Tech Talk

U.S. Energy Dept Sees High Growth Potential in Wind

Mon, 12 May 2008 21:23:34 -0500

The U.S. Department of Energy released a report today, May 12, saying that the country could in principle generate one fifth of its electricity with wind by 2030. Assessing this purely hypothetical scenario, a DOE task force concluded that aggressive installation of wind turbines could significantly cut reliance on fossil fuels as well as greenhouse gas emissions at a total additional cost that would be equivalent to 50 U.S. cents per month per electricity customer. U.S. wind capacity is growing at a rate of nearly 6 GW per year at present, but to achieve a 20 percent generation share by 2030, wind capacity would have to be increasing by roughly 16 GW per year by the end of the next decade.

Out of Africa: New Broadcasting Tool

Mon, 12 May 2008 13:10:49 -0500

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to the emergence of a new generation of African film and television producers is the high cost of air-time. Most African cities still only support a few television networks (largely because of the reluctance of governments to permit more). And even these few networks often do not broadcast many hours, even in the capital (and even less hours in rural areas). A new technology is available – from a Silicon Valley startup named Qik – that permits real-time broadcast over G3 cell phones such as Nokia’s N95. Amazingly, these video-equipped phones can stream video live over the Web. While people so far have thought of the technology as a way to broadcast live events, Qik could also be used (and this is my idea to inexpensively broadcast pre-recorded material – or live music or theater performances – thus permitting artists and media creators in African to bypass a television network system that imposes unaffordable high “taxes” on them. The Qik technology is getting interest from both professional media and citizen journalists such as Ground Report. The chief technical officer and cofounder of Qik is a former Oracle engineer from India named Bhaskar Roy. Africa remains on the periphery of Qik’s radar but Bhaskar is enthusiastic about the socially-conscious and developmental benefits that the technology might deliver. He envisions an army of streaming-videomaniacs, using their cell phones to discipline rogue governments, document abuses against the powerless and instigate reforms in the delivery of public services. "By streaming human-rights abuses, people with cell phones can help stop them," Roy says. The technology is contributing to the rise of a "video advocacy" movement that is still on in its infancy in Africa, but is gaining steam elsewhere in the world.

Poll Finds U.S. Climate Concern Remarkably Unchanged

Fri, 09 May 2008 17:48:08 -0500

A recently released Gallup Poll indicates that the proportion of U.S. citizens who worry a great deal about global warming is remarkably unchanged in the last 18 years: about 37 percent now, versus 35 percent in 1990. That, even much large numbers of Americans report that they are indeed concerned about climate change and consider themselves quite a bit better informed than before. Four out of five Americans consider themselves very well or fairly well educated on the issue now, compared to barely more than half in 1990.

Morgan Sparks, Creator of Practical Transistor (1916-2008)

Fri, 09 May 2008 16:31:15 -0500

The man who turned the earliest transistor into a practical device, launching a revolution in electronics, has passed away at the age of 91 in Fullerton, Calif. Morgan Sparks was a researcher at AT&T Bell Labs when he was recruited by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley to help exploit a breakthrough circuit they were calling the point-contact transistor. Working with fellow AT&T engineers Gordon Teal and John Little, Sparks took the invention and fashioned a low-power variation on it that the laboratory dubbed the bipolar junction transistor, which improved on the work of the original trio of inventors, who were awarded the Nobel Prize for discovering the transistor principle.

Fueling ARPA-E with oil company leftovers

Fri, 09 May 2008 13:45:30 -0500

A lot of bureaucracies have been slapping their letter of the alphabet onto the ARPA bandwagon the past couple of years (HSARPA, IARPA). Late last summer, President Bush passed the America COMPETES Act, which included a provision to establish an Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy(ARPA-E). I think we should give the intelligence community all the cool new toys it needs, but I really think energy independence takes priority. Bart Gordon, the House Science and Technology chair who shepherded ARPA-E along the gruesome path of "house resolution" to actual law, is also beating this drum. Today, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Gordon had some sharp words for the people who are taking their sweet time establishing the new agency. One of the issues seems to be funding. Congress has repeatedly voted to repeal between $13 billion and $18 billion in tax incentives for the oil industry, but so far it hasn't happened. "I don’t believe the Federal government should be subsidizing an industry that is already seeing the highest profits on record," Gordon said. In the shadow of last year's oil company profits ($123 billion), $18 billion seems kind of anemic. But funding ARPA-E with that $18 billion would give it 6 times the annual funding allotted to DARPA, the original Advanced Research Agency. Just some perspective.

Maker Faire Highlights: Good ol' Moore's Law at Work

Fri, 09 May 2008 11:51:30 -0500

In contrast to projects that were throwbacks to the electronics of yesteryear, some Maker Faire gadgets would be impossible to build without increasingly cheap and small microprocessors. Take John Maushammer's booth, for example. Last year, he managed to shrink down the video game Pong to wristwatch-size. You don't play the game yourself; instead, the computer inside plays both sides, scoring a point for the right every minute, and a point for the left every hour. Now, armed with a more powerful microprocessor, John is working on a watch version of the arcade game Asteroids. He's programmed the tiny ship to scan the screen for dangerous asteroids and shoot or avoid them before a collision. He admits that his code is better at playing the game than he is. Check out both watches: Another glaring example of how cheap microprocessors have become was the table dedicated to BlinkM, the smart LED. Each BlinkM is essentially an RGB (red, green, blue) LED with a microcontroller on the back. That means that you can easily adjust the color, hue and brightness of each BlinkM without using larger or more complicated microprocessors in your DIY projects. Tod Kurt showed off some nice BlinkM demos at the booth:

The Battle between Fear and Greed in the Nanotoxicology Debate

Fri, 09 May 2008 08:49:20 -0500

There is no news topic more commonly covered in nanotechnology today than concerns overs its potential environmental, healthy and safety (EHS) impact. There are at least two reasons for this, I believe, one is that bad news or failure is always more compelling to read, and to write, than good news or achievement. And the second is that environmental activists are so much more adept and capable at manipulating the PR machinery than a gaggle of physicists, biologists and chemists. As far as the former reason, this blogger is as guilty as the next scribe, with the caveat that my ruminations on the subject have been with the aim to provide a little more balance to the issue. It appears I am not alone. Barnaby Feder at the New York Times waded into the controversy on his “Bits” blog and made the rather reasonable, but in today’s atmosphere nearly sacrilegious, assertion that “…nanotech skeptics, perhaps taking their cue from former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, are going to war with the weapons they’ve got. With no evidence so far that nanotech is actually damaging anyone, they are focusing on the materials most widely used in consumer products and doing their best to worry the public –and government officials — about potential hazards that have yet to be thoroughly researched.” Uh oh… “no evidence that nanotech is actually damaging anyone” is not going to be taken lying down. A commenter on the “Bits” blog cites “evidence” from research on fish that disproves Feder’s assertion. In his defense, I am sure that Feder reserves the term “anyone” for those of the human species. But aside from indefinite pronoun confusion, the idea that tests performed on fish are conclusive evidence of nanotechnology’s toxicity to humans would be jumping the gun somewhat. There are a number of reasons for this, but not the least of which is that a big problem still persists in the lack of standards and measurement. As a result, two experiments testing the toxicity of nanoparticles may appear to be identical on paper but result in completely different results: nanoparticles are toxic, or nanoparticles are safe. But as I have argued before this debate will not be resolved by scientific inquiry, understanding and rational policies, it will come down to whether the environmentalists can incite enough fear to overcome industry’s drive to make a profit. In other words, fear and greed are the two battling forces, so no need to trouble yourself over “evidence”.

Another win for Blu-Ray: Neil Young

Fri, 09 May 2008 06:45:18 -0500

In recent years, consumers have been all about video quality—digital, high definition, giant screens, high capacity disks. Audio quality, not so much. In fact, the move to compressed audio stuffed into iPods and other mp3 players and hard disks that act like home jukeboxes has continued the downward trend in audio quality that started with the move from vinyl record to CD. At least one artist has decided to do something about it. Rocker Neil Young is releasing his audio archives not on itunes, not as a multi-CD boxed set targeted at Christmas shoppers, but on Blu-Ray discs. Actually, a series of Blu-Ray discs, that will start shipping this fall. The discs will include archival video and stills as well as the audio

Northwest Nuclear Smackdown

Thu, 08 May 2008 17:46:28 -0500

The Northwest Compact just turned down Energy Solutions' proposal to bury some of Italy's nuclear waste in the fair state of Utah. Why is that important? Because it's going to set off serious fireworks of drama this summer. Just you wait. Here's the back story: Last fall, EnergySolutions a nuclear waste disposal company that's been accused of some shady dealings in the past, applied with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to import 20,000 tons of low-level nuclear waste (LLW) from Italy for burial in their nuclear waste dump in Clive, Utah. LLW isn't the bubbling containers of green goo of Troma Films. It's the lowest class of nuclear waste-- tissues you sneeze into on the hot side of the reactor; boots or gloves that have some contamination but not enough to merit disposal with high level waste. But still. It's other countries' nuclear waste, the ultimate NIMBY. And this isn't a one-time deal: EnergySolutions plans to make importing other countries' LLW its business. Well, Bart Gordon's head fell off. Gordon, who is chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, immediately introduced a bill banning all importation of foreign LLW. You can't blame him. This would set a terrible precedent for other countries that have no place for their nuclear waste, basically telling them that the western US is a logical choice for the world's nuclear waste dump. (It didn't work in Australia either.) The Northwest Compact is the federally mandated entity in charge of the Northwestern US' low level nuclear waste. Utah is within the NW Compact's purview. So, earlier today, the NW compact handily smacked EnergySolutions down. But here's the catch. EnergySolutions is a private company. As such, the company maintains that its private nuclear waste dump is not bound by the rules that govern the federally controlled nuclear waste dumps. So on Monday, probably anticipating today's outcome, they filed a pre-emptive suit. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, meanwhile, is letting people comment until June 10. (Over 1000 comments so far.) Then it will issue its own decision. If the NRC trumps the NW compact and rules in favor of EnergySolutions, there will be a huge catfight in Utah. If Rep. Gordon's bill gets passed, there will be a huge catfight in Congress, as all of the NRC appointees were put there by President Bush. They're not going to enjoy being told how to do their jobs. Stay tuned.

Nanotechnology continues its rush into consumer products while nanotech legislation slowly percolates through Congress

Thu, 08 May 2008 14:57:46 -0500

Nano is hot. Apple isn’t the only one to call a product the Nano, there’s also a car by that name, and I have a feeling it’ll label more than a few kindergarten cubbies in a couple of years; forget Madison and Montana, what could be hipper these days than naming your little sprout Nano? We’re brushing our teeth with Nanowhitening Toothpaste, putting our kids in Nano-tex pants, fixing furniture with NanoGlue, smoothing our skin with Nano-Gold Energizing Cream, trying to lose weight by popping nanoSlim pills, and using some 600 other consumer products containing nanoparticles. (It’s amazing what people will buy because it sounds high tech.) That’s about a hundred more than existed last fall, when Spectrum authors Barbara Karn and H. Scott Matthews warned that research in nanotechnology safety is falling behind its commercial progress, and that the technology has the potential to be the next major environmental and health disaster.

Maker Faire Highlights: Mechanical Mathematics

Thu, 08 May 2008 11:48:43 -0500

Probably the most complex mechanical contraption at Maker Faire was the Computer History Museum's model of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2. Babbage began working on the idea for a mechanical calculator based on the method of finite differences in 1846, but he never actually built the device. The museum showed off a scaled down, table-top model at Maker Faire and demonstrated how it works.

If you're interested in the history of Charles Babbage and his work (both on the Difference Engine and his Analytical Engine, which preceded modern programmable computers), check out James Essinger's book Jacquard's Web. Spectrum editor Tekla Perry will have more coverage on May 10th, when the museum puts the full-size Difference Engine No. 2 on display. The machine is 11 feet long and 7 feet high with more than 8000 bronze, cast iron, and steel parts.

Desertification Studies Cut Both Ways in Climate Debate

Thu, 08 May 2008 11:43:06 -0500

For feelings of timelessness, unboundedness, and permanence, nothing beats the Sahara Desert. Yet as recently as 14,800 years ago, vast reaches of it were green, as a stronger summer monsoon enabled lakes, wetlands, grass and shrubland to expand upwards from the Sahel. Then around 6,000 years ago, with increased incoming sunlight and a weakening monsoon, desertification set it. But was that process fast or slow? Is it a case in point for those sounding alarms about “abrupt climate change”—change that takes place too fast for humans and ecosystems to adapt?

In Obama-McCain World, Is Carbon Regulation Inevitable?

Thu, 08 May 2008 10:26:22 -0500

Republican presidential candidate John McCain cosponsored the first major U.S. bill to establish a carbon trading system, and the likely Democratic nominee Barack Obama is cosponsoring a lineal descendant of that bill. So it’s a foregone conclusion that we’ll have legislation next year regulating and cutting carbon emissions, right? Not necessarily, to judge from the degree to which criticism is rising, not just on the political right but on the left as well, of the mainstream approach to reducing climate change risks.

Power of Small: Tedious and Largely Irrelevant

Thu, 08 May 2008 09:16:04 -0500

I finally stumbled upon the website for “Power of Small: Nanotechnology”, the PBS program intended to enlighten us about nanotechnology’s promises…and threats. Needless to say I wasn’t breathlessly looking for it. So after having forewarned of it two months ago, I actually watched some of it. Based on the early PR, I was expecting a documentary, but instead it follows the Fred Friendly model of a panel discussion. I waded in undeterred, but my interest quickly waned. By and large based on what I did watch, I agree with David Berube of Nanohype, who clearly has far more patience than me as he watched all the clips. The clips are organized around three topics of discussion: Privacy, Health and Environment. For the privacy section, Berube notes, “There is little distinction about how nanoscience will sufficiently increase the privacy concerns given microchips are already available.” We’re in agreement there. On the health part, the discussion quickly descends into 150-year life spans…sigh. Again, how you pin this problem of extended life on nanotechnology is unclear as Berube argues “Then we move to genetic switches that affect aging. We don’t need nano to engage in genetic engineering.” Exactly.

Maker Faire Highlights: My Favorite Robots

Wed, 07 May 2008 22:49:32 -0500

If there's one thing you can count on at Maker Faire, it's the presence of robots. They're everywhere in all shapes and sizes. Sure, it was impossible to miss the giant electric giraffe, but size isn't everything. Take Herbie the Mousebot (a robot kit from Solarbotics) - if you judged just by the number of delighted smiles and giggles coming from children's faces, this had to be the winner. The little robot has a light sensor that it uses to follow around a beam of light from a flashlight. It also has whisker and tail sensors that make it turn around when it hits your foot or starts to go under the couch. Brilliant! It's smart, cute, and simple. Made solely of discrete components, it looked fun both to build and to play with: As cute as Herbie was, how could he possibly compete with one of the world's most loved androids? That's right, I'm talking about R2-D2. The R2-D2 Builder's Club were also a big hit at the Faire, showing off their handcrafted, chrome-domed creations. In some ways, they're even better than George Lucas's original (for one thing, they don't require a tiny man inside). Check out the video to see the droids in action and find out what makes them tick: And I always have room for the just plain weird. Voxhead is a robot with a neck, head, and one arm. He sits on a table making bizzare sounds (even after you know that he's supposed to be singing Radiohead's "Creep," it still takes a lot of imagination). While it's easy to just slap a speaker on a robot to make it talk, Voxhead sings the hard way, by replicating the human vocal cavity (complete with artificial tongue). Its creator, Mike Brady, wants to use Voxhead to probe the ways we learn to communicate - the robot itself learns by listening to its own attempts to mimic sound and trying to improve. Voxhead's the android equivalent of a babbling baby. Take a listen yourself: