New Florence. New Renaissance.

The SAP Sapphire Collage

I started writing trip reports when the kids were young and would embed photos and all kinds of trivia from the visits, print them and store them in giant file folders. Even now, they will occasionally flip through the write-ups. As the pandemic started couple of years ago, I started jotting bullets about every day and started taking even more photos. With a new iPhone 12 Pro, the photo collection accelerated. We have had mild lockdowns in FL so my wife and I did lots of day trips and I shared them in an Instagram series called “West Coast on the East Coast”. Someday, I will contribute the hundreds of pages of bullets and thousands of photos to a time capsule about the pandemic. Hopefully, people will see a positive side to the plague.

Google Photos, Facebook and other places where the photos are shared have allowed me to develop collages. I have become pretty good at my own pattern recognition.  Here are some from the Sapphire event last week.

An evergreen SAP

I have heard from a couple of customer execs how nice it is to deal with a Millennial CEO like Christian Klein. I saw him up close in a couple of sessions and was impressed how confident he sounds. Jan Gilg had to replace a COVID-affected Thomas Saueressig at short notice and he handled that admirably. This was Julia White’s first in-person Sapphire and I was impressed by her energy and positivity. Dr Hasso Plattner told me a couple of years ago, he was impressed with how young SAP felt. I did not understand what he meant. After last week, I do.

But not just youth, when Scott Russell shared a photo with the ageless football GOAT Tom Brady it hit me age is a state of mind. Scott brings an incredible career from around the world. Peter Maier does the same with his vertical knowledge.

We had a fascinating conversation with Eva Zauke about localization services for all the countries and local governments SAP supports. It is a endless journey – it used to be languages, payroll and tax support (SAP was born global with MNC customers from Day 1), now it is about data domicile, new ESG regulations and so much more.

Last month, I saw Amy Weaver, President and CFO at Salesforce present a slide at an analyst event. It nicely captured how they have grown through major crises and supported their customers for the last 17 years since their IPO. It hit me that SAP has helped its customers for 50 years through many more transitions – mainframe to client/server to cloud architectures, relational to columnar databases, now it is helping them move to industry networks, low carbon energy, new vaccines and so much else new. And helped customers through a number of recessions and other challenges.

“A Category of One”

Scott Russell said when they segment the market effectively, they are essentially a category of one, onto themselves. I could not agree more. “Vinnie Vertical” was especially thrilled about several one-on-one conversations about Industry trends and technologies with

• Achim Schneider about customer experiences, reverse logistics and other retail trends
• Matthew Reymann about computational chemistry and the opportunity for the Chemical sector with new molecules in energy, food and so many other sectors
• Falk Rieker and trends in fintech
• Benjamin Beberness and energy transition to low carbon in oil and gas and utilities and the dramatically shifting global energy landscape
• E.J. Kenney and the Direct to Consumer trend in CPG, health care and other consumer industries

I will be honest I cannot have such conversations with execs at too many other tech vendors. Having said that I wish the show floor would have not emphasized traditional functional silos – HCM, SCM etc.

I partly blame my side of the aisle – analysts - for reinforcing acronyms which encourage such silos. Easier said than done, but hope SAP starts speaking a different language not just reinforcing this 30-year-old taxonomy. When they compete at a higher level of abstraction, SAP has little competition. Us analysts will eventually catch up.

“The future of everything”

Andre Bechtold and Anita Riegel arranged a personalized tour of the Trilogy fashion/apparel demo company on the show floor which showcased next-gen tech for product innovation, sustainability, robotic manufacturing and retail experiences

I have seen videos of other SAP showcases. It would be nice for SAP to similarly show off the bank branch of the future, the clinic of the future etc. at its events. It would be a logistical challenge to move the giant devices around the world but there is a wow factor in bringing together the physical and virtual worlds.

More adjectives for the enterprise

Christian Klein ended his keynote by raising the bar. It is no longer sufficient to think about an intelligent enterprise. It also needs to be resilient and sustainable. I wish he had added "profitable". We risk largely talking about sustainability as a compliance mandate. We have been growing a number of case studies around the circular economy, low carbon transition which are allowing for new revenue streams and cost savings. We need to highlight that a lot more of that,

Relativity theory and ecosystems

During a visit to Joshua Tree NP. Margaret and I got to spend some time with some astronomers in the desert night and they talked about how much more we know about our celestial skies since they were at school and how the universe keeps “expanding” 

At Sapphire, for a change it was nice to see a compact set of partner booths, but at breakfast with Frank Ruland we discussed the expanding ecosystem around SAP. Strategy consulting firms, warehouse and other bot vendors, digital agencies, SAP.iO Foundries startups, low-code communities, App Stores – it’s not your grandpa’s ecosystem

With these fresh voices, we will hopefully see much more automation of services, new business models and a lot more change.  

Business Model Innovation

In an exchange with Christian Klein, I mentioned that the software industry led customers into new business models like subscriptions starting in the late 90s. Now, many customers are ahead experimenting with outcome-based models, platforms and “everything as service.”

I was pleasantly surprised to hear of the uptake of RISE with SAP, especially with net-new customers. I would love to see SAP and its partners align their economics with those of their customer experiments.  

Sapphire was a whirlwind and as you can see I took hundreds of photos and created tons of collages.

I have been asking every vendor what have you done to take advantage of the last two or three years since your last in-person event? More importantly, what have you done to help your customers through all the shocks and chaos?

I got a pretty convincing set of answers and yet came away with several new questions. As Emerson famously said “It’s not the destination, It's the journey.” As we move to new everything, I would say most customers look forward to lots more of SAP-enabled evolution.

Analyst Cam: Erik Keller - A Therapist’s Garden

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.

I occasionally invite authors to present on their new books in this series. This time it is my former Gartner colleague and mentor, Erik Keller

In his book, available at Amazon, he shares his personal journey after he retired from his technology analyst career and became a master gardener and from there a horticultural therapist. He has helped over a thousand clients including cancer patients and juvenile delinquents with the restorative power of flora.

We cover a surprising amount of STEM topics – gene sequencing in plants, how drones and mapping tech have influenced gardening, Google Lens and gardening mobile apps. I am driving to SAP’s Sapphire event in Orlando this week, and will probably talk about spargel (white asparagus) season (which goes from April to June) with many of the German executives. Erik reminisces about his trips to their HQ in Walldorf and has a botanical angle on the delicacy.

We also discuss how much more information is available even to the amateur gardener nowadays. And how much publishing has changed since his last book, Technology Paradise Lost, he wrote in 2004.

Very inspirational and educational half an hour.

Greening old buildings

BlocPower is a Brooklyn-based start-up that has “greened” more than 1,200 buildings in New York City and has similar projects in two dozen other cities. It uses a lease-to-own platform, offering landlords and homeowners green heating and cooling systems, electric appliances and solar panels. It installs the equipment and manages its upkeep. Landlords make monthly payments that cover those costs and offer returns to investors.

The company reports it has reduced building energy costs by 30% to 50% and reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 40% to 70% in current projects. It says it can reduce U.S. greenhouse gases up to 25% in 10 years and recapture up to 30% of the millions of dollars in wasted energy spent.

CNBC

 

 

Shipping Carbon Dioxide

 

Shipping Carbon Dioxide

Early in February, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries announced that they will build the world’s first ship for transporting carbon dioxide solely from carbon-capture facilities. The demonstration ship, which will be able to haul 1,450 cubic meters of liquefied CO2, is scheduled to be operational by late 2023.

The Japanese shipbuilding giant joins a list of ambitious projects that plan to ship CO2 from the power plants and factories where it’s emitted to sites where the gas can be used or permanently stored. By providing a cost-effective option to transport the greenhouse gas, CO2 shipping could provide an impetus for large-scale deployment of carbon-capture utilization and storage (CCUS).

IEEE Spectrum

Here is a Norwegian version of storing and shipping CO2 - Northern Lights

 

Which lady has yelled at you the loudest?

I have been yelled at by mom, my wife, my daughter and many other ladies but I am going to nominate Lauren Schlichting as the loudest

That’s US Air Force Major Lauren Schlichting.

We were at the Sun n Fun Airshow in Lakeland, FL yesterday. The last mile to the parking lot took us 90 minutes, the grounds were soft from days of rain and sure enough we got stuck in the parking lot mud till help arrived 90 minutes later. So, I was arranging for our tickets when the Thunderbirds show had already started. With my back to them, I was left shaking like a leaf by the loudest sound I have ever heard. So was Margaret 30 feet away and everyone else around us.

The Thunderbirds had flown directly over us in their F-16s. They can technically reach speeds of Mach 2 though in airshows they stay below Mach 1. But it sure felt like a sonic boom had hit us. And Major Schlichting, in her first year as a Thunderbird is the right wing pilot in the diamond foursome formation. It's precision flying - she is often only 18-inches from the lead jet. 2 other solos make up the aerobatic team of 6.

Two weeks ago, I had the chance to see the US Navy’s Blue Angels in their F-18 Super Hornets - see my write up here. Each has their fans. Navy v Air Force. Super Hornet v Fighting Falcon. My wife likes the Thunderbirds jet livery more. 

This video is a nice compilation of both the Thunderbirds and the Blue Angels. Mercifully, they rarely fly together – imagine those roars if they were to try to out-hotdog each other.

You may enjoy my Instagram gallery of 10 photos from the event.

Oh, and btw the Major’s pilot call sign is “Threat”. Don’t piss her off 😊

Supercritical geothermal energy

Quaise Energy, a geothermal energy company born from MIT, has set its sights on harnessing the unlimited renewable energy that exists beneath the earth’s surface. To do so, Quaise plans on drilling holes at least twice as deep as the deepest holes ever created (i.e. Russia’s Kola Superdeep Borehole and Qatar’s Al Shaheen oil well, each of which sit at about 7.5 miles deep), which, according to CEO Carlos Araque, would generate power “at a scale far greater than wind and solar.”.

Extremetech

More on Carbon Capture

Occidental Petroleum Corp., the shale giant backed by Warren Buffett, plans to build 70 carbon capture facilities around the world by 2035 that will each remove as much as 1 million tons per year of the greenhouse gas directly from the atmosphere.

Bloomberg

Here is more on other carbon capture and storage initiatives, and the challenges. It describes some of the technology Oxy will be using.

Geomechanical pumped storage

Quidnet's innovative GPS energy storage technology pumps water underground and stores it between impermeable rock layers. The rock performs like a natural spring and holds the water under pressure. When the project is called upon to supply electricity, the pressurized water is released to power a hydroelectric turbine that generates emission-free electricity. The entire process is closed loop to conserve water resources.

The technology is a form of pumped hydro storage, which currently provides over 90 percent of the world's energy storage capacity, but deployable in a wide and diverse swath of geographies previously considered unsuitable for pumped hydro development. This unique approach to energy storage offers a new, cost-effective, highly scalable tool that is key to unlocking the global clean energy future.

Press release from San Antonio based CPS Energy

Joe Zhou, the CEO of Quidnet Energy describes some of the principles in an investor pitch

 

Hydrogen-fired train

The company, formally East Japan Railway, will begin safety testing on the two-car Hybari train in late March. Plans are to start commercial service in 2030.

Hybari runs off hydrogen fuel cells and batteries. Hydrogen is supplied from tanks to a fuel cell system, and a chemical reaction with oxygen in the air generates electricity. The batteries store energy generated when the brakes are applied.

Nikkei Asia

Video on principles of such trains are designed

Relocating farmland to increase carbon capture

Scientists have produced a map showing where the world's major food crops should be grown to maximize yield and minimize environmental impact. This would capture large amounts of carbon, increase biodiversity, and cut agricultural use of freshwater to zero.

The reimagined world map of agriculture includes large new farming areas for many major crops around the cornbelt in the mid-western US, and below the Sahara desert. Huge areas of farmland in Europe and India would be restored to natural habitat.

The redesign—assuming high-input, mechanized farming—would cut the carbon impact of global croplands by 71%, by allowing land to revert to its natural, forested state. This is the equivalent of capturing twenty years' worth of our current net CO₂ emissions. Trees capture carbon as they grow, and also enable more carbon to be captured by the soil than when crops are grown in it.

Phys.org

Image Credit – Nature

 

 

The awesome Blue Angels

I had a chance last weekend to go to the Airfest at the storied MacDill Airforce Base just a few miles from where we live. I walked through the belly of a C-5 Galaxy and a C-17 Globemaster. Looked inside a Blackhawk helicopter. Stood under the 8 engines of a B-52 Stratofortress. Saw a F-22 Raptor stealth fighter and an E-3 Sentry AWACS radar plane fly by. A demo by a C-130J Super Hercules. See my Instagram post for 10 photos from the visit.

But the highlight of the day was the US Navy’s Blue Angels.

Since 1946, the Blue Angels have performed for nearly 500 million fans. Since 2020, they have flown the F/A-18 Super Hornet E/F. During their demonstration, the Blues fly six aircraft split into the Diamond Formation (Blue Angels 1 through 4) and the Lead and Opposing Solos (Blue Angels 5 and 6). Most of the show alternates between maneuvers performed by the Diamond and those performed by the Solos.

There were 6 Angels in the show including

1. Captain Brian Kesselring, Flight Leader and Commanding Officer
2. Lt. Christopher Kapuschansky (right wing)
3. Lt. Scott Goossens,(left wing)
4. Major Frank Zastoupil (slot)
5. Lieutenant Commander Cary Rickoff (lead Solo)
6. Lieutenant Commander Julius Bratton (Solo)

Check out their bios here and those of Blue Angels 7 and 8 -Lieutenant Griffin Stangel who narrated the show and Lieutenant Katlin Forster, the event coordinator

They did several maneuvers including the Fleur de Lis where the pilots fly over center point, where they separate and do a 360-degree roll with the diamond shape reconnecting through a loop.  Others included the Barrel Roll Break, the Diamond Dirty Loop‎ and the Fortus.

My phone battery died just as the Blue Angels show started. Logan Sears who was with his family next to me in the stands came to the rescue. He kindly sent me half an hour of footage. I have edited in down to 6 minutes of thrilling maneuvers below.

Unbelievably, next weekend the US Air Force’s Thunderbirds in their F-16 Fighting Falcons are coming to a show in Lakeland, a short drive from us.

Try and catch one or both of these acrobatic teams in person if they are ever at a show near you. Quite a thrill to watch and hear their thunder up close.

Vacuum bombs

Britain says the Russian Ministry of Defense has confirmed the use in Ukraine of the TOS-1A weapon system, which uses thermobaric rockets.

Thermobaric weapons, sometimes called "vacuum bombs," basically suck in oxygen from the surrounding air to generate a more high-temperature explosion than conventional bombs.

Though not illegal, their usage is controversial because they are much more devastating than conventional explosives of a similar size, and have a devastating impact on anyone caught in their blast radius.

Radio Free Europe

This video explains how vacuum bombs work and the human impact

Low-intensity nuclear weapons

These warheads make Washington state host to the globe’s third-largest arsenal of deployed nuclear weapons — an estimated 1,120 — behind only Russia and the United States as a whole, whose stockpiles still number in the thousands, despite decades of reductions, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

One weapon in particular on those subs is at the apex of relevance in its short life: The W76-2, a reduced-payload nuclear warhead designed to counter Russia. It was rushed into production by the Trump administration and greenlighted by Congress in anticipation of a moment precisely like this one — a Russian invasion of a friendly nation, where President Vladimir Putin’s “escalate to de-escalate” doctrine could inch the world’s nuclear superpowers closer and closer to an exchange.

Seattle Times

Video below describes the “guaranteed retaliation” principle to have adversaries think long and hard before they launch a preemptive strike

Kamikaze drones

Among the many weapons being used by the Ukrainian military to inflict losses on the Russian invasion forces, several have risen to prominence in the country and on social media. Alongside ‘St Javelin’ and the ‘Ghost of Kiev’ which have mythologised the eponymous anti-tank missile and the Ukrainian air force’s Mig-29 fighters, the Bayraktar TB-2 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has gained a symbolic place in the Ukrainian defensive arsenal.

Bayraktar’s UAV is a comparatively cheap, rugged and efficient platform that is performing well, but it is certainly not a miracle weapon. The effectiveness so far of the TB-2 speaks more to the skill of its Ukrainian operators and the incompetence and operational failures of Russian forces than any particularly unique capabilities of the drone itself.

The Spectator

And here is a US equivalent of what are also called “loitering” missiles

The evolution of hypersonic aircraft

China is developing a hypersonic airliner capable of transporting 10 passengers to anywhere in the world in less than an hour.

The 148-foot-long (45-meter) plane is about a third the size of a Boeing 737 and has delta wings identical to that of Concorde, the world’s first supersonic airliner, but with the tips pointed skyward, reported the Daily Mail.

Officials hope to build a fleet of the jets by the end of 2035 and to increase their capacity to 100 people by 2045 – although their exact purpose is yet to be revealed. Owing to its intricate construction, the plane will be able to travel at a speed of Mach 5 or more than five times the speed of sound.

Eurasian Times

Here is a video which goes into the fits and starts in the evolution of hypersonic craft

Technical Oscars

Don’t look for technical awards in the Oscars telecast tonight

The Scientific and Technical Awards Presentation will be held on Saturday, September 24

The Academy’s Scientific and Technical Awards Committee has started investigations into the following areas:

• Color-accurate real-time streaming collaborative review
• Large format digital cameras
• Anamorphic lenses
• Focus-pulling measurement tools
• Storage mechanisms for long-term film preservation
• Wireless remote lighting control
• Deployable practical on-set rain effect solutions
• Object-based surround sound systems for cinema
• Scalable render farm management systems
• Laser cinema projection systems
• Interactive procedural texturing software

President of Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy talking last year’s technical awards, especially those won by ladies.

Digital twin of the human body

Twin’s Whole Body Digital Twin builds a “digital twin” modeled after a patient’s individual metabolism. This digital replica is continuously updated based on data from wearables, blood tests and self-reported symptoms. AI is then used to analyze the twin and offer personalized guidance that could facilitate improvements.

Users can see how changes to nutrition, sleep, activity and breathing could potentially reverse or prevent chronic metabolic diseases. Because it enlists technology and monitors that are already approved, Twin has said that its system doesn’t need FDA approval.

Medical Media and Marketing

More possible applications of the concept in healthcare

 

AI and new drug innovation

It takes on average a decade to go from the initial discovery stage of a drug to approval and, with a high failure rate, the pharmaceutical industry estimates it costs $2.7bn to bring each one to market. Clinical trials make up the bulk of this time and cost, but discovery and pre-clinical tests can still take three or four years.

During the pandemic, AI was primarily used as a tool to save scientists’ time, accelerating this notoriously slow discovery process, while often using drugs and vaccines designed for similar viruses such as Mers as a starting point. But advocates of AI believe its wider use during the crisis is just the start of a revolution in drug discovery that will harness growth in biological and chemical data, computing power and smarter algorithms that could reduce soaring healthcare bills and create treatments for conditions where we have none.

They argue AI proved itself in the crisis. AbCellera sorted through 6mn cells in three days to find an antibody that could be mass produced — in this case by Eli Lilly — as a drug called bamlanivimab that has helped more than 1mn Covid patients. A supercomputer helped in Pfizer’s quest for an antiviral that could be taken orally.

Financial Times

Demis Hassabis co-founder of Isomorphic Labs which is part of Google presents on the future of AI

Biophilic Design for Hospitals

As a cancer patient himself, he understood that design could play a huge role in how patients experienced the often uncomfortable treatments. He started asking patients what they wanted in a new facility. “What I heard repeatedly is, ‘We don’t want sterile fluorescent lights. We don’t want to feel like we’re on a stage while we’re sitting on these high exam tables and freezing cold in gowns,'” he says. Patients wanted a softer experience, with more natural light, not the typical sterile white walls of a chilly hospital room.

“As we met with the architects, we went with a full natural material palette for everything, lots of varying textures and colors all relating to nature, what we felt was more soft and inviting,” Flora says. He wanted the project to “echo more the feeling you get when you walk into an Apple Store than the feeling you get when you walk into your gynecologist’s office.”

FastCompany

More on biophilic design for health settings

 

The future of mRNA

Messenger ribonucleic acid, or mRNA for short, is a single-stranded molecule that carries genetic code from DNA to a cell's protein-making machinery. Without mRNA, your genetic code wouldn't be used, proteins wouldn't be made, and your body wouldn't work. If DNA is the bank card, then mRNA is the card reader.

At the University of Rochester, Dragony Fu, associate professor, department of biology, received expedited funding for his laboratory from the National Science Foundation to research RNA proteins. If we are currently witnessing mRNA vaccine 1.0 for Covid-19, then 2.0 will address two further categories of disease, says Fu: "one is pathogens, like Sars, but you can apply this technology to other foreign invaders such as HIV. Already before Covid, companies were in development making mRNA vaccines against HIV." He also cites Zika, herpes and malarial parasites in the pathogens camp.

"The other category is autoimmune diseases," he says. "That is intriguing because it's verging beyond the very strict definition of a vaccine." Fu says the future could involve mRNA "treatments", for example to reduce inflammation. "In theory, that opens up so many possibilities," he says.

BBC

Colon Cancer cure next for mRNA?

 

Non-sleep Deep Rest

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, told the Wall Street Journal

“Meditation is something I see the value of, but I struggle to do that. Walking is very helpful to me. I find it much easier to think when I’m walking or pacing. Through the pandemic, sometimes it’s been helpful to take my dog out for a walk, and I can relax by listening to podcasts. I found these podcasts which are non-sleep deep rest, or NSDRs. So while I find it difficult to meditate, I can go to YouTube, find an NSDR video. They’re available in 10, 20 or 30 minutes, so I do that occasionally.”

So what exactly is NSDR? It includes specific techniques to reach self-directed states of calm through mental focus. NSDR protocols can improve learning, help you relax, reduce stress, and help you fall asleep more easily. The term NSDR was coined by Dr. Andrew Huberman at Stanford who also practices Yoga Nidra  

In this video the doctor discusses the science of sleep and relaxation

 

 

Finland: Capital of Disc Golf world

Disc golf and woods, woods and disc golf. They were meant for each other. One such location where you can find an abundance of both of these things is Finland. They have seen a steady rise in course implementation, PDGA events, and PDGA membership since the early 2000s. Their numbers are so high that they currently hold the record for the most disc golf courses per capita. They have over 800 courses for nearly 5.5 million people (that’s one course for every 6,875 people). They also have more disc golf courses than ball golf.

Here is a TED talk on how the sport helped the country during the pandemic

 

Amtrak’s new Venture coaches

That’s because last week Amtrak quietly unveiled the first deliveries from a previous order with Siemens dating back to 2017. While some interior modifications may occur, this is essentially the same product that will roll out throughout the country over the next decade.

The Points Guy has a detailed review here on the Amtrak Venture class coach

Tesla’s Megapacks in Alaska

Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula has historically relied on gas turbines to distribute power to the community up to four months out of the year. To reduce the community’s reliance on fossil fuels to power the turbines, Homer Electric installed 37 Tesla Megapacks, providing grid stability even in freezing temperatures.

Electrek

 

Creative uses of captured C02

The WSJ describes how captured CO2 will yield useful daily products including vodka

Air Company, a Brooklyn-based startup, uses photosynthesis-inspired technology to create vodka distilled from CO2-derived products. It first creates hydrogen from water using a process known as electrolysis, before feeding it into a reactor alongside CO2 captured from ethanol plants in the Northeast, the company says. The gases then go over a catalyst, says Stafford Sheehan, the company’s co-founder and chief technology officer. The resulting mixture of ethanol and water is distilled into vodka, Dr. Sheehan says. The company estimates that producing one liter of vodka takes a pound of CO2 out of the air.

More on Air Company and plans beyond vodka

 

Synthetic Biology for Carbon-Negative Chemicals

Acetone and isopropanol have a combined market value of over $10 billion (£7.4 billion). They are widely used as industrial solvents and to make plastics, including acrylic glass and polypropylene. However, they depend on fossil fuel-derived hydrocarbons, resulting in significant carbon emissions during their production.

Michael Jewett’s lab at Northwestern University in Illinois, US, working with LanzaTech, a carbon-capture company based in the same state, used synthetic biology to develop the first sustainable and scalable carbon-negative approach for producing acetone and isopropanol.

Chemistry World

Video on computational synthetic biology at Northwestern U

Covering canals with solar panels

The project involves covering several open water canal segments in Stanislaus County with solar panels to test whether the concept could result in a reduction of water evaporation, improve water quality through reduced vegetative growth and generate renewable electricity in a state aiming to decarbonize by 2030.

The Hill

 

ML catalogs global solar farms

"Colleagues and I have now published in the journal Nature the first global inventory of large solar energy generating facilities. “Large” in this case refers to facilities that generate at least 10 kilowatts when the sun is at its peak (a typical small residential rooftop installation has a capacity of around 5 kilowatts).

We built a machine learning system to detect these facilities in satellite imagery and then deployed the system on over 550 terabytes of imagery using several human lifetimes of computing.

We searched almost half of Earth’s land surface area, filtering out remote areas far from human populations. In total we detected 68,661 solar facilities. Using the area of these facilities, and controlling for the uncertainty in our machine learning system, we obtain a global estimate of 423 gigawatts of installed generating capacity at the end of 2018. This is very close to the International Renewable Energy Agency’s (IRENA) estimate of 420 GW for the same period."

Singularity Hub

The global journeys of spice

Aramco World has a nice series around the global travels of 6 spices - ginger, cumin, cloves, nutmeg, pepper and cinnamon

Finding Shackleton’s Endurance

National Geo has greenlit an epic documentary detailing the successful search and discovery of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s sunken Endurance ship near Antarctica, helmed by British historian Dan Snow.

The doc will chart the successful search by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust for famed explorer Shackleton’s shipwrecked Endurance, which sank in 1915 near Antarctica.

Led by Polar Geographer Dr. John Shears and Marine Archaeologist Mensun Bound aboard the South African icebreaker Agulhas II, a crew of scientists and archaeologists teamed with filmmakers and Snow to document the events in real time leading up to the discovery.

Dateline

Here is a preview courtesy of the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust

More West Coast on East Coast

Recent Instagram galleries (with 10 photos each) of recent weekend trips along the West Coast of Florida

Gasparilla 2022

Rail landmarks

The bridges of Channel A

New Port Richey

Tampa International Airport – flying objects

Views from Tampa Convention Center

Pizza keeps evolving

For over 30 years, the chicken tikka masala pie at Zante Pizza & Indian Cuisine in San Francisco, California, has blurred the line of whose cuisine is it anyway, with a new breed of pizza entrepreneurs like Hapa Pizza in Beaverton, Oregon, and Anzalone Pizza in Boise, Idaho, using their Asian culinary heritages to present Vietnamese pho and Thai panang curry on pizza.

While pizza continues to morph and bend beyond pizza itself, lending its essence to pizza-flavored snacks (see: Combos, Cheez-Its, Goldfish Crackers, and Pretz), its crux is that pizza adapts to where it is—from Tokyo-style marinara to São Paulo’s move away from their staid white-tablecloth, fork-and-knife, pizza-for-dinner-only status. Or the offerings of Old Forge, Pennsylvania’s self-proclaimed “pizza capital of the world,” where, in a town of 9,000 people, rectangular pan pizzas are not called pies but “trays,” and there are no slices, just cuts.

Taste

Below is more on how pizza has evolved over the centuries

Shark Month: SAP.iO Foundries Sustainability Startups

I have said a few times that the arguments around renewable fuels – solar and wind in particular – have hijacked the Sustainability conversation. Lots of good has been delivered around Circular Economy thinking. The US EPA defines a circular economy as one which “reduces material use, redesigns materials to be less resource intensive, and recaptures “waste” as a resource to manufacture new materials and products.”

So, it was a fascinating journey in the last month talking to entrepreneurs, literally around the world, who are putting their heads down and showcasing plenty of success stories. My conversations with each are linked below.

• Ashley Etling of Limeloop talked about her reusable, smart packaging to help in today’s exploding eCommerce deliveries

• Giacomo Franchini of Italy based SupplHi presented on sustainability, sourcing and other elements of complex industrial B2B supply chains they support

• Carlos Oliveira of Chile based Algramo presented a different way to package and consume CPG products resulting in reduced plastic pollution, bite size economics and other benefits.

• Wilhelm Myrer of Norway based Empower talked about his blockchain tech to provide traceability and accountability for the circular economy. Norway, btw, is leading the world in circular economy thinking. 97% of their plastic bottles are recycled. Most other countries are barely at 10%. That is as impressive as the country's dominant performance in the recent Winter Olympics. 

• Matthew Wright of Specright presented on the huge payback from precise specifications in products, formulas and packaging

These conversations were facilitated by Kange Kaneene of SAP.iO Foundries. Her group represents SAP’s startup programs, including accelerators, that enable startups that can deliver value to SAP customers. Impressive in 4 years they have helped over 370 startups across 10 locations. All these startups were part of their Sustainability cohort. My conversation with her is here

Like I said – inspiring. Small firms, Big dreams, Tangible results that are helping the world.

The complex LNG supply chain

With the energy crisis caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, SciTech Daily has a nice article on the global liquefied natural gas (LNG) market. The US, Qatar and Australia are some of the biggest exporters. China and Japan are two of the biggest importers with Germany ramping up its own imports

"LNG is made by cooling natural gas to minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 162 degrees Celsius), which reduces its volume by a factor of more than 600. Natural gas is piped to a port, processed in a liquefaction plant, and then loaded into specialized insulated, temperature-controlled tankers for shipment by sea.

To receive LNG, an offloading port must have a regasification plant that converts the LNG back to a gaseous form so it can be sent by pipeline to end users. Both liquefaction plants and regasification plants cost billions of dollars and take multiple years to build."

Video on the complexity of LNG logistics

 

The promise of the hydrogen economy

Hydrogen has a diverse range of applications and can be deployed in a wide range of industries.

“It’s a very powerful molecule,” DellaVigna said. “We can use it for heavy transport, we can use it for heating, and we can use it for heavy industry.”

The key, he argued, was to “produce it without CO2 emissions. And that’s why we talk about green, we talk about blue hydrogen.”

Described by the International Energy Agency as a “a versatile energy carrier,” hydrogen can be produced in a number of ways. One method includes using electrolysis, with an electric current splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen.

If the electricity used in this process comes from a renewable source such as wind or solar then some call it green or renewable hydrogen.

Blue hydrogen refers to hydrogen produced using natural gas — a fossil fuel — with the CO2 emissions generated during the process captured and stored.

CNBC

Beyond blue and green the industry has other nicknames - brown, yellow, turquoise even pink hydrogen.The video below discusses some of them:

 

Solar energy from the American desert

Margaret and I drove from Las Vegas, NV to Joshua Tree National Park in CA recently. Saw an amazing variety of solar farms in the desert landscape.

Off US-95, south of Boulder City we saw miles and miles of solar panels. They included the Copper Mountain Solar Facility, a 802 megawatt solar photovoltaic power plant (see some of the panels in video below). It is next to the 64 MW Nevada Solar, the 150 MW Boulder Solar, and the 300 MW Techren Solar projects.

This complex adds up to half of the generating capacity at the nearby Hoover Dam, which has powered Las Vegas’s bright lights for decades.

The nearby thousand acre Townsite Solar + Storage  uses a Tesla Megapack whose capacity is rated at 360,000kWh.

Photo Credit

Off I-15, near the CA/NV border, we saw Ivanpah which uses mirrors to focus the power of the sun on solar receivers atop power towers. The video below describes the design and some of the problems the site has encountered

Impressive what you can do with cheap land and free sunshine.

Reimagining the Tuk Tuk

A pop-up store at a mall caught my eye. They had a whole variety of electric tricycles for personal and business use. The salesperson rattled off a bunch of attractive features

• Classified like an eBike – ride in bike lanes, on sidewalks, residential streets and bike trails
• 30-50 mile battery range from a single charge
• 18-28 mph speed
• No gas, license, registration, insurance required for models with a top speed of 20mph
• Minimal to no maintenance  
• Storage compartment and baskets for bags and light gear
• No pedaling required

The personal and business use cases are limitless and they cost way less than BEVs to buy and operate. Many of them look like an Italian designer rethought the tuk tuk you see on Asian roads.

The Driven says there are already 1.5 million electric trikes on Indian roads and another 1.35 million in China. As we rethink our carbon footprints and lifestyles, I have a feeling we will see more of them on Western roads

AI and Americas Cup

In 2015, McKinsey acquired QuantumBlack, a London-based data analytics and AI specialist which had established its reputation working with F1 teams. “The New Zealand team wanted an AI that could do dynamic manoeuvres in highly variable environments, but didn’t think this was possible,” says QuantumBlack’s Nic Hohn. “Reinforcement learning really works when you’ve tried everything else.”

The McKinsey team worked with the New Zealand team for ten months during 2019 and 2020. The bots got so good that the human sailors would watch the simulations and pick up tips. “The bot was actually doing things that felt counterintuitive to the sailors,” says Jacomo Corbo, QuantumBlack’s co-founder and chief scientist, “but they’d try them out on the water and they’d actually work.”

Wired UK

 

Astronomy in the Desert

While we were at Joshua Tree National Park in California last weekend, Margaret and I went to the monthly Dark Sky Program at the nearby Sky's The Limit (STL) Observatory and Nature Center in Twenty Nine Palms

We had a bit of cloud cover that evening but Ann Congdon, President of STL, kindly shared with me couple of photos of spectacular skies other guests have captured above their dome.

Nonetheless, it was a thrill to get a tour of the skies by Allen Schiano, who has a doctorate in Astronomy and Astrophysics and teaches at Irvine Valley College in Irvine. He previously worked at UC Irvine as a Director of Instructional and Research Computing. He was on stage with John Hill who is the Technical Director at the Large Binocular Telescope operated by the Steward Observatory of U of Arizona.

With their laser pointer as guide, us amateurs got to see

• Sirius, the brightest star in the sky
• The three stars in a straight line in Orion’s Belt
• The Big Dipper and the North Star
• The open star cluster, Pleiades, also known as The Seven Sisters

They answered a bunch of questions including how the recently launched James Webb Space telescope will be able to look farther back in time than previous telescopes using infrared light and will allow scientists to look through dust to see stars forming inside.

But the highlight was an experiment they ran as the clouds cleared. Allen describes it:

“It's a long story but the video at the end is worth the time it takes to read what it's all about.

My buddies John Hill and John Hoey and I had a crazy idea to try to see something with a 14 inch telescope that had only been seen with telescopes larger that twice that size.  And we didn't use the method usually employed - a spinning disk in the focal plane - since it requires more equipment and expertise than most people could achieve. That was our goal-  something simple others with amateur telescopes could do.

What were we trying to do, you say?  We wanted to see the Crab Nebula pulsar 'pulse' on its close to 30 Hz frequency by taking 30 second images at the scope.  Those could easily be shown to people watching with current amateur level equipment.

We rigged my Celestron C14HD SCT telescope with 'woofer' speakers and pumped nearly 30 Hz signals into speakers we had taped to its side (Data from the Jodrell Bank, UK ephemeris of the Crab were used to calculate the exact frequency which is critical). We aimed the scope at the Crab Nebula, specifically at the pulsar in the nebula which is the remnants of the star that exploded in a supernova which people saw on Earth in 1054 AD. The neutron star is 1.4 times the mass of the Sun and is about 10 km in diameter. It spins at a dizzying 30 times per second. Like a lighthouse, with every rotation it sweeps a beam of light past us. We see it as a 30 Hz pulse. That's too fast to detect visually for most people.

This video consists of four frames captured while aimed at the pulsar and with the speakers vibrating the scope just below 30Hz. You can see the stars bouncing around while the pulsar remains stationary.  The pulsar does bounce around in the same direction as the stars since the location of the pulse is defined by the exact timing of each frame which we did not control.

As far as we know, this is a brand new technique for capturing the pulses of the pulsar and requires only a modest investment in equipment that almost any amateur astronomer could afford.

Instead of seeing it blink on and off this video captures its image as it vibrates 30 times per second. All the stars and background bounce back and forth as does the pulsar. But the pulsar is only lit for a brief moment every 1/30 of a second so it seems to stand still.

The images aren't perfect. This was our first attempt. But this definitely proves this concept works. And that is totally cool!

Tech Specs:  Celestron C14HD at f11/Mallincam DS10cTEC camera/30 sec exposures at gain=110/160 and bin=1/image processing by GIMP (cropping, rotation), Topaz Labs DeNoise AI (noise reduction), and PixInsight (animation)

The video is here.”

In preparation for the trip, Margaret had tried out several monocular lenses to attach to her iPhone. Assembly turned out to be a bridge too far in the dark. So it is a bit embarrassing to see how deftly Allen assembles his 250 lb. telescope.

Talking about the dark, Margaret did bring along a tactical flashlight with red/green/blue lights. We used the red light to walk around and not spoil the viewing for others. Red light has a wavelength of around 650 nm. That can be detected by cone cells, but not rod cells in our eyes. Cone cells dark adapt much quicker than rod cells.

BTW, even a day trip to STL is worthwhile. It has an Orrery – walkable model of the solar system at 20 billion-to-1 scale, trails with desert flora and a variety of sculptures. It is off the grid thanks to eight solar panels plus a bank of reclaimed batteries donated by the USMC which has a large base in town. This system provides the power for computers, projectors, a weather station, and more.

Quite a memorable visit.

Photo Credit - STL and guests who signed them.

Hydroelectric as most popular renewable fuel

Investments in the sector slowed somewhat before 2020 as other renewable sources such as wind and solar PV gained momentum, a situation exacerbated by delays to several major hydropower projects and some regions’ lack of policy changes, which also stunted growth. The industry is, however, experiencing a renaissance as countries are increasingly motivated to find suitable renewable options to decarbonize their energy supply.

“Hydropower is the backbone of low-carbon electricity generation and has been rising since the 1970s. Over the last two decades, the installed global capacity of hydropower has grown from 680 GW in 2000 to nearly 1,200 GW in 2021, a surge of more than 75%,” says Rystad Energy analyst Karan Satwani.

Oil Price

Video of the massive Baihetan project in China 

Ancient solution for a modern problem

Hurd, a falconer, and Cheddar, a juvenile Harris’s hawk, are contractors hired by Tampa International Airport to visit a few times a month and deal with unwanted guests.

It’s a 3,000-year-old, human-devised method for fighting a 100-year-old, human-made problem.

Airfield operations compliance manager Brett Bell is the guy driving the truck.

Planes take off and land at Tampa International Airport each day carrying thousands of passengers blissfully unaware of what’s happening in the giant, grassy fields below. Bell and his small team are the specks down there, looking out for the even-smaller specks — herons, egrets, turkey vultures, pigeons, gulls and so on — threatening to damage or bring down airplanes.

Tampa Bay Times

One of the hawks was profiled in the Mike Rowe episode on the airport in the “How America Works” series. Preview below

Auto features on a subscription basis

Although consumers might have gotten used to subscribing to music, movies, and TV shows, and even clothing, a subscription model for automotive options would be a dramatic shift in how cars have been sold for more than a century. Traditionally, a vehicle’s factory-equipped options are permanent, regardless of whether a car is 10 years old or whether it has been sold to a second or third owner.

But under some of the subscription model scenarios suggested by automakers, certain features might disappear as soon as the monthly or yearly payment stops, in the same way your streaming or phone services stop when you cancel your subscription or fail to pay. On the upside, analysts say that subscriptions may encourage automakers to provide software updates that help features evolve after purchase—especially when it comes to vehicles with cutting-edge technology. Some consumers also might like the idea of paying only for the non-essential luxury features they want, such as voice recognition or parking assist, for example.

Consumer Reports

Both Tesla and GM’s Cadillac unit offer their self-driving features on a subscription basis

Exciting nuclear fusion progress

"The JET experiments put us a step closer to fusion power," said Dr Joe Milnes, the head of operations at the reactor lab. "We've demonstrated that we can create a mini star inside of our machine and hold it there for five seconds and get high performance, which really takes us into a new realm."

The ITER facility in southern France is supported by a consortium of world governments, including from EU member states, the US, China and Russia. It is expected to be the last step in proving nuclear fusion can become a reliable energy provider in the second half of this century.

Operating the power plants of the future based on fusion would produce no greenhouse gases and only very small amounts of short-lived radioactive waste.

BBC News Thanks to Frank Scavo for pointer

Vegan Travel

Last year, Responsible Travel added roughly 1,000 vegan-friendly trips as part of its commitment to becoming “nature positive,” a vow to not harm wildlife or habitats but leave them more protected and supported, by 2030.

Its vegan-only vacations include a 10-day vegan tour of Ethiopia (from roughly $2,300; prices exclude flights), seven days of hiking volcanoes in Guatemala (from about $1,360) and eight days of snowshoeing in Austria (from about $1,160).

New York Times

Of course, if McDonalds continues to introduce its McPlant products not much travel may be required

Rain forest hotels

There's nothing quite like waking up in a rain forest — the sounds, sensations, and sheer size of these biodiverse landscapes are a magical reminder of the magnificence of nature. But unless you're traveling with your own camping gear (and some serious survival skills), the best option is to check into a well-appointed lodge for a worry-free wilderness retreat. Fortunately, many eco hotels in rain forests also encourage responsible tourism, from preventing deforestation by buying huge swaths of forests to supporting wildlife conservation projects. As more travelers seek new ways to consciously connect with nature, here are some of the best rain forest stays for 2022.

Travel and Leisure

Here is one in Peru profiled in the article

 

Rethinking the TV Remote

To bring remotes from the age of 1,000 buttons to the age of modern tech, companies downsized. For some, it was because of a realization that consumers wanted simplicity. Others were prodded along by the minimalism of Apple Inc. and Roku remotes. The way we watched TV was changing—more on-demand streaming, less regular programming—and so was the way we interacted with all of our devices. Voice assistants became the most prominent characteristic of the modern remote, featured in those for Apple TV, Amazon Fire, and Google’s Chromecast, as well as Roku.

WSJ

 

 

Consumer Reports – what an awesome resource

As a technology analyst I have always been impressed with the wide coverage and rigor Consumer Reports brings to its analysis of autos, home appliances and consumer tech. I scan through every monthly issue and especially the annual Top Picks and Auto issues.

It has stayed true for 75 years to its motto of being a “force for honesty and integrity in the marketplace” and is broadening its horizons. They shared their vision in their strategic plan here. 

It is one of the best nonprofits we support and would encourage others to do the same.

 

Sporting Goods continue to evolve

With many people still working from home, athleisure has gained further ground, reflecting new attitudes toward traditional workwear. Increased health awareness has given many people a new perspective on sports and general fitness. E-commerce has thrived, as consumers continue to shop online, even as lockdown measures have eased. Digital forms of individual or community-based exercise and physical activity have become more popular and have created new possibilities for sporting-goods companies. Meanwhile, sustainability is more important than ever, with the COP26 Climate Change Conference emphasizing the need for companies to increase their efforts to decarbonize as they seek to differentiate their offerings.

McKinsey

Video on how Dick Sporting Goods continues to invest heavily in brick and mortar

 

From telehealth to hybrid health

Smart companies are recognizing that telehealth is just one piece of a much larger whole. Carbon Health, an early virtual care provider, now has physical locations in 17 regions around the country and is getting into clinical trial research. Amazon Care, which launched its virtual care platform in 2019, has opened 17 in-person clinics for Amazon employees with Crossover Health. Companies such as Rezilient Health are also thinking about the ways in which spaces such as parking lots can be repurposed to house health clinics.

This movement is part of a coming wave of retail health clinics. This year, Walgreens agreed to invest $5.2 billion into VillageMD (see video below) to put 1,000 of its primary care offices next to Walgreens pharmacies. CVS is making similar investments. At its recent investor day, CVS Health CEO Karen S. Lynch said the company would be expanding services to include primary care, both in person and virtually. Even Dollar General is marketing itself as a health care destination.

Fast Company

 

The transoceanic cable landscape

The world’s biggest owner of cables is a household name, at least to Americans – it’s AT&T, which has a stake in around 230,000 kilometres of international internet cabling, or around one sixth of the total. But looking at others in the top ten reveals why both Big Tech and Western governments are starting to pay the apparently dull issue of cable ownership more attention: in second place is China Telecom, while Chunghwa Telecom (based in Taiwan) is third and China Unicorn is sixth.

In the tenth and eleventh spots, however, are some very familiar names: Facebook and Google. Big Tech is getting into big cables – and doing so in a big way. Over the past few years, 80 percent of investment in new cables has flowed from the two US tech giants. As of today, Facebook owns or co-owns 99,399 kilometres of cables, Google 95,876 kilometres. And more investments are on their way: in August, Facebook and Google announced their plans for building a 12,000 kilometre undersea cable, Apricot, which will link Singapore, Japan, Guam, the Philippines, Taiwan and Indonesia when completed in 2024. For Google, that came hot on the heels of a previous announcement about the Echo subsea cable, which will connect California, Singapore, Guam and Indonesia. For its part, Facebook has thrown its weight behind the coalition of telcos building what might turn out to be the longest subsea cable ever: 2Africa, a 45,000 kilometre-long cord planned to encompass the whole African continent and connect 33 countries in Africa, Europe and the Middle-East by 2024. In May 2020 Bloomberg reported that the project will cost under $1 billion – but that was before Facebook announced several expansions to the initial design.

Wired UK