Topic: Recycling?

[Nemesis]

Link to full article

Mitsuyuki Ikeda, a researcher from the Okayama Laboratory, has developed steaks based on proteins from human excrement. Tokyo Sewage approached the scientist because of an overabundance of sewage mud. They asked him to explore the possible uses of the sewage and Ikeda found that the mud contained a great deal of protein because of all the bacteria.

The researchers then extracted those proteins, combined them with a reaction enhancer and put it in an exploder which created the artificial steak. The “meat” is 63% proteins, 25% carbohydrates, 3% lipids and 9% minerals. The researchers color the poop meat red with food coloring and enhance the flavor with soy protein. Initial tests have people saying it even tastes like beef.

I wonder if this could be small and automated enough for the ISS?

Note:  This link was posted at the "Other Place" by Sarek. 

[FRA.E.Kehakoul_XC]

I must tell you , although i know that it is build from base up and there is chemically no connection anymore with the sewage, the thought is odd.
I know that water and urin is reprocessed on the ISS . For both processes
I think it would be necessary to readjust the  information layer in the water  used to produce it ,to make it neutral or vitalizing again.

Not sure  though if they are even aware  about the scientific findings in that regard.

[Lieutenant_Q]

A protein re-sequencer?

"When you flush the toilet where does it go?  Well that sounds like a question for our engineer, Commander Tucker."

"Wait... a Poop question?  Can't I talk about the Dilithium Chamber?"

[Bonk]

I think it would be necessary to readjust the  information layer in the water  used to produce it ,to make it neutral or vitalizing again.

I would think that nanofiltration, reverse osmosis and re-salting would do the trick. Buuut... purification system materials result in some leachates. Often tap water is better. (less exposure to plastics) This is in the context of earthbound home and industrial use though. Double distilled in glass has always been the most pure in my experience though, but such stills are expensive, rare and probably not at all practical for spaceflight (and severe overkill for drinking water anyway - and you'd need to add salts to prevent electrolyte imbalances). Actually, I think I smashed the last all glass and quartz still of any significant capacity in Canada some years ago. (The disposition of federal assets is so irrational...)

Not sure  though if they are even aware  about the scientific findings in that regard.

  I have a major scientific problem with these "magic water" theories that seem to be proliferating. A pure solvent is a pure solvent. Granted, water is almost never pure in nature - so if it has "magic" properties, it is not the water itself but how it interacts with materials in it or around it. (Think silanisation of glass surfaces, or the "legs" of wine on bare glass)

That said, the hydrogen bonding in water and in alcohols makes them different. You've got me thinking about information storage in liquids now...  I would imagine that if possible, alcohols and polyols would have greater retention ability. But information in either water or alcohols would be quite easily destroyed, the act of drinking them would certainly do so. Not that I want to drink a big glass of cold amyl anytime soon.

Hrmm... systematic and patterned silanisation of glass surfaces might provide some interesting effects, maybe even a molecular scale "pump". (lab-on-chip style) But oh, right, I'm all done with chemistry. I think it best to leave it to the master, mother nature.

Though I suspect that these "magic water" theories are just the result of typically inadequate science journalism that talks down to the audience, and no one is really making these claims. Either that, or they are published in Nature. 

[FRA.E.Kehakoul_XC]

Actually i didn't talk about magic, i meant scientific findings in that regard.
 Its done by an university over here,they worked on one of the many basic attributes of water we don't understand.

To summarize up what they found. A water droplet put on a small glass plate for microscopic uses,will after drying leave a pattern on the glass you can make visible by using a dark field microscope.
 Now assume you got one source of water and a class off students,let us say the source is a bottle of evian or distilled water.
Each student is issued a new sterile pipete they all soak a bit water from the evian or distilled bottle and make a dot on their glass plate. and let it dry.

Under the microscope they all  will show a unique pattern,it was found that it was possible to pass that pattern along to the water container if touched by a given student.
ANother observation:
  i saw photos of the changed pattern  as one of the students made a dot before and after visiting a dentist and exposition to radiation. The before  pattern was  a clearly defined  ring like structure,after exposition the pattern was broken and blurry, the pattern regained it s shape after a few hours.

I got a possible mechanism for this to work in mind but that would lead to far now.


There are working devices used in industry and certain professions  to "up" their water.

The bakery's found that they need lesser baking soda,less flour if they used that uped  water, the bread is tasting better reaches more volume etc.
Reducing costs.

Other example was a factory that had trouble with corrosion of the pipes in their plant, after trying everything else they got so desperate to try that approach and their problems were gone.

in certain professions this is not loudly declared ,but just accepted and used for pure  capitalistic reasons.
It works doesn't matter why.



Another interesting ability of water would be the one the university of Vienna is experimenting with.

They found, if you take two glass containers fill them to 80% with water  then put and anode in one the counterpart in the other and connect that to a high voltage power source.
Now carefully push the two containers closer together,. incrementally at one point the water starts to behave almost like liquid helium or a bose einstein condensate,it starts crawling up the wall of the side of the container closest to the power source .
This is happening in both containers the very moment they reach the rim the water starts building a bridge between both containers even if there is  still a  air gap of like 5 millmeters.
 if you pull then both containers apart the bridge will stay and stretch.
I saw one  about 4-5 centimeters wide .
After like 25 to 30ty second the bridge will collapse and the process is not repeatable with the used water for a while.
No one has a theory yet  how this works.

But from the looks of it,it reminded me on the water probe in the movie abyss,just the humming sound was missing in the movie.

THese are clearly ground work phenomena,and got to be approached like in the old days. And not wiped away.

I would recommend to dig deeper into that topic.


Both topics should be findable on the net if searched with the right terms,while concentrating on hits with a university reference in them.

There is no such thing as magic, just phenomena we don't understand and lack of oversight if it comes to concepts like chance or randomness.

[Bonk]

I used the term "magic" to disparage the terms "readjust the  information layer in the water  used to produce it ,to make it neutral or vitalizing again", which without your follow-up explanation, is a valid assesment. Now bear in mind I will use the word "magic" in a different context (non disparaging) in the comments and questions below.

Now on to your explanations:


1) Which I find very interesting:

To summarize up what they found. A water droplet put on a small glass plate for microscopic uses,will after drying leave a pattern on the glass you can make visible by using a dark field microscope.
 Now assume you got one source of water and a class off students,let us say the source is a bottle of evian or distilled water.
Each student is issued a new sterile pipete they all soak a bit water from the evian or distilled bottle and make a dot on their glass plate. and let it dry.

Under the microscope they all  will show a unique pattern,it was found that it was possible to pass that pattern along to the water container if touched by a given student.

Aha! Say I. What you have described is not magic water, but magic humans! (which I much more readily accept but cannot exactly explain) The water is just the medium. I have seen similar experiments with the crystallisation of water where the observations are pronounced. Granted that the evaporative and crystallization processes concerned are somewhat random (but not really - read on) and partially prescribed by rules of physics and chemistry, but also it has been shown in the experiment you describe and the ice crystal one I read about that there is a reproducible effect of the human handling the experiment (inter-analyst variance - is part of it and maybe all of it depending on how you look at it). The additional piece of information on the crystallisation of water experiments that I saw (and the photographs) was that the test subjects (the humans) were asked to observe their crystals and to record their mood. Again, there was a reproducible correlation of the crystal structures observed. The experimental conditions were such that snowflake type crystal formation was favoured for easy observation. The experimental results were also presented at a photography art showing (Japan). I may have some of the details confused and perhaps filled in a few non-original details, but that is the nut of the idea.

So, I have no problem accepting that human presence and the attitude and mood of that human will have an effect on the processes observed. drb may like to comment on this, as I suppose it is ultimately a demonstration that we are indeed a part of the universe we exist in and intimately connected with it. This is good "magic".


2) Not enough info on this one:

There are working devices used in industry and certain professions  to "up" their water.

The bakery's found that they need lesser baking soda,less flour if they used that uped  water, the bread is tasting better reaches more volume etc.
Reducing costs.

Other example was a factory that had trouble with corrosion of the pipes in their plant, after trying everything else they got so desperate to try that approach and their problems were gone.

in certain professions this is not loudly declared ,but just accepted and used for pure  capitalistic reasons.
It works doesn't matter why.

What does "up" water mean exactly? Still sounds like magic to me. (the bad kind) Every boiler tech I know still uses traditional corrosion inhibitors. If they knew there was something better they would be all over it, trust me.

Nevertheless, I am still curious about this one, perhaps there is more to the story that will help it make sense to me?


3) This one I'm reasonably sure I have the answer to (and my science journalism hypothesis may apply to its common interpretation):

Another interesting ability of water would be the one the university of Vienna is experimenting with.

They found, if you take two glass containers fill them to 80% with water  then put and anode in one the counterpart in the other and connect that to a high voltage power source.
Now carefully push the two containers closer together,. incrementally at one point the water starts to behave almost like liquid helium or a bose einstein condensate,it starts crawling up the wall of the side of the container closest to the power source .
This is happening in both containers the very moment they reach the rim the water starts building a bridge between both containers even if there is  still a  air gap of like 5 millmeters.
 if you pull then both containers apart the bridge will stay and stretch.
I saw one  about 4-5 centimeters wide .
After like 25 to 30ty second the bridge will collapse and the process is not repeatable with the used water for a while.
No one has a theory yet  how this works.

But from the looks of it,it reminded me on the water probe in the movie abyss,just the humming sound was missing in the movie.

Water has a strong dipole moment. You can reproduce the experiment yourself pretty easily. Find a sink with a water faucet (cold) on it that you can finely control, get the strongest magnet you can find (small neodynium rare earths are getting common in the household these days) and hold it as close as you can to the smallest steady stream of water that you can achieve. Observe the effect. What you will see is the effect of a magnetic field on the dipole moment of water. The dipole moment and hydrogen bonding in water are some of it's "magic" properties. (the good kind)

The experiment you describe sounds very much like a glorified version of this, as applying a potential difference across two bodies of water, with the results you describe is going to be a function of the dipole moment of water, hydrogen bonding, dissolved salts (or rather ions in their water solvation spheres), pH (hydronium ions and their solvation spheres), and finally currents in the bodies of water concerned - oh and of course the distance between them and the nature of the insulator between them will affect the overall capacitance of the system (in the case you describe I assume it is air). So this is totally expected behaviour as far as I am concerned - no real "magic" here - all well understood properties of materials and physical principles.

I am confident that with sufficient tools and trials I could most likely completely explain this one. (My thoughts go right to the effect of water currents (not electrical) however small, and ion distributions, as well as the changes in local humidity conditions on the experimental scale.) edit: Oh, and of course, the resulting hydrolysis at the electrodes once the water bridge is formed and it's effect on the pH of each now half-cell. (I think this might be key to some of the observations)

Now here's my fun spin on #3: add non-Newtonian fluids with a dipole moment and hydrogen bonding into the equation (starch suspensions and ferrofluids as two examples) and repeat the experiment. One just might get some pretty cool Terminator 2 type stuff - but I like your Abyss reference too. 

Oh and finally I suspect that we're looking at a minor language barrier on such a complex topic here, and if so I apologise for any confusion, but I'm always impressed with how well you do. (I dropped out of French class as soon as I was allowed - grade 10. ) Though I like to think my English skills, particularly written, are well above average. (I'm so modest too! )