• I like the fuel efficiency standard of 45mpg by 2030, although from a technology standpoint I think it can go a bit higher, considering that Europe has set the same standards for 3 years from now.  Obviously this is a behavior issue though, as Americans like large inefficient cars.  Perhaps that will change in the next 20 years though, where we will find we can eclipse this mark.

• In relation to the above comment, it is important to recognize that when discussing gasoline versus electric cars, fuel savings is not equivalent to CO₂ savings.  While the proposal takes into account the increased electricity demand, the opportunity cost of gasoline cars compared to electric vehicles must include the CO₂ released in the production of the electricity used in the vehicle.  Using current figures, I recently wrote a blog in which I calculated that electric vehicles emit 2/3 less CO₂ when traveling the same distance as the average internal combustion car.  While it would certainly be reduced even more as coal and gas electricity generation is replaced by renewable resources, this CO₂ contribution needs to be included in the personal vehicle numbers that the proposal quotes.

• Clean Energy 2030 deserves a lot of credit for recognizing the potential of a program like cash for clunkers (they reference this article in their proposal) well before it was readily accepted and implemented.   Accelerated replacement of inefficient vehicles provides immediate carbon emission savings, and establishes a standard for future car generations.  The total fuel and carbon savings from this program will perhaps be the subject of another blog…

• I agree with the limited role that biofuels are given.  I know I am probably angering a whole community of scientists with that statement, but I am open to debate on the subject.  In my opinion there are three main reasons I do not support biofuels, at the moment.  Firstly, I don’t believe that biofuels are truly renewable.  While they in theory have a zero net carbon cycle, this is only true if the biomass is replanted, re-grown, or re-produced in an equal manner.  But it is not a closed cycle.  The process requires land (for the scale of production required), and land is a limited resource that is used for other products and other means that are just as, if not more important, as outlined in this Science article, which was also covered in The New York Times.  The process also requires extreme amounts of water, which may be a concern in coming ages.  Secondly, the complete energy efficiency of the cycle, depending on the type of biomass, remains relatively low.  Thirdly, there just isn’t enough biomass in the quantities needed in order to significantly impact the energy demand of the world.  Despite that, there are and will be more niche areas where biomass serves as a great solution, especially where the added advantages of having a liquid fuel can be utilized.  Plenty of information on the basics of biofuels can be found here.

• I am guessing that the intermittency cost of 20$/MWh is not arbitrary, so I would be curious to find out from what source it is taken.  Intermittency is and will be a key issue as more solar and wind generation is added to the grid.  However, there is a possible solution. While I may be accused of being biased because my background is in solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), SOFCs offer a unique solution in that they can be run in reverse as electrolysis cells (SOECs).  This dual nature allows for generation of electricity from hydrogen and hydrocarbon fuels, but also storage of electricity in the form of these same fuels.  Hence, they can be used for power leveling where excess electricity is converted to fuel to be used later when demand exceeds production.  SOFCs are also a distributed energy solution, where residential houses, commercial buildings, and utility companies can each have their own fuel storage and electricity generation systems.  The full cycle efficiency of electricity-fuel-electricity of an SOFC/EC is upwards of 70%, which approaches the cycle efficiency of a battery, with the added benefit of having unlimited energy storage.  While SOFCs are currently not cost effective, ongoing research can certainly meet efficiency and cost goals by 2030, which should greatly reduce the 20$/MWh intermittency value.

• I agree with the doubts regarding the viability of carbon capture as a solution to CO₂ emissions.  This is a very expensive technology in today’s form, and has not been proven effective in large scale.  Additionally, the problem remains as to where and how one would be able to store all this carbon and CO₂.  I reference again Nathan Lewis’ talk as a great outline for the concerns regarding this technology.

• It should not go unmentioned that there are other cost savings to creating a renewable energy economy that are less tangible, yet just as important.  Among these are reduced defense spending to fund wars as a result of needed oil imports (“petrodictatorships”, as coined by Thomas Friedman in “Hot, Flat, and Crowded”), cleaner environments, healthier air, and hopefully, less costs resulting from reduced climate change.

• I am a strong believer that any and all technologies that offer viable solutions to our current carbon emissions problems should be implemented in one form or another.  While it is my opinion that solar power will be the sole solution to the world’s energy problems in the distant future, a suite of near-term solutions is the most practical and cost-effective means for achieving this goal.  With that said, it is important to recognize that efficiency is not a solution in and of itself to our energy problems.  While efficiency measures can produce incredible cost and carbon savings, as recently outlined by a team at McKinsey, maintaining electricity demand at current levels over the next 20 years, the goal of Clean Energy 2030, would be just as detrimental without significant development of renewable energy sources.  Efficiency measures with today’s energy portfolio only delay the problem.  But efficiency measures enhance the solution when renewable sources are implemented.

• Lastly, the financial model is very sensitive to the price of gasoline, as witnessed by the change that occurred when the value was reduced from $4 to $3.  It would be nice to see how sensitive the model is to gasoline prices in general, as well as any other variables that are subject to change.  With that in mind, I think the best way to present the data is in a “best case – worst case” scenario, where a range of possible outcomes is given.  Or at least it could be determined at what price of gasoline the plan breaks even.  This would give the reader some insight into how robust the proposal is with respect to natural variables.

In conclusion, I think that Clean Energy 2030 is a great source for understanding the possible solutions for reducing our carbon emissions and establishing a renewable energy portfolio.  Whether you agree with the ideas and the financials or not, I hope that we can all agree that a solution in general is needed to curb our nation’s dependence on fossil fuels.

They were all in such a twisted mess that I was reminded why I kept them all stuffed down behind my desk and kept out of sight. Untangling all of the cables and then figuring out how to connect them all to my new computer was the most time consuming part of installing the computer. If only someone would invent a way to power a computer and all of the peripheral devices without the need for all of the cables. What if there were such a thing as wireless transmission of electricity?

The concept of transmitting electricity wirelessly is actually an old one. Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla both did research on wireless electricity back in the late 1800’s. Although they agreed that it was important to research how to transmit electricity wirelessly, they disagreed on how electricity should be generated. I like to think of Tesla and Edison as the original AC/DC. Tesla thought that electricity should be generated and transmitted as alternating current while Edison believed that it should be done via direct current. While we know that Tesla, over time, won that debate, it is interesting to note that both scientists agreed that it would not be very efficient to create a massive infrastructure of metal wires around the globe. Unfortunately, with wireless electricity never taking hold, what has developed over time is a massive system of hard wiring that would disappoint both Edison and Tesla.

Even though the concept of wireless electricity has, for the most part, fallen by the wayside for the past 100 years, it is now shockingly close to being commercially available. Watch the following videos and see if you find them as amazing as I do.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

This method of transmitting electricity can charge many different devices over a range of many meters. How does it work? Basically, energy is transmitted as an electromagnetic wave from a transmitter coil to a receiver coil, in much the same way that radio waves are transmitted to a stereo receiver from a radio tower. The wireless devices being shown in the videos have the main (transmitter) coil hidden in the table/counter. The main coil transmits low frequency electromagnetic waves to a receiver coil hidden in the devices being powered. The receiver coil vibrates at the same resonant frequency as the transmitter coil, absorbs the electromagnetic energy, and voltage begins to build up that can then be used as electricity. The transmitter coil can be hidden in a ceiling, behind a wall, or, as shown in the videos, under a desk or countertop. The receiver coil needs to be embedded in or attached to the device being powered.

With this type of technology you would never again have to plug in your cellphone, iPod, Blackberry, etc. Simply place them on a surface that is near a transmitter coil and they would start to charge. Imagine having a transmitter pad in your garage that you could park an electric car on. Simply pull into your garage and your car will start to charge right away. The possibilities are endless.

You won’t find this technology at your neighborhood Radio Shack, or at least you won’t find it there right now. Maybe soon? How cool would that be? Hopefully it will be quite some time before I buy a new computer but, when I do, I hope that I can simply set my new computer onto a desktop fitted with the wireless electricity technology and skip having to spend time with the mess of cables behind my desk that appear to be reproducing like tribbles.

• I like that the renewable energy goals are being achieved through three main areas: wind, solar, and geothermal. Nathan Lewis at the California Institute of Technology outlines the total energy that can be potentially captured from natural resources in a series of talks and papers. Of these, wind, solar, and geothermal comprise the three largest, although solar by far is greater than the other two. With that in mind, I think the goal with respect to wind is reasonable in that the technology is currently close to maturity and is cost effective. In my opinion however, the geothermal goals seem a bit inflated considering the level of investment that will be needed for widespread implementation of enhanced geothermal systems. Globally speaking, I think solar (thermal and photovoltaic) will be the best solution, but utilizing all of our mix of resources for a near-term national solution is advisable.

• Transmission capacity will certainly need to be expanded in order to support the increased production from remote and distributed sources, as noted in the proposal. However, the proposal should also take into account transmission efficiency. This is a major area for improvement, as transmission losses make up a large part of the 68% of electricity produced that is wasted, according to 2008 numbers. So while end-use electrical efficiency can be improved through technologies such as Google’s PowerMeter, we should also focus on smart-grid technologies and advancements in superconductors for increased supply efficiency. Perhaps this area is included in the efficiency measures taken to produce flat electricity demand?

• I agree that the personal vehicle sector will be the easiest upon which to impart change, but we shouldn’t forget the other 40% of the transportation sector where efficiency improvements can, and are being made. GE has made strides in locomotive efficiency, while large-scale implementation of hybrid trucks, fuel cell buses, and efficient passenger planes are all feasible within the next 20 years.

• I agree that the private sector will/should provide much of the funding for these initiatives, in addition to that which the government contributes. More than anything, the role of the government is most valuable in instilling an attitude with the public that these changes are necessary, and with that said, I think so far the Obama administration has done a good job showing that energy policy is a priority. This includes funding in all levels of R&D, including basic sciences.

• The proposal does not take into account the natural behavioral phenomenon I like to call “guilt-free purchasing” – the idea that if something is environmentally cleaner and/or more energy efficient, people may naturally buy more of it compared to their normal purchases. For example, if a futuristic newly established business knows that LED lights are more efficient, and that the electricity they are using comes from mostly renewable energy, they may install twice as many lights as are necessary to illuminate their showroom. In this sense, publicly speaking, if there is an idea that the electricity we use is clean, people will tend to use more of it, and care less about efficiency. The point I am making is that it is easy to push better efficiency when there are multiple drivers in addition to just cost, i.e. CO₂ emissions from electricity generation. As a result, the efficiency measures in the proposal that keep demand constant over the next 20 years are based on today’s urgency. If and when the nation’s electricity is mostly from renewable energy, these efficiency standards will be hard to maintain, especially in a world where economic prosperity and energy consumption are so closely tied. The trouble with this notion is that it is very difficult to quantify. My comment then is that one must be cognizant of this phenomenon and perhaps include a time-dependent variable in the electricity demand calculations that account for this.

Part III coming soon with more comments…

One notable participant, and leader in my opinion, is Google, whose “Clean Energy 2030” proposal for reducing US dependence on fossil fuel was first presented in October of 2008.  The proposal is organized to address three main areas of action: energy efficiency, renewable (carbon-free) electricity, and personal vehicles.  By addressing these areas in combination, their analysis concludes that by the year 2030 the following reductions can be made from the predicted EIA baseline numbers: fossil fuel-based electricity down 88%, vehicle oil consumption down 44%, and overall US CO₂ emissions down 49%.

Google is unique in that they have used their resources to not only hire staff to take the time to develop such proposals, but they also have started to implement these solutions within Google and throughout the community.  Through the creation of google.org, they have committed to “address some of the world’s most urgent problems.”  Under this umbrella falls such clean energy initiatives as RE<C (renewable energy costs less than coal), RechargeIT (plug-in hybrid vehicle expansion, including solar-powered recharging stations), and Google PowerMeter (smart energy monitoring).  Each of these initiatives represents part of the solutions that were mapped out in Clean Energy 2030.

One of Google’s plug-in hybrid vehicles getting recharged as part of their RechargeIT initiative.

I write about these things not as a commercial for Google, but to use them as an example of what I think is an important responsibility of the private sector: the involvement of companies beyond their own internal interests.  Additionally, I think it is important for people to think about these solutions, whether you agree with them or not.  Certainly no proposal will be 100% accurate, nor will everyone agree with it.  But debate about these issues and getting the public involved are keys to moving forward and finding the right solutions.  Besides the policy, however, it is the science, technology, and innovation that I hope people find most fascinating.  It has been a long time since such a universal and interdisciplinary problem has been presented to the scientific community.

So it is my proposal to you, the reader, that you read Clean Energy 2030, and/or other proposals like it, and comment on what you liked, and what you disagreed with.  I too will be following up with another blog on my specific thoughts as well.  Beyond that, if you’re just looking for some background on the subject, the proposal outlines well the major areas of scientific research that will be so important to our society in helping us solve our energy problems.

Eventually, my distaste for bottled water focused on how the whole concept of bottling and selling water in an industrialized nation, like the U.S., is incredibly unfriendly towards the environment. When I think of how much fossil fuel goes into the manufacture of all of those little plastic bottles which are then filled with water and then flown to America from places like France and Fiji at the expense of burning more fossil fuels so that Americans can drive around in their fossil fuel burning monster-sized SUVs while drinking the stuff and then the empty bottles are carted away by fossil fuel burning trucks and are deposited in land fills where they then take about 450 years to decompose…..well, I think you get my point.

Now I have a new reason to not like bottled water. Could bottled water be dangerous to human health? I just read an article called “Bottled Water Under Scrutiny” (C&En News, July 13, 2009). A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report points out that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not have the authority to require bottled water companies to use certified labs to test their water quality or to report their test results. The EPA, on the other hand, regulates municipal tap water, and certified labs MUST be used to test municipal tap water. In addition, suppliers of tap water must provide annual quality reports to consumers of their water. The article goes on to point out that only two of 188 bottled water companies provide customers with quality testing information from certified labs.

That makes me feel a whole lot better about using the water fountain right outside the door to my office. I feel comfortable knowing that the water I drink every day in Chicago and Evanston is regularly tested. I have no idea how the quality of the water from the vending machine downstairs compares to the quality of the water from the city. I think I’ll stick with the water fountain outside my office door. It will give me peace of mind, save me money, and be much more friendly towards the environment.

This story reflects a burgeoning trend by companies to spin their products in a way that shines favorably on the environment. We probably never thought about the impact of spam on CO2 emissions, but thanks to McAfee, we can now feel good about buying their product. This is all well and good, and simply reflects the very positive cultural and societal movement towards cleaner and more efficient energy production and usage in order to reduce our environmental imprint. However, as with all science, it is necessary to analyze studies like this in detail, and to be cognizant of any conflicts of interest that may exist. In the case of corporate advertising, the vested interest of the company in producing data which leads to more sales is glaring.

The most interesting part of the McAfee study is that about 80% of the energy associated with spam comes from the user end: viewing and deleting spam, manually filtering, and searching for false positives (scanning the spam folder for valuable emails accidentally filtered from the inbox). The energy associated with each of these categories is defined as “user hours,” calculated by multiplying the time spent for these acts by the average power required by the computer.

It is in the application of these “user hours” that McAfee confuses and distorts the issue, and inflates the environmentally deleterious impact of spam presumably for its own economic benefit. The energy associated with user hours is only a factor if, in lieu of viewing and filtering spam, the computer would have been off. It is the difference in energy between normal non-spam behavior and behavior with spam, the opportunity cost (to use a business term), that should be used in the analysis. The only scenario where the McAfee analysis is correct would be where the computer is on an extra amount of time due to the user time spent dealing with spam. If you spend 15 minutes a day dealing with spam, do you stay an extra 15 minutes at work, or at home on the computer, AND do you turn your computer on and off each time you use it? It is safe to say that most people’s computing behavior does not follow this pattern.

Here is another way to look at the issue. Most people take time during the work day to go to the bathroom or to take a coffee break. This on average would be about 15 minutes away from your computer. Do you turn your computer off when you go to the bathroom? I know I don’t. Using the same analysis and logic as McAfee, the global energy and CO2 footprint of people simply going to the bathroom would be just as large (maybe I just inadvertently proposed the new advertising campaign for the antidiarrheal industry). The point is, by treating user time as added energy, McAfee has greatly inflated their numbers to their benefit.

I commend McAfee for its efforts to analyze the energy associated with an industry. These types of studies are very useful and often shed light on existing inefficiencies. The references it used and the data it collected were both excellent. However, its representation of the final data fell short. Despite this, they were successful in highlighting a much broader and more important related issue: how much energy is wasted by computers that are on and not being used. I’m turning mine off after I write this.

One, Li ion batteries can be bulky when designed to power something like a car; for a typical laptop, to get about 5 hours of battery life, you need a reasonably large battery, bigger than the standard one they come fitted with. Two, li-ions have a finite number of discharge cycles – this means that as they are used over time, their charge capacity (how long they last) degrades, until they die. The more they are used, the faster they die, leaving a near useless husk of toxic chemicals. There are some agencies that take in old batteries and recycle them, but the fact remains that reliability over time must go down.

What this means for electric cars, is that a typical unit designed to power them would keep the range of the car limited between recharges, with that range constantly decreasing, until the large battery would need to be removed and replaced. This is seen in cell phones often – their batteries typically last a couple of years, just long enough in most contracts to be eligible for a phone upgrade. This leads to a massive amount of cell phone trash – instead of buying new batteries, which are nearly as expensive as the phones themselves, people just get new phones and throw their old ones away.

The way EESUs work is quite different. The device uses barium titanate powder, made from barite, whose world reserves are estimated at about 2 billion tons (enough for about 10 billion units at current specifications). The actual energy storage is 52 KWh, about 1.5 times as much as a typical li-ion battery and made at about 25% the cost. In the event of a crash, the unit is designed to instantly discharge into the ground should it become compromised. The broken unit can be sent back and remade into a new unit.

EESUs have been tested into the millions of cycles, an almost limitless lifetime, compared to the 5000 discharge cycle limit on li-ion batteries. How it actually works, according to US Patent 7033406, involves sintering small grains of barium titanate powder into a bulk ceramic, which eliminates pore space, thus reducing the discharge rate. Barium titanate crystals have high permittivity (ability to store energy), and the bulk ceramic is designed to mimic this behavior. A single unit of these in a car would not only extend the range, life expectancy, and decrease charge time (the average charge time is 3-6 minutes [Source: EEStor, INC]), it would also allow electric cars to be viable for the mainstream public.

Some of you may have seen the film, Who killed the Electric Car (2006), a documentary about the rise and fall of electric cars in the United States. For those who haven’t, you should definitely see it – as much as it is biased, it makes some good points about where our electric cars went. However, a return to electricity-powered cars is coming; hybrids are just one step down that road. The main issues people had with the electric cars of old were the lack of range, problems of recharging and battery replacement, and overall market penetration. For manufacturers, that was the ever-present question – if they made these electric cars, would people buy them? First and foremost is always money. However, to achieve what Obama’s administration has been working toward, freedom from energy dependence and a course change away from eco-damaging energy sources, we are going to need changes on every step of the way: changes in attitude, changes in energy sources and efficiency of transfer, changes in social norms, changes in how we get around.

Perhaps most shocking is the way our society has shifted itself towards personal transportation – commuters going to work are driving cars by themselves, fuel efficiency is among the lowest standards in the world, and there is a general dislike of public transit compared to European nations. EEStor, a Texas based company, is working with Zenn motors, a company devoted to efficient and clean cars, to produce a battery and consequently an electric car able to meet society’s needs. The battery, called an EESU, is a ceramic ultracapacitor, a different technology than our current lithium-ions that address many of the weaknesses of the li-ion batteries. Lightweight, easily recycled, high energy capacity and low recharge time, these EESU batteries are ideal for making electric cars viable. According to company press releases, it would only require $9 worth of electricity for an EESU-powered vehicle to travel 500 miles with zero emissions, versus $60 worth of gasoline in an average combustion engine car (average 22mpg, fuel prices based on 2004 averages). EESUs carry 10 times the power of traditional lead acid batteries without the toxic chemicals and materials. EESUs could very well be the return of the electric car. More on this next week.

Peak energy is the theoretical proposition that at some point – past, current, or future – our capability to extract and process fossil fuels will reach a maximum, and then start to decrease until reserves are wholly depleted. Peak energy has become a widely discussed and disputed subject as carbon emissions and alternative energy have become ubiquitous topics in today’s society.

The idea was first introduced in the 1950s, when M. King Hubbert proposed that the production of a fuel roughly follows a bell curve, with a distinct maximum – and hence, a distinct total reserve of fuel that is known to exist and be economically feasible to extract. This idea has become widely accepted, despite that substantial historical evidence points to a more adaptive theory most notably defended by Morris Adelman at MIT. His proposal is that Hubbert’s peak energy theory posits two major flaws: (1) humans will never know, or be able to know, the entire supply of fuels that exists on earth, a value that is required or assumed in Hubbert’s model, and (2) the model neglects that development of technologies will continue to expand the reserves in a balance with demand and cost.

Proponents of both theories cite historical reserves and production data as evidence in support of their respective positions. Many Hubbert enthusiasts point to the peaking of U.S. oil production in the 1970s as proof that his peak energy theory pans out. However, those observers may neglect to consider that the U.S. is not a self-contained universe, and production has dwindled over the past few decades because cheap and abundant oil is available from the rest of the globe. Technologies have developed that make off-shore oil production possible where it wasn’t just decades ago, but government involvement undeniably plays a role in which of these types of technologies are utilized (i.e., the lack of drilling into Alaska’s massive fossil fuel reserves). In this latter case, domestic production is a choice, not a necessity.

Adelman enthusiasts point to surprising data that, on a global scale, both oil production and global fossil fuel reserves have continually increased over the past 50 years. In fact, oil reserves today are larger than they were ever known to be. This sole fact seems to support Adelman’s argument that a peak will never occur; that effective technology will always find a means for development of fuel at a cost equal to demand, and hence fuel supplies are unlimited. The practical implication of this theory is that the peak date (the time at which the peak is achieved) is continually pushed further into the future.

In my opinion, it is more realistic that a combination of these two theories better describes the balance between supply and production ability. While technology certainly continues to expand our knowledge of (and access to) global reserves, the nature and scope of future technology is unpredictable. It is very possible that technology will not be able to balance our demand for fuel, resulting in insufficient production and higher prices. This idea produces a mix between Hubbert’s theorized symmetric bell curve and Adelman’s continually rising production curve by adding a time-dependent “technology” factor. The new curve is one in which the peak likely reaches a plateau or is muted, such that there is a slow loss of production after the peak at a rate much less than the slope directly preceding it.

The debate between the Hubberts and the Adelmans is simply theoretical. Yet, its practical effect has been a very real stirring of the general public’s fears. The fear of reaching the peak fuel level causes speculators to overvalue fuel and prices to rise. While that sounds purely negative, the stirring has also resulted in another significant – and in my view, extremely positive – effect: as the public and the government grow wary of reaching the peak fuel level, they become increasingly cognizant of the need to develop alternative and sustainable energy sources.

A recent article in Nature by Kurt Kleiner addresses the impact of peak energy on the global community and the development of sustainable energy technologies. Some argue that the diminution of fossil fuels is undoubtedly a good thing in terms of the movement of energy production towards technologies with minimal carbon emission. I disagree, to the extent that diminution occurs when alternative energy and an accompanying infrastructure are still mere “goals” in society. The dwindling of fossil fuels, without alternatives in place, harms the economy. And while the necessary endgame of fossil fuel reduction is the advancement and increasing cost-efficiency of alternative energy fields, the technologies in general have less room for growth and less capital for investment when the economy is fragile. The ideal environment for sustainable energy development exists when the economy is strong and growing, driven by low fuel costs, and the public and government understand and want to switch to alternative energies.

Instead of actual diminution, the mere fear of the depletion of fuel reserves best drives sustainable energy research and development. When temporary fuel cost crises end and prices go down, as they have every time in the past, we need the global community to have internalized that fear of depletion. In this respect, then, the debate over the peak energy theories may have an important and lasting contribution to our environmental policies and economic prosperity.  Hopefully, the idea of peak energy will spur change well before the theory becomes our reality.

The piece concentrated on the DARPA-funded DEKA arm, developed by inventor Dean Kamen and his team of 40 engineers. Size and comfort were key issues in designing the limb. The final product is the size of an average person’s arm, weighs around nine pounds, and is buffered from the wearer’s body by small balloons that expand and deflate as pressure on the arm changes (the balloons inflate when the wearer picks up something heavy, and deflate when the arm is at rest).  Controlling the arm using their shoulders and pedals in a specially designed shoe, volunteers demonstrated their ability to pick up and drink from a soda bottle and eat a grape.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

The end of the segment touched on the future of prosthetic control, featuring Duke University engineer Jonathan Kuniholm. Kuniholm, who lost his forearm in Irag, demonstrated his ability to control a prosthetic hand using the nerves still intact in the remaining part of his arm. These nerves send out small electrical signals, which a processor in a prosthetic arm can be trained to interpret.

Similar work is being done here by Northwestern faculty member Todd Kuiken and his research team at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. They are using an exciting new procedure called targeted reinnervation to reroute nerves that used to control a missing limb to different, intact muscle areas (rerouting nerves that used to control an amputee’s arm to his or her chest muscles, for example). These reinnervated muscles can then communicate with a prosthesis, again allowing the wearer to control their limb intuitively. Click here to read an SiS article on the Kuiken team’s work.