Tuesday, December 31, 2013

WAYS 7 – The GiveAndTaker

Motto: The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you.
John E. Southard

Today is the last day of 2013. Austrians call this day Silvester, which always makes me think of the cat chasing Tweety in a Looney Tunes cartoon, even thou the spelling is different (Sylvester). All in all, it makes me smile and, together with the nice atmosphere which invades Vienna in this period, contributes much to giving me an optimistic disposition before New Year Party.

For celebrating the night between the years, there are some pre-requisites which cannot be cheated: a little trip down the memory lane (what did the ‘old’ year bring, compared to what I wished for last year), a little peek into the future (what would I kindly ask from the ‘new’ year), food and drinks in the stomach and on the table, some money in my pocket, funny outfits (especially on and around the head…), lots of noise and lots of hugging, kissing and hoping.

I spent the morning enjoying a late breakfast in a wonderful place (Beaulieu in Ferstel Passage), focusing on the memory part. Then I strolled a little through the town, went home for a hot bubble bath (thus coming back to enjoying the present). Then I decided to take a glimpse into the future, before I get out and loose myself into the present again - by eating, drinking and fire-working into the New Year. So I started writing ...

I cannot say I have completely stopped making wish lists and plans for the next year. I have however learned that lists are mostly useful for putting things into perspective when you look back on them … and smile while remembering the ‘old you’ who created that content... Time has a way of sorting through what is important and lasting versus short day-dreaming, and revealing what is good for one versus what is just meant to become lesson-learning...

Those being said, I should focus now on the message I wish to share with you today...

While sitting and enjoying my hot chocolate cup this morning, I looked around at the crowd which was strolling up and down the Ferstel passage. Some people were working this morning, such as the waiters and the singers. There was a small piano and a violin exquisitely playing music of various backgrounds – from classical to Elvis ballads. Those people were giving us food, drinks and music, in exchange for a few euro and applause. We were giving them our money and admiration in exchange for nurturing and beautiful future memories. Everyone was giving and taking, in a nice set-up and with a smile on his or her face.

Why is this so important? … Quite simple answer … It is one of the easiest ways out from the contemporary self-induced and self-perceived ‘Crisis Ages’. As pointed out in a previous posting (Ways 6 – The Teacher), our future has the face of our children. If we raise takers, we shall provide tyrants and feed abuse, intolerance and inequity in our world. If we raise givers, we shall provide martyrs and feed more abuse, intolerance and inequity… If we raise give-and-takers, we shall provide leaders and people striving on generosity and freedom of choice, thus feeding love, tolerance and prosperity in our world.

For all religions, races and cultural backgrounds, the past has proven over and over again that the only way out of any crisis created by inequity was for people to come together when they have hit the bottom of despair and start to give to and take from each other in an equitable manner. I am not referring here only to tangible goods, but also to housing and hospitality, moral support, love and trust and the list can go on.

Life is a multioption, multichoice and multipeople game, which should find its own balance once people learn to accept that happiness comes from within. The give-and-take mood has more to do with feeling, perception and expectation than with any material thing one may see around. Material things could be used to achieve internal aspirations but not the other way around. Material things could be used to achieve higher spirituality but not the other way around. People should regard taking as a way to improve their giving capacity but not the other way around. By taking love, trust or knowledge from others, you will enrich yourself; by further sharing this love and trust and knowledge, you will enrich the world around you.

I will share with you now my short list of wishes for 2014. May this Year bring health, wealth, respect and happiness to all the genuine give-and-takers of the world! And may this Year bring health, wealth, respect and happiness also for all the others, so that they may learn to accept and value what they are offered, so that they may start giving things that matter in exchange. And ... may 'wealth' go way behind the material component of its meaning!

Happy 2014!

Georgina Popescu

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

LENR OUTLOOK 2014



I WISH ALL MY READERS: MERRY CHRISTMAS, SEASON GREETINGS AND A NEW YEAR 2014 AT LEAST 12 TIMES BETTER THAN WAS 2013!

The radical improvement wish goes first of all to cold fusion, LENR, LENR+, HENI, and it depends critically on great, deep,
bold changes – those changes that were possible in 2013 but did not happen.
Success or failure is a problem of definition, of possibility per expectation and lowering expectations is the best for easy successes. However, my OUTLOOK 2013 cannot be called a success by any standard; it is actually an exercise in wishful thinking.
I have started it by wishing “Vivat, crescat, floreat” to LENR- for 2013 and beyond. Now it can be seen that LENR has lived- it survived, however it is still, in part living in past, depending on its past, kind of prisoner of its cradle. It is growable only at the price of fundamental metamorphoses, but only very few of our colleagues are accepting this.
In Outlook 2013 I have told you about my optimistic expectations- LENR should be more intelligent, serious, realistic, pragmatic, materialistic in 2013. Has it? Please answer, dear readers and give us examples.
Interesting, important, significant positive events came only from the new forms of LENR+ (HENI) having a scientific-technical genome so different from that of the original Fleischmann Pons phenomenon that a filiation or kinship demonstration is not easy at all. Metal and hydrogen in great love and unexpected (due to insufficient knowledge) good heat- that has been left from the great energy dream of the Founding Fathers. The Hope is alive and shining but has moved, quite far from its birthplace.

I am old, but (modesty go away!) still a very good learner. Outlook 2013 has taught me what to expect for 2014. how to be very, very cautious and moderate, how to minimize risks of errors.
Therefore, I predict with absolute certainty that 2014 will mark the end of Cold Fusion’s 25 Years War- with a great victory. It will be a year of triumphal battles en route; our most advanced form of new energy will start to conquer the world. The competitors as Fossil, Nuclear, Solar, Wind, and Bioenergy will accept their fate
And the journals will start to publish more and more “peccavi”
confessions of the most stubborn skeptics.
Wait and be amazed. And happy.

Peter



Saturday, December 7, 2013

COLD FUSION, WHAT NOW?



A fast answer to the title question refers to this weekend. Beyond any doubt, the JCF14 Meeting of the Japan CF-Research Society is an important meeting; see please the program and the abstracts of the papers:                                                           
I was especially  impressed – very positively, by one of the presentations: Discussion about the quality of the experiments in cold fusion” by E. Igari and T. Mizuno The title of the paper is even more comprehensive than “about the reproducibility of cold fusion experiments.” All my faithful readers know that reproducibility is my obsession. However quality sounds even better- a  dear technological concept making me nostalgic – my passionate reading the opuses of the great quality gurus: Deming, Juran, Crosby and others and my own Gladwellian Ten Thousand Hours work for the quality of suspension polyvinyl chloride- sweet glory of yesterday! One of the authors is a really great cold fusionist and the first author is the CEO of a Japanese ecology company, also a very important personality. The vital importance of reproducibility is clearly described in the abstract. The origin of the problem is systematically investigated using the very principles of scientific research. They find more contributors to the wicked problem: "the lack of clear hypothesis", "difficulty in controlling the experimental conditions" and "uncertainty of information" What else could be considered and how could we improve the situation?  I hope the in-extenso paper will give some- at least incipient answers. However the prestige of the authors will hopefully stimulate the total intolerance toward bad reproducibility and the problem solving abilities of our community. We have to wake up from this reproducibility nightmare.
So far, so good but we also need a strategic, long range answer to the “what now, cold fusion” question.
A fine Motto is this:                                                                            The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for the rest of your life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do. (Henry Moore)
Henry Moore was a sculptor; for non-artistic professions in which reality and rules are brutally imposed, his dictum becomes true and applicable mainly for the period of life which starts with retirement and ends with death- physical or intellectual, whichever comes first. The Task you try to accomplish must be important, infinite, impossible and in order to attain the highest peak experiences, unpopular too. Heresy is the best. You can see I am fighting for truly unpopular views, both outside and inside the cold fusion field. I am not doing it for seeming different, but because I sincerely think I have discovered some nasty inconvenient truths that happen to confront standard views and memes.
I have discovered the Motto after a professional career in which I had to solve well, as many problems as possible; I needed successes in order to remain a researcher- as almost anybody else I could not afford too many great failures. In 1989 when I have joined the Cold Fusion movement irreversibly, I was convinced that the first technologies will appear no later than in 5 years. My unique worries were the scarcity of the magic metal palladium and the expected production of lower currency energy that cannot be converted in electric energy. However the vision of a world using cold fusion energy was quite natural and vivid.
The problem of bad reproducibility became “a rich source of troubles, despair and skeptics from the start of the cold fusion story” as I wrote during the third year of CF history.  Take care please, I was speaking about ‘troubles” and not problems  (problems are solved, troubles, in the best case get old and fade away) because I already was disappointed with the passive approach- advanced calorimetric methods instead of radical measures for intensification of the heat release. It was then an open question, in which extent the active, creative method was THEN possible? Was THEN possible- in principle to understand what happens scientifically, to build a working theory that can lead to good, repeatable, controllable experiments? Was THEN feasible to start an action of scale up and technological development?  It is more important to answer today; so many years later to the same question- can be the existential and developmental problems of the classic CF/LENR systems solved? Are they actually solvable in principle?  According to my 20 Rules of Problem Solving-appended to this for your convenience to this editorial, after the Igari Mizuno abstract, Rule No. 18 is special for unsolvable problems. These can be solved only if their premises are radically changed. In the same manner, cold fusion has to be metamorphosed in such an extent that even its parents could not more recognize it, in order to become productive indeed..
This metamorphoses can be described in the style of the problem solving rules- by “complete definition. An other quotation from Henry Moore wisely states:
To know one thing, you must know the opposite. Therefore a good definition combines a negative one- what the thing, concept is NOT with what it actually is, or has to be. The list is still not complete. Usable, energy generating cold fusion is:
Accomplished NOT by Science First, BUT by Technology first;
Created NOT via Theory, BUT using smart Engineering,
Based NOT on wet (aqueous) systems BUT only in vapor phase;
Working not at low temperatures (> 100 C), BUT at higher ones (>200 C);
Using NOT palladium, BUT transition metals *e.g.) nickel:
Using NOT deuterium, BUT light hydrogen;
Being NOT simple, static, linear, BUT complex, dynamic,
Structured NOT as one step, BUT multi-step multi-phase;
Belonging NOT to electrochemistry, BUT to nanoplasmonics;
Incorporating NOT nuclear  reactions, BUT nuclear interactions;
Correctly called NOT LENR  BUT LENR+, HENI
I make the most pernicious assertion include here explicit:
“The reproducibility problem and scale up practically cannot be solved for WET cold fusion systems- as the FP Cell. Wet systems are technologically dead."
This will not contribute much to my popularity, but I would be very happy if somebody proves this is idiotic, with data, solid data, and longer term. The simplest reasons for this:

First reason: it seems that deep degassing of the active surface is an absolute necessity; the presence of any non hydrogen gas inactivates fatally the cathodes. Purely electrochemical tricks as electrode inversion and co-deposition are not effective to solve the dreadful reproducibility problem

Second reason the spatial density of the places or zones where the reactions that generate heat, happens is much too low and decreases fast in time

Third reason, due to the presence of a water (heavy or light) phase the temperature is limited to ~100 C, high pressure electrolysis cells are inconvenient. Recent discoveries converge to showing that a higher temperature is able to accelerate the reactions considerably- a sine qua non condition for scale up.

Fourth reason- it seems electrolysis cannot deliver deuterium or hydrogen in the necessary active form.


ATTENTION PLEASE; this: “wet systems, no technology”   is my direct message too, for Eijiro Igari and Tadahiko Mizuno- I hope one of my readers will let them know before they start the presentation at JCF14.
Mizuno is the greatest specialist worldwide in plasma electrolysis- and this is NOT a wet system because the active site of the cathode is not in contact with water, but with plasma.
Strictly in principle plasma electrolysis is NOT hopeless. I cannot do more; I am not able to communicate in Japanese. Help us please!
Peter

PAPER ATTACHED:

Discussion about the quality of the experiments in cold fusion

E. Igari and T Mizuno:

Hydrogen Engineering Application and Development



igari@cleanplanet.co.jp

After the announcement of the Cold Fusion by Fleischmann and Pons in 1989, there has been great debate between the deniers and the believers of the science of cold fusion phenomena. The debate continues to this day after two decades since the announcement. In other sciences, this situation is rare typically due to the fact that experiments are either reproducible or not. In this particular situation, the poor reproducibility of the experiment has been a major issue. As a result, the truth about whether or not cold fusion is even possible has been questioned. The purpose of this paper is to clarify why this unique situation occurred. We divide the process of experiment into four phases to analyze why "poor reproducibility" occurred. (1)Setting up the hypothesis, (2) Planning of experimental design, (3) Implementation of the experiment and (4) Verification of experiment. We would like to discuss what the problems have been in each phase.We interviewed the scholars in the field of Cold Fusion and found that the following problems have occurred in the four phases. (1) Hypotheses: There have been a number of hypotheses. Therefore, it has been difficult to get specific, measurable feed back. What one believes theoretical plays outs quite differently in experimental form (2) Experimental design: Each experiment may appear to have been carried out under the same conditions. However, variations appeared in the experimental results. It is possible that there were unknown conditions in metal, gas, and other components. Such unknown conditions might have not been considered in the experimental design. (3) Implementation of the experiment: Preventing the dispersion of the gas such as nano-structure of the metal as well as the gas such as hydrogen is very difficult. Hence, it has been difficult to control the experiment perfectly. (4) Verification of experiment: There has been some uncertainty about the various hypothesis and experimental conditions. It is difficult to write specifically about all the experimental conditions in the papers. Therefore, reproducing the experiments have been difficult for other researchers.
In this study, we focused on the quality of the "implementation of experiment". In particular, we analyzed the prototype of the venture companies outside of Japan. We looked at the photos and the data of the prototype. We also analyzed the structure of the prototype, material, gas, and the method of heat measurement from the photos. We came to the conclusion that the results and outputs that the company claims are quite different from what they appear to be. Moreover, the data and the information which contained a lot of noise were announced without peer-reviews.
In conclusion, "the lack of clear hypothesis", "difficulty in controlling the experimental conditions" and "uncertainty of information" led to the current controversy of Cold Fusion. It is important to solve these problems in order for the society of Cold Fusion to be in the main stream of the scientific society.
ATTACHED PROBLEM SOLVING RULES.

PROBLEM SOLVING RULES –INTERNATIONAL
by Peter Gluck

Motto:

“ I think, I exist. I decide I live. I solve problems, I live with a purpose.”

1. There are NO isolated problems, they always come in dynamic bunches

2. There are NO final solutions for the really great problems, these have to be solved again and again.

3. NOT solving the problem, but defining it is the critical step.

4. NOT the unknown data, but those known and untrue are the greatest obstacle to the solution.

5. .NOT what we know, but what we don’t know is more important for solving the problem.

6. NOT the main desired positive effect, but those secondary negative and/or undesired effects decide in most cases if a solution is implemented.

7. NOT all problems have a complete, genuine solution.

8. NOT the solutions that seem perfect from the start, but those which are very perfectible are the best in many cases.

9.  NOT the bright, shiny, spectacular solutions but those elaborated, worked out with difficulty and effort and patience are more valuable and have a larger area of applicability.

10. NOT the solutions that are logical and perfectly rational, but those that are adequate for the feelings of the potential users, even if they are ilogical, have the greatest chances of fast implementation.

11. NOT the quality of the solution but the speed of its implementaion is the decisive factor in many cases. It can be better to have a partial solution applied fast than a slower almost perfect solution.

12. NOT always long hours of hard work and great efforts, but (sometimes) relaxation and fun is the best way to obtain solutions for (awfully) difficult problems.

13. NOT our own problems, but the problems of other people are usually more boldly and creatively solved by us

14. NOT the solutions worked out by us, but those borrowed. bought or stolen from others are more easily accepted and implemented.

15. NOT the enhancement of human strengths but the limitation
of human weaknesses is more useful for efficient problem solving

16. NOT the very careful perfect planning, but the smart assuming of risks and firm decision taking are the practical keys to successful problem solving.

17. NOT always the existent, real problems, but many times the fictive, imaginary ones are the most difficult to be solved.

18. Do NOT accept the premises of the problem, change them as necessary and possible.

19. Do NOT stop at the first solution, seek for alternatives.

However, for the really advanced problem solvers, there is a SUPER –RULE- the most important of all;

20. NOT the wise application of these rules but the finding of the specific exceptions to these, is the real high art of problem solving.