Brighton decay...

Interesting after life of one of the burnt down Brighton Piers that was built in 1866 in front of Hilton Hotel at Brighton beach. I am glad that it was left as it was after it caught on a frightening fire about 5 years ago which the origin of fire still unknown, however in my eyes, it is now more "lively" than the restored theme-park pier 5 minutes away. The burnt skeletons have eroded, collapsed and re-occupied by new lives. Seagulls rest and nest on them, algae and shells grow on them, millions of sea lives benefit from the decomposed iron, the eroding steels by the fire as well as natural courses have chosen some beautiful texture and colors from a rotting pallette, they blend in perfectly with the rocky beach of Brighton and live happily with the spirits that once enjoyed the pier... the bare skeletal structures that ghosted the memory of mystery flames look especially stunning when the sun sets, by drawing strong profile lines on the summer sky of golden hour with brushes and splashes of melancholy. The structures that once made a pier stands still on the sea are now supporting each other in an balancing act, but if your stand quietly in front of them, you might hear the whispers of the ruins and dead, and maybe the weak cranking sounds from the slow-moving joints of the skeletons that are still trying so hard to defeat the waves hitting on them and the tragedy happened years ago...

Smart underwater factory Amsterdam

Hard-rocking artsy diatoms

Haekel Swarm from Simon Jenkins

I first heard of Jenkins from his articles in Guardians, and I remember his cynical statement criticizing a few modernist architects as ‘the worst offenders because they became the most powerful’ in the article responded to the 2006 exhibition on modernist art at the V&A. Surprisingly he is fascinated by diatoms, too. That's probably why he hates modernists so much?

Simon Jenkins is a journalist and author. He writes a column twice weekly for the Guardian and weekly for the Sunday Times, as well as broadcasting for the BBC. Previously he wrote columns for the Times and the London Evening Standard, both of which newspapers he edited.

His career began on Country Life magazine and continued on the Times Educational Supplement, the Economist (political editor) and the Sunday Times (books editor). He served on the board of British Rail and London Transport in the 80s and was deputy chairman of English Heritage and a Millennium commissioner. He was Journalist of the Year in 1988 and Columnist of the Year in 1993.

His books include works on London architecture, the press and politics and, more recently, England's Thousand Best Churches (1999) and Thousand Best Houses (2003).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2008/apr/22/simon.jenkins

Algae Farms at Sea

http://www.jmu.edu/news/madisonscholar/bachmann-1.shtml
In addition to using the bioreactor, Bachmann and his students are experimenting with growing algae in a saltwater fish tank.

"One of the things that we want to look at is whether or not these algae could be cultivated offshore, to save valuable land area needed for housing and current food production practices," Bachmann said. "But, in order to do this, you must ensure you can do it in a contained manner, so that the algae do not disrupt the environment.

"Offshore algae farms have the potential to absorb significant amounts of CO2 and produce substantial amounts of bio-oil. But algae plumes could alter entire ecosystems if they cannot be properly contained, and you do not want that happening."

The Chesapeake Bay is a testament to this, Bachmann said. The bay has struggled with algae problems in the past, and felt strains on the fishing industry there. In certain conditions, fertilizer runoff can lead to large-scale algae plumes so thick, they block sunlight from getting through to organisms below the surface that need it. In severe conditions, those organisms die off, thus disrupting the food chain.

"These algae plumes can be quite large, some more than 400 miles in length," Bachmann said. "Right now, no one wants to clean them up. But if companies could harvest these microalgae and process them into fuel, then they just might just be motivated enough to help cleanup this environmental problem."

The deep ocean, far offshore, could prove to be an ideal place for cultivating algae without disrupting the environment.

"A lot of the ocean — 95 percent of it or so — is really like a barren desert and it doesn't have anything growing in it," Bachmann said. "As you travel into the open ocean, the surface of the sea is too far away from the nutrients that are found in the soil. These nutrients are essential for plant growth. If you're at the shore, the nutrients are here, the sunlight's here, everything grows. If you go into the deeper ocean, the sunlight is still present, but the nutrients are far below the surface and nothing will grow."

The fish tank trials will provide answers to a couple of questions: Are there algae that will grow there and can it be contained? In an attempt to keep the algae from spreading, it will be grown in clear dialysis tubing. "So if we could load up a tube, bright green, filled with algae, put it in there, have it keep growing and not have our tank get overrun with it, then we're looking pretty good," Bachmann said.

As for the nutrient source, poultry litter might do quite nicely, he said.

Gas, Diesel, Biofuel production from algae