MY LIFE IN BIOTECHNOLOGY

It took me around 7.5 years to gain a B.S. in chemical engineering and PhD in biochemical engineering.  The only real job I had in industry was in biomass engineering, more specifically as a process engineer in sugar factories.  My graduate school research and dissertation involved building a tunable laser before you could buy one, plus a microreactor, to irradiate Escherichia coli in the visible spectrum to affect the DNA/RNA bonds.  

Sterilization or catalysis depended on the exogenous photosentizers used to absorb the laser light.  Here was the problem, the effect of light on DNA/RNA bonds depend on the wavelength of the laser.  We operated at 600 nanometers.  If we had a laser that could radiate at 265 nm, with the same energy, the effectiveness increases by 30,000 times.  However, frequency doubling of laser light was in its infancy, and even today hasn't progressed that much.  Visible or uv, the portion involved in the electromagnetic spectrum is tiny:

At one time I actually understood all the above.  So let me go on to the reading level of most of us.

One of the first projects I led early in my university career involved a raceway to grow microalgae using carbon dioxide from the emission from a generator, the long term application being an aquatic farm of microorganisms fed the effluent from a fossil power plant to reduce global warming.  The advantage of microalgae is that it can be five times more efficient than any land crop in converting sunlight into biomass:

• trees and plants:  tenths of percentage (all over the map)
• land crops  1.8% to 2.2% (1-2% from Wikipedia)
• marine alga:  6%-8% (up to 12% is the theoretical high)

So if you want to grow the most biomass in a relatively cheap environment (you pay for farm land, but the ocean is mostly free) with free fertilizer (from OTEC upwelled fluids), then the future has to be marine organisms.  Kelp is a potential crop, but macroalgae is not as efficient as microalgae.  While the potential of marine biomass is promising, the lack of an industry certainly is a clue that commercialization remains a challenge.

Engineers are supposed to take research started by scientists into the marketplace.  Thus my interest turned to something I coined as macrobiotechnology.  Energy is always a low-cost product, so I searched for high value commodities ready for the marketplace.  

I was in the 1980's secretary of the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii, which in those days had an adjacent Hawaii Ocean Science and Technology Park.  They were combined into the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority, which I now think was a mistake, for Authority meant anyone wanting to do anything there had to make a profit.  All those companies had a tough time, even with products such as pearls (a company I started with former Governor George Ariyoshi and then Dean of Engineering Paul Yuen), biopharmaceuticals (Cyanotech and others) and seafood (Neil Sims, who I recruited to Hawaii to run that pearl culture company).  No one there has become a billionaire.

Good time to mention that people make the difference, and something like golf or cuisine or karaoke are important links.  Paul Yuen and I golfed almost every Saturday for twenty years.  Golf was the key to forming a relationship with Mitsuro Donowaki, leading to formation of the Pacific International Center for High Technology.  

Golf, karaoke and travel sealed the friendship with Tadashi Matsunaga and Grant Burgess.  I met them more than a quarter century ago when Grant was a post-doc in Matsunaga's lab at the Tokyo University of A&T.  Matsunaga founded the Journal of Marine Biotechnology and went on to become president of his university.  Burgess followed Matsunaga as editor of that journal.  In the very first issue, our team was the only American paper accepted for their 1993 charter issue.  Title?  Marine Macrobiotechnology Systems.

Grant went back to Scotland to Edinburgh University, where the two professor-mates adjacent to his room just happened to be the Scotch Professor of the country and the second who had a membership in the Royal and Ancient Club, which runs Saint Andrews.  We all golfed there numerous times.  On my recent trip to Japan Matsunaga took me out to dinner, followed by a karaoke session in Roppongi.

There is an M Curse in marine biotechnology.  And Matsunaga is one of the few M's who are still alive and doing well.  Here is an even more interesting M Curse, Part 2.  All that led to the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute later landing a $25 million National Science Foundation Marine Bioproducts Engineering Center, which made the University of Hawaii the national lead for the pre-commercialization of marine biotechnology

At around this time I joined the Hawaii Biotechnology board, we hired David Watumull, and twenty years later, they seem, with spin-off Cardax, to be just about ready to make a profit on astaxanthin to remediate inflammation.  Unfortunately, all my stock options are so diluted as to be negligible...I think.

As much as nothing truly significant has yet happened, this thread of my professional life in marine biotechnology has nevertheless enriched my life in ways that deserve to be a movie.  We could squeeze in golfing at St. Andrews with Burgess and Matsunaga, which was hilarious.  Mind you, Grant moved on to the University of Newcastle, where he directs a prestigious laboratory, and you'll read of his research exploits someday.  Or the lunch I had with Shinichi Nishimiya to plan for the future of the Blue Revolution, where marine biotechnology will be a prominent contributor.

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Hurricane Erick was up to Category 4, but is weakening and should ease south of Hawaii.  However, Hurricane Flossie still shows a track that looks like she's aiming at the Big Island:

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HOLLYWOOD and FAREWELL

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a lengthy (2 hours and 39 minutes) Quentin Tarantino rambunctious flick starring Leonardo DiCaprio (who was kind of playing Burt Reynolds of those days) and Brad Pitt (beat out Tom Cruise for the role of the real life side-kick of Reynolds in the 60's, and performed well), with a bunch of others, like Al Pacino, Dakota Fanning, Michael Madsen, Kurt Russell (who was also narrator), and Bruce Dern (in a role that was supposed to be filled by Burt Reynolds, who passed away before filming began).  Luke Perry also died, for real.  Other actors portrayed people like Bruce Lee, Steve McQueen, Michelle Phillips and Mama Elliott.

Rotten Tomatoes reviewers gave it a decent 85% rating, but audiences only 71%.  I can see why, for the film was rambling and threw a curve ball at the end.

Some of the script built up the Manson clan and the home and lifestyle of Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski.  Leonardo DiCaprio as a fading cowboy star lived next door to them.  You knew something was going to happen, and it did, but not in the expected way.  It was kind of a dirty trick.  But, heck, this is only a movie, not a documentary.

OUaTiHollywood is Tarantino's first film without producer Harvey Weinstein, of sex abuse fame.  The film was Tarantino's "love letter to Los Angeles of the 60's."  I drove all over the area in those days, and the nostalgia exuded.  The soundtrack of the 60's featured the Mamas and Papas, Los Bravos, Paul Revere and the Raiders Neil Diamond and others.  Cost $110 million to make.  Reviewers used terms like heady, disorientating, irresponsible, brilliant, outrageous, too long and such.  All appropriate.

The Farewell was a totally different kind of movie.  Rotten Tomatoes bestowed 100% reviewers and 91% audience ratings.  You only very rarely get this kind of approval.  Here is an RT list of the best.

Writer and director Lulu Wang deserves most of the credit:

The Farewell, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2019, where it was picked up for worldwide distribution by A24. The film follows a struggling New York City artist, played by Awkwafina, who travels to China for a family reunion to visit her dying grandmother.^[17] Wang based the film on her grandmother's illness, a story she first told on an episode of This American Life.^[18][19] It is set to be released in the United States on July 12, 2019.

Wang (to the right of Awkfina in this photo) was born in Beijing, at six moved with her parents to Miami, is trained in classical piano and graduated from Boston College in 2005 with a double major in literature and music.  Her first film five years ago was Posthumous.

Awkwafina (Nora Lum), born and grew up in New York City, but also studied in Beijing.  She was first a rapper, then appeared in a few films, including Oceans 8 and Crazy Rich Asians, where she played a role (right) about as different as you can imagine.

The film, well, as the family kept the bad news of lung cancer from the afflicted grandmother (Zhao Shuzhen), everyone was sort of morose and sad.  The only personality with energy was Nai Nai, the person who was dying, and she was the great spirit of the film.  I shouldn't say this, but as much as the film made a case for her imminent passage, six years after the story was first written, she is still alive.  Kind of a Hollywood ending.

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Hurricane Erick is now a Category 3, but is expected to ease south of Hawaii.  However, Hurricane Flossie seems headed straight towards the state, with predictions of a more northernly path:

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I LIVE TO EAT

On Saturday, I posted on how to enhance food into cuisine at 15 Craigside.  I left you at Miyazaki Wagyu Beef.  So let me continue into Part 2, including the best pizza I've ever had.

Most diets, and two nutritional articles in the morning Star-Advertiser, no matter how they color it, advocate eating to live.  I live to eat.



Mehmet Oz and Mike Roisen, for example, want to alter your eating habits for a healthier life.  They are right, of course, but is there a better way?  I won't really enjoy a salmon burger with sweet potato and broccoli for breakfast.




The second article recommends cutting "just" 300 calories/day  represented here by two chocolate chip cookies.  Makes sense.

My cuisine choices this weekend of course followed the live to eat theme, but I only consumed a third of a pound of wagyu and chutoro (a fatty tuna sashimi), which is excellent for omega-3 fatty acids:

Just a simple meal on my lanai, with Kirin Beer and Taru-zake (note the cedar square cup):

Ho-hum, just another wagyu and chutoro meal on my lanai.  But great, nevertheless.

I might add, though, that when you go to a major conference in Japan, the evening before the meetings begin, conferees are invited to "dinner," which in this country doesn't mean dinner.  This is a reception where there are the usual beer, wine, alcohol options, plus an assortment of dishes.  You generally stand, eat, drink and talk.

The traditional practice is for the leaders of the gathering to pound open a cask of sake.  Note that people are drinking the sake in those wooden containers.  The keg is made of cedar, which adds to that distinctive taste.  However, they double the aroma by serving this special sake into a cedar drinking cup.  

Generally, inscribed on the wood are the conference details.  This is what you see on my above taru-zake cup:  TechnoOcean 96.  That was almost a quarter century ago.

Some of you might have experienced in a robatayaki restaurant sake poured into a cup, which sits in this wooden container.  Or, the cup might not be used.  In any case, they pour the sake to the very top so you either slurp the liquid without moving it, or drop a lot while bringing it up to your mouth.

The second part, pizza, was a $1.50 takeout from the 15 Craigside Dining Room.  This was Florentine:  spinach and tomato, plus avocado.  I always ask that the avocado be placed in a separate container, which I consume with a salad.  Again, I reduced my consumption by enhancing only one-fourth.  I froze the remainder.  Avocados do not freeze well.

I first fried the bottom of the pizza in a pan with a lot of butter, which would evoke rejoinders from nutritionists.  However, you know me by now.  I then transferred the piece to a toaster/oven, but first adding, for this go around, pepperoni and chopped up shiitake mushrooms and onions.  I then placed the combination in the oven.  After a few minutes I cracked an egg onto the top of the pizza and returned the super pizza back into the oven for a couple of minutes.  The result:

With beer and a glass of Chardonnay, what a meal.  Perhaps my best pizza ever, and the egg could have been the key.  Maybe the butter, too.  I forgot to add the basil I had picked, but I still have 3/4 of the pizza left.  Next?  Japanese Wagyu Beef Pizza?

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Hurricanes Erick and Flossie will threaten Hawaii by this weekend.  Erick looks to sufficiently weaken and ease by south of the islands, but Flossie could get stronger and take on a path a bit more to the north:

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DEATH BRINGS EVERLASTING PEACE OF MIND

This should be a sad month for me, as my wife of 47 years passed away ten years ago.  She went in the morning, in the afternoon I posted on Gratitude...Not Grief, and The Huffington Post published it the next morning.

We talked at some length about death and the afterlife, and perhaps I convinced her that there was none.  Then again, maybe not, for she sort of still believed in angels.  We both did not want funerals, but a celebration of life might be appropriate.  We also didn't think much about the need for gravestones.  

I never previously imagined a tribute to her, but people left money at her celebration of life, so I decided to use it to plant a tree she liked.  I know it had yellow flowers, so I used her funds (we kept separate spending accounts) to travel around the world to find this tree.  During this traumatic month, I thought I'd also place her ashes at places she wanted to visit but did not, mostly because I wasn't interested.  Kind of an atonement process.  The first ceremony was a private one at Rainbow Falls.  I'm close to completing an e-book on these journeys to 50+ sites.

While I was in Bangkok on this search, her sister-in-law, Gwen, who worked at a botanical park in Hilo, informed me that the name was the Gold Tree.  Eventually at least 100 trees were planted, including at the Hilo Municipal, Ala Wai and Makalena Golf Courses.  The Ala Wai ones all passed away, but Pearl's cousin, also from Hilo, recently sent me a note that the Hilo golf course tree is now somewhere between 30 and 40 feet tall.

There should be a Sunday message to this story, but the surprising, if not shocking, twist, is that, as well-matched as we were, and I was indeed very lucky, for she did everything for me, my life the past decade has been absolutely fabulous.  I think it has to do with my reaction to trauma.  Her sudden departure should have left me crushed, and certainly in grief.  Neither happened.  Gratitude led me to the Gold Tree and Pearl's Ashes.

It's almost like she gave me a final gift to enjoy the rest of my life in whatever way I wanted, which I have.  In October of last year I again experienced this backlash effect when  I couldn't walk one night.  This cleared up in a few minutes, but distress sparked euphoria.  This sense of general ecstasy went away when I went on two trips.  They were great, and sure, I'm holding a $900 bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild, but still stressful.  There was a mild E2 between those trips.

I returned at the beginning of last month to undertake two medical procedures.  I had purposefully delayed doing them, fearing the worse, because I had been too lucky all my life, and some balance was overdue.  Thankfully, everything went so well that I entered Euphoria 3, which has continuously been with me for six weeks. 

When Pearl died, my view of death changed.  So much so that I stopped going to funerals, except one, when the wife of the deceased called me to provide a eulogy.  Plus, my attitude about life significantly shifted from others to me. 

All my life I have been generous and went out of my way to help people.  I've given more than anyone I know.  That was fine, but sometimes the effect can be stressful, for most of my professional career involved finding annual funds to support a hundred staffers.  Even in retirement, I was still writing books and taking on chairmanships of good causes.

Finally, three years ago I decided to end all that and now focus on myself.  Mind you, I'm not an ogre, for I still smile and am mostly kind.  However, simple things like I stopped giving gifts, thankfully accepting what I am given.   Anyone my age deserves this.  It's easier for me, as Pearl and I had no children.  As you can see, I'm also eating well.



I'm now only a little more than a year away from reaching reaching 80.  Getting to the Year 2020 has long been one of my goals since coming up with Earth 2020:  Visions for Our Children's Children, a NASA-sponsored public education program linking the University of Hawaii with similar institutions in California on sustainability, environmental accountability and world peace.

That was 45 years ago, and I assisted Manoa Futurist Jim Dator in leading the Hawaii effort.  I was a bit player, but did come up with the Earth 2020 theme.  My life certainly was influenced by this summer program.  I just watched Jim on Leslie Wilcox's Long Story Short.  He must be well into his 80's, looks incredible and hasn't lost any lucidity.

When you get to our age, the end is closer, and I now realize much of what I attempted to do will not reach any kind of fruition for a long time to come.  But they will all someday arrive with impact.  From World Peace (my first article with The Huffington Post touched on this subject) to SETI to Geoengineering of Global Warming to the Hydrogen Economy to Fusion to the Blue Revolution, I feel very much satisfied with just helping plant those seeds.

So pardon me for attempting to optimize my final few years by maximizing life to the fullest.  I actually think that my hair is getting blacker.  I know I'm happier.  The past ten years after Pearl went have been the most enjoyable period of my life, and maybe even getting better.

Death is seen by some, if not many, as something terrible.  For me it could lead to eternal blackness or gloom.  Then again, maybe I should look at my final phase as everlasting peace of mind.  In any case, it would be nice if my current state of Euphoria 3 continues till....and who knows, I might actually wake up in Heaven.

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In the East Pacific Ocean is Tropical Storm Erick, who will become a hurricane, head in the direction of Hawaii, but hopefully weaken back into a tropical storm when he arrives on Friday:

But, ah, right behind is Flossie.

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