Defkalion says: HENI is a more proper name…

Interview with John Hadjichristos, Chief Technology Officer of Defkalion Green Technologies Global


I had the privilege to discuss with John Hadjichristos about the Ni-H technology of Defkalion in a human cultural frame. This scientist is more than 20 years younger than me, but our ways of thinking on subjects much beyond the technology have much in common. We are coming from the same geographic area, his country is the cradle of civilization and this cannot be changed by the problems of present, but only in principle, because in practice the company has to move in an area better for work and business.
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Very short CV of John Hadjichristos

John is a 54 years old mathematician with post graduate studies and research in System Theory and Biology. One of his research results caused, by accident as he says, his involvement with Information Technology, where he worked for 23 years from different positions in large scale IT projects, mainly in Greece, before moving to management consulting and energy. This designing systems and managing teams of brilliant young people- period, as he describes it, gave him insight experience of how systems work and change.
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I think that somebody famous has already said that history repeats itself but does it in a non-repetitive way. I think the best definition of technology is:

“Processes of transport, transfer and transformation of matter, energy and information that create something useful for people.” (Pierre Le Goff)
Actually this definition is Humankind's great plan of progress.
Up to today, only a part of this was accomplished namely "transport and transfer of information" I call this generically “Google” because when I have read the 1998 paper by Brin and Page my reaction was: "this is it, they have done it, from now on search will be finding!" I am far from idealizing Google but summa summarum they and their competition have done a great work.

Question:
I had a good prediction for Google, I have predicted quite early that you will succeed; I will apply for a job of techno-prophet.
History repeats itself, your technological mission is now obvious, and you have to solve “transformation of energy”. Can you please compare the Information Revolution with your Energy Revolution- to come fast?

Answer:
I think your hint to compare any forthcoming evolution with Internet Revolution is very wise, even though each field has its own rhythms and special characteristics. I believe that the goal to reach Google (in analogy) in the forthcoming energy revolution requires as a prerequisite an energy Internet in place, which is impossible without something in analogy of a PC in energy. I am convinced that nature provides us with the kernel patterns for its operating system software.

From the very first beginning, we vision Hyperions as one of the energy-PC of this new energy era, producing enough heat energy to cover the energy needs of people and their societies as a base source of energy. Note that about 75% of everyday energy needs of a typical Central European house are for heating/cooling applications and only 12% on electric energy applications. Still, the energy model humankind is using, relies on the transportation of energy enclosed in carbon formations from one place to an other, resulting huge energy loses during transfer and chemical reformation of fossils, whilst energy policies (at least in EU) focus on the 12% of the energy needs (electricity through renewable) ignoring, yet,  the 75%! Solar or wind energy are important, but I think that no society can rely on such technologies to create base energy sources, always needed to stabilize any energy network.

  But there lies a problem, predicted by the great visionary and technology prophet Arthur Clarke. I think it was in his Odyssey 2061, where he predicts the result of the development of "fusion technology" as it was called during his days: Cheap and safe heat energy, that can be easily transformed also to electricity using existing technologies. According to Clarke’s prophesy, this may result to "thermal pollution"!

We think that Clarke was right! For example, when one can buy a 45kW Hyperion for household use, he would like to produce as much electricity he can- to sell to the grid and create a profit from such “high currency” energy. Existing technologies can turn something around 20% of the “low currency” heat energy to electricity, so the remaining energy has to be consumed somehow (covering his heating and cooling needs) and not thrown to the environment.  But this remaining heat energy is huge, far more than the usual needs of a household.

Question:
What can you tell us about the evolution of DGTG’s strategy regarding this new source of energy and your personal approach to a Solution?  

Answer:
In the Hyperion design we embedded technologies and design architectures to avoid (as much as we can) such irresponsible behavior by the consumer/producer of energy using Hyperions. What we will encourage is the "strategy" of such man/woman or business entity to give the energy he can not consume to the neighbor, resulting to the creation of neighbor energy networks and hubs, in analogy to the LANs in the Internet networking. Then, the formation of a global Energy WEB, as proposed by Jeremy Rifkin in his "Hydrogen Economy" book, is possible “copying” the same characteristics of the Internet we know: non-hierarchical structure, common shared "values", self-organize etc. The implications of such challenge are huge at different levels. And the responsibility of every "player" in this new energy era, involving also the "consumer" decisions directly in this evolution, has to be as big as possible.

So, before reaching the Google era of such energy network, we have to focus on its PC build, equipped with characteristics that will help the positive result of the energy revolution within a very responsible manner. I guess humankind will be smart enough to avoid the mistakes of the previous technological revolution, the IT revolution, like building mainframes of energy, which is the main characteristic of the existing hierarchical energy distribution model based on ecological non-friendly fossil or nuclear energy sources. I guess that, in analogy, such hierarchies of dinosaurs in the decision making made you suffer Peter during the Ceausescu regime era…

Question:
I see, you had and still are living in too interesting times. Perhaps it helps that here in the Balkans to educate somebody is equivalent to teach her/him to cope with any situation.


Answer:
(Laughing…)
You survived and progressed Peter, we Greeks are surviving also in this rocky places for centuries, maybe because of our quick adaptation to changes using traditional networking techniques, such as the ones that made Greek maritime industry the biggest in the world. Such “networking” always creates new rules in game-playing, such as decision making or performing R&D, much more effective than any authority can create.


Question:
Can you please tell us about your “cold fusion history”- your first contact with the concept, your meeting with the problem, your encounter with what we can call the community- your first impressions about the field as such?

Answer:
I think this history is still hot…
Originally I was very skeptic if heat energy can be produced in room conditions with the so called “Cold Fusion”. Thanks to Prof. Stremmenos and Andrea Rossi, we realized during measurements we performed on his lab-reactors that I was wrong. We still pay our respect to Rossi for that as his major contribution to the forthcoming developments.

We signed a contract with Mr. Andrea Rossi. He (through his wife’s company Leonardo Co) was to provide the core technology (reactor) and us to build the engineering around it in a safe product, which we called Hyperion. In our contract, we deserved the right to distribute complete Hyperions globally, except US and military applications where Mr. Rossi had already some reservations.

In the mean time, Rossi signed a contract with Ampenergo that was in conflict with our contract. Ampenergo would act like us in US, but due to their contract with Rossi, for the whole American continent exclusively. Ampenergo published their relationship with Rossi on 25 of June 2011, that created us a huge problem: our Greek-Canadian share holders were basing their investment on our company under the hypothesis that we could distribute products to Canada also.

By mid July 2011 a combination of technical issues, relating with the lack of testing on e-cat reactors following our protocol (as well as his denial to accept technical changes we proposed already to increase control capabilities) and serious commercial issues created a dead end. In the mean time, we had invested a lot from our pockets in order to fulfill our obligation and role responsibilities as engineering around e-cat. That dead end really came up by the end of July 2011. As far as I know, Andrea Rossi divorced also from Ampenergo a few months later… but this is another story with no relevance with what we are talking here.

Then Alex Xanthoulis, the CEO of our company, asked me if we can "trigger the reaction" without Rossi. I said that this could be possible but with very little success possibilities over the financial risk we would undertake. Alex then said "OK, let's do it, I trust you”.

What really followed was an orgasmic period of work, where we set up our team, designed the basic protocols and our development strategy and set up our first lab. This was followed by a second lab in Piraeus whilst the most recent is the demo-lab we operate in our HQ in Glyfada.

What most people do not know is that we got very big help from what had been published already in CF/LENR literature. Most of the scientific announcements, including those of Rossi made in public, indicated us WHAT NOT TO TRY. On the other hand, a lot of positive indications and useful scientific knowledge related,  had already been published in public domain from other fields such as plasma physics, astrophysics, chemistry, metallurgy, volcanism, new material science, nanotechnology etc.

By November 2011, we had the first positive reaction in our R3 (release 3) reactor, activating LENR with thermal preheating/shocks. I think we had some good luck too, as we had carefully analyzed before a small burst of energy  that took place inside one of the closets where we keep raw materials, caused by an electric leakage and a wrong handling procedure by me, who is the worst hands-on in our labs.

Very quickly we realized that the “thermal method”, as well all the “gas loading methods” were not giving us the expected results that could lead to an industrial prototype due to their very slow feedback. We designed then our R4 lab reactor where a more aggressive triggering method (plasma ignition or ion-bombardment as some people call it) was introduced. We faced a lot of difficult methodological and technical problems, as well as lab safety risks, that taught us valuable lessons that concluded to the results we reported in our ICCF17 paper. What we have not reported in the last, which is the result of our R5 testing equipped also with calorimetry, was the problems we had over most of this period. There were times that we had to work non-stop experiments in machinery rooms in Pireaus with 2C room temperature and with very limited resources (but with a lot of promises for support from the Greek government, never fulfilled).

Needles to say that during this first period of our R&D, some brilliant and stupid ideas came up, some from our young scientists and engineers. We did not reject any without a good reason, in most cases followed by testing. This procedure is still on and highly motivated for anyone in our company, as well as for people close to us. For example Symeon Tsalikoglou, our CBO’s grand mother, 92 years old, gave us in written (!) a very surprising idea/proposal  for heating up airfield corridors using Hyperions as she hates the delays from snow  when travelling.

During this crucial period there were times that Alex was trying to cheer up me and our R&D team, in order to continue after a failure and times when we exchanged this role.

I think that you know the rest of the story.


Question:
What I admire especially at DGTG is team work. How was it achieved that people working in science, technology, engineering, metrology, management, business cooperate in conditions, that, I bet, are quite far from ideal?

Answer:
We shout and smoke a lot during our meetings, if this gives you an idea… but this is typical Greek brainstorming procedure (laughing…)

Any way, team building, as well as success, is a mind game. Such “game” of ours is highly motivated and controlled by corporate values. Teamwork and unity are our company’s best asset.


Question:
And the reverse- how is the community reacting to your ideas new approach and achievements? More directly how could the LENR specialists help you? 

Answer:
Till NI Week and ICCF17, I think that the reactions from the members of the existing LENR small research community and this technology fans were quite cautious on us. This is well understood and respected as far as we are “the new comers” in this field, carrying new ideas and proposing (as loud as we can) a co-operation attitude towards this technology commercialization. So far, I think that this field has been dominated by self-referential approaches. I assume that you had pretty good reasons when naming your blog EGO-OUT…

Following ICCF17, we recognized a big difference in such behavior. In contacts we created and maintain with certain active members of the research community, we do recognize that the “Co-operation” message we tried to give had a very positive perception. I hope that we will be happy to announce the result of such co-operations in science and in related technologies build before ICCF18 in Missouri next year. In the mean time, we continue our work in R&D and business development, moving our HQ and the basic R&D to Vancouver, Canada within September 2012, where we intend to finish the pre-industrial prototype build and to start the safety certification procedures.


Question:
In your NI Week paper you have asked for a good (define good please!) definition of this source of energy. I know that actually to “call a spade a spade” is an ancient Greek saying. We call it LENR (but which energy is low, exactly). You call it HENI-Heat Energy from Nuclei Interactions- made from your analyses of the partially spent fuel you know more than us about these interacting nuclei. How are they interacting?

 Answer:
As you know, a definition is always a pre-theory. So far, research was conducted in this area with an understanding on the observed phenomena (heat anomalies or transmutations) using the scientific “tools” of hot fusion and conventional nuclear physics. So LENR was almost commonly accepted as Nuclear Reaction phenomena in Low Energies (how low, no one defines) because of the tools in use and not due to the real phenomena causing effects to be measured and analyzed by such tools (as well as by other).

Trying not to be too much technical at this point, I can state that the phenomena we trigger and measure give us very strong evidence of a dynamic environment (system if you want) of a series of interactions between nuclei. These involve nuclei when we make hydrogen atoms reactive and nickel more receptive, as you have described within just this wise small phrase already.

The result of such triggering is first of all the “disguise” of the Hydrogen’s proton to a neutron for a very short period of time, that can then interact with other nuclei without the barriers of the Coulomb law.  Such “nuclei interactions” are completely out of the existing definitions on what is nuclear or what is chemical reaction, as defined in the 30’s, where no observations could be done on phenomena on the atomic level nor any scientific knowledge was available on different states of the Hydrogen or the actual “shape” of its electron trajectory.

So, the LENR term is problematic due to such serious scientific reasons. But there is one more problematic effect from the use of such wrong definition: Certification of products based on such technologies when named “nuclear”, will result the involvement of lobbies dominating the present related Nuclear Authorities, that they will use any of their spades to delay any improvement out of their control or interest, when the area of interest and responsibility of such Authorities has nothing to do with the phenomena we are talking about!

Following these and being a mathematician, I think that a good definition, keeping all egos and dogmas out, must describe in general the observed phenomena with a more open-mind attitude from anyone involved. We have to avoid the relation of any development of science and technologies around HENI phenomena with the funding of the Physics/Nuclear or the Chemical Department of a University, that could be involved in this research area. Science is one and we have to keep it that way, if we want to keep on talking with Mother Nature. In any other case, we can not see or listen and understand her stories by stop talking and hearing to each other.

On the other hand, the brutal force strategy to reach nuclei fusion may result what Agamemnon achieved for ten years in front of Troy’s walls. Finally the castle was taken because Odysseus tricked Trojans, disguising his proton warriors into a neutron gift.  

I hope that the above is an answer to your last question.

Thank you Peter for the opportunity you give us to communicate with the very interesting people that follow your blog . I will be glad to clarify anything they want to ask in your blog posts.

What should I tell? I am in my room, almost 75% blind, dominated by an insatiable curiosity and the Internet gives me the marvelous possibility to get real frontline news coming from a Friend six months ago I did not know that he exists and now he shares with me and you, dear readers a great and essential adventure. John is a man who has understood what  his Ithakas mean:
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ithaca/ Read this please!

I will finish with an idea I had that had to be censored, it is too heretical.
You know this quote:
Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.
(Charles de Gaulle)
It probably originates from some antic sayings referring to more decent professions- but now it inspires me to think:
“Cold fusion is too complex a matter to be left to physicists”
 I apologize for this idea, but reality is not so humble, perhaps we needed a mathematician who thinks that a good solution  is based on deep and active understanding of complexity and engineers who know that some problems can be solved only when we change them.


Peter

ROOTS VIII – THE WASTE

Motto:

The gap in our economy is between what we have and what we think we ought to have - and that is a moral problem, not an economic one. Paul Heyne

Today I decided to go back to the ‘roots’ series, as I have suddenly realized that I missed one of the main causes of our current troubles. It came to me just like that, in the morning...

The motto comes from a guy who died in 2000. The biography on the Wikipedia is not long, however seems that the guy made a professional choice that enabled him to fight the war of morality in a certain age segment, where he probably believed he can induce greatest change – adolescence.

This reminded me of my mother. She was also a teacher in the same field and also has chosen the undergraduate segment, even if she could have taken the university (much better paid, and with higher recognition). Probably the reasons behind their rather similar choice were a little different, however the fact remains – they did exceptional work in their field and, as far as my mother is concerned, I have seen some of the people that came out of her ‘hands’ and they are great individuals, with good moral standing and healthy family lives.

Coming back to the motto, I have to admit that it was quite a challenge to pick one today, because there were so many great quotes I found. So I decided to share with you also the other finalists:

He who buys what he does not need steals from himself (Author Unknown)

The hardest thing is to take less when you can get more (Kin Hubbard)

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell (Edward Abbey)

As you may suspect from the title, I decided to dig out today the WASTE root of the crisis.

It happens to be one of my biggest weaknesses and probably this is why I have not singled it out before. I live with it every day. Even thou I am trying to overcome it, it is a very powerful enemy and it frequently gets the best of me.

This morning I just realized how much it has become like a cancer for our current way of living. The sad part is we got so much used to it, that we are not even aware of the damage it actually does. The trigger for realizing this may seem strange…  I was unpacking a simple ordinary pack of toilet paper – nice and pink, slightly scented. And suddenly a big part of my childhood started to pass before my eyes...

I got transported back into the 80s in my home town (Bucharest), when toilet paper was also pink, but not so soft and funny scented. It was sold in bookstores next to other paper products and was a very scarce resource. Just like food and electricity and a lot of other things which we now take for granted. We used to be very careful how much we use and we actually had a lot of jokes about alternatives to toilet paper – will not bore you with details.

Basically this is how we managed to overcome the scarcity of resources back then – with a lot of humor and love. We were happy and valued everything in a different way. Bananas were shared between me and my sister and I can hardly remember my parents having any. Cakes were made in house once or twice a week, as sugar was rationalized per person. We were actually sharing with some of our neighbors, nice old ladies who also had great skills for sweets-producing, so they were also sharing their cakes with us. Pop-corn was the result of team work for preparing and we had a special supply of it, so were very popular amongst other kids for having it.

Cooking was in general carefully planned (as gas was scarce), food variety sometimes optimized also by cook-times criteria. On special occasions we would indulge with oven-cooked meals and also some ‘fire intensive’ specialties. Heating was confined to the ‘winter rooms’ and the kitchen was quite an adventure for my mother in cold season, but she managed it with love and dignity (results were always tasty, no compromise on quality…).

My father was also cooking, but he was the ‘bad boy’ of the family in this respect, as he was not so economical with either raw materials or cooking times. He used to display 2 or 3 cooking books when he was ‘creating’, so he optimized only the tasty outcome. This is why my sister and I were so delighted whenever he performed one of those acts…

Now when I think back on those times, I believe that the variety and at the same time scarcity that was blended by our parents into our daily meals really ensured the healthy growth of both our bodies and minds.

Clothing was mended with love and care, passed on from older to younger siblings, always clean and sometimes transformed, so it does not look exactly the same. Soap was also made in house for washing clothes and was excellent disinfectant (good for hair-washing also). We had some hens in the courtyard that were giving us ‘natural’ eggs for years (the birds were already too old to be eaten and were family members anyway...).

In school, apart from the standard subjects, we were also learning basic housing skills (cooking and sewing) and were creating some nice things that we still have stashed somewhere in the attic.

What is happening today? Various forms of creativity are certainly encouraged also in today’s schools, even wider choices that in our childhood. However the abundance of disposable things is gradually eating up many hard-working ways of collecting memories. It is difficult to choose a favorite doll when you have tens of them, or to look forward to eating your half of a banana, while your parents are begging you to eat healthy from hundreds of options.

The older we get, the more we are drawn into the waste tornado. Some of us are swallowed by it in our daily personal lives, others in our professional lives, many of us in both areas. Some give in to this temptation on daily basis, some less frequently but with bigger collateral damage.

But… what exactly am I thinking about when saying WASTE?

About buying too much food and throwing it away. Using too much paper and throwing it away. About getting the newest and most technologically advanced piece of equipment and throwing away the good old one which is still fully functional. About manufacturing things for single use, just to ensure permanent sales (in this category I include not only those official one-use towels or similar, but also those things for ‘long-term’ use, which actually break immediately after the warranty expires, just because they were not really designed to last).

I am thinking about all those billions of options in terms of cosmetics, clothing, accessories, food, medicine, cars and IT gadgets, wondering what happens to all those who are not chosen to come home with us. About millions of things which are chosen from billions of options to come home with us, just to sit on some shelve and never get used, and then get thrown away (or in the best case donated to some charity which usually proves to be just another business, that re-introduce them in some second hand stores in a distant country, waiting again for someone to pick them and take them home...).

I am thinking about the billions of residential, office and commercial square meters which are being built as I write, to add to the offer of already vacant billions of residential, office and commercial spaces that wonder if they would ever be chosen by the less and less wealthy ordinary people, as well as by the less and less successful middle businesses. I am thinking of businesses which over-expand, counting on their product being better than the competitors, but then killing each other in the process, as the prices go down for everybody.

I am thinking about the waste of our beautiful imagination, which is blown away every day by a civilization which creates more and more brain robots. About a month ago I was sitting in a bus, next to a kid and a young man. The kid was talking about the most recent movie he has seen and the guy next to him asked him something else instead - when did he last read a book. The kid was rather confused and replied that it is much easier and entertaining to see a movie. Then the guy told him: ‘yes, but a movie will never give you what a book can. In a movie you see a very narrow world – the one which the director imagined for himself and imposed then on his public. When you read a book you can imagine things the way you like it, in the colors you choose, and you can make the character as beautiful or as ugly as you wish. In a book you read with your own mind and feel with your own soul, therefore build your own world; while in a movie you are just a passive observer of someone else’s world.’

I wish there were microphones in that bus and this creativity lesson coming from a simple (but wise) young man was broadcasted on all TV channels during prime time. However this could not happen in this world, as we are only programmed to waste that prime time with negative news which turns us into passive observers of someone else’s perception of world events. This is what modern communication channels make of us, correlated automatic answering machines, triggered by certain stimulus which the owners of this channels orchestrate - negative, panicking, gloomy, “global-crisis-self-fulfilling-future-losers”. It is indeed a waste of our creative, positive, loving, solution-oriented and long-term surviving selves.

What else do we waste, apart from material things and spiritual potential? Basically we experience a huge waste of our otherwise very limited… TIME.

We spend it nowadays in so many funny ways that do not enhance our spirituality. Let’s take for example politics. In the good old days when media was not so wide-spread, this used to be a necessary evil of the organized society. A handful of people were paid from contributor’s money to spend their time playing political games with a reasonable outcome, which I suspect was to preserve some ground rules and proper order in the society. Nowadays, apart from the fact that the purpose of the politicians is not very clear anymore, we also have another systemic problem: every citizen with voting right is now wasting time on politics. I believe nothing more needs to be said, readers should know already why I would categorize this as a total waste. And for this waste we pay very much, much more than we can even begin to imagine.

Plus that the term ‘politics’ does not refer only to government, as it is a much wider area of our life – we have to act political at work, in our personal circle, sometimes even in our home. A reasonable part of this politics is good and brings positive result; however making it the main driver of our life would really turn it into a big waste. As with everything else in life, finding the right balance is the real challenge.

And I could continue on many other forms of waste in our day-to-day life, but then I become guilty of the sin of a movie director – imposing my view on the story and thus stopping your imagination from running wild, all by its own. I bet you can come up with huge number of waste examples of your own, so I will invite you to do just that.

To wrap this up, I would just ask myself how did we get so fast from there (childhood scarcity) to here (current waste)? In the case of the former communist countries this change was much faster, in case of the more advanced economies the transition happened slower. In some case the scarcity is still there and it is another proof of the cancer-like waste which we experience (as we do not have enough will and determination to put our waste to a good use and help them…).

I believe that the transition, from scarcity to wealth and then further to waste, is connected with human need for comfort and security. This was originally a good and desirable evolution, if only we knew when and where to draw the line before switching to waste.

The difficulty is connected to the fact that temptation has become a global business. Behavioral economics is one of the recent trends in economic science, basically revealing how our faulty human nature rules our choices, how manipulation games are called “marketing”, and how silly we can behave when we face of our own weaknesses and are addressed with the right temptation (‘right’ meaning a mix of dosage, place and time plus ... as someone said so nice ... lack of witnesses!…).

More than that, modern financing schemes really disconnected our purchasing power from our real net worth (and more sadly also from our social and health insurance schemes…), creating a bubble exactly from what the motto points out: it made some of our dreams become possible even in those cases when they shouldn’t have ...

It is nothing wrong with dreaming, as long as we can still distinguish between dream and reality. Unfortunately, the good old sense of responsibility and accountability got diluted in this process and people took what they thought they deserve without asking themselves who will pay for this in the end. I do believe that the bill will be paid by all of us and even sadder is that it will be paid by our children, unless they rebel and refuse to pay for the waste created by the ‘old folks’.

Therefore, with the risk of repeating myself, I will say it once again: we are not living a crisis, but a paradigm change, something that happens almost every century, a transformation which will give birth to a new world. For better or for worse – this remains yet to be seen. I hope we have become wiser at least in the way that we should not shed blood for cleaning ourselves. We can still do it with water, soap and self-control.

We need to wake up and re-assess our behavior according to our needs, both material and spiritual, and also both as individuals and social-wise (addressing all the dimensions of our societies). We need to bring back the reasonable into our lives, to search again the long-lasting sense of satisfaction, which got lost in the run after the quick sense of easy pleasure.

There is also some good news in today’s writing and thus a glimpse into some ways ahead. First of all, I know that not everyone has given into the temptation of waste; there are deep roots of morally healthy people which are raising beautiful kids. There are also beautiful teachers still fighting for the morality of our future generations.

And the greatest news is that this is a global problem for which no global resources need to be identified. This one we can and need to tackle individually by ourselves, in our family and circle of friends. It is also the hardest part, because it means we should all realize that every one of us is personally responsible for our own choices, but this is also where our hope for the future lies.

Yesterday I bought a very nice Jiminy and I hope it was not a waste, but a helpful material representation of a friendly consciousness.

I wish us all good luck!

Georgina Popescu

INSPIRED BY DEFKALION: THE TORTUOUS WAY TOWARD LENR STANDARDS,.

This writing has two parts; if you are busy or you don’t like my style, feel free to go directly to the second.

FIRST PART: NEGATIVE

My former Global Problem Solving Consultancy Bureau had a great variety of customers. Our successes are easy to explain: we repeated slogan-like that we solve each and all the problems. A candidate dictator from a troubled African country wrote:

“My problem is how to manipulate my people, in this age when even here information is circulating much too freely making my work so difficult"
We have prepared a good Modern Mass Manipulation Manual for the customer, however unfortunately before paying he was arrested, emasculated and hanged by the militia of a rival, therefore his chances to become a dictator have practically disappeared and my Bureau has lost money. Highly disturbing, we cannot apply the perfect bordello business model (Payment First, Service After Payment) to protect us against such a malheur.
Anyway, here is the:
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Executive Summary of the Modern Mass Manipulation Manual

Mass Manipulation is actually easy. Masses enjoy manipulation because it replaces thinking with the own brains an effort very few humans can afford. Use killer memes to install memecracy (see our former report MM 24/0037829) and the following three main actions:

DIVIDE and Rule
Divide and rule, convert the differences in disagreement and disputes, weaken the brains by provoking the reptile and the proto-rat brains against the neo-cortex, show it enemies and dangers and horrible risks everywhere and overall- even in the mirror. Make the people to be eternally suspicious, terrified, and vigilant , learn them to fear their own ideas, make them to hate actively anybody with other opinions and develop in them criminal attitudes toward those on the opposite sides of everything. Discourage original, creative or personal thinking incessantly and fiercely! Divide the World in “Us” and “They”

CONNECT and Stupefy
Connect and stupefy, connect many brains from a group, a crowd, from a room, a hall, a marching column, an Internet forum/group force them to practice groupthink and no think and you will state with satisfaction that intelligences are not additive; on the contrary they are mutually weakening and slowing down, up to total blockage, A great, lazy and coward Big Brain – fictive – will completely replace all the real brains that are functionally annihilated. Connect people to celebrities and mythomaniacal populist politicians (like you!) and degrade them to fans. Fanatize them!
Disconnect people from reason, decency, kindness, goodwill, human feelings, and especially from altruism! Eradicate empathy!

COMBINE and Confuse
Combine and confuse, abundantly mix truths, half-truths, outright lies, real, false and useless data, weird superstitions and obsolete myths, plausible but inexistent correlations, crippled and unsustainable metaphors, poisoned fantasies, fragments of cultural slogans and many other such things and when this mixtura miserabilis is ready, inject it in brains. Any cognitive or intellectual activity of the poor grey cells will stop except a perpetual signaling of Fatal Error.
The Test of success is- if after all these manipulations the people are grateful to you, admire and idolize you.
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Obviously we are serious professionals: the Manual also comprises over 300 pages of practical examples, it outperforms Machiavelli’s The Prince by orders of magnitude. Old Niccolo is of no help when the young dictator-in-spe decides to use the Internet in his actions.
Despite the fact that today it is increasingly risky to become a dictator and the more fragile ones are weeded out fast, we have succeeded to sell more – always up-to-dated variants of this fine Manual to new customers and two of them have used it in the effective mode. They rule over millions of people and the word democracy has disappeared from the local vocabularies.
However it still has to be forgotten irreversibly and this is a challenging task.

SECOND PART POSITIVE (about LENR!)

Problem solving is a great art, and, modesty apart, I am a guru of it- (see my 20 Rules of Problem Solving in this Blog.) A practical principle is that a very good solution is applicable for surprisingly broad range of things. Take in consideration that: “The Good and Evil are Siamese twins”- ergo the Manual, in an adapted form. can be used for other problems too even if these are essentially good, positive, constructive.
In my former writing it was stated that LENR needs a Definition.
At the Panel of LENR theory at ICCF-17 it was minimum of superposition or concordance between the basic ideas of the brightest 5 theorists, their assumptions are different and their logic and mathematics do not intersect. I conclude that prior to a definition, for LENR it will be necessary to have a lot of more mutual understanding, less Babelization, a bit of conceptual harmony, a good inner taxonomy. and even standards. The standards have to be accessible and acceptable for the LENR people but also for those outside the field who take the decisions.
The MMM manual can be used to help to make these tasks more clear...

DIVIDE and Solve 
Divide- and the other two basic MMMM verbs/actions are poly-semantic here.
Even huge works, plans, tasks (says the science of Project Management and also the common sense) can be fulfilled if they are divided, in small sub-tasks. Sometimes, this is the unique possibility to make a mega-task manageable. Other times it is a trick to get time till the task becomes obsolete or ceases to be interesting or important.
Wicked problems must be split in small steps, actions and tasks. Tasks have to be smartly segmented. Logical schemes with alternative ways have to be created; careful good planning is essential.
We have to divide the great field of LENR in sub-domains, select those with the best scientific and technological (if!) perspectives
and focus on those with the highest expectations. I am using a rather simple approach; when I speak about dividing, the “knife” I am using is technology. I repeat- the main criteria for dividing is: what is good for technology and is potentially commercially valuable, from what cannot lead to a technology and is merely a lab curiosity. But this thinking too must avoid logical rigidity.  Divide ideas in those that are possible, those that can be made possible and those that are not possible. These three categories are overlapping dynamically, will remain in evolution.
If, in LERN you try to divide the things in simple and complicated, then in practice you will state soon that actually they are very complex and amazingly complex.
Everything I know in LENR I have learned from my colleagues via their writings and messages, however today it is a sharp division between my opinion and the LENR opinions of other people. This is due to my focusing on technology and on the future – perhaps most people will consider I am anticipating some facts. Only the future can show if I am too optimistic regarding the present situation of the field. It will also show if I am too pessimistic regarding the technological future (lack of it, actually)of the classic, pre-revolutionary part of LENR.
Yes, when it is about dividing the entire LENR field, it seems only I am speaking about LENR and LENR+ following a technical and scientific revelation caused by the Defkalion process. It is described as:

LENR - unexpected, not controllable nuclear reactions in a hydrogen isotope plus transition metal system.

LENR+- designed and controllable nuclear reactions in a hydrogen plus transition metal system enhanced by making hydrogen reactive and the metal more receptive.

If this division/classification will be ever accepted, this depends on the industrial success of the Hyperions and of the E-cats- if they become heaters as usual and are sold as other older energy generators.
It is a great pity and delay that this simple and powerful principle “make hydrogen reactive and nickel more receptive” is not recognized; this is in a way present in Piantelli’s process (hydrogen negative ion and nano-clusters of nickel). I bet that Rossi’s E-cats- he had more variants of them thin and fat, are all also based on this generic “best practice” or “core understanding”  Rossi speaks so many times about  the necessity to use atomic hydrogen and to apply some special proprietary treatments to the micrometric Ni powder that this is a case where we can believe him.

It is also regrettable that in the present time, the LENR+ deniers and LENR+ ignoranti are so predominant, the qualitative difference between the classical LENR systems and the fledgling LENR+ technologies remain merely unknown. 
By the way, my Open Letter was accepted very politely by the organizers of the ICCF-17, but as far I could state its impact on the participants was zero or less. It could be worse.
However despite the fact that I have predicted the technological failure of palladium and deuterium in wet systems these are continuing to be popular and the pre-formed nanometric complex powders are participating in many scientific orgies with both deuterium and hydrogen.
So it is a sharp division between my opinion and the opinions of my colleagues and friends, however one of the first slogans I created says; “Differences in opinions attract smart people and repel only those who are not so” Sometimes this is almost true, however it sounds fine, isn’t it?
I have now the typical behavior of a theorist speaking my own language, own concepts and very personal presumptions and specific approach; and I am not the fan of anybody, even not of myself because I do not claim my inerrancy.
For a standard we have to analyze the similarities and the differences between LENR and LENR+. In practice only LENR+ as Defkalion says- needs a standard and a definition, and only LENR+ has to be and can be standardized.

CONNECT and Understand
First of all, LENR has to be connected to reality, this is usually a
painful and shocking experience and it is especially difficult when it is about the technological reality. Defkalion’s experience (see their paper at ICCF-17) shows that even if LENR is the cause of many natural phenomena, hydrogen and nickel in their “almost” natural-technological state are very far from being ready to initiate/enter a low energy nuclear reaction, have no real chances, and their physico-chemical status has to be radically and deeply transformed.
This explains the extreme difficulty of experimental LRNR and shows the way to LENR+ as an energy source.
Connect with pragmatism and disconnect from theoretical idealism, re-connect theory and experiment. Connect as strongly possible, LENR and the Scientific Method (principles of Galileo).
Without this connection any progress in understanding and in making LENR useful, is illusory.
Few people will agree with me that the time is ripe for LENR’s weaning from palladium, therefore I will not say that perhaps it is time to invest less (money, time, hopes) in wet systems (yes I know about Brillouin!), electrolysis, deuterium. The great LENR community is free and democratic, everybody does something resulting from what he/she has already done, likes to do and affords to do. Global LENR management and strategy are inexistent or just happen. Perhaps a better connection between the teams could help.
Connect in stronger and more powerful networks of researchers, but include good engineers and materials scientists. Connect to the essence and disconnect from the fuzzy halo of ideas around it. This is a problem of subjectivity and of definitions.
Connect with more and more remote scientific and technical ideas trying to create creative bisociations.
Connect better- smarter, more diplomatically with the press, develop empathy for their points of view and try to convince the journalists that a working LENR is a better source of interesting sellable information than a failed LENR.
Special- National Instruments has connected with the best LENR warriors and has established a very valuable model. In the near future, the place where LENR+ Truth can be revealed is Defkalion’s on-line real time mass spectrometry plus the other systematic and instrumental analyses- a unique window of opportunity. I hope DGTG will connect with an excellent strategic partner as good in instrumental analysis as National Instruments is in instrumental measurements, for his task of paramount importance. Goddess Athena, help us!
May I add some highly desirable but rather idealistic connections?
Develop more connected professional networks, include engineers, managers, specialists in materials science, IT people, clever businessmen, nice politicians...
Make friends, make demos, make positive noise. Develop empathy for skeptics. Stop infighting. Develop strong solidarity in the LENR community and do not let it to degrade to liquidarity or even gasidarity.
Disconnect from the cursed word “anomalous” use ‘unexpected’ or ‘surprising’ instead.
LENR is at least as natural as combustion, nuclear fission or hot fusion but much more environment friendly as these.
LENR is more concentrated, practical and reliable as solar or wind energy. It has to be developed in harmony with the other forms of energy, connected with these by complementarity not by senseless rivalry.

COMBINE and Enhance
First of all, combine the best modes of thinking for understanding the generative essence and spirit of LENR+.
Combine and unite the good things and eliminate the bad things
Combine the best theories, more precisely the fragments of truth from these to develop real understanding and ideas for the technological development of this science. Accept that theories if not combined and confronted with solid experimental data are uselessly incomplete...
Accept that only combinations of theories are able to explain LENR that is a very puzzling combination of a broad range of branches of physics and chemistry.
LENR+ uses secret combinations of chemicals that enhance some of the critical (bottleneck) stages of the set of reactions that lead to LENR+. Rossi calls in a populistic manner these combinations "Catalyst” and calls his generator E-cats- a misnomer taking profit from the general sympathy toward the household felines.
The combination of words “cold fusion” is an other misnomer. (for ‘fusion’-ask Steve Krivit) , ‘cold’ is also not true/real. LENR+ is not as hot as Hot Fusion (at millions of degrees) but it is very hot for earthly conditions. It seems that as Defkalion says, LENR+ takes place only in the dynamic vacancies – miniature workshops of Hephaistos with Hell- like conditions.

Conclusion: for the success of LENR, we have to divide it in LENR+ that is both interesting and valuable and LENR classic that is only interesting, we have connect it to good things and disconnect it from harmful things; and, eventually we have to combine what we already know with what we still have to discover- all these in order to create the best energy source of the near future.
Peter

GOOD PAPERS

The Oxford English Fictionary
http://oefictionary.tumblr.com/

List of lists of lists:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lists_of_lists

Google Fiber: Ultra-Fast Internet: http://askbobrankin.com/google_fiber_ultrafast_internet.html?awt_l=4jAx_&awt_m=JKhRi.o0h8P6SL

Panasonic develops highly efficient artificial photosynthesis system generating organic materials from carbon dioxide and water :  http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120730005402/en/Panasonic-Develops-Highly-Efficient-Artificial-Photosynthesis-System

Toilet Paper: A History:  http://thefrailestthing.com/2012/07/25/toilet-paper-a-history/

The Weakness of Positive Thinking:
http://www.strategy-business.com/article/re00199?pg=all

Cuckoo Tricks to Beat the Neighborhood Watch:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120802141525.htm

The Positive Power of Negative Thinking:
http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/the-positive-power-of-negative-thinking

New Google Tools to Make the Search Engine More All-Knowing::                                                     http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/new-google-tools-to-make-the-search-engine-more-all-knowing/

Stop bad email but not all email:
http://www.greatleadershipbydan.com/2012/08/stop-bad-email-but-not-all-email.html

You Know the Placebo Effect. Now There's the Nocebo Effect: http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/you-know-the-placebo-effect-now-theres-the-nocebo-effect

Google Works to Make Search Smarter
Google shows off improvements to its Voice Search, and adds Gmail to Web search results:
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428805/google-works-to-make-search-smarter/?nlid=nldly&nld=2012-08-13

Scientists' Gold Discovery Sheds Light On Catalysis:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120812151610.htm?goback=%2Egde_1807453_member_145933572

Do Americans Really Envy Sweden's Egalitarianism?:
http://bigthink.com/praxis/how-much-equality-would-you-like

False Wisdom of Crowds:
http://www.futuristspeaker.com/2012/08/false-wisdom-of-crowds/

Evolutionary Increase in Size of the Human Brain Explained: Part of a Protein Linked to Rapid Change in Cognitive Ability:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120816141537.htm

DEFKALION: THE BIG BAD PROBLEM IS DEFINITION OF LENR.

(Comments regarding Defkalion’s ICCF presentation-2)
In anticipation of Theory Panel Discussion lead by Michael McKubre at ICCF-17, Wednesday August 15.

Defkalion’s preoccupation with a proper definition of LENR- the useful kind of it- is obvious. See please the first part of their National Instruments Week technical presentation and also the part entitled “Towards an industrialization path of LENR products” of their ICCF-17 paper. Their motivation is not curiosity – they are in a very close contact with reality, they have a marketing problem and are facing even more obstacles due to their planned manufacture and selling of a product with a functionality and potential risks- still unknown- in part.

John Hadjichristos says: “The lack of any common defined definition is an obstacle (which we face already) towards LENR Industrialization”
Undefined, unknown, unexplained- all these sound badly and generate fear, suspicion, and rejection.
Please do not ignore my problem solving rule no. 17:
 “NOT always the existent, real problems, but many times the fictive, imaginary ones are the most difficult to be solved.”
Imagination beats reality when it is about producing bad problems.(An other dreadful example for that is the phobia of genetically engineered food, but I will not enter any polemics on this).

LENR has nuclear in it and nuclear is a very negative anti-catchword today. One of the tasks of our community is to demonstrate that LENR is an almost completely harmless nuclear process, much more eco-friendly than nuclear fission or hot fusion. - as it really is. The definition has to tell how and why it is so.
While the other LENR scientists are seeking, searching, studying LENR, industrialists as DGTG have to sell it and they must tell the customers what the product/process is, what it does (good) and what it will not do. (bad).
A definition, in our case is a proto-theory! The problems of definition and of theories cannot be separated for LENR.
.
See please what I have told about theory in my Open letter to ICCF-17 http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2012/08/open-letter-to-iccf-17.html
Simple theories do not work, all the systems of LENR are complex and those LENR+ that give energy in useful amounts are surely overly complex. They are actually “prefix theories” and the prefixes can be; hyper-, trans-, multi-, trans-, pragma- or as Defkalion’s theory is: -active, -interactive. Resembling more “How Stuff Works” http://www.howstuffworks.com/ than a simple or simplified theory based, say, on an elegant Hamiltonian treated in a bright way. Theorists can afford to focus on a single barrier, a real and effective explanation comprises a lot of barriers that have to be penetrated, overcome, removed or even cheated in some way.
When we eventually will have a good theory, it will be a fine and noble and essential task to condense it in a definition acceptable and understandable for any user of the LENR generators- Hyperion, E-Cat or else.
It is not easy to discuss with theorists, they usually are very dedicated to their mental products, “married “to it, defend it fiercely and want to apply it much beyond the normal area of validity. They are not playing God, but are frequently playing Nature- they try to tell Mother/Stepmother Nature what to do.
An example, if a theorist has decided that what happens in the Pd-D system is D + D, than he extends this to the Ni-H system, it is surely H + H- it must be so. Defkalion’s results show that this is not true, or it is a side-reaction (what about nucleosynthesys, it has to be found out!?).
A theorist can decide that the explanation must be straight and simple, but the experiment will contradict him/her- so many compounds, parameters, isotopes etc.  are present and so many of these are (inter)active. Who offers a guarantee that the same things happen at 250 and at 650 C?
I am not a theorist but I am a very bad example of theoretical closed-mindedness. I have postulated in 1991-1992 that the surface dynamics of the metal (Pd mainly) is a decisive factor in Cold Fusion:
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/GluckPunderstand.pdf,
It stimulates the appearance of “active sites”- later renamed more specifically Nuclear Active Environment. I still consider “environment’ not the best word here but NAE became a meme-
Unfortunately it is not a universal LENR meme.
With the advent of the “some like it hot” LENR+ - the process is seen to be enhanced orders of magnitude at very high temperatures, I have concluded quite ‘linearly’- it is normal, the dynamics of surface atoms is much greater at 400-800 C than at room temperature, surface dynamics is a part of the story.
Now, Defkalion shows that “the common nuclear active environment in which LENR occurs is proposed to be the vacancies in the crystal lattice of a heavy metal of a critical size and geometry where excited atoms of hydrogen interact”  However they also say: “nothing happens unless the vacancies “open and close” changing their dimensions” An easy tasks for a subjective, prejudiced mind- it is possible to say that the vacancies performing LENR are dynamic inner surfaces ‘sui generis’. This does not change much for anybody else than me. However I am thinking that I was kind of prophet but that’s just imagination.
What kind of theory (prefix-theory) needs LENR in order to work?
Classic science distinguishes 3 categories:

Third class theories are Explicative- they explain what has happened after the experiment.
Second class theories are Prohibitive- they say what is not allowed or cannot be done.
First class theories are Predictive they say what has to be done for the success of the experiment, process whatever.

It is a sad truth that LENR had no first class theories and even the other theories were of limited use for the experimenters who had many troubles.
However now this is changing quite surprisingly, Defkalion’s theory defines a new class:

Premium class theories are Productive they are effectively part of a new process and make scale-up, improvements and development possible.

OK, let’s the theory of LENR theories for other occasions and try to not forget an other very fundamental issue: bureaucracy: the definition of LENR has to be standardized and legally accepted.
I have lived a half of century in an idiotic oppressive bureaucracy; one of my most stupid and sadistic bosses used to say “A good researcher is first of all a good bureaucrat” And still I am convinced that in context, bureaucracy is a great thing, is order is rules, is discipline, standards; intelligent bureaucracy is not an oxymoron.
The Definition has to become official and universally accepted and used to protect the generators that will change the situation of energy worldwide.
Today (Aug 14) at ICCF-17 Lawrence P.G. Forsley has presented a very interesting and documented paper re. official and legal issues of LENR. Unfortunately I still do not have the text but I have listened at Skype to it…and it is a part of the solution, inclusive the bureaucratic solution.
Defkalion has a strategy for solving the definition- bureaucracy problem. Quoting John Hadjichristos:
We think that a new International Independent Institution, as the main body on standards and industrial support references, is the best we can expect at the moment. This could play a serious role against using Nuclear/Atomic agencies for licensing LENR products, which are not nuclear (following the old definitions) but related with energy from nuclei interactions. An Organization, with similar structure as IAEA, is yet not possible, as far as it will require national formation of relevant bodies and multinational agreements. So an Institution could be a helpful interim solution.

Important clues for the definition will come from the analytical works of DGTG – especially the on-line mass spectrometer and this needs collaboration and cooperation. But it is a problem of the LENR community.
In order to enter the Industrial Era, the LENR army- has to pass the Definition Barrier too. Together.
Peter

DEFKALION’ S LENR- from Discovery to Invention

These are my first comments re the paper
”Defining a New Source of Energy”
presented by John Hadjichristos, CTO of Defkalion Green Technologies, at the National Instruments Week, Austin, TX August 8, 2012

I take full responsibility for the statement that this is a landmark publication in LENR and that things and thinking will be different when the LENR researchers will understand the very spirit of this paper. Some people will accept this fast, some very slowly- Inertia is name of the game for many.
The essence is that LENR is converted now from a Discovery (smart, surprising, confusing) to an Invention (very smart, creative, radical, controlled). It is a change of attitude from try and wait to change in a planned manner.
This paper represents a new orientation and is the start of a New Wave in LENR. It has a great value “per se” but an even greater value as an example. It is a new scientific-technological strategy.
In the present state of affairs it is more important HOW they are doing it than WHAT they are doing specifically, there are probably more alternatives to the technology.-having the aim of abundant generation of vacancies that act as NAE at high temperatures.
LENR is about the relationship between pairs- nuclear marriages of a metal and a gas; initially the mutual attraction between these is not high enough for a success, the participants have be changed in nature and in properties in order to become perfectly compatible. Obviously, not Defkalion has discovered this, from the ancient CF times, the metal (mainly palladium) was treated by very inventive methods. Admirable creativity was demonstrated by Arata. Ahern and many others in using nanotechnology for making palladium and alloys a better nuclear partner for deuterium and by Piantelli who has made a better choice of metal- nickel and has applied the highest science and even art of nanotechnology to force nickel to reveal its best properties and virtues in his process.
But now, Defkalion goes more steps further, makes a complete job. They consider that the gaseous participant of LENR, hydrogen, must be also brought in a very special status in order…to follow the order: Unite!
And instead of a simple theory- LENR+ will be explained and understood by an aggregate of more theories combined with elements of know-how. In a sense, a realistic and useful LENR + theory cannot be separated from actions having the purpose to enhance the effect and from pragmatic engineering. “Pure” theories are beautiful and simple but do not work.
And it is LENR+ because at high temperatures the generation of NAE- vacancies is orders of magnitude more intense than in the case of classic LENR.
The paper demonstrates that DGTG has worked out an original process and has not taken it from Andrea Rossi.
I hope the Hadjichristos paper will be thoroughly discussed because the LENR community can learn a lot of it. I hope the professional detractors and the fans of Detailitis will focus on other subjects.
I had the privilege to read this paper in raw form and to make some corrections. I had the impression that I am like a guy who sees for the first time the Venus of Milo and his first remark is that she has a small wart on her ass. I have found two typos.
This paper has to be understood. But this will not be easy.
It is of symbolic importance that DGTG was the only group to honor Martin Fleischmann during the NI Week with a small call for a moment of silence during the technical presentation. They belong to our community and are not some aliens. LENR+ is a natural, vitally necessary continuation of LENR that has to grow up if it wants to survive and prosper.
Peter

WAYS 2 – THE LESSONS

Always when judging
Who people are,
Remember to footnote
The words "So far."
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

Last month I took a 3-day trip to Barcelona. Nice town on the seaside, where the landing happens from… the sea side. Also most of the flying happens above the sea, thing which made me quite nervous, because I do not like flying over deep waters. I know it is silly, as I would presume that crashing over water brings more probability of survival than crashing over mountains, but anyway… my complete lack of swimming know-how just turns my stomach into the home of a hundred ants when I fly over water. While we were coming close to the city, I started to relax and tried to enjoy a bit the view –exquisite otherwise.

I will not get into details about Barcelona and my holidays as I suppose no one is interested in this so I will get to the return flight. This time I was really nervous, that ‘kind-of-I-have-a-bad-feeling-nervousness’. Just in front of me while boarding there was a Russian family with a little daughter. At the entry, the door to the pilot’s cabin was opened and a nice voice from inside invited the little lady to look in without being shy. The father was impressed and thanking the pilot for this and the immediate effect was that … the whole family got invited to look in. I started to wonder if the pilot was some terrorist who was planning to blow the plane up and this was his last good deed before the final gesture…

We settled in, and then the plane started to move. While we were still on the runway, the captain started to talk to us. He welcomed us on board, told us that we are flying to Vienna (good-at least I was on the right plane…) and then informed us that there is a storm ahead and that he will try to go around it. Also good, so perhaps my bad feeling is not connected to the bomb but to a storm… this one is better, I already survived some of those…

Then the same voice invited us all to look to the left immediately after the take off, as we will fly along the coast and have the chance to say good-bye to the nice beaches of Barcelona. I thought to myself ‘ok, nice relaxing exercise’ and prepared to extend my neck as far as socially acceptable without biting into my left neighbor’s right ear. And then the funniest thing happened – the guy actually turned the big plane to the left so suddenly after we rose from the ground, that I thought for a second he will dip the wing into the water and we will actually shake hands with the people on the beach to say an official goodbye. And then another funny thing happened – after we did the grand tour of the beaches, he turned again … to the right! This time really heading home…

Well, now I started to wonder whether next he will tell us his wife dumped him, this is his last flight and he wanted to let us die with a nice memory of Barcelona beaches in our heads. But then quite soon after this, the nice voice started to talk to us again. This time he was mentioning the fact that the travelers can actually see the day – night limit line on one side. Then he told us on which side we can see Nice. By that time I was already more than relaxed, thinking that as long as he is flying that plane nothing wrong can happen, as he obviously loves to do it. I started to feel like in a hop-on / hop-off trip only nicer and wondered if we shouldn't tip the pilot on our way out.

Later on he apologized that we will feel a little shaky, kindly asked us to buckle up and at the same time pointed out that to the left there is the big black nasty storm that he told us about, with nice lightning illuminating the clouds from within, a unique spectacle under which (unfortunately not possible to see) there was another nice town (cannot remember which). Interesting was also that I felt no real shaking compared to what I have experienced in some other cases on clear weather …

And so, he kept on showing us amazing things out of the window until we arrived in Vienna, and the flight attendant said her routine ‘thank you, hope you fly Austrian again and goodbye’. Then, immediately after landing, his smiling voice also added simple but warm “thank you, wish you good night and a nice stay in Vienna”. I must say that night I saw a complete different face of Austrian pilots - even thou I should not use the plural. I am not sure I will have a similar flight again soon.

I was not surprised at all (I almost expected) to see the cabin door opened when we left the plane, him standing with a big smile on his face in the door and saying goodbye to each of us. I did not expect him to be so young and tall, suntanned and blue eyed (or maybe not blue but nicely eyed anyway...), but I managed to close my mouth and put my eyes back in their respective eyeballs rather elegantly, probably I also shared a smile in return (even if I could not swear to that...).

I arrived home late at night, with a big smile on my face and with some lessons learned.

There are still people that can do their ‘routine’ job, without forgetting that for others the same sequence of events is nothing short of a miracle. And so someone can make the best of it – not only focus on delivering highest professional standards in their work, but going one step forward and bringing a human dimension, care about the smiles on people’s faces and the drops of happiness in their blood.

The second lesson was that we can fly through life at high speed, not looking left or right and believing that reaching the destination is enough; sure way to miss a lot of spectacular views…

Third - that sometimes we cannot see for ourselves, so there is a need for someone else to guide our eyes to the right picture.

The fourth lesson was that 'detour' one: the shortest way between two points and the nicest way between two points are very different things. Taking the time to see the beauty of a place (or in case of relationships of a person) enriches the life, no matter if the detour is short or long. Sometimes a nice detour may prove to be the actual way. From the detour I also learned a secondary lesson, to always expect the unexpected (why on Earth did I assume that the beaches were in the direction of our way home?...). So, whenever you find yourself somewhere else than intended please regard this as a 'detour' and enjoy - it usually comes in nice packages. Or at least with good lessons.

And finally the fifth lesson was that one hundred ants in the stomach can also predict something nice or cannot predict anything at all. The feeling can be related to the pure fact that I must have probably just swallowed one hundred ants over dinner.

And those were only one afternoon lessons.

I will now take you to another place - a nice quiet restaurant in Bucharest, where I was with a dear friend of mine. She told me that the ‘most beautiful age’ from her point of view was 43. I immediately perceived it as good news, as it is still slightly ahead of me; then the question popped up rather quickly – why 43 and not 40 or 45 or 36? … The answer: because that was exactly the age when she became really comfortable with everything about herself – inside and outside. Well, perhaps the words were not exactly those, but anyway…

And then I started to wonder if I have not already passed the best age, as I realized it had nothing to do with the calendar. The lesson I learned that day was that the sooner you reach the most beautiful age, the longer it may last. It can be a couple of years, a decade or even more. I started to better understand why women tend to omit mentioning their age as they grow older, and it seems to me is because they try to avoid labels and conventional judgment. Then they reach the beautiful age and it does not matter anymore, obviously until… it starts mattering again. Because everything in life is cyclical and so I come to the second lesson at the same table: the link between personal life and career.

She made me open my eyes to the fact that if you live a long life (which I wish to all of my readers) then you will inherently encounter ups and downs. Career path brings you challenges followed sometimes by satisfaction, other times by disappointment; sometimes you just get good money out of it, other times status or just peace; sometimes respect, other times humiliation; sometimes power, other times endurance. The most important part is to take the lesson out of each of those phases and to move on, which may very well mean enjoying some periods of quietness, taking some steps back, recharging your batteries from the other side – the personal one.

Even from the school years, but most strongly in university and after that in our professional life, we learn that in this global economy the most valuable features of a winner are cold head (for thinking clearly), decorated with big eyes and even bigger ears, small mouth and educated nose, two strong feet (for stepping over others) and agile hands (for grabbing opportunities).

On the other hand, most undesirable features for managers are usually connected to everything which is soft, sensitive and oversized, such as the chest (may be fostering a big heart…), and the behind (it is difficult to cover your a.s if it is oversized…). 

There are of course exceptions, like in every rule, and I have been professionally blessed to work with many of them, while I also like to believe I have grown into one of those exceptions, by learning as much as possible from my past bosses and experiences.

Putting a piece of your heart and soul into day to day work, adding passion, strong beliefs and ethical principles usually make the difference between management and leadership. At the same time, such approach may have unexpected outcome bordering to professional self-endangerment, as you gradually create an eye of a storm, in which others may easily push you or you can even get pulled all by yourself. In any case you get exposed to changes in career that have greater amplitude and lower predictability than the average, such as going to sleep in Kansas with a promising career and waking up next day away from Kansas and without your red shoes. Therefore, if you build your whole life around Kansas dreams, all those storms may have a tribute on your health, ability to give and accept love, to forgive and forget, to accept and embrace.

The holidays actually ended with one of the greatest lessons in life. While preparing to go to the airport on Sunday evening, a sweet beautiful dog that was safely playing during the day got somehow out of the comfort of her courtyard and the next thing we knew was we had to find a place to bury her. Very sad, I got on the plane and got back to Vienna. I could not think about holiday ending any more, as it seemed so petty compared to a life stolen from us in one second.

However I did not want to let this week pass without sharing with you this holiday’s lessons. They made me realize this is also one of the ways ahead. I started to count the number of lessons I get in a day. The good news is that it is hard, as they are so many. Usually they come associated with physical sensations and the memory of hits or hugs (imaginary but feeling so real).

So, the way which I want to share with you today is: take the time to learn some lessons every day, apply as much as possible from them starting tomorrow. Recognition for being the pettiest and meanest will always be subject to harsh competition, while for wise and kind people the world is always big enough. Look out the window, upon that part of the human kind which is good and beautiful. Join them and trust that together we can overcome any crisis and then also take care of healing the wounds of those who are now so busy competing against each other…

Georgina Popescu

ANSWER TO MY OPEN LETTER TO ICCF-17

I am very happy to report you that Prof. Sunwon Park and Dr. Frank Gordon, the leader-organizers of ICCF-17 have answered very politely, nicely but firmly to my provocative Open Letter addressed to the conference. I am very grateful to them and I am honored that my ideas were analyzed seriously.

First, they have made the following essential statements about the Conference:

"ICCF-17 promises to be a very exciting conference.  Most of the groups who are known to be working toward commercial products will attend the conference and make presentations.  In most cases, this conference will be the first public presentation of their results and plans for the future.
In addition, leaders in the development of theories to explain the phenomenon will present their theories in individual presentations and as participants in a panel discussion.  More than 80 abstracts were received from scientists in 15 countries for presentation in both oral and poster sessions.  The conference schedule was adjusted to maximize the number of presentations and provide time for interaction between scientists.

The first objective of ICCF-17 is to carry on the tradition of the previous ICCF conferences to allow international groups of scientists to present their data to further the collective understanding of scientists working in the field.

The second objective is to end the misunderstanding and the skepticism on the cold fusion of the main stream scientific community, the media, and the public by showing the evidence that "cold fusion" is real.
And the final objective is to start an international concerted effort to expedite the commercialization of energy generation devices based on LENR to solve the immediate energy and environmental problems of the world and to prevent the possibility of misusing the LENR for the destructive purposes.”
Each sentence of my Open Letter was read and I got answer, opinion re each idea. I am enchanted to tell that for many of them
the answer was “we agree”

Some of my exaggerated worries were confronted with positive facts.
“Many companies will present their data or demo to show that we can use LENR as an energy source”
Because I was really desperate due to bad reproducibility:

“Unpredictability and low reproducibility may have been solved. Many presentations at ICCF-17 will show reproducibility of their experiments, lack of understanding and control seem to be remaining until we can have a LENR theory accepted by the people in cold fusion community”

How fine it would be to get rid from this many years long obsession and scientific humiliation! I will drink the equivalent of a glass of champagne for any team reporting reproducible results.
I liked very much this:

"The Pd-D system has completed its mission by showing the possibility of cold fusion, and opened the cold fusion field.  Now the Ni-H system will be developed and its technology."

The following statement has determined me to re-consider with deep empathy and maximum openness the papers of Dr. Mitchell Swartz:

"Yes, Pd-D based LENR system is difficult to be used for energy generating technology as is. We agree that those defects are detrimental to being any useful technology. However, people like Swartz could make it work by separating the deposition of D to Pd from generation of energy. His papers will be presented at ICCF-17."

I feel guilty (really) for being convinced that nanostructure-enhanced LENR has too low energy density limits to be industrialized.
. But perhaps it will be shown that this is simply not true:

"This can be debatable. Many researchers are already working in this direction and reporting very positive results. Many people are using different nano composite materials and claiming a success, Preloaded ZrO2-PdNi-D Nanostructured CF/LANR Quantum Electronic Components by Swartz is a good example."

I am very pleased that the leaders of ICCF-17 say this:

“We agree that we need radical changes in the cold fusion community and very good strategy considering the enormous magnitude of impact cold fusion can bring.”

In my next writing I will try to show how the new approach of Defkalion to LENR can be start point for revolutionary changes in LENR.

I am indebted to Prof. Park and Dr. Frank Gordon for these good answers and I wish that ICCF-17 should be our most efficient and most successful CF conference ever!
Peter

OPEN LETTER TO ICCF-17

Motto
I will believe you that Cold Fusion exists when you will show
me a boiler for two eggs, working with Cold Fusion.
(Prof Ioan Silberg, R.I.P!)

It’s vain to deny that our field, LENR, has wicked problems of development and of acceptance scientifically and it is nowhere technologically... However I dare to think these problems can and have to be solved.
In this Open Letter I am presenting some ideas/implicit suggestions that, in my opinion, could be used in the frame of a solution. I am fully aware that some of the ideas can be considered as non-conformist even heretical or simply erroneous.
However my desire to solve the problems – after more than 23 years of waiting, hopes and disillusions in the field, is perhaps stronger than even my fallibility.
These are the personal opinions of a technologist and do not refer to LENR science, scientific discoveries and development-a realm of richness and diversity, only to LENR as an energy source.My secret hope is that the coming experimental data will demonstrate that great part these ideas are simply false/idiotic, but these demonstration need facts not words.

The list of ideas.

To change from an idealistic view to a realistic, pragmatic, materialistic one…

It is not about the existence of LENR, it is about its usability;

We have to accept that we are in deep trouble and this is not only the fault (guilt) and effect of the skeptics.

We have to accept that a failure is a failure only when you start to blame others for it; the skeptics are only a smaller part of our problem

We cannot accept endlessly and candidly what is unacceptable for others; the Scientific Method has no exceptions. Unpredictability, low reproducibility, lack of understanding and control cannot be tolerated for a small eternity.

To examine seriously the idea that the cradle system of Cold Fusion, Pd – D, electrolysis is a dead-end for technology…

The inherent weaknesses of the Pd-D based LENR systems, low intensity, bad reproducibility, ephemerality, are not curable. As long as my poisoning hypothesis is not accepted and thoroughly tested we will persist in error. It says that any gaseous impurity is blocking, deactivating the nuclearly active sites and makes the reaction chaotic. Pragmatically seen the Pd-D electrolysis system is unmanageable, uncontrollable and partially incognoscible.

The classic CF system Pd-D via electrolysis is hopeless technologically and inconclusive scientifically, it is vital to spend the available funding preponderantly with gas phase systems. As regarding palladium perhaps we have to realize (metaphorically speaking) that cradles and cars are made from different materials;

To examine the limits of the smartest nanotechnology-based methods to enhance LENR...

Preformed nanostructures can enhance the nuclear reactions only to certain limits, seemingly not sufficient for large scale, long time, energy generation.
This is the most dangerous and risky idea of all, however I feel it is my duty to present it to the LENR community for fast falsification.

LENR cannot be understood by simple theories or explanations…

We have to fully accept the complexity of LENR, both theoretically and in experimental practice. Chris Tinsley has told: “Cold Fusion is to Hot Fusion what biochemistry is to chemistry” and really it seems that LENR is similar in complexity to photosynthesis or nitrogen fixation.

Ideal LENR has one barrier (Coulomb’s), real LENR has more barriers.

LENR cannot be explained by a single theory; I have stated this very clearly in my paper: “Cold Fusion- a wicked problem to solve” New Energy Times No 17, June 10, 2006:

From the understanding/theoretical point of view, it seems to be a fatal error to attempt to explain a multiphase, multi-step, multilevel aggregate of phenomena by a single theory -- without considering adequately where they take place, how and what they are…

I know only one LENR theory based on this basic principle- that of Prof Francesco Piantelli. (Pontignano Poster 2010)
A similar broad and advanced vision of LENR has Defkalion Green Energy Global: “LENR- a dynamic system of the multi-stage set of reactions.” Hopefully we will learn more about their theoretical understanding at this Conference.
These type of theories need a trans-disciplinary approach in application.

To acknowledge the dichotomy LENR vs. LENR+…

It seems that all the “classical:” LENR systems tested till now, as such, are not technologizable
We have to accept that the scale-up of LENR systems needs a radical change, to LENR+ systems, that have, first of all a different mechanism of generating nuclearly active sites (NAE).
LENR+ works at very high temperatures at which active nanostructures are destroyed very fast,

LENR that works- is an active LENR based on smart, systematic, modifications of the participant materials both metal and gas; everything depends on these complex preparations, before and during operation.
Andrea Rossi has invented the first such system and Defkalion, present at this symposium, has solved the most complex and difficult problems of engineering of a similar but different system.
We have to acknowledge that LENR is like a caterpillar that has to be metamorphosed in LENR+- a butterfly able to fly (i.e. to generate useful energy).

. Instead of conclusions…

I think the best option is for radical changes, first of all in the mode(s) of thinking in/re LENR.

Peter Gluck
Aug 1, 2012