Benazir Bhutto’s death mourned by the Boston community

Benazir Bhutto had visited the Boston Pakistani and Pakistani-American community several times over the past several decades. Over time she had developed friendships, and strong political support from some of her friends here. I was not a big fan of her politics, but I also got a chance to meet her on some such occasions in Boston. She walked with grace and had a band of followers who stood close by wherever she went. She spoke fluently (at least in English) and said pretty much what she thought her typical US based audiences would like to hear: democracy, women’s rights, poverty, progressiveness. When politely confronted for her shortcomings, she would equally politely refute them, and carry on with her speeches on injustices meted out to her and her family.

But now she is no more. The Boston Pakistani community came together yesterday to grieve and pray for her soul at a gathering held at the Islamic Center of Boston-Wayland (see Boston Globe write up).

Benazir Bhutto killed: last days of a bloody year for Pakistan (updated with videos and images)

This year has been a bloody one for Pakistan (link, link, link, link, link, link) . The society has received one shock after another. But this one perhaps hurts the most, and will probably hurt for a long while to come. Today, at an election campaign rally in Rawalpindi, in the same park where the first prime minister of Pakistan was assassinated, Benazir Bhutto was killed with gunshot wounds and a bomb blast. Several other people were also killed.

This is the 4th tragedy to hit the Bhutto family. Zulfiqar Bhutto, an extremely popular prime minister was first hanged by a military government, then her brother Shahnawaz Bhutto was poisoned, her brother Murtaza Bhutto was killed in a police gunfire, and now Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated.

Happy holidays…and a Happy 2008!

(click on image to enlarge)

Designing Superoleophobic (oil repelling) Surfaces

Wow! Now this is an awesome innovation - Superoleophobicity, i.e. ultra oil repellent behavior. It brings back some memories of my grad school days when I tried to learn how to make hydrophobic surfaces with organic self-assembled monolayers and then oxidized them to study the post-oxidation hydrophilic behavior of model organic surfaces. I was wowed at that time by some of the work that George Whitesides’ group at Harvard had done on designing super hydrophobic surfaces (water repellent).

But right now this is the new big news! As I understand, to design superoleophobic surfaces, scientists from MIT (Anish Tuteja et al. from Cohen’s group). are using both the chemical and physical properties (surface curvature and kelvin effect etc) of especially designed microfibers to get superoleophobic behavior. I imagine tremendous uses in protection gear for machine components, spill cleanup, and the petrochemical industry.

I will let more knowledgeable reporters comment on it (from Emerging Technology Trends):

New oil-repelling material from MIT

Posted by Roland Piquepaille

MIT researchers have developed flexible surface coatings that repel oils. According to the research team, this is the first material able to do it. They say that these findings could have applications in aviation, space travel and hazardous waste cleanup. Their oil-repelling, or ‘oleophobic’ material, is using specially prepared microfibers, which are a blend of a specially synthesized molecule called fluoroPOSS (short for ‘fluorinated polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes’) and a common polymer. The U.S. Air Force, which developed the fluoroPOSS molecules, wants to use this new material to protect components of airplanes and rockets from jet fuel.

You can see on the left “a steel grid (square pores with 1 mm spacing) coated with electrospun fibers containing 9.1 wt% fluorodecyl POSS used for oil-water separation. Octane droplets (colored with oil red O dye) easily pass through the membrane whereas water droplets (dyed with methylene blue) bead up on the surface.” (Credit: Anish Tuteja and Wonjae Choi, MIT) Here is a link to a larger version of this picture. You’ll find another related picture on this EurekAlert! page. And you’ll find additional images and a link to a short video on this MIT page

This project has been led by Anish Tuteja, a postdoctoral associate at the MIT. The focus of his work is to use nanoparticles to modify the surface properties of polymer composites. He worked under the supervision of Robert Cohen, professor of chemical engineering, who provided the help from his research group. He also was mentored by Gareth McKinley, professor of teaching innovation in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and who manages the Non-Newtonian Fluid Dynamics research group.

So how did the team discover this new material? “The tendency of oils and other hydrocarbons to spread out over surfaces is due to their very low surface tension (a measure of the attraction between molecules of the same substance). Water, on the other hand, has a very high surface tension and tends to form droplets. […] That difference in surface tension also explains why water will roll off the feathers of a duck, but a duck coated in oil must be washed with soap to remove it. The MIT team overcame the surface-tension problem by designing a material composed of specially prepared microfibers that essentially cushion droplets of liquid, allowing them to sit, intact, just above the material’s surface.”

Boston Globe: GEO2 profiled

A good coverage for us in The Boston Globe. Wish Rob and I smiled a bit in the photo

Woburn firm’s goal? World domination
Small company’s filter cleans up diesel exhaust

By Davis Bushnell

Globe Correspondent / December 13, 2007 WOBURN - GEO2 Technologies of Woburn is a small, fledgling company with big ambitions: to have its patented filter for making diesel engines cleaner and more fuel-efficient become the standard for excellence worldwide.

To do that, the privately held company must license its technology or be acquired by a global corporation, said chief executive Rob Lachenauer, 46, who founded the firm 3 1/2 years ago with Bilal Zuberi, 31, now vice president-product development.

Previously, both worked for the Boston Consulting Group; Lachenauer as a partner, Zuberi as a consultant. The company’s first office was in Lachenauer’s Weston garage. It moved into 5,000-square-foot quarters in Woburn, off Cabot Road, in January 2005. There also is a small facility in Wilmington for diesel engine and component testing. GE02 has 25 employees.

“We’re now deep into negotiations with potential partners,” Lachenauer said in an interview last week, declining to be specific for competitive reasons. “In six months, we expect to have something.”

The challenge will be “to sort out various options and then make the right choice,” said Jim Bartlett, a Cleveland venture capitalist who is a GEO2 investor and board member.

So far, between $20 million and $25 million has been raised from individuals and a Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture firm, Firelake Capital Management, Lachenauer said. Corning Inc., the US-based specialty glass and ceramic manufacturer, and two Japanese companies control 90 percent of the particulate filter market internationally, Lachenauer said.

“All of them, as well as others, are aware” of GEO2’s product development work, he added.

The company’s particulate filter is 5.66 inches in diameter and 6 inches long, and consists of “high-temperature, ceramic microfibers,” said Zuberi, a Pakistan native who has a doctoral degree in physical chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Laboratory tests have revealed the filter can remove 99 percent of particulates, or soot, in diesel engines, according to Zuberi and Lachenauer. “It is lighter, stronger, and has a lower impact on fuel economy, thereby yielding better vehicle performance than other comparable filters,” Lachenauer said.

A case for ‘clean diesel’: It deserves a chance in the USA.

(Click on images to expand them for better readability)

Although I respect the position that diesel engines have yet to enter the US market in a big way, and whether this technology will triumph with the American consumer is still to be seen, all major car companies have shown signs of promoting “clean diesel” in the US. This phenomenon may in fact be fueled by the slowing growth of gasoline-hybrid technologies nationally and diesel’s success in Europe. Consider this: while US CAFÉ calls for 27mpg at present, Europe stands at 43mpg and Japan at 50mpg. To some extent, meeting the 35mpg standard proposed in the new energy legislation currently before Congress will mean converting many high torque vehicles to diesel - this would include pickup trucks, SUVs, large minivans and some larger family sedans.

Over the years, we’ve seen all kinds of “Year of…” come and go. But I think most will agree that if anything, 2007 has been the “Year of Energy and Environment” globally - and particularly in the US. While public and private initiatives, like the Google.org’s RE<C, have focused on electricity production for stationary applications, there is a need for a long-term sustainable development plan regarding energy for mobile applications, i.e. transportation. To this point, the question is not so much “what technologies will eventually win,” but more “how must they be staggered to be acceptable socially and developed sustainably in the long run.” At the same time, we have to consider how to ensure that the industries engaged in the sector continue to push the envelope in their technical and business processes to accomplish better, faster and cheaper vehicles sooner.

As innovators (not to be confused with inventors) discuss mobility solutions, the careful among them are paying a lot of attention to making sure we don’t find ourselves in the kind of pipe-dreams that were envisaged when nuclear power was first harnessed several decades ago. Yes, there was the promise of so much electricity that one would not even need to monitor how much we consumed, but we forgot to account properly for the cost of infrastructure, build-out and maintenance. What was missing in that “revolution” was a careful pathway that guided breakthrough innovations into familiar terrains where ideas could be tested and configured for mass adoption.

VW introducing a Jetta ‘Clean Diesel’ that may get upwards of 50mpg

Here is a short snippet from Popular Mechanics magazine. This is just another step in the right direction. We need to have 50-state (legal in all US states) cars that get high mileage and are as clean as, or cleaner than, gasoline vehicles. At the same time it would sure be nice to have cars that people want to drive. Not that I necessarily need all that torque that a diesel engine can provide, compared to a hybrid, but many American do need and/or want that. And if we are to popularize high fuel economy cars/trucks, we need to give them a solution that works with their needs. In the meantime we educate them about the idiocy of having air-conditioned glove compartments and the like, so additional mpg savings can be attained. I guess ‘Clean Diesel’ is arriving!

December 4, 2007

2009 Volkswagen Jetta TDi Test Drive: Clean Diesel’s 50 MPG Meets Prius-Humbling Thrust

The new era of clean diesel in America will officially be ushered in by the new VW Jetta TDi when it goes on sale in a few months. Powered by a 2.0-liter four-banger that produces 140 hp and 236 lb.-ft. of torque, it will be the first automobile to meet the world’s most stringent emission control standards, California’s Tier II, Bin 5.