Paper Mills Reborn?

Could ethanol extend the shelf-life of paper mills? Well the folks at North Carolina State University think so. Steve Kelley, the head of the university’s wood and paper science division, told the (Raleigh) News and Observer:

“There are important differences, but you start with the same material — namely wood — and you can work with a lot of the same equipment,” Kelley said. “It makes a lot of sense.”

With the more than 24 pulp and paper mills in North Carolina struggling in some fashion, producing ethanol in a paper mill might be one way to boost a sagging industry.

Feed the Trees

Corn is out, but North Carolina State University researchers think that by modifying the genes in poplar trees, a more efficient source of biofuels will be available.

The key is to reduce the lignin content of trees. Lignin is the glue-like complex polymer in the cell wall that strengthens fibers and resists microbial decay. The substance is also hard to breakdown, but lignin ranks second behind cellulose as the most abundant organic polymer and constitutes about 25 percent of the dry mass of wood.

The university researchers are studying to understand how lignin is formed with the aim to improve the number of poplar trees available for ethanol production.

The Facebook Identity

So some users of Facebook — the current king of the social networking craze — are actually trying to reclaim their lives by agreeing to cancel their accounts either simultaneously or individually.

What is interesting about Joseph Recomendes’s blog entry is that people are asking if those with Facebook accounts are losing the ability to distinguish themselves. In this Christian Science Monitor article published Oct. 10, Christine Rosen writes:

“This technology, with its constant demands to collect and manage our friends and to relentlessly market ourselves, in some ways undermine our ability to achieve what it so boldly promises to give us – a surer sense of who we are and where we belong?”

Maybe I’ll cancel my Facebook account as well.

Trust the Bloggers?

In her blog entry, “Can Blogs be as Trustworthy as Mainstream Media?”, Lisa Bistreich asks if bloggers and citizen journalists will be able to earn the trust of the public. She makes a valid point that people trust National Public Radio and the BBC, for example, because those organizations have built “reputations of truthful and accurate journalism.”

North Carolina blogger Anton Zuicker may have a solution. In this (Raleigh) News and Observer article, he offers some tips that will help bloggers earn the public’s trust and valuable reading time.

Navigating Through the Blogosphere

From the “I-Wished-I-Wrote-That-Line” comes Traci Grigg’s blog entry on using blog rolls. Traci writes, “Trying to stay up-to-date on the latest information in your field can feel like drinking from a fire hydrant. “

I definitely feel the same way and I often stumble upon new blogs through serendipity or through the recommendation of other bloggers. I do think blog aggregators such as Bloglines and Technorati offer a great service.

Safe Searching

The major search engines, Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com, list and categorize Web sites by crawling the web instead of having people review and index the listings.

So that makes it easier for objectionable material like pornography to appear in the search results. One example would be the infamous whitehouse.com (you might be searching for whitehouse.gov.) The web sites have installed some filtering options to block porn content and other questionable material from reaching kids, but the filters have faced some challenges.

In 2003, a Harvard report blasted Google’s Adult Content Filter for excluding non-pornographic sites such as the American Library Association. In the end, to safely search for sites that might have a questionable name, use the safesearch operator.

Free Information?

At the first Hacker’s Conference in 1984, Stewart Brand said, “Information wants to be free”—a phrase calling for free and open exchange of information.

The May announcement from the OpenNet Initiative said 41 countries filter Web content. I believe people will try to access the content by any means possible.

For instance in Myanmar, 100,000s Buddhist monks marched to protest the totalitarian rule of the military junta. The government responded by shutting down the country’s two Internet service providers. The New York Times reported:

“Along with the Internet, the junta cut off most telephone access to the outside world. Soldiers on the streets confiscated cameras and video-recording cellphones.”

But information does have a way of escaping.

“Since the protests began in mid-August, people have sent images and words through SMS text messages and e-mail and on daily blogs, according to some exile groups that received the messages. They have posted notices on Facebook, the social networking Web site. They have sent tiny messages on e-cards. They have updated the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.”

“They also used Internet versions of “pigeons” — the couriers that reporters used in the past to carry out film and reports — handing their material to embassies or nongovernment organizations with satellite connections.”

Information will be free by one method or another.

Blogrolling

The general issue I have discovered when reading blogrolls on various sites is the fact the links are sometimes not descriptive enough—the reader sometimes doesn’t have an idea of where they are headed once they click the mouse button.

As for the class, my only problem on creating the blogroll for my site stemmed from my trouble to edit categories and post links in the appropriate ones. For instance, I had trouble moving my biofuels links into the category Ethanol/ Alternative Fuel Sites.

The Best and the Worst

I.) Criteria: Timeliness of Information

Best: Ethanol News
http://ethanol-news.newslib.com/

This is a non-commercial Web site offers visitors timely, relevant information on the issues surrounding ethanol. The information is organized by descriptive headlines and showcases news from all sources. This is a poor-man’s version of the searchable news database, Lexis-Nexis.

Worst: Ethanol@mindsay
http://www.mindsay.com/tags/ethanol

This group blog was last updated June 21 leading readers like me to possibly discount the information. While I appreciate the availability of information, I think its effectiveness is limited by its age. In addition, the writers’ neither offer links to validate their points nor allow readers to discover information on their own.

II.) Criteria: Working links

Best: Food and Fuel America.com
http://www.foodandfuelamerica.com/

I find myself visiting this blog on a daily basis because it offers an unbiased look into ethanol production and the potential ramifications its wide use would have on the environment and food supply. The blog writers offer no endorsements and offers links to back their claims and invite public discourse. The links are timely and work.

Worst: Patriot Renewable Fuels
http://www.patriotethanol.com/index.htm

The Web site for this Illinois-based producer of biofuels offers links to news releases  at least two years old, thus undermining the company’s credibility to potential customers. I also found the e-mail links provided on each page did not work.

III.) Criteria: Writing Quality

Best: Auto Blog Green
http://www.autobloggreen.com/category/ethanol/

Face it. People do not read Web pages, they merely scan the information. But I found this blog to be well-written full of taunt sentences. I found myself slowing down and reading post after post.

Worst: Absolute Energy
http://www.absenergy.org/home/grainmarketing.html

The well-known adage, “caveat emptor” (Let the buyer beware) holds true for this Web site. The company’s pages are chocked full of misspelled words and typos which strengthen the idea that one must be more cautious when evaluating information. Here is an example I found on the company’s grain marketing page:

“We are set up to take corn on the 11th of Oct. Our Thursday Oct 11 hours are 10:30 to in line by 6:00 On Friday 7:00 am to inline by 6:00 pm , On Sat 7:00 am to in Line by 4:00 pm . We have a 15000 bu per hour stacker/drive over conveyor .We will take 15.5 corn at no disc. and upto 16.5 moisture at 3cts per 1/2 pt disc. . Give us a call at 866-636-2220 or CHS at Winona at 800-372-8154 for grain bids.”

IV.) Criteria: Publisher Credibility

Best: Simon Robinson’s Big Biofuels Blog
http://www.icis.com/blogs/biofuels/

Simon Robinson is a staff writer with the English-based ICIS, the world’s largest information provider for the chemical and oil industry. Robinson writes a daily blog offering a snapshot of the industry and offers coverage on positive and negative developments involving the industry. Robinson’s writing doesn’t indicate that he is a cheerleader for the industry; he is a solid reporter whose blog offers a good sampling of relevant industry links.

Worst: Radioactive Communist Zombies
http://www.radioactivecommunistzombies.com/radioactive_communist_zom/
For starters, the unnamed writer of the blog, whose name can be found no where, states he is “a frustrated, slightly published conservatarian writer.” The author is not a well-known figure and he offers opinions without citing sources.

V.) Criteria: Web site Navigation

Best: Renewable Fuels Association
http://www.ethanolrfa.org/

As Steve Krug, a usability expert said, navigation is not a feature of the Web site, it is the Web site.

The Renewable Fuels Association knows this point well. The association’s home page offers a simple design that offers clear and easy-to-understand navigation buttons to visitors find everything from media contact information to news releases to position papers. The site follows an orderly structure and it has a search engine to quickly find information.

Worst: USA Energy Independence
http://usaenergyindependence.com/

This three-column Web site is really a dense forest sprinkled with hard-to-find markers. The content —the news briefs, photos, charts, icons and numerous links — are seemingly tightly packed together, thus, creating a cluttered feel. The Web site also suffers from what is seemingly a plethora of ads sprinkled on the more popular pages of the site.

Ethanol: The Future of Energy?

As I grow older my concern for preserving the environment has grown stronger. And with the threat of greenhouse gases rising along with high gasoline prices, the need to replace the billions of gallons of foreign-based petroleum consumed with alternative fuels has gained momentum.

Every interested party from environmental/policy advocates to politicians have seemingly placed their hopes on ethanol, fuel that can be derived from plants including corn, wheat, switch grass and sugarcane. Locally the need is obvious as North Carolinians use 5.6 billion gallons of petroleum-based liquid fuels a year.

My organization, the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, co-published the report, North Carolina Strategic Plan for Biofuels Leadership and the document calls for the state to increase its consumption of ethanol and biofuels to 10 percent by 2017.

I am writing this blog to determine if ethanol is the most cost-effective and environmentally-sound alternative fuel available—more so than hydrogen and solar/wind-generated electricity. If the answer is yes, then I would also like to determine if corn is the best source of ethanol or if cellulosic ethanol is a better bet.

So what will my readers want to know from reading this blog? First, how will a wider acceptance of ethanol affect gasoline prices at the pump? I suspect the reader will also ponder how the nation’s food supply will be impacted by a greater reliance on ethanol.

Keywords

• Ethanol
• Corn Ethanol
• Biomass
• Cellulosic Ethanol
• Alternative Fuels
• Enzymes
• Oil-producing regions
• Biofuels

Preliminary Web Site List

American Coalition for Ethanol
http://www.ethanol.org
The South Dakota-based organization aims to spread the gospel of biofuels on a grassroots level through seminars and publications. The Web site offers an interactive guide that clearly breaks down the process of creating ethanol. The site’s biggest attraction for me is the state-by-state reference guide detailing all public policies relating to ethanol.

Renewable Fuels Association
http://www.ethanolrfa.org/
This is the online home for the national trade association for the U.S. ethanol industry. The detailed resource center offers information on everything from renewable fuel standards to job opportunities with the industry. The site is clean and well designed.

Food and Fuel America.com
http://www.foodandfuelamerica.com/
This blog offers daily posts and links concerning a host of issues on a variety of topics, but more importantly, the site offers an unbiased look into the food versus fuel debate with ethanol. I assessed the quality of information on this site using this guide found at the Virtual Chase Web site.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory
http://www.nrel.gov/biomass/
This federal organization aims to “create market-viable alternative energy solutions.” The site offers a plethora of links to federal and private-commissioned studies and reports on alternative fuels. The site also includes information to better inform site visitors on how alternative fuels could impact their lives.

United States Alternative Fuels Data Center
http://www.eere.energy.gov/afdc/altfuel/ethanol.html
This U.S. Department of Energy Web site offers a detailed look at ethanol production and showcases it completeness by offering information on federal/state incentive laws and data on the alternative fuels market. The site also offers similar information on other fuels including hydrogen and propane.