Sumber: Utusan Malaysia 8 Oktober 2009

Ramai saintis, penyelidik diperlukan

Oleh TARMIZI ABDUL RAHIM
tarmizi.rahim@utusan.com.my

KUALA LUMPUR 8 Okt. - Timbalan Perdana Menteri berkata, Malaysia kini amat memerlukan lebih ramai saintis, penyelidik, tokoh inovasi dan perintis dalam bidang sains dan teknologi bagi merealisasikan pertumbuhan ekonomi berdaya saing serta dinamik.

Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin menegaskan, kerajaan akan melakukan apa saja bagi mengatasi masalah kekurangan golongan saintis yang pada masa ini berada dalam keadaan kritikal dan amat mendesak.

Menurut beliau, sasaran kerajaan dalam Rancangan Malaysia Kesembilan (RMK-9) untuk melahirkan 60 saintis, penyelidik dan jurutera bagi setiap 10,000 tenaga kerja sehingga kini hanya mencapai 18 peratus daripada sasaran.

"Seperti gelas yang diisi separuh air, saya lebih suka menyebut gelas itu dipenuhi separuh air daripada menyebutnya separuh kosong. Negara perlu memanipulasi situasi ekonomi dunia yang meleset pada masa ini untuk meningkatkan usaha inovasi.

"Keadaan ekonomi itu tidak sepatutnya disia-siakan sebaliknya perlu diambil peluang daripadanya bagi membangunkan nilai tambah inovasi dan memulih negara ke arah kemakmuran ekonomi," katanya.

Beliau berucap pada perasmian Ekspo Penyelidikan dan Ciptaan Institusi Pengajian Antarabangsa 2009 (Pecipta 2009) di sini hari ini.

Hadir sama, Menteri Pengajian Tinggi, Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin dan timbalannya, Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah.

Pada sidang media selepas majlis itu, Muhyiddin menggesa universiti dan swasta atau pihak industri menjalin kerjasama dan perkongsian pintar dalam melaksanakan program penyelidikan dan pembangunan.

Beliau berkata, amat merugikan apabila hasil penyelidikan universiti hanya sekadar disimpan dan tidak berpeluang dikomersialkan.

"Kerajaan mahu melihat hasil penyelidikan itu sampai ke tahap yang boleh dimanfaatkan bukan setakat kajian semata-mata," katanya.

Timbalan Perdana Menteri mengakui antara kekangan yang terpaksa ditanggung oleh pihak universiti dan kerajaan adalah masalah peruntukan yang tidak mencukupi.

Katanya, kerajaan setakat ini memperuntukkan kira-kira RM200 juta kepada universiti untuk tujuan penyelidikan dan jumlah berkenaan tidak mencukupi.

"Insya-Allah kita akan kaji balik peruntukan ini dalam RMK-10 sekiranya mendapat gandingan sumber pembiayaan di antara kerajaan dan swasta sekali gus memberi peluang kepada universiti berasaskan penyelidikan mendapat sumber dana tambahan," katanya.

Menurutnya, kerajaan amat menggalakkan penglibatan pihak swasta pada masa depan untuk menjalin kerjasama dan menyumbang dana bagi tujuan penyelidikan dan pembangunan inovasi bersama pihak universiti.

Beliau menarik perhatian tentang amalan di negara maju seperti Jepun, Amerika Syarikat dan Korea Selatan, yang kebanyakan sumbangan dana adalah daripada pihak swasta.

"Tetapi tidak di negara ini iaitu bantuan penyelidikan universiti banyak tertumpu kepada sumbangan kerajaan dan penglibatan pihak swasta dalam penyelidikan dan pembangunan masih kecil," katanya.

'Toxic' seaweed spreading on France's northern coast

Source: Yahoo news AFP


SAINT-BRIEUC, France (AFP) – Mounds of putrified green algae are building up on France's northern coast, releasing poisonous fumes blamed for the recent death of a horse and the collapse of the rider. Part of the coastline has been declared off-limits as local authorities acknowledge they are unable to get rid of the decomposing seaweed that has washed up on shores in more than 80 communities across Brittany.

Green groups accuse President Nicolas Sarkozy's government of turning a blind eye to an "environmental cancer" caused by the algae and blame intensive farming for producing nitrates that feed the seaweed's toxicity.Veterinarian Vincent Petit lost consciousness and his horse collapsed when he slipped on a patch of rotting algae near the beach of Saint-Michel-en-Greve on July 28.

The horse died almost instantly and Petit was pulled to safety by a crew of workers who happened to be nearby.The veterinarian has since threatened to sue local authorities for reckless endangerment, raising alarm in a string of coastal communities in Brittany's Cote d'Armor region."The death of the horse may be the opportunity to get things moving so that finally, something is done," said Rene Ropartz, mayor of Saint-Michel-en-Greve.

Some 400 people turned out Sunday for a rally on the town's beach to demand action from the government to deal with the green algae problem once and for all. Already this year, the town of 500 souls has spent a paltry 150,000 euros (212,000 dollars) to clean up the algae and that effort is floundering over the growing masses of the nuisance.

"Two or three years ago, we would collect a maximum of 21,000 tonnes of algae. But this year, we are going to beat those records by a long shot," said Ropartz. Yvette Dore, mayor of the nearby town of Hillion, said clean up operations had yielded in early August the same amount of green algae usually collected by the end of October.

The problem has plagued the area for more than 30 years but local leaders say more green algae has washed up this year and new territory is being invaded on the Atlantic coast.
The green algae develops in shallow waters such as the wide bays in Brittany, fed by the farm chemicals seeping into the water.

Environmental groups say the onus is on Brittany's farmers, mostly pig raisers, to take action to prevent nitrates from polluting the water. The group Eau et Rivieres de Bretagne on Monday accused the government of ignoring the algae problem and said shutting down beaches was not the answer.

"Everyone knows that only a major reduction of the use of fertilizers and other nitrogen chemicals will result in a lower green algae tide," said the group. Local doctor Pierre Philippe said fumes from the seaweed can be noxious in some cases depending on the state of putrification. His advice is to stay away from them.

"Up until now, it was not a major problem, other than the cleanup and the cost of those operations," said Joel Le Jeune, mayor of Tredrez-Locquemeau. "But now the safety of people and animals is at stake." Le Jeune decided to bar access to a strip of 200 metres of coastline where the green algae is thick and potent. Due to the rugged terrain, workers had been unable to clean up that area.

But Dore, the mayor of Hillion, insisted that locally-elected officials were powerless to deal with what she described as an agricultural problem, saying the matter went far beyond their jurisdiction. The green algae has also been bad for business. Mario Scotto, owner of the last beach hotel in the village of Saint-Michel-en-Greve, blames the foul-smelling seaweed for the drop in tourism.

"It has caused enormous damage," said Scotto.

Pengorbanan

Tadi telefon adik di Malaysia..adik no-3 cakap adik bongsu menangis tiba2 sebab rindu pada kakak sulungnya...

Sedih pula mendengarnya...

Halal vs Haram

I have a friend in my lab whom I regard very special..

He is an Erasmus student, a biochemist who joins ARC for awhile learning something about aquaculture..

Everytime when we meet, we would discuss a lot of things from aquaculture, algae, fungi, bacteria..world issues, education, religion etc... I somehow found that he is a very unique guy: intelligent, interesting, very open, friendly and he'd always make me think a lot too..

Recently we talked about the halal food..

Although so many curious people have asked me about the halal food, this time my friend came out with this question & with his own argument...

He told me in his country (he is Finnish btw) it is not allowed to slaughter an animal consciously and let them bleed to die..It seems for them that this is very cruel (bleeding animal to death) & what did they do here is to knock first the animal untill it become unconscious & kill them as fast as possible. In europe, they are very particular on animal's welfare & only certified, highly trained people can conduct the slaughter. In Finland, there are specific laws for this. Even some muslim people have been charged in the court in regard to this matter.

I told him that we muslim feels that the animal we slaughter did not feel any pain since
during the slaughter (and according to Koran) we would have to use a very sharp knife plus it has to be done as fast as possible and it shoud cut in the neck of two important veins 1) the jugular vein & 2)the carotid arteries. I personally believe that in one way the animal wouldn't feel any pain but I just couldn't prove it to him. Ofcourse it is hard to convince him since he is a real scientist which only believes on hard facts.

So, I did a little research on the net and found this. Too bad that I cannot access the paper of this prominent german scientist, Wilhelm Schulze since I'm writing this post from my house. Professor Willhelm Schulze and colleagues have done a great job in proving that the Halal meat is indeed 'fresh, hygienic' & most importantly 'painless' for the animal. Below is what I've got from wikipedia..http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Schulze_(professor_of_veterinary_medicine)

Wilhelm Schulze (10 December 1920 – 30 December 2002) was a German professor of veterinary medicine who lectured and later directed University of Veterinary Medicine Hanover. On August 24, 2006, the university decided to name a prize[1] after him.

Professor Wilhelm Schulze and his colleague Dr. Hazim carried out a study at the School of Veterinary Medicine, Hannover University in Germany. The study: ‘Attempts to Objectify Pain and Consciousness in Conventional (captive bolt pistol stunning) and Ritual (knife) Methods of Slaughtering Sheep and Calves’. His study concluded that the Islamic way of slaughtering is the most humane method of slaughter and that captive bolt stunning, practiced in the West, causes severe pain to the animal.

In the study, several electrodes were surgically implanted at various points of the skull of all animals, touching the surface of the brain. The animals were allowed to recover for several weeks. Some animals were then slaughtered by making a swift, deep incision with a sharp knife on the neck cutting the jugular veins and the carotid arteries as well as the trachea and esophagus (Islamic method). Other animals were stunned using a Captive Bolt Pistol (CBP). During the experiment, an electroencephalograph (EEG) and an electrocardiogram (ECG) recorded the condition of the brain and the heart of all animals during the course of slaughter and stunning.

The results were as follows:
I – Knife Method
1. The first three seconds from the time of knife (Islamic) slaughter as recorded on the EEG did not show any change from the graph before slaughter, thus indicating that the animal did not feel any pain during or immediately after the incision.
2. For the following 3 seconds, the EEG recorded a condition of deep sleep - unconsciousness. This is due to the large quantity of blood gushing out from the body.
3. After the above-mentioned 6 seconds, the EEG recorded zero level, showing no feeling of pain at all.
4. As the brain message (EEG) dropped to zero level, the heart was still pounding and the body convulsing vigorously (a reflex action of the spinal cord) driving a maximum amount of blood from the body thus resulting in hygienic meat for the consumer.

II - Western method by C.B.P. Stunning
1. The animals were apparently unconscious soon after stunning.
2. EEG showed severe pain immediately after stunning.
3. The hearts of animals stunned by C.B.P. stopped beating earlier as compared to those of the animals slaughtered according to the Islamic method resulting in the retention of more blood in the meat. This in turn is unhygienic for the consumer.

Indeed, I'm really amazed by this results & thanks to my friend who had asked that question to me in the first place..

SUBHANALLAH, ALLAHU AKBAR

Algae as biofuel?

Pictures from Cargill, San Franscisco

Big ponds of algae (??ha)

My schedule is becoming hectic than ever..Lesser time to write in the blog, more time will be allocated to thesis writing n reading..sigh .Anyhow,I will always try to keep this blog updated with any articles which intrigues me such as this one (copy pasted from the link below). I've also highlighted some points which I think crucial in determining the success/failure of using algae as biofuel. Although I've always been an optimists, I personally think that there is still a long way to go until there will be a time where we can use biofuel from algae for real. Further comments will ensue later (2,3,4,5,6 weeks or more from now??)

Taken from http://www.the-scientist.com/2009/02/1/36/1/

The latest crop of biofuel pioneers are looking past corn and french fry grease to microscopic organisms which they hope to coax into producing fuels to power planes, trains, and automobiles. At first, biofuel experts focused their attention on ethanol from the sugars in corn kernels; next, heads turned to second generation biofuels, such as ethanol from the cellulose in non-food plant parts. Now the next, or third, generation is here.

THE MICROALGAE AS BIOFUEL

"We've really seen an explosion in third generation biofuel companies and ideas," says Matt Carr, director of the industrial and environmental section at the Biotechnology Industry Organization. "Algae is the hottest in terms of buzz."

The basic concept behind algal biofuels is deceptively simple. Microalgae naturally produce and store lipids similar to those found in most vegetable oils. If scientists can genetically jigger the oil-storing tendencies of algae into becoming more efficient than they are in nature, commercially viable levels of transportation fuels may result. The key challenges include selecting the most suitable algae strains (Point 1), growing these algal cells at optimal rates, engineering the metabolic pathways (Point 2) that control oil production to create cells pregnant (rasa cam kelako pulak term nie) with desirable oil products, and extracting the oil in an efficient and economic manner.

It's not the first time algae have been pegged as a fuel source: Between 1978 and 1996, the US Department of Energy explored the potential of algae, but stopped when the price of a barrel of crude oil fell from $50 to $20. Not since then has there been so much research and development focused on making algal biofuels a broad reality. Dozens of private companies and a few publicly-funded researchers are now working on algae strains similar to those contained in the Cargill ponds, trying to bring the cost of algal oil manufacture (Point 3) down to levels that could save consumers from the roller coaster of gasoline prices. Key players in the algal fuel race include Solix Biofuels, a Colorado-based operation which plans on firing up a closed-tank bioreactor system that uses waste carbon dioxide (Point 4) from beer making, and Aquaflow Binomics, a New Zealand company that seeks to produce biofuels by harvesting wild algae from polluted waterways. Earlier this year, in the first algae-powered commercial aircraft test flight, a Continental Airlines Boeing 737 was powered in part by an algal biofuel produced by California-based Sapphire Energy.

In a clear, sunny November morning, Juergen Polle dips a disposable dropper into a sloshing slough of Sheepshead Bay on Brooklyn's southern shoreline, searching for microalgae. "On average, I get three to ten strains per water sample," he says. Polle escapes his fourth-floor lab at Brooklyn College every chance he gets to sample the waters surrounding Brooklyn and Long Island, on the hunt for species that might one day serve as the tiny engines of a biofuel-based economy. (Still, he's a little reluctant to call himself an algae hunter. "If you want to put it in two words, then yes," he says.)

Down the road from his first sampling site, Polle holds a ball of twine and gingerly lowers a glass measuring cup over a flood wall into more of the murky waters that surround Brooklyn. "Why do I need all those expensive tools?" he jokes.

Specifically, Polle is looking for efficient oil producers, algae that can accumulate anything more than 30% of their body weight in oils. His work, now a year and a half old, is funded by a US Air Force grant that aims to develop algal jet fuel. According to Walter Kozumbo, manager of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research's bioenergy program, the Air Force uses about 2.5 billion gallons of jet fuel per year. "Clearly there's a national defense issue here with depending on foreign oil," Kozumbo says.

Polle says that since he started collecting algae for the Air Force project, he's isolated approximately 300 strains of unicellular algae, and is in the process of parsing out a few hundred more strains that are clumped together in additional water samples.

The beauty of imagining microalgae as tiny fuel factories is that the compounds they naturally manufacture are chemically similar to petroleum-based fuels. For example, Kozumbo says, the triacylglycerides that photosynthetic algae accumulate generally resemble JP8, the kerosene-based jet fuel of choice for military aircraft. And these unicellular plants don't just make and store these useful oils; they can really crank them out. The US DOE says that microalgae have the potential to produce 100 times more oil per acre than any terrestrial plants, including soybeans.

Polle's hunt has taken him across the country, from ponds and birdbaths in Texas to the Salton Sea of California. Polle has his sights set on collecting in the salt flats outside San Francisco as they likely harbor interesting marine species that he has not yet seen. In similar salt flats near the Great Salt Lake in Utah, Polle found a few strains of algae that he thinks might be new to science, though the constraints of his mandate prevent him from fully exploring these potential taxonomic additions. "At this point we're not really identifying them," he says. "[Taxonomic identification] is not interesting to the Air Force. We just go out and try to find the greatest diversity there is and screen for lipid production potential."

When Polle does find algae that show promise as biofuel producers, he passes them along to his collaborator, Christoph Benning, a plant biochemist at Michigan State University. Benning performs genetic experiments to uncover the biochemical mechanisms that make one algal strain more proficient than another at rapid growth and efficient oil production.

Benning, who's also funded through the USAF jet fuel program, admits that biologists lack a full understanding of the metabolic pathways algae use to produce oil. "We're missing the basic tools," he says. In algae, Benning explains, oils accumulate under physiologically stressful conditions, such as a lack of nitrogen or grossly fluctuating temperatures, which are counterproductive to vigorous growth. That's a central problem from the perspective of someone who wants to grow a healthy algal population that is also proficient at producing and storing oil. Through genetic experiments on Arabidopsis and on the lab rat of algae, genus Chlamydomonas (which naturally inhabits soils and is easily cultured in the lab), Benning hopes to identify transcription factors that are triggered by stressful environments, and could be used to encourage increased oil production in algae without slowing their growth from stress. "We're trying to identify the nuts and bolts of making oil in algae," he says.

Benning's lab has already produced promising results. In 2005, Benning uncovered some of the genes and enzymes important to lipid biosynthesis in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, isolating BTA1Cr, a gene responsible for producing a critical membrane lipid in the species (Euk Cell, 4:242-52, 2005). Since Chlamydomonas is not an ideal oil producer, Benning hopes that what he learns in this model system translates into other, more biofuel-friendly species that Polle might turn up.

We're investors in science sometimes, technology all the time, and magic infrequently," says Erik Straser, leader of the Cleantech team at Mohr Davidow Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. Straser's investment portfolio includes a company that feeds farmed pine and poplar trees to bacteria that normally inhabit termite guts and produce ethanol. While scientists are working to develop the technological tools necessary to make biofuels from genetically modified organisms commercially viable, Straser says existing biofuel companies are scrambling to scale up their operations to sizes that will make a real dent in US fuel consumption. Scaling is the magic that Straser awaits. "It's a lot harder than people think."

For a biofuel company to make serious headway in the US fuel market, it must prove that it can produce at least one million gallons of fuel per day (Point 5), according to Straser. And accomplishing that, he says, takes some major machinery. "You're going to need [closed-tank bioreactors] the size of a football stadium (Point 6)." And biofuel efforts based on open-pond ( little bit skeptical here) (Point 7) growth of photosynthetic algae, which gather at the surface to draw energy from sunlight, might need considerably more space.

Pat Gruber, CEO of Gevo, a company that produces the biofuels butanol and isobutanol using bacteria and yeast cells, says that going the photosynthetic route is a bit of a pipedream. "There's not enough freakin' land and water in the world to do that. What we've got here is a lot of emotion running rampant without facts being thrown on the table." Gevo's genetically altered "bugs" consume sugars in closed reactors and produce fuels similar, but superior, to ethanol, Gruber says.

Michael Borrus, founding general partner of X/Seed Capital, agrees that scale is a big hurdle. "The big problem with biofuels is that no one knows how to scale anything," he says. "It is possible, sure, but it's not an easy proposition."

One Israeli company, Seambiotic, maintains a 1,000-m2 site with eight oblong ponds that can produce approximately 23g/m2/day of algae, according to its scientific advisor and algal growth expert Ami Ben-Amotz. That growth rate approaches US DOE's stated (but never reached) goal of 50g/m2/day. Ben-Amotz says that Seambiotic shipped approximately three tons of algae belonging to genus Nannochloropsis to biofuel manufacturers in 2008. But even this quantity of algal biomass does not yield one million gallons of biofuel per day-not even close. Ben-Amotz says that his algal cells typically contain 30% oil per gram of biomass, so 3 tons would only yield slightly more than 816,466 grams (or approximately 235 gallons) of algal oil, which could yield approximately 100-200 gallons of biofuel.

"I could ship 500 gallons tomorrow if someone wanted to buy it." -Harrison Dillon
With the help of seawater and free carbon dioxide from Israeli Electric Company smokestacks, Ben-Amotz says that Seambiotic's only limitation to increasing that growth rate is developing a better hydrodynamic system to churn the pond water more efficiently for proper aeration and increased algal growth rates. He's working with NASA on that one. "They got to the moon," Ben-Amotz says. "I hope they will solve the problem of water mixing!" Ben-Amotz says he thinks he can eventually achieve a growth rate of about 75g/m2/day.

Next year Ben-Amotz says that Seambiotic expects to open a new open-pond facility-again sited at an electric plant-that will likely be the largest facility for algae production in the world. It will cover 5 hectares and will provide tons of algae to different production facilities; lipids will go to biodiesel manufacturers, sugars will go to bioethanol producers, and proteins to makers of nutraceuticals. But even Ben-Amotz admits that Israel doesn't have enough land to support truly commercial-scale algae production. He says that similar facilities will need to be constructed in other countries in South and North America for that to become reality.

Eric Jarvis, a senior scientist at the US DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Col., worked on the agency's algae fuel exploration program, dubbed the Aquatic Species Program, before it was halted in 1996. Jarvis participated in a large-scale, year-long algal growth experiment in open ponds in the desert outside of Roswell, NM. He says that experiment taught him a lot about the prospect of growing algae for biofuel in such a way. "These are ecosystems, and you have to think of them in a bigger sense," he says. "It's not just a row crop, where you plant it and harvest it."

Jarvis adds that keeping algal strains confined to ponds (especially if they're genetically engineered) (Point 8) is just one of the challenges of outdoor algal farming. One must also be aware that alien algal strains (Point 9) will likely end up in open ponds, potentially throwing the system into disarray.

Al Darzins, a principal group manager at the NREL, says that the agency is currently focusing more on using living organisms to convert waste cellulose, such as that from corn stover or switch grass, into ethanol. Algae work was virtually nonexistent at NREL a few years ago, he adds, but now the agency currently devotes about $1 million of its budget to algae projects. "We should reopen the Aquatic Species Program," he says.

Darzins says that the scientists working on the Aquatic Species Program were the first to clone the gene for Acetyl CoA Carboxylase (ACCase), an enzyme that functions in lipid production, and insert that gene into the algae Cyclotella cryptica. The close-out report published by the DOE after the conclusion of the program, which many in the algal oil business refer to as "The Algal Bible," identified the ACCase gene as a key player in algae's oil synthesis. With the gene in hand, researchers working on the program even patented it and managed to coax algal cells into over-expressing ACCase. "These early experiments did not, however, demonstrate increased oil production in the cells," the report reads. Says Darzins, "It was a good shot in the dark, but it was a shot in the dark, nonetheless."

I'm behind the wheel of a white Jeep Liberty Diesel, driving around the broad streets of South San Francisco. A colorful corporate logo blares "Solazyme" across the side of the vehicle. The car feels like any other diesel car or truck. Turn the key, the engine rumbles to life and the motor growls under the hood. But this Jeep is different. In the gas tank is a fuel produced completely by genetically engineered algae: A pure biofuel. Riding shotgun is Harrison Dillon, a microbial geneticist who is now president, chief technology officer, and cofounder of biofuel company Solazyme. "When we drive this thing down the street in downtown San Francisco, people cheer," says Dillon with a wide grin.

Dillon started Solazyme with some colleagues in 2003 ("when oil was cheap," he says), and kept a culture collection of a couple hundred Chlamydomonas strains in his own low-tech facility. "We bought the growth media, sterilized it in my kitchen, and stored it in the garage," he remembers.
They tried to grow the algae in outdoor ponds, but quickly realized that the productivity of the algae was nowhere near high enough to yield appreciable amounts of fuel. So they switched to heterotrophic species of algae(Point 10), which directly consume carbon-based compounds rather than passively absorbing carbon dioxide from surrounding media. "That's when the technology just took off," Dillon recalls. "It really went exponential." The advantage of using heterotrophic algae, according to Dillon, is that they are bathed in their energy source; as opposed to photosynthetic species, which must jockey for a good sunbathing position among millions of their kin.

While Solazyme's exact species and strains of algae are a closely guarded secret (kedekut ilmu,haha), Dillon assures that the company uses several obscure strains as their workhorses. "You're lucky if you can get 10 papers to come up on PubMed that name them," he smiles. "We look at algae that have been isolated from all over the world," from Irish peat bogs to equatorial swamps. For feedstock, Solazyme's algae eat anything from waste glycerol and sugar cane to sugar beet pulp and molasses. "You can use just about anything," Dillon says, as long as the feedstock is high-volume and low-cost.

Dillon says that Solazyme's algae produce some hydrocarbons, but mostly triacylglycerides. To make their biodiesel, the company takes the glyceride backbones from these fats and adds methanol. To get renewable diesel, they take that fatty acid methyl ester and "hydrotreat" it, stripping off oxygens and saturating the molecule with hydrogens. That gives them a straight-chain alkane, not much different from the diesel that flows from gas pumps into millions of diesel engines everyday across America. In nature, algal cells are rarely above 30% oil. Yields of 50-60% oil per gram of dry weight of algal cells are considered excellent. Solazyme's algae, however, stores 75% oil per gram of dry weight. "We have incredibly good scientists here," Dillon says.
olazyme is most strikingly different from its competitors for the fact that its organisms produce not just transportation fuels, but also other consumer products-a way to diversify their business and leverage high-cost goods against the low price bar set for fuels. On a table in the company's boardroom sit about 10 jars of cosmetic goops and nutriceutical concoctions. I tentatively dip the tip of my finger into what Dillon calls Solazyme's "olive oil," and bring it reluctantly to my lips. Though my mother's Italian ancestors would be rolling in their graves at calling this stuff olive oil, it was edible.

Dillon says that he expects Solazyme to be producing algal biofuel at "demonstration levels of tens to thousands of gallons" per day by 2009, and aims to be producing its fuel products at commercial levels by 2011. "The scalability is not something that frightens me too much," he says.

"A big basic strategy of ours is to fit into existing infrastructure at every step of the way." Using large-scale fermentation tanks that currently churn out a wide variety of microbially-produced products-nutriceuticals, amino acids (lysine) for animal feeds, carpet fibers, components of infant formula, and laundry detergent enzymes-Solazyme hopes to fill existing petroleum pipelines with their diesel, which can run in unmodified diesel engines. "We were the first company to walk into a major oil company conference room with a barrel of microbially-produced oil," Dillon crows. "I could ship 500 gallons tomorrow if someone wanted to buy it."

Ternakan udang maju di luar negara..Malaysia?

Pemandangan sebahagian dari kolam udang di Indonesia yg bersaiz

50,000 ha!

Sumber utusan malaysia

PENTERNAKAN udang dunia didominasi oleh lapan buah negara iaitu Korea Utara, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Brazil, Ecuador dan Mexico.
Faktor utama kejayaan negara-negara itu menguasai pasaran udang antarabangsa adalah kerana faktor geografi iaitu mempunyai cuaca tropika, jajaran pantai yang panjang dan mempunyai kawasan luas sesuai untuk pembangunan kolam udang.

Pertumbuhan industri akuakultur dunia adalah stabil terutama melibatkan udang, bak kata Pengerusi CP Prima, Hardian Purawimala Widjonarko iaitu syarikat pengeluar udang terbesar Indonesia dan antara yang terbesar di dunia, ketika krisis ekonomi dunia sekalipun manusia akan tetap makan.

Lantaran itu pengeluaran udang di sentiasa meningkat sejak 1997.
Pada tahun 1997, pengeluaran keseluruhan udang di dunia adalah 0.95 juta tan metrik, manakala pada 2004 pengeluarannya telah meningkat kepada 1.8 juta tan metrik hasil daripada pertumbuhan tahun sekitar 9.8 peratus.

Penternakan udang kini termasuk kategori produk yang mewah dalam pasaran antarabangsa.
Sebelum 1980-an, udang ditangkap secara tradisional tetapi apabila penternakan udang diperkenalkan sehingga 2004, ia telah mencecah 37.9 peratus daripada keseluruhan industri penternakan akuakultur di negara itu.

Dengan pertumbuhan yang stabil, lebih banyak syarikat besar berani melabur untuk melaksanakan penternakan udang secara besar-besaran dengan kualiti yang tinggi.
Berbanding dengan udang ditangkap secara tradisional yang bergantung kepada musim dan kualitinya tidak dapat dikawal, ternakan udang mampu mengatasi masalah itu.
Apatah lagi ia mampu memenuhi permintaan yang tinggi, mengurangkan kos dan dapat dijual pada harga yang lebih rendah berbanding yang ditangkap berikutan peningkatan teknologi penternakan.

Syarikat ternakan udang terkenal, CP Prima yang ditubuhkan pada April 1980 oleh Charoen Pokphand Group misalnya telah lama bergiat dalam bidang tersebut.
Syarikat itu mempunyai pengalaman lebih 28 tahun mengendalikan akuakultur termasuk kolam udang secara besar-besaran.

CP Prima telah mencatat jualan bersih sebanyak Rp6.09 trilion (RM2.7 bilion) pada tahun 2007 dan yakin akan terus berkembang berdasarkan pasaran antarabangsa terus meningkat termasuk permintaan tempatan yang membabitkan industri hiliran.
CP Prima mempunyai 50,000 hektar kolam udang dan mempunyai 38,000 orang pekerja termasuk 12,500 pekerja sepenuh masa.
Baru-baru ini Menteri Pertanian dan Industri Asas Tani, Datuk Mustapa Mohamed telah melawat salah sebuah ladang ternakan syarikat berkenaan di Lampung yang terletak di Sumatera Selatan.

Mustapa ketika ditemui Utusan Malaysia memberitahu, konsep plasma yang digunakan oleh syarikat berkenaan dalam melaksanakan penternakan udang adalah hampir sama yang dilaksanakan oleh Felda Berhad di dalam penanaman kelapa sawit di Malaysia.
CP Prima menyediakan rumah bagi pekerjanya untuk tinggal di kawasan kolam berkenaan dan kawasan berkenaan juga dilengkapi dengan kemudahan sekolah, pusat kesihatan, bank, balai polis, dewan orang ramai dan kawasan rekreasi.

Menurut Mustapa, para penternak terbabit diberikan seorang sebuah kolam dan mereka perlu menjelas bayaran kira-kira RM65,800 bagi sebuah kolam dalam tempoh lima tahun.
Kebanyakan penternak, katanya, tidak bermasalah untuk menyelesaikan hutang tersebut kerana pendapatan yang stabil.

Penternak terbabit memperoleh pendapatan kira-kira RM450 sebulan (selepas ditolak hutang) dan mereka juga boleh membeli barangan keperluan di kedai yang disediakan oleh syarikat dengan harga yang murah.
Selain gaji, syarikat berkenaan juga memberi barangan keperluan sebanyak kira-kira RM200 kepada para peserta dan ditolak daripada hasil udang yang dijual kepada syarikat pada hujung bulan.

Pendapatan RM450 sebulan adalah dianggap lumayan di Indonesia (hmm..mungkin Malaysia akan ada masalah dari segi ini..) terutama di kawasan pedalaman seperti di Lampung kerana kebanyakan penduduk di kota Jakarta sendiri tidak mendapat pendapatan sebanyak itu.
Selain pendapatan yang lumayan mereka juga mempunyai rumah yang selesa dan kemudahan asas yang mencukupi berbanding penghuni di bandar-bandar utama yang kebanyakannya menghuni rumah-rumah setinggan.

Sikap bertanggungjawab yang ditunjukkan oleh syarikat berkenaan dibalas oleh pekerjanya dengan menghasilkan produktiviti yang tinggi dan berkualiti.
Keunikan hubungan majikan dan pekerja itu merupakan rahsia kejayaan syarikat berkenaan untuk muncul sebagai antara syarikat penternakan udang terbesar di dunia.

Dengan peningkatan pencapaian syarikat pelbagai program kemasyarakatan dan pemuliharaan alam sekitar telah dilaksanakan termasuk penanaman 3,100 hektar pokok bakau pada 2007.
Menjelang 2011, kawasan seluas 5,200 hektar pula akan ditanam dengan pokok berkenaan.
Penanaman pokok bakau bukan sahaja meningkatkan kawasan hijau di sekitar kolam udang, tetapi juga dapat mengelakkan daripada berlaku hakisan yang sekali gus memastikan udang yang diternak tidak terjejas. Selain itu, hakisan pantai juga dapat dielakkan dan kehidupan di sepanjang pantai semakin meningkat.
Pada 2007, CP Prima mencapai tahap pengeluaran maksimum 3,856 kolam udang iaitu kira-kira 57,000 tan metrik setahun.

Bagi mengatasi masalah itu, CP Prima telah membeli Kumpulan Dipasena iaitu sebuah syarikat pengeluar udang terbesar di dunia di dalam satu kawasan yang terletak di Lampung.
Kolam-kolam udang yang menghasilkan pengeluaran rendah kerana hampir terbiar telah dipulihkan semula.

Kolam-kolam terbabit kata Hardian, apabila beroperasi sepenuhnya dan mencapai pengeluaran maksimum akan meningkatkan pengeluaran udang CP Prima kepada 200,000 tan metrik pada tahun 2010. Keseluruhan eksport udang CP Prima adalah 58 peratus ke Amerika Syarikat, 20 peratus ke Eropah dan 17 peratus ke Jepun. Kata Hardian, udang-udang yang dihasilkan diproses kepada pelbagai produk lain dan kebanyakan dieksport ke Amerika Syarikat. Baru-baru ini sebuah syarikat dari Jepun turut berminat untuk mengimport udang dari CP Prima. (wow..I'm so impressed!)

Kejayaan CP Prima mungkin boleh dilaksanakan di Malaysia, terutama Sarawak kerana bentuk geografi kawasan penternakan itu adalah sama dengan kawasan paya di Sarawak yang masih luas serta tidak berpenghuni.

Special message to Kamil......tunggu apa lagi??

Red Alert! Red Tide!

I wanted to comment on the news of this paper for a long time..but just didn't have time to do it..until now....

From Kosmo, January, 2009

KUALA LUMPUR - Penduduk di kawasan Pulau Pangkor dinasihatkan tidak memakan hidupan laut di kawasan berlakunya perubahan warna air laut jika pencemaran tersebut berpunca daripada fenomena Red Tide atau alga merah.
Menurut Pengarah Institut Oseanografi dan Maritim, Universiti Islam Antarabangsa Malaysia (UIAM), Profesor Madya Dr. Kamaruzaman Yunus, kehadiran alga merah yang terlalu banyak itu boleh memberi kesan terhadap habitat laut kerana akan menyebabkan oksigen terlarut menjadi rendah.
"Apabila ia semakin banyak, lama kelamaan alga-alga ini akan mati dan mendap di dasar laut. Kemudian bakteria akan mereputkan alga ini yang akan menghasilkan toksin.
"Kehadiran toksin ini akan menyebabkan ikan di laut mati. Kalau ikan yang masih hidup makan alga ini dan kemudian ditangkap oleh manusia untuk dimakan, ia boleh membahayakan manusia termasuk menyebabkan kematian,'' jelasnya.
Semalam, Kosmo! melaporkan mengenai perubahan air laut daripada kebiru-biruan kepada warna merah yang mengejutkan kira-kira 2,000 nelayan di sekitar Pulau Pangkor, Kampung Baharu dan Segari di Perak.
Keadaan itu menyebabkan pendapatan nelayan mulai merosot ekoran hasil tangkapan ikan yang terjejas

The first thing that came across into my mind is..aahhh…it’s the ‘red tide’& it turned out to be true. In fact, since 1976, more than 300 cases of the red tide phenomenon were reported in Malaysia. In 2005, one fisherman from Sabah died after eating shellfish which contain toxin due to this phenomenon.

Red tides are actually associated with Harmful Algae Bloom (HAB). Harmful as it name’s sound, this species usually produce potent toxin which can find their way to the human. This usually happens through aquatic animal consumption by human especially bivalve or mollusks (mussel, clam, oyster, scallop). Why is it easy for the HAB to enter this kind of animal? It is because these animals are filter feeders which means that they basically eat anything that passes through their mouth. Currently, there are increase scientific awareness on this matter especially when more coastal waters are being used for aquaculture.

To be continued..