Fat Bacteria In Our Gut Is Making We Fat!

Bacteria inside our guts will determine our feature to be "obese" or "lean". Researchers in Washington University, U.S.A., have transmitted human's gut bacteria into mice and found that mice with bacteria from obese person are increasing weight.

Researchers started by finding four pairs of human twins, where one twin was obese and one was lean, and then implanted a sample of each of the twins’ gut bacteria into mice that were raised in sterile conditions. Even though all mice were fed the same exact diet, the mice populated by bacteria from the obese twin grew fatter than mice who got the microbes from the lean twin and their metabolism changed, too.

Another stage of the experiment led to an even more interesting result: Combined with a healthy diet, “lean” microbial communities can be transmissible.

Remarkably, when the obese and lean mice were later put in the same cage for 10 days, the obese mice began to show the same “leaner” metabolic profiles of their cagemates (through feces, mice exchange bacteria when they share a cage, but the researchers wanted to find out which bacteria would dominate). This transformation only happened when those mice were fed with healthy diet. Transformation didn't occur when fed with low fiber and high saturated fat diet.

The results emphasize that "lean" gut bacteria combining with healthy diet could help to control obesity. Today, more and more people are taking "good-bacteria" (probiotics) to improve their health. Will a "health-lean" bacteria be added to the line of probiotics one day? So far the study was only done with mice and the same interactions may not happen in humans--but the results offer hope.

Source: http://www.fastcoexist.com/3016825/why-youre-fat/your-fat-bacteria-is-why-youre-fat-and-may-be-the-key-to-an-obesity-cure

Record Month For Australian Wind Farms (About 11% of Malaysian Monthly Consumption)

Australia's wind farms have a record month in August. The entire month of August 2013 wind farms alone had generated 1,024 GWh of electricity. So, how much electricity is this? Lets compare to Malaysia 2011 electricity consumption. In 2011, Malaysia had consumed 107,403 GWh of electricity. Averagely it was about 8,950 GWh per month. Therefore, Australia's wind farms August production is about 11.4% of what Malaysia consumed in a month. Too bad that we don't have a lot of wind potential in Malaysia. It would be good clean and renewable energy source.

Source: http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/graph-of-the-day-record-month-for-australian-wind-energy-51632

Top 20 Countries With Utility-Scale Solar Development

The latest update of utility scale solar developments round the world shows that the US has just joined China as the second country to have installed more than 3GW of “big solar”, and will soon be joined by Germany. Below chart shows the top 20 countries with number of plants and installed capacity. The number under "Capacity" in the chart has unit of "MW".

My neighbor country Thailand is ranked #10 with 9 solar power plants of total 192MW of capacity. According to SEDA, Malaysia has about 40MW of installed solar capacity and about 115MW in progress.

Source: http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/graph-of-the-day-top-20-countries-for-big-solar-37322

Few Spray-On Solar Technlogies - Potential To Further Lower Down Solar Cost

Currently, solar technologies rely on cells made from silicon. The process of manufacturing is expensive and time consuming. More and more engineers and scientists are looking into the so call "spray-on" technology which resembles the process of inkjet printer. You simple "print" the solar cell out. This technology could make solar panel relatively inexpensive, easy-to-manufacture.

Below are few "spray-on" technologies:

(1) Researcher Jillian Buriak and her team at the University of Alberta have designed nanoparticles that absorb light and conduct electricity, using phosphorus and zinc. Both materials are more plentiful than scarce materials such as cadmium and are free from manufacturing restrictions imposed on lead-based nanoparticles. This new technology could be mass-manufactured using simple methods, such as roll-to-roll printing or spray-coating.

(2) Researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) are working in collaboration with solar company Spark Solar Australia and Finnish materials company BraggOne Oy investigating solar cells made from quantum dots. Quantum dots is a nanocrystal made of semiconductor materials that are small enough, in the size of ~ 0.000001 mm, which displays quantum mechanical properties. These quantum dots are mixed with a conducting polymer to make a plastic. Spray-on solar panels composed of this material can be manufactured to be lighter, stronger, cleaner and generally less expensive solar cells.

(3) Professor David Lidzey and his team from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and the University of Cambridge have created a method of spray-coating a polymer (layman term plastic) based photovoltaic active layer by an air based process – similar to spraying regular paint from a can – to develop a cheaper technique which can be mass produced.

(4) Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. has developed a solar spray-on technology based on carbon compounds. When dried and solidified, the material would behave like semiconductors and generate electricity when exposes to light. Currently, Mitsubishi has achieved a conversion rate of 10.1%, half of what you can get from si panel.

The major issues encountered by most of the "spray-on" technologies are lower cell efficiency, scale-up production, and long-term reliability. It will still be a while before it can be a mainstream technology.