethro Tull Ian Anderson runs fish farm," by
Sissel McCarthy (May 5, 1998) CNN.