Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1183414
22 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I NOVEMBER 2019 RAMAC [1] has the best description of comput- ers that I've ever seen. The author character- izes a computer as "…a remarkably fast and phenomenally accurate moron." A computer's job is to compute, not think. Granted, comput- ers have come a very long way since 1958, and these days, they are a lot closer to thinking (or something like thinking) than they were back then. But even if the computer could think, that's no reason for the designer not to. A sim- ulator is still just a tool, and design is the de- signer's responsibility. I've been running sys- tem simulations for 40 years, but the first thing I always ask myself is still, "Do I believe this?" Shaughnessy: That's what it comes down to. Thanks for speaking with me, Todd. Westerhoff: Thank you, Andy. DESIGN007 Reference 1. Richard V. Andree, "Programming the IBM 650 Mag- netic Drum Computer and Data-Processing Machine," Holt, Rinehart & Winston Inc., 1958. Capturing carbon dioxide and turning it into commer- cial products, such as fuels or construction materials, could become a global industry, according to a study by researchers from UCLA, the University of Oxford and five other institutions. The research is the most comprehensive study to date investigating the potential future scale and cost of 10 dif- ferent ways to use carbon dioxide, including in fuels and chemicals, plastics, building materials, soil management and forestry. The study considered processes using car- bon dioxide captured from waste gases that are produced by burning fossil fuels or from the atmosphere by an in- dustrial process. The research found that on average each utilization pathway could use around 0.5 gigatonnes of carbon di- oxide per year that would otherwise escape into the at- mosphere. (A tonne, or metric ton, is equivalent to 1,000 kilograms, and a gigatonne is 1 billion tonnes, or about 1.1 billion U.S. tons.) A top-end scenario could see more than 10 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide a year used, at a theoretical cost of un- der $100 per tonne of carbon dioxide. "The analysis we present- ed makes clear that carbon dioxide utilization can be part of the solution to combat cli - mate change, but only if those with the power to make decisions at every level of government and finance com - mit to changing policies and providing market incentives across multiple sectors," said Emily Carter, a distinguished professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering and a co-author of the paper. (Source: UCLA Newsroom) Carbon Dioxide Capture and Use Could Become Big Business