Some of the ICCF-5 papers were barely legible, and they generated
peculiar files in the ClearScan format. So I OCR'ed them and retyped
a lot of the text from scratch. Here is one:
Ogawa, H., et al. Correlation of Excess Heat and Neutron Emission in
Pd-Li-D Electrolysis. in 5th International Conference on Cold Fusion.
1995. Monte-Carlo, Monaco: IMRA Europe, Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France.
This came out in vol. 1, PDF p. 133:
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/PonsSproceeding.pdf
I had such trouble with Table 1 that I passed copies of the scanned
image to various people and asked if they could read it. I still do
not know what the units are under the columns headed "Normal
Electrolysis" and "Pulse Mode Electrolysis." Abd suggested those are
days, which seems likely. I should probably patch that.
Anyway, what I would like to point out is that although this is not
an outstanding or important paper in the history of cold fusion, it
is an example of what 'might have been.' Ogawa was a student of
Okamoto at the Tokyo Inst. of Technology. Okamoto was an inspiring
teacher and a live-wire -- very funny and cynical. Unfortunately, he
died young from cancer (in his 50s I believe) and research at Tokyo
Inst. of Technology came to an end.
This paper shows a correlation between the hardness of the cathode
and excess heat, and also neutrons and heat. A great many conclusions
were piled into only a few experimental runs:
"The two background runs [with hydrogen] and one foreground run with
the Pd cathode of high electric resistance and high hardness gave no
nuclear effects, while one foreground run with low electric
resistance and low hardness gave appreciable excess neutron emission
and the excess heat generation. The [reversed] correlation was found
between the two nuclear effects [heat and neutrons] . . ."
Not very convincing, but it was a promising start. Suppose Okamoto
had lived, and suppose this project had been funded properly. They
might done the experiment 10 times more, or hundreds of times more
with automated equipment. That would have been convincing. Suppose
further that people had paid attention, and a major journal had
published the result. That would have had impact!
Instead, it has been more-or-less forgotten. I know about Okamoto's
group and their work, but not many other people do. I know of dozens
of other defunct similar efforts, some good, some not so good, but
all deserving of support, in my opinion.
- Jed
