Biomechanical mechanism to sequester CO2

OK, so lets start with the big one.  I think I can reverse global warming.  Ideas have to come from somewhere don't they?  This is a plan I started working on over 6 years ago and no one has been able to find a reason why this wouldn't work and this includes university departments and one of the largest chemical companies in the world.  It is however, theoretical and so I am putting it out there to see if people agree or if people want to help try and prove or disprove the idea.

Essentially I have established a mechanism by which you can power the metabolism of bacteria using a renewable energy source.  Essentially you can plug the little blighters into an electrical power source and you can them get them to make a fuel.  So why would you want to do that?  Surely if you already have electricity you wouldn't need a fuel?  This is true, however, the really good part of the plan is that in making that fuel, the bacteria take in carbon dioxide.

This means your renewable energy is used to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere!

The fuel that is created is formic acid which can be split into hydrogen and CO2.  But while the hydrogen can be used to drive an electric battery the CO2 remains in solution and so this can be either recycled or disposed of underground as a form of carbon capture.

So what do you think?  Or better still does anyone want to help get this done?

Help, I'm drowning in scaffolding!!!

In this blog I will get the disclaimers in early and state that all of the following is purely opinion and conjecture.  It does seem to me that education in the UK is facing a crisis but that people are tending to look in the wrong direction as to where these problems are coming from.

The first problem is to do with measuring success.  Any system will need to know how it is doing but there are a number of fundamental problems with how this is measured.  The first is that the examination system needs to be independent of those setting the curriculum.  We need to take away the temptation of an exam board to make an exam easier to make them (or the schools that pay them)look more successful.

The second though is all to do with the four letter 'f' word.  That's right, fail.  We have developed a whole set of problems with the 'f' word and it runs through government, through teachers, through parents and into young people.  We are all scared witless of failing and we all have it wrong.  We have it wrong because of a host of reasons.  We have lost site of what a test or examination is there to do.  Despite the fact that the clue is in the name.  It is there to examine or test your abilities.  It isn't there to pander to ego's or make anyone look good.  In fact, if anyone gets 100% in a test then realistically it wasn't a test.  At this point some of you may be thinking 'but we are putting young people under so much pressure.'  Sorry but that is not down to tests.  That is down to how people react to the results.  We have become all about that one shining mark, the end point at which we are either a success or a failure.  The trouble is that life isn't like that.  Life is about your approach and your attitude.  That if you get something wrong you try again until you sort it.  Instead what we have is a system that makes people petrified of those marks because if they get something wrong then they are in trouble.  This then finds it's way down to those young people who are faced with a choice.  Endless pressure of the fear of failure or just switch off and don't care.

All we need to do is change the emphasis.  Just try your best and try to improve.  If you do that and it is not working then we will find something else for you so it does.  If you are not trying your best though, and we have done our bit then guess what?  That is down to you.  What we have now is a system where all of the responsibility for those who fail is down to the teachers or school.  It is human nature to take advantage.  If we give none of the responsibility to the student then they are well within their rights to sit there and take no interest unless it is entertaining enough to bother.  We end up stifling students by endlessly spoon feeding.  If we don't they might fail.  If we don't end up with students who can think for themselves they will fail at a lot more than exams in life and that will be our failure.

Education 3 - Those early years

In the field of genetics there is an age old argument of what is called 'Nature versus Nurture'. This discusses the effect that our environment and upbringing have on our characteristics as opposed to our genetic makeup we get from our parents.  As teachers our job is to develop students to be the best that they can be. One way of looking at this (and it is not supposed to be pessimistic despite how it might sound) is that a child starts life off with an almost infinite range of possible outcomes available to it.  Our job as a profession and a society is to keep as many of these possibilities open for as long as we can until that individual chooses a path of their own.  Even then though efforts must surely be made to ensure that they have options open to them throughout their lives.

So how do we begin to do this?  Perhaps one approach might be to try and look for all of those points in the lives of young people where their development falters?  For example, in the same way that the development of society has leapt forward due to certain discoveries such as the internet, or antibiotics we can look at the development of an individual in the same way.  Some of these discoveries are more straight forward than others.  The ability to read or write for example.  There are some though that are far more subtle, and possibly more fundamental.  Working memory is essentially the post-it note for the brain to be able to work out problems.  Fine motor skills underpin the ability to write.  There are a host of elements that actually help us to be able to read.  Dyslexia can be seen in the structures of the brains where function is reduced.  However, connections in the brain are created and reinforced with use. So are these areas underdeveloped and this is causing the problem or are we not creating means by which these young people can create these connections in different ways?

There are those that believe that education starts too early, that children should learn through play such as the Montessori method.  Other education systems do not start formal education until much later.  One study in New Zealand compared groups who started reading at 5 and at 7.  By the age of 11 there was no difference in the reading abilities but the attitudes towards learning of the group that started at 5 was more negative and their comprehension of what they were reading was actually poorer.

It is my belief that we need to fight against the instincts that make us think that the more we do something the better it will be.  Instead we need to spend more time on those fundamentals and allow young people to develop understanding of both themselves and the world around them.  Hopefully then they will be far more willing and capable of dealing with the detail when it comes.

A discussion board for education and the environment

This blog like many others wants to make a difference.  In this case the aim is to create a number of discussions to try and actually work towards solutions in these areas and how they might be achieved. 

The reason for these two particular areas of focus is because of my own areas of experience.  I was a PhD student for three years at the National Institute for Medical Research as well as spending 8 years as a company director and then 5 years as a teacher.  I have since created ESP Thinking. This is a company formed to try and help teachers by creating apps to save them time.  Please feel free to take a look at the site but these pages are about a wider aim of problems solving and it would be wonderful to see as many people involved as possible.

As with all problem solving though, try to keep things constructive.  You never know, together we might just make a few solutions actually work out there.