Tech Talk

Last week Spectrum Online ran my profile of Andasol 1, a solar thermal power plant that's set to startup in Andalucia with the largest installation built expressly for storing renewable energy: a set of molten salt storage tanks that will hold enough heat energy to run its 50 MW steam turbine for 7.5 hours after dark. This week brought decisive evidence that another solar thermal design that makes even better use of energy storage -- a so-called 'power tower' whereby sunlight is focused on a central tower -- will also have its moment in the Andalucian sun.

The project, dubbed Gemasolar, will employ sun-tracking mirrors covering an area equal to 40 soccer fields to focus light at the top of a roughly 120-meter-high tower. There the sunlight will heat a solar receiver full of molten salt. In contrast, Andasol 1 (like most of the solar thermal plants under construction in the U.S., Spain, North Africa and the Gulf) uses thousands of square meters of trough-shaped mirrors to focus light on a synthetic oil; energy is stored via heat exchangers that transfer the synthetic oil's heat to a molten salt.

One advantage of the power tower is thus obvious: heating salt directly eliminates the need for heat exchangers, reducing installation and operating costs. Another lies in the fortuitous thermodynamics of heating molten salts, whose maximum safe temperature of 565 C is about 165 C higher than the synthetic oil's.

Sandia National Lab researchers verified these power tower advantages in the second half of the 90s, but also suffered through a series of operational difficulties. Five years ago the European Commission provided funding for the Gemasolar project (then known as the Solar Tres) to demonstrate that the difficulties could be overcome, but the project foundered on legal issues and changes in Spain's renewable energy law. But engineering continued and this March the project sprung back to life when its lead proponent, Spanish engineering firm Sener, clinched a solar thermal joint venture with Abu Dabi's alternative energy program.

With Abu Dabi's deep pockets Gemasolar's financing just might survive the current financial crisis. Siemens confirmed that the tower was moving forward this week by disclosing that it would supply the steam turbine to convert the tower's solar-generated heat into up to 19 MW of electricity for the Spanish grid.

For further details on Gemasolar, see this frank telling of its origins, design and goals on Sener's website. For details on a competing power tower design that directly produces steam, see this white paper from Spains' Abengoa Solar.

That farout sci-fi staple known as the space elevator is in the news again, among real engineers who take the idea seriously. An organization known as the Japan Space Elevator Association will hold the 1st Japan Space Elevator Conference in Tokyo on 15-16 November. And the attendees should have a lot to discuss.

A piece from CNN ('Space elevator' would take humans into orbit) reports that interest in developing a space elevator has never been higher, with hundreds of engineers and scientists from Asia, Europe, and the Americas working hard to turn the visionary concept into a reality, possibly within a few decades.

The CNN item refers to the challenge of building a cable that would extend from a ground station to an orbiting outpost thosands of miles above as 'an unprecedented feat of human engineering'. Once built and deployed, the tether would theoretically be capable of conveying an attached platform into space.

Continue reading "Space Elevator Engineers Are Set to Meet in Tokyo" »

Plugs are definitely vogue at this week's Mondial de l'Automobile in Paris. So where does the hybrid vehicle fit into the picture? It may not, according to Renault. The French carmaker says that electric vehicles, not hybrids, are needed to deliver the emissions reductions that governments and customers demand.

Renault says that it is engineering a pair of battery-powered electric vehicles (EVs), to be produced starting in 2011, that it claims will be cheaper to build, cost markedly less to power, and produce far less carbon dioxide. Today they unveiled a partnership with utility géant Electricité de France to "establish electric cars as a viable and
attractive transport solution for consumers."

And Renault is not the only major automaker planning to produce commuter-oriented EVs. Mitsubishi Motors and Daimler both announced plans in Paris last week to accelerate commercialization of small EVs -- Mitsubishi with its i-MiEV minicar and Daimler with a battery version of its popular Smart Fortwo. Volkswagen's promo materials in Paris confirmed it would join the EV club, producing a tiny commuter EV called the Up! in 2010 with a top speed of 130 kilometers/hour and roughly 100 kms of range.

Ok you say. EV's are à la mode. But what of the hybrid option? The question is partly semantic. Hybrid technology is everywhere if you count the mild hybrids, which employ a small but potent electric battery to save gas by rebooting the combustion engine on a green light instead of idling through the red; some can also recuperate energy during breaking by recharging their battery. This technology is going mainstream: Renault competitor PSA Peugeot Citroën said it alone will install 1 million stop-start systems by 2011. VW spokesperson Martin Hube said his company viewed stop-start as just an evolution of internal combustion drive. "You can call it a mild hybrid but it's just a smart technique," says Hube. "That's nothing new."

No automaker questions whether full hybrids like the Prius or GM's plug-in Chevy Volt that can drive on either electricity or gasoline are something new. But while several showed full hybrid concept cars in Paris, fewer talked up plans to build one. Perhaps they've made the same calculation as Renault: it's not worth the trouble to cram high-energy motors, batteries and an engine into a vehicle when one can go straight to the full EV instead.

I have to admit that I saw this tidbit a week or two ago over at Nanodot and found it to be so outlandish that I thought it fell into too-ridiculous-to-comment category.

But people kept sending me the links to the news story usually accompanied with some slack-jawed, bewildered comment.

It is bewildering. First, who is this Des Moines, IA-based Continental Western Insurance Group? I have never heard of the insurer, but I am not a Midwest farm. If someone would like to enlighten me as to the nanoparticle producers they currently insure (or should I say, used to insure), I would welcome the information.

Second, excluding “nanotechnology”?! Okay, you could make some poorly informed, taking hearsay over science decision that nanoparticles, or even more precisely carbon nanotubes, have exhibited some similarities to asbestos, albeit with research still inconclusive. But nanotechnology?

What is that supposed to be exactly? Will that include STMs and AFMs, key tools in nanotechnology? Will that include the GMR effect used in your computer so you can store 100 gigabytes of family photos?

Continue reading "Midwest Insurance Company Excludes Nanotechnology from its Policies" »

Digital Cinema technology has been viable for several years; the problem has been getting it into the theaters. It’s not that theater owners, for the most part, wouldn’t love to trade in their film projectors, it’s that converting a multiplex to digital is an expensive operation; about $70,000 a screen.

In the December 2006 issue of IEEE Spectrum author Russell Wintner described a creative solution to this dilemma: a deal between the vendors of digital equipment, the movie studios, and the theaters in which the vendors would provide the equipment to the theaters at no charge, and would be reimbursed by fees paid by the movie studios when they load digital files of movies onto the theater systems. Wintner termed this charge a virtual print fee. An interesting idea at the time, but would anyone sign on? Wintner predicted that they would.

And indeed, they have. Wintner’s group, Access IT, signed four studios this spring--Disney, Fox, Paramount, and Universal—and is busy converting 10,000 North American screens to digital (AccessIT had already installed systems for projecting bits onto 4000 screens with a studio backed virtual-print deal). And last week a consortium of three of the largest theater chains, Digital Cinema Implementation Partners (DCIP), announced that they put together a financing package that will fund converting 20,000 North American screens to digital and signed on five studies—Lion’s Gate Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Pictures Universal Pictures Walt Disney Co., Again, studios will pay a virtual print fee.

Later last week Sony Corp., partnering with Paramount and Twentieth Century Fox, separately announced that it would convert 9000 screens in North America, Europe, and Asia. Again, the conversion will be financed by a virtual print fee. All the consortia are estimating this fee to be between $700 and $1000.

As far as Wintner is concerned, the more of these deals that happen the better. “It means,” he says, “the initiative I helped start in 1996 has succeeded with a commitment to replace 35mm film in all theatres across the U.S. and Canada (a total of about 38,000 screens).

Next up for Wintner? Taking advantage of digital cinema’s 3D capability. “These announcements,” he says, “will add enormous momentum to 3D initiatives.”

The U.S. Department of Defense, as we reported this month, has become the home of several very large-scale renewable energy projects. The reasons are simple: the military owns lots of empty land, it has complete jurisdiction over that territory, and its energy needs are insatiable. To that end, the U.S. Army, which to date has lagged the Air Force and the Navy in its energy initiatives, has just announced plans to build a 500-megawatt solar thermal plant at Fort Irwin, in California. The Mojave desert, an empty and hot place, has long been the home of solar thermal activity in the United States, in large part because it receives some of the strongest solar radiation in the world. The Army also reaffirmed its interest in a 30-megawatt geothermal power plant at Hawthorne Army Depot, using geothermal research from the Navy.

The Army's endeavor marks the military's first foray into solar thermal. The plant will be about equal in size to the Mojave Solar Park 1, which is being developed by Solel Solar Systems and is expected to be operational in 2011. However, contrary to what this CNET article reports, the Army's solar power plant will not "eclipse today's largest U.S. solar thermal installation of 14 megawatts at Nellis Air Force Base" -- that solar installation, though large, is photovoltaic. For more on the Nellis photovoltaic field and other military energy projects, check out this slide show.

Mobile phones are the rage in Africa, but their success should not obscure an uncomfortable reality: Internet access is relatively small and too costly.
The solution is neither clear nor inexpensive. Two problems are critical. First, there need to be better communications links within and between African countries. Second, the African continent must have stronger links with the rest of the world.
Undersea cables, coming on stream, seem likely to solve the second problem. The first problem is more nettlesome, though bright minds envision an answer in the sky.
Satellites ought to do the trick, say Google and a communications innovator, Greg Wyler, whom the search-engine company is supporting.
The effort by Wyler's Ob3 Networks, which would involve 16 satellites, is expensive -- $700 million by one reckoning. There's also the question of whether the approach is commercially viable, or would require long-term subsidies from outside donors.
Definitive answers will not come quickly. The task of "wiring" Africa -- amid all the hoopla over the penetration of mobile phones in the poorest parts of the world -- remains daunting. And yet without greater Internet usage, the information economy in Africa will suffer gravely.

Today Darpa released a report I've been hearing about for months concerning whether and how we could make the next big leap in supercomputing: exascale computing, a 1000x increase over today's machines. Darpa was particularly interested in whether it could be done by 2015.

With regard to whether it could be done by 2015, the answer, according to my read of the executive summary, is a qualified no.

Continue reading "Exascale supercomputers: Can't get there from here?" »

Last July, our Sally Adee, brought you a story on the controversy over a Utah company's plan to import 18 000 metric tons of Italian nuclear waste into the United States and (after some difficult to understand process) dump some of it in Utah.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has decided to delay its decision on whether or not the importation can proceed. The NRC is going to sit on its hands until a federal court hears a related case—some time next year.

The delay, says the Journal, gives a boost to a bill that would ban nuclear waste imports (unless they were defense-related). The legislation is currently stuck in committee.

From our intrepid intern, Monica Heger:

The Nobel Prize in physics was awarded today for discoveries in subatomic physics. Yoichiro Nambu, from the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago won half the award for his discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics. Two Japanese physicists, Makoto Kobayashi from the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization and Toshihide Maskawa from the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics at Kyoto University, split the other half of the award for their discovery of the origin of broken symmetry, which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks, a fundamental particle.

Broken symmetry lies behind the very nature of our existence. At the time of the Big Bang, if equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created, they theoretically would have destroyed each other. Instead, that symmetry was broken, allowing for the existence of our universe. Scientists still do not know how that symmetry was broken.

The three Nobel winners all explained broken symmetry within the framework of the existing laws of physics. Kobayashi and Maskawa were only able to do this by expanding broken symmetry to include three new families of quarks. The quarks they described in 1972 have only recently been observed in laboratories by particle accelerators.

Andrew Maynard in his latest blog site presents one of the stronger metaphors I have seen to date to describe the state of dialogue (or lack thereof) on the future and direction of nanotech.

Maynard likens the current discourse to the latest social phenomenon the “silent rave” in which everyone shows up at the same place but listen to their own iPod.

These nanotechnology meetings to which Maynard draws his comparison consist of scientists, policy makers, industry leaders and NGOs just to name the main groups and they are all marching to the beat of different drummers.

What Maynard seems loathe to point out is that there may actually be qualitative difference between the drummers, or, to follow his metaphor, songs. Maybe Ringo Starr was a better drummer than Pete Best.

After reading TNTLog’s recent experience at another stakeholder consultation group intended to be “Fruitful Dialogue”, one wonders how fruitful these dialogues can be when one or more of the groups clearly have absolutely no idea of what they are talking about.

Is it possible to step in and pull the plug on those iPods of the clearly misinformed? Probably not. The thought that some ideas and opinions are just bogus has come to be so anathema to “reasonable” people that we have to endure nonsense, or noise, and hope that the more pleasant notes come to the fore.

Unfortunately, hoping for something to happen doesn’t mean that it will.

I watched Flash of Genius in a sort of slack-jawed amazement. The movie, which opened over the weekend, stars Greg Kinnear as Bob Kearns, inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper who brought car companies to their knees in the early 90s by winning a patent infringement case with GM.

The climactic scene is a patent trial! Sure, plenty of movies have trial scenes--but patent law is notoriously opaque. Throw in the complexities of engineering and a mentally disturbed engineer representing himself, and you've got the makings of cinematic Ambien. Mercifully, the trial moves at a brisk clip, with plenty of drama, and the most cogent explanation of the legal standard of non-obviousness that I've ever heard.

And of course, there was the flash of genius, Kearns' "eureka moment," when looking in the mirror and watching his eye blink, he realized he could make a windshield wiper work the same way. I was so excited when I came out of the movie that I started madly Twittering my review.

As I tweeted, I got to thinking about the nature of eureka moments. Kearns' eureka moment was actually several moments spread over a decade. Kearns blinded himself in one eye when popping a champagne cork on his wedding night. He and his wife recount this incident throughout the movie as the moment--but the wiper wasn't even a twinkle in his black eye at that time. Then there was the time he was driving his family in a downpour and he was frustrated by a lack of wiper-speed variability. Then there was the moment when he looks at his eye blinking in the mirror, and the first two moments came together--Eureka! Kearns' flash of genius.

Hmm. Flashes of genius, maybe. Or flashes that result in a moment of insight.

But that's really kind of nitpicky. Less so is the scene where Kearns' wiper works--the first time he turns it on. No way, I thought. And when I read John Seabrook's 1993 New Yorker article "The Flash of Genius" on which the movie was loosely (as it turns out) based, I learned that Kearns actually spent months perfecting his invention.

In fact, comparing the article to the movie is an object lesson in how Hollywood distorts complicated issues and complex people into a digestible package of entertainment. There's a laundry list of differences between legal fact and movie fiction. For instance, in the movie Kearns is a professor at Wayne State University teaching applied electrical engineering. In reality, at the time he invented the wiper, Kearns, who had a masters in mechanical engineering and would eventually teach at Wayne State, was commuting to Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, trying to earn his PhD. He came home on weekends to be with his wife and family. The real hero of the story should be his wife Phyllis, who had to take care of six kids by herself, while holding down a substitute teaching job (wait, was that true or made up?).

Finally, there's the explanation of the technology behind the intermittent wiper, or rather lack thereof. In the movie, we come to understand that Kearns invention is electronic rather than mechanical, and that it relies on simple components: a transistor, a capacitor and a variable resistor. How these work together in a novel circuit design (the Invention) is never explained in the movie. But how hard would it have been to have Kinnear explain the mechanism to his kids, using Seabrook's elegant explanation:

The resistor and the capacitor together were the timer, and the transistor worked as the switch. The resistor, which the driver could adjust with a knob, controlled the rate of current flowing into the capacitor. When the voltage in the capacitor reached a certain level, it triggered the transistor; the transistor turned on, and the wipers wiped once. The running of the wiper motor drained voltage out of the capacitor; it sank below the threshold level of the transistor, and the transistor turned off. The wipers dwelled until the capacitor recharged.

Having said all that, this is movie well worth seeing. How many times do you see circuit diagrams, even as set pieces, on the silver screen? How many times do engineers star in a film? Kinnear gives a terrific performance. And the ending, though happy enough, underscores the price the late professor Kearns and his family paid for his obsession. See the movie. Then read the article.

Last month broadcasters in Wilmington, N.C., turned off their analog signals, meaning that viewers of over-the-air television had digital television or nothing. This is a preview of the nationwide analog shutdown scheduled for 17 February 2009.

Local government officials worked hard to get the word out, and an estimated 97 percent of Wilmington residents knew about the analog shut-off. The local fire department sent volunteers out to help people hook up their converter boxes. It still didn’t go so well. Many viewers lost their favorite television channels altogether; of the 1828 people who complained to the FCC in the first five days after the shutoff, more than half of those had lost channels. Others called their local television stations to complain.

According to a team of students from Elon University, many problems were related to the antenna. One Wilmington resident quoted in a great blog post about the antenna problems said, “I feel scammed by all these commercials and companies. If getting a new antenna was something they knew we might have to do, why did they not say our antennas would not work?”

So it looks like my unhappy experience in trying to switch to digital was not, unfortunately, an aberration. Just making some rough calculations, I figure that 12 percent of the roughly 15,000 people in Wilmington who don’t subscribe to cable or satellite were ticked off enough to call the FCC. Nationwide, twelve percent of the 13.4 million households is 1.6 million. The FCC is going to have a really busy February.

And it might not just end there. In fact, I hope those volunteer firemen keep standing by. Back in August I converted my mother in New Jersey to digital; all went well, she got lots of channels, she was happy. I just found out that, however, in spite of my carefully written instructions, a couple of days after I left she pushed some button out of sequence and hasn’t been able to tune in a TV signal since; wonder if I should have her call her local fire department to sort it out?

I’m the family archivist, that person who takes the photos, makes the videos, sends prints to the grandparents, digs out the baby or pet pictures whenever they’re needed for a school project, and, in general, is responsible for creating, storing, and organizing our family’s memories.

I’m reasonably successful at the creating end; I usually manage to grab a camera when I’m running out to an event that ought to be commemorated, I pose the kids on birthdays and major holidays.

I’m not so great at the storing and organizing part. The last time I made any serious attempt to organize photos was when I was last on maternity leave—my youngest is now 10. I do regularly download digital images from my camera to my computer, occasionally back them up using an online service. I haven’t attempted to label any of these images since 2003, deciding it was way too time consuming. I used to order prints occasionally, but after the unopened boxes started piling up, stopped that as well.

And I’ve been feeling really guilty about it; I know I really need to get my photos under control, but it’s just too overwhelming, so I procrastinate, and feel guilty about procrastinating.

But this week, thanks to a few engineers at Adobe’s Advanced Technology Lab, I’m no longer feeling guilty. Oh, I’m still procrastinating, but now I have an excuse.

Let me explain.

Tom Molloy, the senior vice president in charge of Advanced Technology for Adobe, invited me to visit him and a few research engineers in San Jose for a private show-and-tell. I had no idea what I might see. Malloy pulled a few projects out of the 80-some in the works and the principal engineers on the projects gave me short demos.

Continue reading "Spectrum visits the Adobe Advanced Technology Labs" »

Five years ago Toyota relaunched its Prius with a Saatchi & Saatchi ad blitz with the EV-bashing tagline "and you never have to plug it in." Toyota's corporate marketing manager said the idea was to show the Prius was, "not an idea that's ahead of its time."

What a difference a few years can make. At this year's Paris Mondial de l'Automobile, which opened to the press yesterday, plug-in hybrids and full-battery EVs are everywhere -- and their plugs are displayed conspicuously.

Smart, the Daimler/Swatch joint venture, towered a dangling plug over their floorspace to highlight its development of an EV model of the tiny trendy Smart Car due out in 2010. GM executives gamely held the cord of the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid for photographers. And check out the plug on Ligier Automobiles' EV city car!

Frank Weber, GM's Global Vehicle Line Executive for the Volt, explained the shift to me in dollars and cents, or rather euros and centimes. "If you say that the charge costs less than a euro per day, it's that simple," says Weber. "Plugging in means saving, being able to drive and don't watch the signs at the gas station. This is what the plug means. It's now looked at as an opportunity and like, well ok at night you have to plug it in but you would do this anytime because the moment you plug it in you know that you save."

I am beginning to think that the Project on Emerging Technology gets some pleasure in demonstrating how ill informed US citizens are about subjects outside the scope of Britney Spear’s marital woes.

They have just released another poll, as they did last year, that indicates that Americans (North Americans, I presume) don’t know much about nanotechnology, and this year seem to know even less about synthetic biology.

This year the news reports didn’t come with penetrating, albeit condescending, insights such as people with less education were less likely to know about nanotechnology than those with advanced educations. But it did manage to come with foreboding tales as it did last year with the concept of “backlash”.

This time around the scary scenario will be of the next presidential administration being called upon to make decisions about synthetic forms of life.

One of these days, when I have some extra cash, I am going to commission one of these polling companies to do a survey that lists every policy issue that will impact everyone and find out the degree to which people actually know the subject. I am betting that on everything from healthcare to taxes that fewer than 50% will have any idea about the subject.

Should we be alarmed? Definitely, yes. An uniformed electorate is the Achilles Heel of democracy. But I am not terribly worried that 90% of people in the US don’t know about synbio. However, it does get me a tad nervous that nearly 60% of Americans can’t name a single Supreme Court judge.

I arrived in Fiji on Wednesday and was immediately greeted by an unexpected tech story. A taxi driver drove me from the airport to Suva, the capital, through hyper-green lushness, behind which farmland stretched out to the horizon. Tucked between the broad-leaved trees were one-story houses, some of them balanced on stilts to avoid flooding during the rainy seasons.

As we entered downtown Suva at 8 in the morning, dozens of teenagers and twenty-somethings thronged on the sidewalks, all massively perky and clad in bright red shirts. They were booster temporarily hired by Digicel, a Jamaican mobile phone company, to hype up the launch of the company’s Fiji-wide GSM network that day. Dance music pounded throughout the central downtown area from the backs of Digicel pick-up trucks, a prelude to the all-day party the company was throwing for itself. Two Digicel minions jumped in front of our car at a stoplight and started wiping down the windshield.

Thousands of Fijians stood in line in front of the flagship Digicel store throughout the day. In Fiji, the incumbent carrier, Vodafone, has long had a virtual monopoly (another company also offers services, but it piggybacks off of Vodafone’s network) and charged prohibitively high rates, according to a few locals I approached.

Continue reading "Mobile-phone newcomer shakes up Fiji" »

A recent short report that comes from the German government, namely from the State of Hesse, identifies all the potential ways nanotechnology could impact energy.

The firm for which I currently work is cited often throughout the report based on our reports and white papers on nanotech and energy.

While in the past we too have listed all the potential ways nanotechnology could impact the energy sector, like the more far out possibilities of power lines incorporating carbon nanotubes to more mainstream concepts such as improved solar cells, it is really in the more mundane areas of improved efficiency that nanotech can have the biggest impact today.

Improved insulation and lighter materials for automobiles don’t get the headlines that 3D solar cells made out of carbon nanotubes seem to get. But these uses are being adopted today and are likely to be the growth area for nanotech applications in the energy sector well into the near future.

As you can see from the chart that is cited in the State of Hesse of report, the big market application for nanotechnology is in “Energy Saving”, equaling near 5 times the size of “Energy Storage” and “Energy Production” combined.

S