Veteran NPR^® science correspondent and award-winning radio and TV journalist Ira Flatow's enthusiasm for all things science has made him a beloved on-air journalist. For more than thirty-five years, Flatow has interviewed the top scientists and researchers on many NPR and PBS programs, including his popular Science Friday^® spot on Talk of the Nation. In Present at the Future, he shares the groundbreaking revelations from those conversations, including the latest on nanotechnology, space travel, global warming, alternative energies, stem cell research, and using the universe as a super–super computer. Flatow also further explores his favorite topic of the science of everyday life with explanations on why the shower curtain sticks to you, the real story of why airplanes fly, and much more.

From dark matter and the human consciousness to the surprising number of scientists who believe in a Creator, Present at the Future reveals the mysteries of science, nature, and technology that shape our lives.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 5 reviews)

Interesting ideas, somewhat flawed execution

Overall the book was worth reading but just barely. As another reviewer mentioned, there doesn't seem to be any real rhyme or reason to the layout of the book in terms of what is covered where.

More significantly it is just not very well written. Here is the sentence that had me laughing out loud:

"Sitting on the panel, beside the usual film folks, was Dr. James Watson, the famous codiscoverer, with Dr. Francis Crick, of the three-dimensional structure of the DNA molecule, 50 years before." (p.203)

This is not the only instance of convoluted writing.

There also are problems in the editing of the book.
For instance, on p. 109:
"Remember our energy numbers? Remember that corn ethanol gives you a return of 1.25 energy units for each energy unit you put into growing, harvesting, and turning the corn into ethanol?"

Well, no in fact I don't. Because he hasn't mentioned it until p. 114

"Their results were startling. Ethanol returns 25 percent more energy than it takes to put into it. So if you put 100 units of every into growing, harvesting, and turning corn into alcohol, you get a yield of 125 units of energy."

In conclusion, there are some interesting ideas in this book but they are marred by some poor writing and editing.

August 04, 2008

IGCC

Pebble reactors, "each one of the cylindrical pebbles are packed with a load of radioactive fuel, a cue ball, containing inside, ten thousand tiny little micro spheres of uranium. They drop into the top of the a hopper and by gravity are circulated and discharge from the bottom and then pneumatically reinserted in the top and could be operated without refueling or shutting down for about five years." "The Chinese and the South Africans are in fact now in the process of licensing for construction two of these demonstration plants." The pebble reactor has no water; instead the coolant is helium and does not get activated or corrode material; the pebble reactor promises to be 50 percent efficient. The heated helium can be used to produce electricity or as a heat exchange. The pebble reactor may be used to produce hydrogen. The reactor does not have walls and the design is "Meltdown-proof" because the reactor design does not let the fuel get hot enough to melt. The reactor is designed to automatically shutdown without human intervention if the coolant fails. "Pebble reactors don't show any signs of being cheaper than the conventional reactors we have in the country." "The white house has been reluctant to spend money on developing these reactors, spending money instead on more conventional nuclear reactors." Two commercial reactors are scheduled to come online in 2011, 2012.

PBMR process involves helium coolant entering the vector vessel at 500 C and a pressure of 9MPa or 1,323 pounds per square inch. The gas moves down between the hot fuel sphere, and leaves the vessel at 9090 C. The hot gas enters the tub urine and is connected to the generator and gas compressors. The coolant leaves the turbine at 500 C, recompressed, and returned to the reactor vessel.

Joe Lucas, director of Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, says, "We have more energy in the form of coal here in the United States than the Middle East has in its entirety in oil." Lucas choice for energy is coal. "Sulfer dioxide, nitrogen oxide ... have been cut by about seventy percent overall". Coal is half the cost of other fuels. Half the electricity produced in the United States comes from coal. Lucas says the highest potential for coal as a energy source is power plants that emit no pollutants. The CO2 emitted from the coal power plant will be stored in underground aquifers.

Integrated gasification combined cycle, IGCC can produce gas from coal. Jeff Goodwell says, "But the industry has resisted building these plants. They prefer to tout these plants that are ten to twenty years down the road and continue building the same thing." "The coal industry fought tooth and nail against all those laws that required reductions during the 70s and 80s and 90s, spending millions of dollars lobbying against them." Sequestration of CO2 underground will work. Coal power plants could store millions of tons of CO2 underground. The biggest sequestration field is in Canada and after twenty five years sequester about twenty five million tons of CO2, "which sounds like a lot, but a coal plant in Georgia emits that much in one year.' Delays instead of solutions is a sad song and dance, Goodwell says, "It was the same talk in the 70s. We can't clean it up. Its too hard. It's too expensive. The stuff's not ready yet. And then they pass laws and it comes ready and they do it far cheaper than before. It was the same debate with mercury (pollution). We can't do it. It's too had. Stuff's not ready. You know, if we passed a law, they would do it." "it's the same thing with IGCC. Gasification is widely deployed around the world. There have been a number of IGCC plants that up and running all around the world." Big profits are compelling investors to build Coal fired plants and get them grandfathered in before CO2 laws apply. Goodwell believes that mandatory CO2 regulation is inevitable.
January 28, 2008

Does science have a future?

As I expected, this was a fun book to read. I did not any significant errors.

The presentation was disjointed with no clear direction.
January 27, 2008

A good, broad view of modern scientific advances

I'm a big fan of popular science books--new theories and advances pop up all the time, and it's hard to keep up with them otherwise. "Present at the Future" is definitely one of the better offerings out there, both in terms of the scope of the fields covered and in the clarity of its explanations. In fact, Flatow picks such interesting topics and discusses them so well that I often found myself wishing he's explanations had gone even more in-depth. The fact that he didn't is not a handicap however; the broad range of topics will expose readers to a lot of new potential interests they can then pursue further in other sources.

My only quibble with the book is Flatow's alarming tendency to start a paragraph with a quote, write four or five sentences, and then recycle the exact same quote--which struck me as somewhat sloppy. Surely the experts he interviewed provided him with more than one usable soundbite. But honestly, it's a very small flaw in an otherwise excellent book.
January 26, 2008

He is definitely trying

As science writers goes Ira Flatow is pretty goods,. I may be prejudiced because my middle school ( Junior high ) science teacher was Ira Bradley.
I've read a lot of Popular science in the 55 or so years since then.
I can't give this guy a 5 star, but he's covering the issues.
He's a reporter
so we really can't expect him to have much of a sense of the mathematics or
important equations involved,
but he should read some of the great science writers of the 30's and 40's and get a sense of the history
and it's importance.
Talking about the future without mentioning Benoit Mandelbrot or Per Bak
is pretty much leaving out the "big picture". He also left out Isaac Asimov who is probably the most prolific science writer of all time.
Some of us may not be "present at the future", but we have a good idea where it is headed.
December 17, 2007

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