How is Bioethanol Produced?

Bioethanol is produced mainly from the process of sugar fermentation.

Fermentation is a metabolic process (it occurs within cells).

It converts sugars (example: glucose - C6H12O6) to acids, gases or alcohol.  Glucose fermentation produces ethanol and carbon dioxide. An enzyme in yeast acts as a catalyst for fermentation. Beer's gassy head is CO2.

An alternative method of producing bioethanol is reacting ethylene with steam.

Energy crops such as corn and wheat are often used.

Ethanol is a high octane fuel and has replaced lead as an octane enhancer in petrol.

Deepwater Horizon (2016), directed by Peter Berg

Deepwater Horizon was an offshore drilling rig.

It was registered in Majuro, the capital city of the Marshall Islands (equatorial islands in the Pacific Ocean) and constructed in 2001 by Hyundai Heavy Industries.

It was owned by Transocean and leased to BP.  Deepwater Horizon drilled the deepest oil well in history in September 2009 at a vertical depth of 10,683m in the Tiber Oil Field in the Gulf of Mexico.

It used both

• semi-submersible (think "floating oi rig") and 
• dynamic positioning (DP) technology.

DP uses differential GPS, as the position obtained by ordinary GPS is insufficiently accurate for Dynamic Positioning.

Differential GPS improves accuracy with the aid of a ground-based reference station.

A film based on the blowout at the Deepwater Horizon was directed by New York-born Peter Berg (who also directed Battleship in 2012) starring Dorchester, Boston-born Mark Wahlberg.

Dorchester is steeped in history; it was founded a few months before the founding of the City of Boston.

Nobel Prize in Physics 2016 Awarded for Topology Applied to Materials Science

The Winners

Half of the prize goes to David Thouless. The rest is shared between Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz.

A Common Academic Background

Thouless attended Trinity Hall, one of the oldest of the 31 colleges in the UK's Cambridge University, founded by the Bishop Bateman of Norwich in 1350.

Michael attended Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge (alumni are known as "Caians") and Duncan Haldane at Christ's College Cambridge, a relatively modern college having been founded in 1505.

What they are doing now

Duncan Haldane teaches Physics at Princeton University. All three are experts in condensed matter physics.

What is topology very roughly?

Topology is the study of spaces whose properties remain constant under continuous deformation like stretching and bending. It's useful mathematics because its linked to the physical world.

Keeping up to speed with the Physics world

Nature Physics is a publication that gives you updates on the latest research impacting Physics.

What Exacty is Ivory?

Ivory is a hard material made from animals' tusks and teeth. The ivory obtained from all species is chemically the same, it's a compound of calcium called dentine. Apart from elephants, the main source of ivory, it can also be obtained from walrus, hippopotamus and narwhal. 

What are Range States?

The term Range State is sometimes heard in the context of environmental news. It refers to any nation in which a particular species inhabits or crosses as part of its normal migration route. The term is used by international conservation organizations in the context of formulating conservation policy.

The Range State term is used particularly in the CMS legislation, or Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals. More succinctly, it is known as the Bonn Convention. It is construed under the aegis of the United Nations Environment Program.

The Nobel Prize in Physics

To understand the impact of physics on the world, and the achievements of physicists in recent history, it is very important to have, at very least, a cursory awareness of the Nobel Prize of Physics over the years, and the winners who won them. It has been awarded since 1901, with the first winner being Wilhelm Roentgen, who discovered "Roentgen Rays" now better known as "X rays". He donated the monetary reward he received to his university. The 1902 prize was awarded to Lorentz and Zeeman for the discovery and theoretical explanation of the "Zeeman effect". Its practical use is in magnetograms showing the variations in the magnetic field of the sun.

When did the Dinosaurs Get Extinct?

The dinosaurs are believed to have gone extinct around 66 million years ago, as part of a mass extinction sometimes known as Cretaceous-Tertiary (or "K-T") extinction that wiped out as many as three quarters of plant and animal species on earth. Evidence for this extinction lies in iridium rich layer of sediment found in rocks believed to have come from an asteroid.

The asteroid theory has been dubbed the Alvarez hypothesis after the Nobel prize winner and San Francisco-born Luis Alvarez who proposed it. Luis Alvarez gained his PhD from the University of Chicago and was a member of California's Bohemian Club (founded 1872). Observing particle interactions through a bubble chamber he designed was key to him winning the Nobel Prize.