Thomas Friedman of the NY Times recently visited the NIF facility as quite the skeptic. Fusion energy offers the promise of renewable, sustainable, and carbon-free energy. Sounds like a pipe dream in many ways.

But Friedman was impressed, especially with the enormous facility:

I began my tour there with the N.I.F. director, Edward Moses. He was holding up a tiny gold can the size of a Tylenol tablet, and inside it was plastic pellet, the size of a single peppercorn, that would be filled with frozen hydrogen.

The way the N.I.F. works is that all 192 lasers pour their energy into a target chamber, which looks like a giant, spherical, steel bathysphere that you would normally use for deep-sea exploration. At the center of this target chamber is that gold can with its frozen hydrogen pellet. Once one of those pellets is heated and compressed by the lasers, it reaches temperatures over 800 million degrees Fahrenheit, “far greater than exists at the center of our sun,” said Moses.

More importantly, each crushed pellet gives off a burst of energy that can then be harnessed to heat up liquid salt and produce massive amounts of steam to drive a turbine and create electricity for your home — just like coal does today. Only this energy would be carbon-free, globally available, safe and secure and could be integrated seamlessly into our current electric grid.

The facility powered up for the first time a few weeks back. Over the next year, it will continue to ramp up the laser for a test ignition run in 2010. If, and that’s a BIG IF, ignition proves successful…the transition to a game changer in energy will pick up speed. A pilot plant for fusion power is estimated to cost around $10 billion, close to the cost of a new nuclear plant.

Read Thomas’ entire recap of his journey here.

We’ll be starting the discussion tonight with a KQED QUEST video tour of the NIF facility:

Our speaker, Wiveka Ramel, put together a long and varied list of local resources for those dealing with depression. You’ll find everything from places to learn to ways to participate in ongoing research.

Learning:

• National Institute on Mental Health has a lot of information about the science and treatment of depression
• Author William Styron describes his personal experience with major depression in a beautifully written book “Darkness visible: A memoir of madness”
• Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, a psychologist and researcher of bipolar disorder, gives a compelling description of her personal experience with bipolar disorder in “An unquiet mind.” She has also written about great artists in history who suffered from bipolar disorder in “Touched with fire: manic-depressive illness and the artistic temperament”
• The “Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression” by Andrew Salomon examines personal, cultural, and scientific aspects of depression. It won the 2001 National Book Award.
• Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) has information about many psychological disorders and conditions and evidence-based treatments
• A self-help book that is very popular and gives a cognitive-behavioral perspective of depression is “Feeling Good” by Dr. David Burns
• For a Buddhist touch on dealing with adversity, read any of Pema Chödrön’s books (e.g., “When things fall apart,” “The wisdom of no escape”)
• In the HBO series “Confessions” Mike Wallace, Martha Manning, and William Styron talk about their personal experiences with major depression.
• For research papers on depression, meditation, and emotion regulation, see
  • Wiveka’s Papers
  • Greg Siegle’s Pysch Lab
  • Stanford SPL Papers

Treatment:

• SF Bay Area Center for Cognitive Therapy in Oakland
• SF Counseling Center
• Sevitar, Dr. Wiveka Ramel’s psychotherapy practice in San Francisco: www.sevitar.com, 415-279-2519
• Berkeley psychology clinic
• Stanford psychiatry clinic (medication & psychotherapy), 415-498-9111
• Find a psychiatrist in San Francisco who can prescribe medication.
• Hotline for mental health services in San Francisco that links people to public and private mental health resources: Access 415-255-3737
• To find a psychologist who specializes in cognitive behavior therapy, use the following web sites where you can search for therapists in the whole country:
  • ABCT
  • ACT

Support groups:

• Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, San Francisco: Jane 415-519-0171
• The National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI), San Francisco

Participate in research on mood, anxiety, sleep, emotion, memory

• Research on psychotherapy and meditation for social anxiety, CAAN at Stanford
• Research on treatment for insomnia and depression at Stanford (TRIAD). Study coordinator Katherine Taylor klilytay stanford.edu
• Research at Berkeley on stress, daily routines, sleep, and mood in bipolar disorder (click on ‘studies’ then ‘Daily Rhythms Study’), phone 510-643-3797
• Stanford mood and anxiety disorder laboratory (Dr. Gotlib)
• Stanford Depression Research Clinic (Dr. Schatzberg)
• Stanford Psychophysiology Laboratory
• Berkeley Psychology Department
• Stanford Psychology Department

Our upcoming talk is on Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) otherwise known as clinical depression. Most everyone suffers from occasional bouts of sadness, but when that last for two weeks or more that physical changes in the brain start to be observed. This disorder affects about 10% of the population, slightly elevated percentages for women vs men.. The disorder is seen as having a wide range of causes, most notably life events, genetic susceptibility, or a combination.

Here’s a good intro video:

As the video mentions, the disorder is classified when physical changes occur alongside the mood shift. e.g. weight loss, insomnia, not enjoying previously fun activities, along with the low mood, feelings of worthlessness, etc.

What is fascinating about depressive disorder is the perfect storm of conditions that generate occurrence….it’s a combination of genetic predisposition, some sort of stressful event, and then an inability to cope leading to physical changes in the brain. It’s an amazingly complex problem which explains the wide swath of treatments used (psychotherapy, antidepressants, electroshock, mindfulness, even transcranial magnetic therapy….the list goes on and on.)

BTW The video also mentions the serotonin theory of depression, which many see as incomplete theory to explain depression at this time.