"Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty- five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things."
We tend to view our era as a time of unprecedented change while assuming the world before our birth was virtually stagnate. In fact, rapid radical change has been the norm for at least the past few centuries. The case can be made that the generations living just prior to our generation experienced changes every bit as disorienting as ours.
Early in the nation's history, most travel was by water. We built cities on major waterways. Most states in the eastern half of the United States have a major river or the ocean as a boundary. This meant that each state had access to the water transportation super highway. Travel by land was exceedingly difficult. There were few roads. It took days to reach even nearby cities by stagecoach and each night meant fees for food and lodging that were not part of the stagecoach price. You had the labor of a driver spread across a few people. The cost of travel for even short distances could consume a week or more of wages for a typical working person. Only the wealthy and merchants could afford such travel.
I believe it was Pred who said travel from New York to Pittsburgh did not typically take a route across Pennsylvania. It involved boarding a boat in New York, sailing down the east coast around Florida to New Orleans, and then navigating up the Mississippi and the Ohio to Pittsburgh. Boats could handle far more people per trip, required no extra lodging expenses, food was generally provided on board, and laborers per person was much smaller. Water travel was far also more energy efficient and thus less costly.
As turnpikes and canals were built, and with the advent of the steamboat in the 1820s, travel times shrank and so did the prices. Depending on travel destinations, Pred shows the cost of travel per mile between 1800 and 1840 dropped by 50-90%. Railroads shrank distance and dropped costs even more. Today, we can fly from New York to Los Angeles in a few hours for one or two day's wages for someone earning around the US median Salary.
The world continues to change in significant ways but let us not fool ourselves into thinking that our age is the first to encounter sweeping technological and economic changes.
Our friend and colleague Max Fisher over at Worldviews has posted another 40 maps that explain the world, building on his original classic of the genre. But this is Wonkblog. We're about charts. And one of the great things about charts is that they show not just how things are -- but how they're changing.
So we searched for charts that would tell not just the story of how the world is -- but where it's going. Some of these charts are optimistic, like the ones showing huge gains in life expectancy in poorer nations. Some are more worryisome -- wait till you see the one on endangered species. But together they tell a story of a world that's changing faster than at arguably any other time in human history. ...
As the author notes, we have challenges but we hardly descending into some global dystopia. I think these charts give a pretty holistic view. Here are a three examples. It was commonly believed that primitive societies were more peaceful and that modern civilization gave rise to unprecedented violence. This chart compares death rates by war in primitive societies as calculated by anthropologists to the death rates for Europe/USA in the 20th century. And then there is this:
The graphs point to environmental protection and adaptation as the biggest problems in the days ahead. Those challenges are not insurmountable. Energy sources like natural gas and nuclear power can be used in the interim on the way to practical renewable technologies. Genetically modified crops can help to reduce water consumption, increase yield, and improve hardiness. Innovations in fields like biotechnology, nanotechnology, and 3-D printing hold the promise of revolutionizing the world economy into a less wasteful and more affordable human existence for everyone. There is work to do but there is also much reason for hope of a better world.
The Internet is disappearing. And with it goes an important part of our recorded history. That was the conclusion of a studyTechnology Review
looked at last year, which measured the rate at which links shared over
social media platforms, such as Twitter, were disappearing.
The conclusion was that this data is being lost at the rate of 11% within a year and 27% within two years.
Today, the researchers behind this work reveal that all is not lost.
Hany SalahEldeen and Michael Nelson at Old Dominion University in
Norfolk, Va., have found a way to reconstruct deleted material, and they
say it works reasonably well. ...
Earlier this week we presented the thesis from Credit Suisse that not only is 3-D printing not a flash in the pan, existing market research
reports have actually understated its potential market. 3-D printing is
exactly what it sounds like: making 3-D objects from a device that's
conceptually more like a printer than from a typical manufacturing
process.
But we wanted to get a little bit more specific about where exactly this is going to happen.
So with the help of an excellent report from consulting firm CSC,
we now present five industries that are already feeling the effects of
3-D printing's imminent dominance — for better or worse. ...
... The WAND Foundation has developed several dry composting toilet models, some of which were recognized at the 2011 Tech Awards at Santa Clara University. At the conference, Cora Zayas-Sayre, executive director of the WAND Foundation, explained
that by using local materials, the organization has been able to build
275 toilets at a cost of US$30 per toilet. She added that this
innovation has already impacted the lives of 3,000 people.
This innovation simultaneously addresses two challenges that prevail
in developing countries: the unsustainable and costly use of
water-sealed toilets, and the hygienic management of human waste.
Water-sealed toilets require pumping mechanisms to transport water and
sewage between 300 and 500 meters away from the home, a method that is
economically and environmentally unsustainable. Inadequate management of
human waste can lead to a host of health problems in developing areas, and dramatically impact quality of life. ...
... The green-roof movement has slowly been gaining momentum in recent
years, and some cities have made them central to their sustainability
plans. The city of Chicago, for instance, that 359 roofs are now
partially or fully covered with vegetation, which provides all kinds of
environmental benefits — from reducing the buildings' energy costs to
cleaning the air to mitigating the
Late this summer, Chicago
turned a green roof into its first major rooftop farm. At 20,000 square
feet, it's the largest soil-based rooftop farm in the Midwest, according
to the Chicago Botanic Garden, which maintains the farm through its program. ...
8. Interesting piece using driverless cars as an example and the inability of some people to see the potential innovations: The third industrial revolution
... In fact, these possibilities are only the tip of the iceberg.
Autonomous vehicles' most transformative contribution might be what they
get up to when people aren't in the vehicles. One suddenly has
access to cheap, fast, ultra-reliable, on-demand courier service.
Imagine never having to run out for milk or a missing ingredient again.
Imagine dropping a malfunctioning computer into a freight AV to be
ferried off to a repair shop and returned, all without you having to do
anything. Imagine inventories at offices, shops and so on refilling
constantly and as needed: assuming "shops" is still a meaningful concept
in a world where things all come to you.
The really remarkable thing about such possibilities is that the technology is basically available today. It isn't cheap
today, but that may change very quickly. If the public lets it, of
course. When it comes to AVs stagnation, if it occurs, will be the fault
of regulatory rather than technological obstacles.
1. The United States had its financial bubble. Europe is having one too. Is China next? If it is, it could reshape the global economy and radically reshape Chinese government. Here is an interesting piece about China's real estate bubble.
... I like the idea of a breaking the Industrial Revolution into stages,
but I would define them in more fundamental terms. The first Industrial
Revolution was the harnessing of large-scale man-made power, which began
with the steam engine. The internal combustion engine, electric power,
and other sources of energy are just further refinements of this basic
idea. The second Industrial Revolution would be the development of
interchangeable parts and the assembly line, which made possible
inexpensive mass production with relatively unskilled labor. The Third
Industrial Revolution would not be computers, the Internet, or mobile
phones, because up to now these have not been industrial tools;
they have been used for moving information, not for making things.
Instead, the rise of computers and the Internet is just a warm-up for
the real Third Industrial Revolution, which is the full integration of information technology with industrial production.
The effect of the Third Industrial Revolution will be to collapse the
distance between the design of a product and its physical manufacture,
in much the same way that the Internet has eliminated the distance
between the origination of a new idea and its communication to an
audience. ...
... Eventually all of the creative ferment of the industrial revolution pays
off in a big “whoosh,” but it takes many decades, depending on where
you draw the starting line of course. A look at the early 19th century
is sobering, or should be, for anyone doing fiscal budgeting today. But
it is also optimistic in terms of the larger picture facing humanity
over the longer run.
5. What are the contours of income inequality in the United States? This 40 minute video by Emmanuel Saez offers some important insights.
6. Futurist Ray Kurzweil is a little too sensationalist for my taste but this vid offers interesting food for thought about nanotechnology and the future sports. We will even be able to have meaningful sports competition?
The recovered wealth - most of it from higher stock prices - has been
flowing mainly to richer Americans. By contrast, middle class wealth is
mostly in the form of home equity, which has risen much less.
1. Conventional wisdom says wearing the red shirt in Star Trek will get you killed. Not so fast. Statistical analysis in Significance Magazine disagrees. (Keep your redshirt on: a Bayesian exploration)
"... In spite of wearing a redshirt, there is
only an 8.6% chance of a member of the operations or engineering
departments becoming a casualty. These personnel should ensure that
their life insurance plans are based on their departments and not their
uniform color.
Although Enterprise crew members in
redshirts suffer many more casualties than crew members in other
uniforms, they suffer fewer casualties than crew members in gold
uniforms when the entire population size is considered. Only 10% of the
entire redshirt population was lost during the three year run of Star Trek.
This is less than the 13.4% of goldshirts, but more than the 5.1% of
blueshirts. What is truly hazardous is not wearing a redshirt, but being
a member of the security department. The red-shirted members of
security were only 20.9% of the entire crew, but there is a 61.9% chance
that the next casualty is in a redshirt and 64.5% chance this
red-shirted victim is a member of the security department. The remaining
redshirts, operations and engineering make up the largest single
population, but only have an 8.6% chance of being a casualty.
Red uniform shirts are safe, as long as the wearer is not in the security department."
2. Interesting piece on automation in the Economist: Robocolleague
Robots are getting more powerful. That need not be bad news for workers. ...
... Historically, technological advances have been relatively benign for
workers. Labour-market trends through the 19th and 20th centuries show
surprising continuity, according to Lawrence Katz of Harvard University
and Robert Margo of Boston University. In recent decades, for example,
computerisation and automation have displaced “middle-skilled” workers
at the same time as employment among high- and low-skilled workers has
increased. This “hollowing out” is not new, Messrs Katz and Margo note.
Early industrialisation had similar effects. Middle-skilled artisans,
like trained weavers, were put out of work by industrial textile
production, but the fortunes of less-skilled factory workers and
white-collar factory managers steadily improved. Mechanisation’s
insatiable appetite for routine work of all types has yet to create mass
unemployment. Quite the opposite.
The worry is that technology now has its sights set on non-routine
tasks as well as mundane ones. Yet Mr Autor notes that just because a
skilled job can be automated does not mean it will be. The number of
workers used to build Nissan vehicles varies a lot between Japan, where
labour is expensive, and India, where it is abundant and cheap. The
relative cost of different types of workers matters for firms as they
choose how to deploy new technologies. ...
Indie Capitalism has three foundational principles:
• Creativity generates economic value.
Creativity is the source of profit. Yes, efficiency can squeeze more
out of what exists, but creativity gives us originality, which
translates into a market advantage and big margins.
• Creativity drives capitalism.
These past few years we have been victimized by the disastrous results
of “creativity” applied to the financial sector (mortgage-backed
securities, for starters). What we lost sight of is that the scaling of
creativity to actually make things of value sold in the marketplace is
the true heart of our economic system. It is the true generator of net
new jobs, wealth, and tax revenue.
• Creative destruction is crucial to economic growth.
Crony capitalism, which relies on monopoly and political power, is
antithetical to entrepreneurial capitalism. A faster cycle of birth,
growth, and death of companies boosts creativity, economic value, and
growth.
The bottom line: For the first time in decades, several key economic drivers have created a competitive advantage for the U.S. that will encourage corporate strategic decisions on capital allocation and acquisitions for generations to come.
Here's why:
1. Cheap and abundant natural gas. ...
2. Innovation. Despite talk of a brain drain, the U.S. remains the global innovation leader, maintaining a position enjoyed for 50 years. ...
3. Rule of law. Without the means to protect intellectual property, it cannot be exploited for competitive advantage. ...
4. Human capital. The wage gap between the U.S. and China has been shrinking. ...
5. De-complexity. Western multinationals continue to struggle with management of operations in developing countries. ...
6. Public policy and abundance. The federal government appears to be seizing the opportunity to promote job growth at home.
7. Credit, currency and the coming wave of mergers and acquisitions.
"Picture an assembly line not that isn’t made up of robotic arms spewing sparks to weld heavy steel, but a warehouse of plastic-spraying printers producing light, cheap and highly efficient automobiles.
If Jim Kor’s dream is realized, that’s exactly how the next generation of urban runabouts will be produced. His creation is called the Urbee 2 and it could revolutionize parts manufacturing while creating a cottage industry of small-batch automakers intent on challenging the status quo. ..."
Throughout history, war and innovation have gone hand in hand,
whether it’s breakthroughs out of heavily funded R&D programs
or makeshift contraptions thrown together with spare parts. Soldiers are
trained to use the technology on hand to get the job done, one way or
the other.
But how would military operations change if soldiers on the
battlefield could have the best of both worlds: access to expert
engineers able to fabricate custom-designed fixes right on-the-spot and
in very little time? ...
"It may sound strange and far out, but it’s actually quite simple. 4D
printing is being billed as a process where synthetic objects can change
and adapt themselves to the environment. In a recent TED interview, Tibbits compared the process of 4D printing to the process of natural adaptation:
Natural systems obviously have this built in — the
ability to have a desire. Plants, for example, generally have the desire
to grow towards light and they generate energy from the translation of
photosynthesis, carbon dioxide to oxygen, and so on. This is extremely
difficult to build into synthetic systems — the ability to “want” or
need something and know how to change itself in order to acquire it, or
the ability to generate its own energy source. If we combine the
processes that natural systems offer intrinsically (genetic
instructions, energy production, error correction) with those artificial
or synthetic (programmability for design and scaffold, structure,
mechanisms) we can potentially have extremely large-scale
quasi-biological and quasi-synthetic architectural organisms."
The music industry, the first media business to be consumed by the
digital revolution, said on Tuesday that its global sales rose last year
for the first time since 1999, raising hopes that a long-sought
recovery might have begun.
The increase, of 0.3 percent, was tiny, and the total revenue, $16.5
billion, was a far cry from the $38 billion that the industry took in at
its peak more than a decade ago. Still, even if it is not time for the
record companies to party like it’s 1999, the figures, reported Tuesday
by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, provide
significant encouragement.
8. Teleworking: The myth of working from home from the BBC. "Yahoo has banned its staff from "remote" working. After years of many predicting working from home as the future for everybody, why is it not the norm?"
"Reasons for high unemployment among the young include ineffective education systems (the share of early school dropouts is 20% in Italy and 30% in Spain) and dual labour markets with highly protected jobs for older employees. The good performance of Germany is not least a result of the German apprenticeship system, which facilitates labour market access for school leavers by lowering the company’s costs for employing them. The OECD’s latest “Going for Growth” report recommends reforms to strengthen the vocational training systems as one of the most effective ways to fight structural youth unemployment. This would also be a reasonable starting point for the EU’s youth employment programme."
"What’s most revealing about this study is that, like earlier research,
it suggests that students’ preference for printed textbooks is reflects
the real pedagogical advantages they experience in using the format:
fewer distractions, deeper engagement, better comprehension and
retention, and greater flexibility to accommodating idiosyncratic study
habits. Electronic textbooks will certainly get better, and will
certainly have advantages of their own, but they won’t replicate the
particular advantages inherent to the tangible form of the printed book."
The Catholic Church has struggled to bring in young members in the
United States. Less than half of U.S. Hispanics between 18 and 29
identify as Catholic, compared with the 60+ percent of Hispanics older
than 50.
The narrative of decline in the mainline church underestimates the continuing influence of its members, says a religion researcher.
16.Some interesting observations by NYU psychologist Jonathan Haidt. He says we tend to process our social world through three lenses: Social distance, hierarchy, and disgust. Conservatives tend to have a lower threshold of revulsion while liberals, and praticularly libertarians, have a higher threshold.
Issue 104 examines the impact of automation on Europe and America and the varying responses of the church to the problems that developed. Topics examined are mission work, the rise of the Social Gospel, the impact of papal pronouncements, the Methodist phenomenon, Christian capitalists, attempts at communal living and much more.
"Despite the tough economy, many of the nation’s largest churches are
thriving, with increased offerings and plans to hire more staff, a new
survey shows.
Just 3 percent of churches with 2,000 or more attendance
surveyed by Leadership Network, a Dallas-based church think tank, said
they were affected “very negatively” by the economy in recent years.
Close to half — 47 percent — said they were affected “somewhat
negatively,” but one-third said they were not affected at all. ..."
... It's not surprising that younger entrepreneurial firms are considered more innovative. After all, they are born from a new idea, and survive by finding creative ways to make that idea commercially viable. Larger, well-rooted companies however have just as much motivation to be innovative — and, as Scott Anthony has argued, they have even more resources to invest in new ventures. So why doesn't innovation thrive in mature organizations? ...
... First, he says, the focus of an established firm is to execute an existing business model — to make sure it operates efficiently and satisfies customers. In contrast, the main job of a start-up is to search for a workable business model, to find the right match between customer needs and what the company can profitably offer. In other words in a start-up, innovation is not just about implementing a creative idea, but rather the search for a way to turn some aspect of that idea into something that customers are willing to pay for. ...
... discovering a new business model is inherently risky, and is far more likely to fail than to succeed ...
... Finally, Blank notes that the people who are best suited to search for new business models and conduct iterative experiments usually are not the same managers who succeed at running existing business units. ...
5. A fascinating, if sobering, look at the conflict over islands off the coast of East Asia. Trouble at sea
"President Barack Obama's proposed tilt of U.S. priorities toward the Pacific – and away from the historical link to Europe – represents one of the most encouraging aspects of his foreign policy. Although welcome, we should recognize that this shift comes about three decades too late and that it may miss the rising geopolitical centrality of sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. The emergence of these longtime historically impoverished backwaters has been largely missed as American policy-makers and businesses are now obsessed with the challenges and opportunities posed by the emergence of China and, to a lesser extent, India. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, over the past decade has produced six of the world's 10 fastest-growing economies. Through 2011-15, according to the International Monetary Fund, seven of the fastest-growing countries will be African, and Africa as a whole will surpass the slowing growth rates in Asia, particularly China.
This growth has caused the region's poverty rates, still unacceptably high, to fall from 56.5 percent in 1990 to 47 percent today. Further growth will likely push poverty levels down further."
8. New Geography also asks, Is the Family Finished? Some interesting thoughts about the impact of declining birthrates in the U.S.
Pew Research Center has compiled key findings from a new analysis of the
nation’s foreign-born population, based on U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011
American Community Survey.
With more than half the population of many U.S. cities who are
multicultural and Hispanics comprising more and more of the
U.S. population, when does it become meaningless and redundant to
execute marketing strategy that is directed to a general market and a
Latino market perceived to be homogenous?
11. Committee on Economic Development has an interesting piece looking at both the ideological and economic aspects underlying the debate about the minimum wage. Raising the Minimum Wage: “Which Side Are You On?”
"It is an easy call if you are either (a) a strict libertarian or (b) an
enthusiastic advocate of the less fortunate with limited concern about
the scarcity of resources. (If you belong to both of those groups,
there is little advice that I can offer.) However, in between those
poles of opinion, things become rather murky, rather quickly."
... Comparing the Democrat and Republican participants turned up differences in two brain regions: the right amygdala and the left posterior insula. Republicans showed more activity than Democrats in the right amygdala when making a risky decision. This brain region is important for processing fear, risk and reward.
Meanwhile, Democrats showed more activity in the left posterior insula, a portion of the brain responsible for processing emotions, particularly visceral emotional cues from the body. The particular region of the insula that showed the heightened activity has also been linked with "theory of mind," or the ability to understand what others might be thinking. ...
... The functional differences did mesh well with political beliefs,
however. The researchers were able to predict a person's political
party by looking at their brain function 82.9 percent of the time. In
comparison, knowing the structure of these regions predicts party
correctly 71 percent of the time, and knowing someone's parents'
political affiliation can tell you theirs 69.5 percent of the time, the
researchers wrote. ...
STERLING, Va. - Perched by a computer monitor wedged between shelves of cough drops and the pharmacy in a bustling Walmart, Mohamed Khader taps out answers to questions such as how often he eats vegetables, whether anyone in his family has diabetes and his age.
He tests his eyesight, weighs himself and checks his blood pressure as a middle-aged couple watches at the blue-and-white SoloHealth station advertising "free health screenings." ...
... As Americans gain coverage under the federal health law, putting increased demand on primary care doctors and spurring interest in cheaper, more convenient care, unmanned kiosks like these may be part of what their manufacturer bills as a "self-service healthcare revolution." ...
Recent developments in the field of nanotechnology might give new
meaning to the phrase “nothing gold can stay.” Atoms and bonds developed
not by Mother Nature, but by scientists, are gaining momentum as the
building blocks for cutting-edge materials.
Using nanoparticles as “atoms” and DNA as “bonds,” Chad Mirkin, the
director of Northwestern University’s International Institute for
Nanotechnology, is constructing his very own periodic table. So far Mirkin has built more than 200 distinct crystal structures with 17 different particle arrangements. ...
... To better understand
the impact of technology on jobs, The Associated Press analyzed
employment data from 20 countries; and interviewed economists,
technology experts, robot manufacturers, software developers, CEOs and
workers who are competing with smarter machines.
The
AP found that almost all the jobs disappearing are in industries that
pay middle-class wages, ranging from $38,000 to $68,000. Jobs that form
the backbone of the middle class in developed countries in Europe, North
America and Asia.
In the United States, half
of the 7.5 million jobs lost during the Great Recession paid
middle-class wages, and the numbers are even more grim in the 17
European countries that use the euro as their currency. A total of 7.6
million midpay jobs disappeared in those countries from January 2008
through last June.
Those jobs are being replaced in many cases by machines and software that can do the same work better and cheaper.
"Everything
that humans can do a machine can do," says Moshe Vardi, a computer
scientist at Rice University in Houston. "Things are happening that look
like science fiction." ...
... So machines are
getting smarter and people are more comfortable using them. Those
factors, combined with the financial pressures of the Great Recession,
have led companies and government agencies to cut jobs the past five
years, yet continue to operate just as well.
How is that happening?
-Reduced
aid from Indiana's state government and other budget problems forced
the Gary, Ind., public school system last year to cut its annual
transportation budget in half, to $5 million. The school district
responded by using sophisticated software to draw up new, more efficient
bus routes. And it cut 80 of 160 drivers. ...
... -In South Korea, Standard Chartered is
expanding "smart banking" branches that employ a staff of three,
compared with an average of about eight in traditional branches. ...
... -The
British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto announced plans last year to
invest $518 million in the world's first long-haul, heavy-duty
driverless train system at its Pilbara iron ore mines in Western
Australia. The automated trains are expected to start running next year.
The trains are part of what Rio Tinto calls its "Mine of the Future"
program, which includes 150 driverless trucks and automated drills.
Like
many technologically savvy startups, Dirk Vander Kooij's
furniture-making company in the Netherlands needs only a skeleton crew -
four people ...
... -Google's driverless car and the Pentagon's
drone aircraft are raising the specter of highways and skies filled with
cars and planes that can get around by themselves. ...
... "Trying to keep it from happening would have
been like the Teamsters in the early 1900s trying to stop the
combustion engine," Lavin says. "You can't stand in the way of
technology."
The upside of emerging technology is that most will make goods and services
less expensive. That improves our living standard. The downside is that much of
the work we used to do in order to earn the wages to buy goods and services is
rapidly changing. As the last sentence of the article notes, this is not the
first time we have been in these circumstances. Years ago I read that in 1885,
approximately 80% of everything we consumed in the U.S. was produced at home.
By 1915, 80% was produced outside the home. It created massive economic
dislocations. Each time these disruptions occur it has been hard for the people
living at that time to foresee what the new economic order would look like.
It is critical that Christian thinkers wrestle with the challenges of technological
innovation. Creative destruction (the market dynamic where jobs and industries
are destroyed in the wake of creating new ones) has always been a difficult one
for ethics. It is painful but the social cost of other alternatives is also
quite high. Anti-technological calls to abandon consumerism or, conversely,
just saying that “the market will sort it all out,” are not legitimate
responses. I think topics like this should be at the center of our theological
reflection about human labor and the economy.
Many have been inspired by Star Trek to become scientists, and some are starting to make its gadgetry a reality.
Destination Star Trek London has kicked off at the ExCeL exhibition centre,
and I'm willing to bet that among those heading down for a weekend of
pointy-eared fun, there'll be a high proportion of scientists and
engineers.
Many have been inspired by Star Trek to take up a career in science, technology or engineering.
I think the franchise deserves more respect as a science popularisation
medium – how many other prime-time TV shows would allow their
characters to toss out phrases like "I performed a Fourier analysis on
the harmonics, Captain"?
Since its inception in 1966, Star Trek
has familiarised us with the lingo and applications of science. At
least, that was the case for me. I felt pretty disenfranchised from
science at school: it wasn't until I discovered science fiction that I
realised I could understand "difficult" technical concepts.
Since
the show began, many of us have become more tech-savvy than we could
possibly have imagined at school. More than that, we're now seeing
emergent technology here on Earth that was once little more than a Star
Trek scriptwriter's dream. To get you in the mood for this weekend's
festivities, here's a roundup of some of the best Star Trek-inspired
technology.
Replicators - ... Three-dimensional printers have been on the open market commercially for most of the 21st century. ...
Transporters - Earlier this year, Nature reported that photons had been teleported 89 miles, between La Palma and Tenerife. OK, it wasn't exactly transportation ...
Bioneural circuitry - ... And in February of this year, the Scripps Research Institute published details of a DNA-based biological computer based on an original design by Alan Turing. ...
Nanites - ... They've constructed a set of nanorobots, with inbuilt chemical sensors, that can silence genes within cancerous cells. ...
Androids - Japanese scientists have created some remarkably human-looking androids,
though they wouldn't beat Data in a game of three-dimensional chess. ...
Of course, we all ready have personal communication devices. But as someone recently pointed out, while we all have communication devices, we don't see people in Star Trek constantly looking down at them and running into things. ;-) Warp drive would be pretty cool. Any other Trekkie devices that you want to see?
... Grocery stores that found success on the internet are instead returning
to the physical world with a hybrid business model: the "virtual"
supermarket, a shop for smartphone users that carries photographs and
bar codes instead of food. After the success of locations in mass
transit stations from Seoul to Philadelphia, the virtual supermarket is about to hit the city above ground. Chinese supermarket giant Yihaodian announced this week it is opening 1,000 brick-and-mortar locations. ...
... Grocery stores want to reach time-starved commuters, but they also seem
to be capitalizing on consumers' desire to browse. It's one of the
reasons why many people at least claim to still prefer physical
bookstores, even as the monstrous success of websites like Amazon seem
to negate that notion.
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Yihaodian has also experimented with
subway stores, but the announcement this week marks a big move back into
physical space. No longer will "virtual supermarkets" be only in mass
transit stations. They'll occupy actual retail space in the city.
Using compressed air to power cars is something people have experimented with since at least 1840. That's when two French men named Andraud and Tessie tested such a gaseous vehicle on a track. The eco-friendly automobile "worked well," reports the air-car lobby, which exists, "but the idea was not pursued further. "
Why not? Perhaps because making a practical, well-working model is damnably hard. But India's Tata Motors is pushing the technology forward, inch by inch, with its project to build "Airpods" – zero-pollution, cute-as-a-bug smartcars that zip along at 40 m.p.h. via the magic of squeezed air. ...
... So what does this auto of the future look like? Following the smartcar trend, sort of like it stumbled off the set of Disney's Cars. The mid-sized model fits three passengers, although one must face backward like he's being punished for something, and is streamlined almost to the point of becoming a sphere. Its tank can hold 175 liters of air, which a driver gets either at a specialized fueling station or by activating an onboard electric motor to suck it in. Its makers say that filling er' up will cost a paltry €1, and that a full tank of air can last for roughly 125 miles. ...
One of the first essays I ever read about economics in college was Leonard Read's I, Pencil written in the year before I was born. While a little outdated in some ways it still does a wonderful job of illustrating the wonder and complexity of the market process. The Institute for Faith Work and Economics has just released a four minute clip that updates "I, Pencil" in a compelling and entertaining way.
Now let me add a caveat, especially for those of my readers who are skeptical of markets and free enterprise. Markets are not a quasi-deity. They do not solve every problem. They aren't perfect. They don't prevent evil people from doing evil things. But what they do, by historical measure, is astounding. Until very recently, human beings were trapped in low productivity labor. There was minimal ability to trade with others beyond the immediate community. There was no way for us to coordinate with, and mutually benefit from, the work of countless strangers from across the globe. Markets make that possible. Markets made this very conversation possbile that you an I are having right now because without it there would be no computers and no internet to enable this interaction. And for that reason markets can be celebrated, even as we wrestle with many implications that have arisen because of emergence of well-coordinated markets.
(CNN) -- A private spacecraft docked with the International Space Station on Friday, a milestone in a new era of commercial space flight.
The docking happened just before 10 a.m., almost two hours later than planned. A radar system aboard the unmanned SpaceX Dragon that measures distance to the station had picked up a different part of the space station, meaning it could not dock properly, NASA said. ...
... The launch is an important step for NASA and the United States, which currently has no means of independently reaching space. NASA relies on the Russian space agency to ferry U.S. astronauts to orbit.
The first attempt to launch Falcon 9 was halted Saturday when a flight computer detected high pressure in an engine combustion chamber. Workers replaced the valve Saturday, SpaceX said.
The company plans 11 more flights to the space station.
One of a handful of private companies receiving funds from NASA to develop a space taxi system, SpaceX hopes the experience with the cargo flights will help the company reach its goal of carrying astronauts aboard the Dragon.
The company is developing a heavy-lift rocket with twice the cargo capability of the space shuttle, and also dreams of building a spacecraft that could carry a crew to Mars. ...
When the price of a tourist flight gets below about one year's salary, I'm buying a ticket! ;-)
WASHINGTON D.C. (CNNMoney) -- My first ride in Google's self-driving car was, all at the same time, thrilling, fascinating and a little disappointing.
The car was in Washington DC where Google representatives met with groups like the AARP and the National Council for the Blind, groups which might have an interest in cars that that could act as chauffeurs for those who, for one reason or another, can't drive themselves.
I got to ride along on a loop around several DC blocks with two Google engineers in the front seats. Google's "self-driving cars" must always have someone seated at the controls, whether in Nevada -- which recently licensed Google's cars -- or anywhere else.
The drive was thrilling and fascinating because, come on, the car drives itself. In traffic! Disappointing because it's clearly not going to be ready for public use for years and years. ...
I'm convinced that in some other language "Google" translates into "Skynet." ;-)
WASHINGTON -- U.S. traffic deaths dropped last year to their lowest level since record-keeping began in 1949, according to an estimate from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. ...
... Last year's national decline in traffic fatalities -- to 32,310 -- came as motorists drove about 36 billion, or about 1.2%, fewer miles, perhaps because of high gas prices and a still-difficult economy that might have discouraged pleasure road trips.
The 2011 fatality rate is projected to decline to the lowest on record, to 1.09 fatalities for every 100 million vehicle miles traveled, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Traffic deaths have fallen by about 26% since the 43,510 fatalities reported in 2005; highway fatalities peaked in 1972, at 54,589. In 1949, there were 30,246 fatalities, but the rate was 7.13 fatalities for every 100 million vehicle miles traveled.
Traffic safety experts attributed the decline to a number of factors -- "probably people driving less, safer vehicles, safer roads and an improvement in the safety culture across the United States,’’ Jacob Nelson, director of traffic safety advocacy for the AAA national office, said in an interview.
Jonathan Adkins of the Governors Highway Safety Assn. cited increased seat belt use, safer cars, better roads and an improved emergency medical service response effort. "Also, the economy continues to keep traffic deaths lower than normal," he added. ...
(Reuters) - New cars and trucks sold in the United States are getting an average of 24 miles per gallon of gasoline, the highest ever, researchers at the University of Michigan said on Tuesday.
The average fuel economy rating as shown by window stickers on new vehicles bought in March - including pickup trucks, SUVs, minivans and passenger cars - was 24.1 mpg, the researchers found. That was up 20 percent from the average of 20 mpg in October 2007, they said.
The university's Transportation Research Institute began monthly updates on fuel economy four-and-a-half years ago.
The researchers also said that their index measuring polluting greenhouse gas emissions per new vehicle has fallen by 17 percent since October 2007.
For more on fuel economy calculations by researchers Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle, click: www.umich.edu/~umtriswt/EDI_sales-weighted-mpg.html for fuel economy
HONOLULU (AP) — Hollywood icon James Cameron has made it to Earth's deepest point.
The director of "Titanic," ''Avatar" and other films used a specially designed submarine to dive nearly seven miles, completing his journey a little before 8 a.m. Monday local time, according to Stephanie Montgomery of the National Geographic Society.
He plans to spend about six hours exploring and filming the Mariana Trench, about 200 miles southwest of the Pacific island of Guam.
"All systems OK," were Cameron's first words upon reaching the bottom, according to a statement. His arrival at a depth of 35,756 feet came early Sunday evening on the U.S. East Coast, after a descent that took more than two hours.
The scale of the trench is hard to grasp — it's 120 times larger than the Grand Canyon and more than a mile deeper than Mount Everest is tall. ...
Early last week the State Smart Transportation Initiative, a sustainable transport program funded by the Department of Transportation, released some charts on the continued decline of vehicle-miles traveled in the United States. Overall VMT dropped 1.2 percent in 2011 from the previous year, reaching its lowest total since 2003, and per capita VMT fell 2.1 percent to levels not seen since 1998:
Researchers have been saying for several years now that cities in the United States and other developed countries may have reached "peak driving" — a level of vehicle miles at or near the saturation point. The idea is that the sheer volume of VMT can't possibly rise at the same rate it did in the second half of the 20th century, so mileage will either increase far more modestly than it has in the recent past, or perhaps even start to decline.
So far that prediction seems on point. SSTI notes a DOT study from 2006 [PDF] that estimated a rise of 50 to 60 percent in VMT from 2001 to 2025. That would be a significantly slower rise than over the previous 25-year period, 1977 to 2001, during which VMT rose 151 percent. But even this conservative estimate now seems incredibly generous: "In the first 10 years of the period, per capita VMT actually declined by nearly 3 percent," SSTI reports.
People do any number of things while waiting on the platform for the next subway or commuter train. Some pre-walk to position themselves at the best station exit for their destination. Some just mindlessly pace. The ones who used to look down the track every few moments for the next train now look at the digital arrival times every few moments instead. Some take pictures of rats.
And, as of earlier this month, some Philadelphians have been able to shop for groceries. The online grocer Peapod introduced virtual storefronts at select SEPTA stations throughout the city. While awaiting a train, users can download the Peapod app, peruse the items in front of them, and scan the barcode of anything they'd like to purchase. The groceries are delivered to their homes later that day.
Philly marks the idea's American debut, but a number of international cities already have similar services. Woolworths has placed virtual storefronts at the Town Hall Station in Sydney, Australia, and displays from British retailer Tesco were installed last year in South Korea. If three is a trend, you just got trended. ...
AMERICANS are getting fatter: obesity rates have risen 74% in the past 15 years to nearly 28% of the adult population. And they are driving more: the number of miles driven by each licensed driver (VMT/LD), excluding commercial vehicles, increased by an average of 0.6% a year between 1988 and 2008. Academics at the University of Illinois have found a striking correlation between these two variables—but with a large time lag. They noted that previous research had found that changes in diet had an affect on body weight only after some six years. Therefore VMT/LD in 2004 is correlated with obesity in 2010 (see left-hand chart). This near-perfect correlation (99.6%) permits predictions about obesity rates. Since VMT/LD fell in 2007 and 2008, America's obesity rate could fall to as low as 24% in 2014 (see right-hand chart). These predictions come with a strong caveat: correlation does not equal causation. And it should be noted that the authors did not control for factors such as diet, income and lifestyle. Additionally, they did not explore the possibility that the larger, and thus more immobile, people become, the more they drive.
Transport: The car industry’s effort to reduce its dependence on rare-earth elements has prompted a revival in the fortunes of an old-fashioned sort of electric motor.
ONCE again, worrywarts are wringing their hands over possible shortages of so-called “critical materials” crucial for high-tech industries. In America the Department of Energy is fretting about materials used to manufacture wind turbines, electric vehicles, solar cells and energy-efficient lighting. The substances in question include a bunch of rare-earth metals and a few other elements which—used a pinch here, a pinch there—enhance the way many industrial materials function. ...
... The rare-earth element that other industrial countries worry about most is neodymium. It is the key ingredient of super-strong permanent magnets. Over the past year the price of neodymium has quadrupled as electric motors that use permanent magnets instead of electromagnetic windings have gained even wider acceptance. Cheaper, smaller and more powerful, permanent-magnet motors and generators have made modern wind turbines and electric vehicles viable.
That said, not all makers of electric cars have rushed to embrace permanent-magnet motors. The Tesla Roadster, an electric sports car based on a Lotus Elise, uses no rare-earth metals whatsoever. Nor does the Mini-E, an electric version of BMW’s reinvention of the iconic 1960s car. Meanwhile, the company that pioneered much of today’s electric-vehicle technology, AC Propulsion of San Dimas, California, has steered clear of permanent-magnet motors. Clearly, a number of manufacturers think the risk of relying on a single source of rare-earth metals is too high.
The latest carmaker to seek a rare-earth alternative is Toyota. The world’s largest carmaker is reported to be developing a neodymium-free electric motor for its expanding range of hybrid cars. Following in AC Propulsion’s tyre tracks, Toyota is believed to have based its new design on that electromotive industrial mainstay, the cheap and rugged alternating-current (AC) induction motor patented by Nikola Tesla, a Serbian-American inventor, back in 1888. ...
There is another lesson in this story: As long as there are free markets we will never run out of anything. As a resource becomes more expensive, humans innovate and find substitute resources or substitute processes. As neodymium becomes too expensive, we find alternatives. As Douglas Hay observed 25 years ago, nearly everything we make can ultimately made from renewable resources ... including building materials and plastics. As recycling becomes more prevalent and more efficient, it drives down costs as well. Technology improves the efficiency of how resources are mined, processed, and utiliezed, eliminating waste. While neodymium may become so expensive no one wants to use it, we will never run out of neodymium as long as there are market economies. The Stone Age did not end to due an absence of stones and the horse transporation age did not end due to the extinction of horses. Neither will the rare-earth age end because of the exhuastion of minetal deposits.
... As might be expected, the Cato Institute has some sensible words on the subject of NASA: here, here, and here. If you don’t want to believe these guys, see what Martin Rees, professor of cosmology and astrophysics at Cambridge University, has said about manned space flight: “The moon landings were an important impetus to technology but you have to ask the question, what is the case for sending people back into space? I think that the practical case gets weaker and weaker with every advance in robotics and miniaturisation. It’s hard to see any particular reason or purpose in going back to the moon or indeed sending people into space at all.”
Fortunately, President Obama has been eminently sensible on the moon, having already scrapped the moon landing project that had been in the works for some time. Indeed, the announcement of this decision provided what might be my favorite – and most refreshing – quotation from our 44th President: ”Now, I understand that some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned. But I just have to say pretty bluntly here: We’ve been there before.” I just wish he had scrapped most of the NASA missions, turned over what could be justified on national defense/public goods grounds to the Department of Defense and other agencies, and sold whatever was left over to private industry. Now that would be change I could believe in!
But of course this just illustrates that Obama lies. We all know we've never been to the moon. It was all broadcast from a soundstage in Burbank, CA. How can you trust a guy who wasn't born in the U.S. <***Big grin with tongue firmly in cheek.***>
... China has just launched an Apollo moon shot of sorts: The government recently decreed that 5 million electric cars will be traveling the nation's roads by 2020 -- up from basically none today. According to banking giant HSBC, that will equate to 35% of the global electric-vehicle market.
What that means is that China, which last year rocketed past the U.S. as the world's largest market for new-auto sales, is also determined to become its most innovative. As part of the country's 12th five-year plan (2011--2015), Beijing has pledged that it will do whatever it takes to help the Chinese car industry take the lead in electric vehicles (See: China vs. the U.S. in electric vehicles). (Its long-term plan also calls for building bullet trains, subways, and electric buses to alleviate traffic congestion.) "The Chinese are trailing in the development of internal-combustion engines," says Bill Russo, a senior adviser at Booz & Co. in Beijing who covers the car industry. "They figure, Why not leapfrog that technology and become a dominant global purveyor of battery-powered vehicles?"
Building an electric-car infrastructure won't be easy. Vehicle makers must work with a jumble of different players -- from the utilities, which will provide the power and smart-grid networks, to local governments, which will provide public charging stations. Standards must be set. But China, an authoritarian state, is particularly well positioned to help make the electric car a reality. "China's government is supporting electric-car technology more than any other country on earth," says Kevin Wale, head of GM China Group. ...
(Reuters) -
Boeing Co plans to offer passengers the chance to fly into space on a
craft it is developing for travel in low-Earth orbit, the aerospace
company said on Wednesday.
Boeing said it reached an
agreement with Virginia-based Space Adventures to market passenger seats
on commercial flights aboard Boeing's CST-100 space vehicle being
developed for NASA.
The spacecraft
could carry seven people and fly in low-Earth orbit as soon as 2015,
Boeing said. The company added that potential customers could include
private individuals, companies, nongovernmental organizations and U.S.
federal agencies. ...
... One South Korean firm, however, is taking a different tack. CT&T,
whose main line of business until now has been making electric golf
carts, is producing a range of battery-powered cars more suited to
low-speed, short-distance urban driving than to cruising the freeways of
the American West. Its flagship model, the eZone, is a quirky
two-seater aimed at housewives, the elderly and those making the daily
school run. It has a range of 100km and can clip along at 70kph if you
really put your foot down.
It is a proper car, though. In particular, it is the only low-speed
electric car to have passed international front and side crash tests,
meaning that it can go on general sale. That will happen in Europe any
day now, with a starting price between $8,000 and $16,000, and CT&T
has plans to introduce the eZone into Hawaii (one part of the United
States where journeys are, by definition, short) in two years’ time,
when a local factory is up and running. It is also cheap to run. The
firm claims that 1,500km of urban driving—about a month’s worth—will
cost a mere $7 in electricity bills. ...
Even if we could farm on Mars, astronauts might be too weak by the time they get there to help plow the fields.
The first cellular analysis of muscles from astronauts who have spent 180 days at the International Space Station shows that their muscles lost more than 40 percent of their capacity for physical work, despite in-flight exercise.
No matter how good their shape was before the astronauts left, they returned with muscle tone that resembled that of the average 80-year-old. In fact, the astronauts who were in the best shape before they launched were the most likely to come back with withered, or atrophied, muscles.
NASA currently estimates it would take a crew 10 months to reach Mars, with a one year stay, and 10 months to get back, for a total mission time of about three years. These studies suggest they would barely be able to crawl by the time they got back to Earth with the current exercise regime. ...
Ten months after India's $2,000 Nano was launched, carmaker Tata has sold more than 200,000 vehicles.
Months after buying the shiny silver car, farmer Satish Kumar still keeps the plastic wrap on the seats. Most days, his Tata Nano – his first car – sits in the front yard, proudly displayed between the brick pillars of a homemade carport. Tucked from sight are a couple of cows and a humble scooter that still is driven a lot more than the four-wheeled wonder.
The Kumars actually don’t much need a car: Mr. Kumar works in the fields around his house; Mrs. Kumar stays at home; and the kids go to school by bus. The car proves useful for those special occasions when the family wants to arrive together – and in style. “I’m mainly concentrating on using it socially – taking my whole family to weddings and other family functions,” he says.
For Tata, the Indian automaker, Kumar belongs to a new class of customer, thanks to the Nano’s price of just $2,000. But while the Nano spurred much chatter about what it allows the middle class to do, Kumar suggests the Indian consumer may be more smitten with what the car allows them to be. “I think the Nano is actually used as a signaling device,” says Sourabh Mishra, chief strategy officer at marketing firm Saatchi & Saatchi India. “It’s signaling, ‘I’m now part of a group who can afford a lifestyle that hitherto was not possible to me.’ ”
Some 10 months after Nano’s launch, Tata has booked sales of 206,703 cars; 17,000 Nanos have been delivered. Some 70 percent of bookings came from nonmetro areas. ...
The "Nemo H2," which can carry about 87
people, is the first of its kind designed specifically to run on a fuel
cell engine, in which hydrogen and oxygen are mixed to create
electricity and water, without producing air-polluting gases.
"That's important in a city like Amsterdam with over 125 canal trips per day," said project manager Alexander Overdiep.
A boat trip around Amsterdam's concentric semi-circles of canals is a popular tourist pastime in the Dutch capital.
From spring, visitors will have the option of a 'CO2 Zero Canal
Cruise', for an extra 50 (euro) cents, which will go toward further
research into carbon-reducing technology, said Freek Vermeulen,
managing director of Lovers boat company.
The new boat cost more than double to build than a canal boat
running on a diesel engine, and needs to visit a hydrogen dispensing
station for a refill once a day, while normal boats only need a fuel
top-up once a week.
But developers of the 3 million euro project, which was partly
government funded, said costs would decline as more boats followed this
test phase, and if more advanced hydrogen distribution infrastructure
emerged.
A new report states that EVs could potentially speed climate change rather than reduce it.
"Electric cars should be rewarded for their energy efficiency, not for moving emissions from exhaust pipes to powerstation chimneys" says the UK's Environmental Transport Association (ETA). In a report titled "How to avoid an electric shock—Electric cars: from hype to reality", the ETA has taken a close look at electric-powered vehicles (EVs) and their associated technologies. In what could be a shock to some commuters—and governments—the report states that EVs could potentially speed climate change, rather than reduce it, and might not be as good for the planet as some of the spin suggests. Simply put, it's not necessarily the cars themselves that will cause the damage, but the way the electricity is generated to power them and how often we drive them. For instance, EVs powered by "green energy"—wind or solar—are obviously superior, but if the electricity comes from coal, hybrids perform better.
Director at the ETA, Andrew Davis, said: "Whilst the report is not intended to dampen enthusiasm for electric vehicles, their introduction should not be viewed as a panacea; significant changes to the way we produce and tax power are needed before we will reap any benefits." ...
Solution: Electric cars and nuclear power plants. Nuclear is the new green. :-)
The prototype of a solar-powered plane destined for a record round-the-world journey will make its first trip across a runway on Thursday and Friday.
This week saw the Solar Impulse plane outside its hangar for the first time, with tests of its engines and computer.
The plane's maiden flight is scheduled for February, and a final version will attempt to cross the Atlantic in 2012.
As wide as a jumbo jet but weighing just 1,500 kg, it will be piloted by Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard.
"It's very exciting, we are moving now toward a very concrete phase," said Solar Impulse chief executive Andre Borschberg.
"You have to realise this airplane is quite special and you cannot just put it on the runway, apply full power and go in the air - it has to be done really step-by-step," he told BBC News. ...
WASHINGTON – NASA could put a man on the moon but didn't have the sense to keep the original video of the live TV transmission.
In an embarrassing acknowledgment, the space agency said Thursday that it must have erased the Apollo 11 moon footage years ago so that it could reuse the videotape.
But now Hollywood is coming to the rescue.
The studio wizards who restored "Casablanca" are digitally sharpening and cleaning up the ghostly, grainy footage of the moon landing, making it even better than what TV viewers saw on July 20, 1969. They are doing it by working from four copies that NASA scrounged from around the world.
"There's nothing being created; there's nothing being manufactured," said NASA senior engineer Dick Nafzger, who is in charge of the project. "You can now see the detail that's coming out."
The first batch of restored footage was released just in time for the 40th anniversary of the "one giant leap for mankind," and some of the details seem new because of their sharpness. Originally, astronaut Neil Armstrong's face visor was too fuzzy to be seen clearly. The upgraded video of Earth's first moonwalker shows the visor and a reflection in it. ...
A new solar-powered aircraft attempts to fly around the world with zero emissions.
WHEN an airliner takes off for a transatlantic flight it needs to carry some 80 tonnes of fuel, which accounts for around one-fifth of its weight. On really long flights, fuel can account for 40% of a plane’s take-off weight, so that around 20% of the fuel is used to carry the rest of the fuel. Each tonne of fuel burned also produces 3.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Yet inside a hanger at a Swiss airfield is the prototype of an aircraft (illustrated above) that does not use any fuel at all. The wings of this aircraft are almost as big as those of an airliner, but they are covered in a film of solar cells that convert sunlight into electricity to drive its engines.
Solar-powered aircraft have flown before. The pioneer was Paul MacCready, whose Gossamer Penguin made the first manned flight in 1980 in California, with his then 13-year-old son at the controls. A derivative, Solar Challenger, crossed the English Channel in 1981. But nothing like HB-SIA, as the Swiss aircraft is known, has ever taken to the air. If it works as expected, another version will be built and this will take off, climb to 10,000 metres and, by storing some of the electricity generated during the day, continue flying through the night. Its pilots, Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg, plan to cross the Atlantic in it and later to fly it around the world.
The prototype will be unveiled on June 26th by Solar Impulse, a project the aviators run. ...
MUMBAI (AFP) – India's Tata Motors on Monday launched the world's cheapest car, the Nano, hoping to revolutionise travel for millions and buck a slump in auto sales caused by the global economic crisis.
Company boss Ratan Tata said the no-frills vehicle, slated to cost just 100,000 rupees (2,000 dollars) for the basic model, will get India's middle-class urban population off motorcycles and into safer, affordable cars.
"I think we are at the gates of offering a new form of transport to the people of India and later, I hope, other markets elsewhere in the world," he said, describing the launch as a "milestone."
"The present economic situation makes it somewhat... more attractive to the buying public," he told reporters in Mumbai ahead of a glitzy official unveiling ceremony at 7:30 pm (1400 GMT).
Potential owners of the car -- which is just over three metres (10 feet) long and has a top speed of 105 kilometres (65 miles) per hour -- can apply between April 9 and 25, Tata managing director Ravi Kant said. ...
DETROIT (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) said it would launch an all-electric car for city commuting by 2012 in the United States as part of its plan to speed up the introduction of green cars as its global sales falter.
The FT-EV concept made its debut at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit Sunday, where the world's top automaker is also unveiling two new gasoline-electric hybrid cars.
The FT-EV concept shares a platform with the tiny iQ urban commuter car, which runs on a gasoline engine and emits just 99 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer.
"Now, more than ever, while we are so focused on the pressing issues of the moment, we cannot lose sight of our future," Irv Miller, Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. group vice president, said in a statement.
Toyota said the concept car is targeted at the urban dweller driving up to 50 miles between home and work, for instance. ...
Aspiring scientists from the Zurich School of Applied Sciences have built a video simulation that displays the flight path of every commercial flight in the world over a 24-hour period. There isn't much of an application for it, but it sure is cool to look at.
The Brazilian authorities are to use a plane equipped with body-heat sensors to monitor uncontacted Indian tribes in the Amazon from a distance.
Brazil has a policy of leaving such isolated indigenous groups in peace unless it is absolutely necessary to make contact.
Officials say the plane will help them to protect remote communities without interrupting their way of life.
Some 39 isolated groups are believed to be living in the Amazon region.
In May this year the authorities released a photograph of members of an uncontacted tribe firing arrows at a passing plane - an image reproduced in newspapers and on websites.
It is thought there may be more than 100 such tribes still in existence worldwide - more than half living in Latin America. ...
THE
Chevrolet Volt is expected to be the icing on General Motors’ 100th
birthday cake this week. The much-promoted sedan, which will operate as
an electric car in typical local driving, is intended to provide a
jump-start for the company’s second century.
The timing of the
Tuesday event is fortuitous, for much more is riding on the Volt than
whether a new model using experimental technologies will be a hit. For
if the Volt succeeds, it could put the troubled company on a whole new
path after 10 decades tethered to the internal-combustion engine. If it
fails, it could drag G.M., and perhaps the entire struggling American
auto industry, even further behind Asian competitors.
It was on
Sept. 16, 1908, that William Crapo Durant filed the incorporation
papers that formed G.M., with a revitalized Buick as its foundation.
The centennial should be a time of joy at the company. But, with losses
since 2005 approaching $70 billion, and Toyota having accelerated past
G.M. into the No. 1 spot in global auto sales, the company’s staff
won’t be dancing in party hats.
Instead of toasting the glory
days when G.M. owned half of the United States car and truck market —
its share peaked at 51 percent in 1962 amid suggestions that it should
be broken up under antitrust laws — G.M. executives are looking
.expectantly ahead to November 2010. That’s when the Volt, expected to
break cover this week in close to final form, is due to reach
customers. ...
After a closer examination of a surviving marvel of ancient Greek technology known as the Antikythera Mechanism, scientists have found that the device not only predicted solar eclipses but also organized the calendar in the four-year cycles of the Olympiad, forerunner of the modern Olympic Games.
The new findings, reported Wednesday in the journal Nature, also suggested that the mechanism’s concept originated in the colonies of Corinth, possibly Syracuse, on Sicily. The scientists said this implied a likely connection with Archimedes.
Archimedes, who lived in Syracuse and died in 212 B.C., invented a planetarium calculating motions of the Moon and the known planets and wrote a lost manuscript on astronomical mechanisms. Some evidence had previously linked the complex device of gears and dials to the island of Rhodes and the astronomer Hipparchos, who had made a study of irregularities in the Moon’s orbital course.
The Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the first analog computer, was recovered more than a century ago in the wreckage of a ship that sank off the tiny island of Antikythera, north of Crete. Earlier research showed that the device was probably built between 140 and 100 B.C.
Only now, applying high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography, have experts been able to decipher inscriptions and reconstruct functions of the bronze gears on the mechanism. The latest research has revealed details of dials on the instrument’s back side, including the names of all 12 months of an ancient calendar....
From the department of unintended consequences, we now have a bill before Congress that would address one of the biggest problems with electric cars: They're too quiet.
It's not just blind pedestrians who have to worry. An ongoing study from the University of California at Riverside has found that even slow-moving hybrids can get 40 percent closer to any pedestrian than a combustion-engine car before they are detected. This is also a problem for bicyclists, who rely on their hearing to place traffic around them -- far more than many realize.
The bill before Congress would require the Transportation Department to establish safety standards for hybrids and other vehicles that make little discernible noise, including an audible alert.
About a year ago in Taiwan, they started installing countdown timers at traffic lights at a number of intersections. Some counted down the amount of time remaining ’till a green light turned yellow and then red, while others counted down the amount of time remaining before a red light turned green. ...
...It’s a fact that a certain number of accidents are caused both by people who jump the gun on the red light, and those who try to make it through the intersection after the light has already turned red. Ostensibly, the reason for the timers was to give people more precise information about exactly how much time they had remaining before the light changed, in the hope of reducing accidents.
The results are quite interesting. A research institute within Taiwan’s Ministry of Transportation released a report showing that at 187 intersections which had the timers installed, those that counted down the remaining time on green lights saw a doubling in the number of reported accidents, with a 33 percent increase in the number of injuries, while those that counted down until a red light turned green saw a halving in both the number of reported accidents and injuries. Intersection that had both red and green light timers saw a 19 percent increase in reported accidents and a 23 percent increase in injuries.
The launch of the Soviet Sputnik satellite half a century ago inaugurated the Space Age. What comes next?
When people talk about a moment being burned into memory, they usually mean it in a negative way: President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Princess Diana’s fatal car crash, 9/11. The launch of Sputnik 50 years ago this month was different. It certainly had its negative side: no one likes to wake up to find that your nuclear adversary has thrown a shiny ball over your head and that you can’t do a thing about it. But the dawn of the Space Age was also a hopeful event. Visionaries celebrated humanity’s long-awaited climb out of its cradle, and pragmatists soon savored the benefits of communications and weather satellites. Many of today’s scientists and engineers trace their life’s passions to that fast-moving dot in the night sky.
“In his millennia of looking at the stars, man has never faced so exciting a challenge as the year 1957 has suddenly thrust upon him,” astronomers Fred L. Whipple and J. Allen Hynek wrote in the December 1957 issue of Scientific American.
The evolution of the space program continues to be dramatic. In a decade or so, it will be hardly recognizable. The shuttle, which for all its faults is the most sophisticated flying machine ever built, will be a thing of the past. NASA is moving to the Constellation system, which is basically a high-tech dusting off of the Apollo rockets and capsules. Whereas the shuttle is an ambitious spacecraft with modest goals (providing regular delivery-van service to orbit), Constellation is a modest spacecraft with ambitious goals: building a moon base, visiting an asteroid and eventually establishing human settlements on Mars. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin is steering a slow but steady course that he argues can be sustained on a limited budget—an approach that many commentators wish his predecessors had pursued 30 years ago. ...
As you prepare to head out to join with family and friends for that Thanksgiving turkey, give thanks right now for one of the most magnificent engineering feats of all time.
The Interstate.
Or, as it is more formally known, The Dwight D. Eisenhower System of Interstate and Defense Highways.
It's 50 years old this year. And it was in this very month, November, 1956, that the first eight-mile stretch of what would eventually be more than 42,000 miles of limited access highway lacing the states together was opened in Topeka, Kansas.
Clarkson loves it: a bicycle fitted with a jet engine that can do 70mph and may even beat the London congestion charge. Emma Smith reports Jeremy Clarkson has gone green. The Top Gear presenter has finally bowed to pressure from the environmental lobby and got himself a bicycle. It has a wicker basket on the front, a jet engine at the back and a theoretical top speed of 70mph.
Built for the MPH 06 motor show, a motoring circus co-hosted by Clarkson, it has made such an impact the designers are thinking of producing it for sale.
“It’s fantastic and completely legal, probably,” said Clarkson. “You can ride across London without paying the congestion charge and Ken Livingstone can’t touch you.”
The bike uses a standard JetCat P-180 model aircraft engine that can be bought over the counter at model aircraft shops or from online modelling specialists for about £1,800.
Man this is cool! Where was this bike when I was 12 years old. (Mike headed outside to calculate how big a ramp it would take to jump the neighbors house at 70 mph.)
...The researchers envisage a mid-range aircraft that would carry 215 passengers. Its top speed would be 0.8 Mach—that is, 0.8 times the speed of sound or around 600 miles per hour, slightly slower than the coming generation of airliners. Indeed, it is a slower speed that enables such an aircraft to be so quiet: it would drift in to land rather than powering in, all engines blazing, as today's jets do. Its low approach speed, combined with steep climbs and descents, would make it inaudible outside the airport.
.......
The passenger aircraft is currently a conceptual design. There are many challenges that would have to be overcome before it could become a reality by 2030, as the researchers hope. Not only would passengers have to accept windowless flight, but several technical problems would also need to be overcome, including the need to manufacture pressurised cabins that are not the standard tubular shape.
But it is the concept aircraft's fuel efficiency that is really making aircraft manufacturers take note. The researchers claim that it would use 25% less fuel than current aircraft do. Airliners that are cheaper to run and contribute less to climate change may be more attractive than silent ones. That is why a slightly noisier alternative design by the same researchers that is even more fuel-efficient shows most promise.
The Venturi Eclectic, currently on display at the Paris Motor Show, is powered by a 22hp, 50Nm electric motor that's charged by the 2.5 square meters of solar panels on its roof. If it's too cloudy out, a wind-powered force wheel generates the electricity, and in a pinch you can rehcarge using AC power. Designed for urban driving, the golf-cart styled vehicle can reach a top speed of 32mph. It goes into production next summer and will sell for 24,000 euros.
A global competition to build cleaner and more fuel-efficient cars is moving into a new and serious phase. In the past two weeks:
Honda announced a new-generation diesel engine with so few emissions that it meets even California's tough clean-air standards, while getting 30 percent better mileage than an equivalent gasoline- powered vehicle. It plans to sell it in the US in 2009.
General Motors said it would lease more than 100 hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicles by next fall and sell them in volume by 2011.
Daimler-Chrysler's Chrysler group said it would shift its emphasis from brawny truck-based vehicles to small cars, including 10 new fuel-sipping models.
"What we're seeing is a race that's been going on for a while, but is really heating up now," says Ron Cogan, editor and publisher of the Green Car Journal in San Luis Obispo, Calif. "All the automakers are vying to bring out technology that is much cleaner and gets much better mileage."
The push for cleaner, more efficient cars is powered by two forces: the rise in gasoline prices, of course, and new emissions regulations.
BMW will roll out the world's first hydrogen-burning car in serial production early next year, the German premium automaker said on Tuesday, eager to put its stamp on cars with green credentials.
The specially equipped 7-Series executive cars emit only water vapor when running on hydrogen.
The car hits the market next April and will be shown at the Los Angeles car show in November, the company said. It had said in March the hydrogen cars would arrive within two years.
Calmly Considered: Videocasts on Faith & Economics
