San Francisco Chronicle: Last year, San Francisco's Board of Supervisors voted 10–1 to require the manufacturers of cell phones to disclose the level of radiation emitted by their phones. The levels would have appeared next to phones on display in retail outlets. To fight the bill, which never became law, the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association sued the city, arguing that the Federal Communications Commission has certified that all phones marketed in the US are safe. Faced with the prospect of both losing the suit and paying the association's legal fees, the city has put the bill on indefinite hold. As the Chronicle's Heather Knight reports, the city will likely enact a weaker version of the original bill.
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Calgary Herald: Last week Plains Midstream Canada's Rainbow pipeline in northern Alberta ruptured, sending 28 000 barrels of oil onto the Canadian prairie. Although most of the oil has been contained near the rupture, some has leaked into nearby wetlands. The pipeline is owned and operated by Plains Midstream, a subsidiary of the Houston-based Plains All American Pipeline. On Friday, Stephen Bart of Plains Midstream told reporters that his company's investigation into the spill had found the likely cause: Soil beneath the ruptured pipe had not been sufficiently compacted, causing the pipe to sag and experience stress. A badly welded joint was also a factor. Before the spill, the pipeline carried about 187 000 barrels of oil per day from Zama in northwestern Alberta south to Edmonton, 480 miles away.
New York Times: Yesterday Intel announced that it was going three-dimensional in its computer-chip manufacturing. John Markoff for the New York Times writes that Intel has begun making its microprocessors using a new 3D transistor design, called a Finfet (fin field-effect transistor). Intel predicts that the new design—which includes a small pillar, or fin, of silicon that rises above the surface of the chip—will allow the chips to run 37% faster in low-voltage applications, cut power consumption as much as 50%, and make the chip even smaller. While the smallest feature on one of Intel's chips is just 32 nanometers (a human red blood cell is 7500 nanometers wide), "Intel is on track for 22-nanometer manufacturing later this year," said Mark Bohr, an Intel senior fellow. The 3D transistor is seen by some as a gamble, however, because despite its speed, it will not be as ultralow-powered as some chips and therefore not as ideal for smaller devices, such as iPhones and iPads.
Guardian: Connie Hedegaard, the European Union's Commissioner for Climate Action, is seeking to extend the EU's renewable energy targets beyond 2020. The renewable energy industry is currently facing intense pressure from lobbyists from the gas industry, who have held a series of high-level meetings with senior members of the European parliament to promote gas as a cheaper green alternative to renewables. To support their claim, the lobbyists have circulated a report by the European Gas Advocacy Forum (EGAF) that appears to show that Europe could meet its 2050 greenhouse gas targets and save €900 billion by using gas instead of renewable energy sources. However, the report was adapted from a previous study that contradicts the claim, and the original study's coauthors, the European Climate Foundation, have disowned the EGAF report.
New York Times: New York Times energy and environment blogger Jim Witkin predicts over the next five years car-battery technology will see big breakthroughs, which will increase the range and reduce the costs of electric cars. Nothing can change the fact that any rechargeable battery will gradually lose its energy storage capacity after repeated charging and discharging. However, although the battery may no longer power a car, it can still have enough energy capacity for other purposes. Hence, multiple ventures are under way to explore second-life applications, such as using the batteries in the electric utility grid to help manage power flow. And because reuse may be the most viable option for the many batteries that will be required to run the electric cars of the future, new automobile financial and ownership models are being proposed. One possibility is the automaker's or finance company's retaining ownership of the battery and leasing it to the car's owner; then the owner would pay only for the portion of the battery used while it's in the car.
Los Angeles Times: A cap-and-trade carbon emissions plan in California, modeled on Europe's six-year-old system, may be delayed by litigation. Scheduled to begin in January 2012, the program has been challenged by local environmental groups that contend the California Air Resources Board failed to analyze alternatives to trading. "We have to be open to the possibility that there could be other approaches and that we could achieve [carbon] reductions in a different way," said board chairwoman Mary Nichols. Because the European cap-and-trade system has been plagued by tax fraud schemes and cybertheft, it was hoped that the California plan would set a better example for the US. The court's decision is expected to be appealed, but any delay in the January start date could throw a wrench into the financial planning of hundreds of companies, writes Margot Roosevelt for the Los Angeles Times.
New Scientist: IBM is working on a hybrid solar panel that not only would generate power but could also make seawater drinkable. The photovoltaic cells in the panels use lenses to focus solar energy onto small sections of photovoltaic material. To keep the cells from overheating, IBM's prototype uses water-filled microchannels, which, researchers believe, can in turn be used to distill seawater. Because one method of desalination uses hot water to distill seawater—evaporating it to remove the salt—it is more energy-efficient to use the water already warmed from cooling the solar cells. In arid areas where power generation is difficult, the new PVCs can solve two problems at once, producing electricity and clean water, said Bruno Michel, head of advanced thermal packaging at IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory in Switzerland.
Washington Post: A Texas man has been awarded this year's Goldman Environmental Prize for the North America category. Hilton Kelley grew up in Port Arthur, Texas, known for its oil refineries and petrochemical plants. After a stint in the US Navy, he revisited his hometown in 2000 and was troubled by the pollution—the city and surrounding county had one of the highest levels of air pollution in the US, and residents suffered from cancer rates that were 23% higher than the state average, according to the Texas Cancer Registry. In response, he started the Community In-power and Development Association, which held protests and threatened legal action to expose the lack of pollution controls and lax protocols of such companies as Shell Oil. According to Lorrae Rominger, the Goldman group's deputy director, Kelley won this year's prize because "his community had almost been destroyed from the pollution, which was the reason people were moving out. It was the children's health. He did something that affected thousands of people."
Space.com: The first person in space, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, made his flight 50 years ago on 12 April 1961. Now there is a new space race that is centering on space tourism, writes Clara Moskowitz for Space.com. Commercial companies are gearing up to send the first paying passengers to space on private spaceships. "It's an exciting time for the industry," said George Whitesides, president of suborbital spaceship company Virgin Galactic. "I really believe that we're at the edge of an extraordinary period of innovation which will radically change our world." The first flights will take passengers to an altitude of about 100 km, where they will experience about five minutes of weightlessness before returning to Earth. Although Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane is still being tested, regular tourist flights could start as early as 2012.
Science: According to United Nations trade data, Japanese nuclear energy operators import 73% of their fuel from manufacturers in the US. The crisis in Fukushima has led policy experts to ask whether the US should reexamine its legal obligations and add safety rules to the agreements countries sign when they purchase US fuel or reactors. Currently, the US has the power to act only to ensure that spent fuel is not vulnerable to theft or terrorism or used to make nuclear weapons; it does not have the power to act in response to environmental or safety concerns. Ted Jones of the Nuclear Energy Institute says that the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission is already involved in international safety efforts, and that the best way to engage with other nations to increase the safety of spent fuel management is through multilateral organizations such as the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency. "The idea that U.S. regulations that aren't shared by other supplier countries could be an effective influence on fuel risk is probably not a very good idea," said Jones.
Space.com: Two low-Earth-orbiting demonstration satellites successfully tracked a ballistic missile launch through all phases of flight. Such "birth-to-death" tracking has never been done before from space, according to Doug Young, vice president of Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, which built the satellites. Northrop has built three such satellites for the US Missile Defense Agency, which aims to spend $1.34 billion on the Precision Tracking Space System between 2012 and 2016.
Nature: South Africa's commitment to hosting the world's most sensitive radiotelescope array is being tested by a request from oil giant Shell to drill for natural gas in the remote region that would house the facility, writes Linda Nordling for Nature. South Africa is competing with Australia to be the home of the Square Kilometer Array radiotelescope, an array of some 3000 antennas with a total collecting area of 1 km². Because Shell’s search for natural gas would run close to the proposed site for the SKA, it could cause problems. The big worry for the SKA is radio-frequency interference, says Adrian Tiplady, site-characterization manager at SKA South Africa. "The primary risk is electromagnetic interference generated from heavy industrial equipment, such as that associated with mining equipment, and any radio communication equipment associated with the mining activity," he says. "Seismic activity would also have an impact, but only within a closer proximity."
CNET: Earlier this month, Northrop Grumman’s X-47B unmanned aircraft made its second and third test flights at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The X-47B, designated UCAS for unmanned combat air system, is a prototype going through its fledgling stage en route to the goal of demonstrating in 2013 that an unmanned, tailless, strike fighter-size aircraft can land on and take off from an aircraft carrier, according to Jonathan Skillings, writing for CNET News. Under contract with the US Navy, Northrop Grumman is also building a second, similar aircraft, which will include aerial refueling equipment.
New Scientist: A UK company, Highview Power Storage, has been running a pilot plant designed to store potential energy in the form of liquid air. Solar- and wind-powered generators of electricity, which are growing in number, need some kind of reservoir to store the excess power generated for use when the Sun isn’t shining or the wind isn't blowing. The new process stores excess energy by using it to cool air to around -190 °C; the resulting liquid air, or cryogen, is then stored in a tank at ambient pressure. When electricity is needed, the cryogen is subjected to pressure and heat, which produces a high-pressure gas that drives a turbine. So far, the process recovers about 50% of the electricity that is fed in, and the company plans to build a 3.5-MW system by late 2012.
Space.com: NASA's newest Earth-studying satellite, Glory, was made ready to launch by today, but only after an unusually quick fix by the firm Honeybee Robotics, writes Clara Moskowitz for Space.com. The New York–based company was able to design, test, and provide a substitute part for the satellite in eight weeks. That kind of time scale is unheard of in the typical process of building spacecraft mechanisms, said Kiel Davis, president of Honeybee Robotics. But because of the company’s having an expert on staff, and its engineers working around the clock, including four straight weekends, they pulled it off. Glory will gather data regarding aerosols and how they interact with the atmosphere to affect climate.
Daily Mail: Designers at Alcatel-Lucent’s Bell Labs in New Jersey have developed a tiny cube-shaped antenna that transmits signals without the need for huge unsightly towers. The pioneering technology could also create a seamless wireless network and eliminate internet “black spots.” The size of a Rubik’s cube, the lightRadio cube could be attached to lampposts, buildings, or telephone poles as single cubes or in clusters, connected to the cell phone network with optical fibers. The firm will begin trials of the cube with cell phone firms in September and hopes to make it commercially available next year.
Physics Today: Rare-earth metals are key to global efforts to switch to cleaner energy—from batteries in hybrid cars to magnets in wind turbines. Ironically, mining and processing the metals causes environmental damage that China, the biggest producer, is no longer willing to bear, writes Stuart Biggs for Bloomberg. In a related story, two writers for the Daily Mail, Simon Parry and Ed Douglas, describe the environmental devastation in China resulting from rare-earth processing.
New York Times: Last year the Obama administration pushed through an ambitious transformation for NASA: canceling the Ares I rocket, which was to be the successor to the current generation of space shuttles, and turning to the commercial sector for astronaut transportation. So far, most of the attention in this new commercial space race has focused on Boeing and Space Exploration Technologies Corp, or SpaceX. But they are not the only competitors seeking to provide space taxi services, a program that NASA calls commercial crew. One potential competitor is Sierra Nevada Space Systems, which has built the Dream Chaser space plane.
Economist: A Florida company, Planar Energy of Orlando, is about to complete a pilot production line that will print lithium-ion batteries onto sheets of metal or plastic, like printing a newspaper. Thin-film printing methods of this sort are already used to make solar cells and display screens, but no one has yet been able to use them on anything like an industrial scale with batteries. The process promises smaller, cheaper, more powerful batteries for consumer electronics and, eventually, for electric cars.
New York Times: Until very recently, the solar industry was mainly concerned with getting a toehold in the production of electricity at a utility-level scale. Now a New Jersey company is looking for its niche in a different field—how to handle a system that is saturated with solar energy, sometimes enough to destabilize the electric grid. The company, Petra Solar, has a highly visible product: It is under contract to supply 200 000 panels that Public Service Electric and Gas will attach to utility poles around New Jersey. Around 75 000 are already up. Matthew L. Wald, writing for the New York Times, describes the panels’ design and their “smart” functions.
Economist: Although people don’t usually want iron in their water because it has a disagreeable taste and leaves stains, a Florida company plans to use a chemically unusual form of iron to clean water up. Ferrates, which are compounds of iron and oxygen, destroy bacteria and viruses, and attract other chemicals in water, including dissolved metals, and precipitate them for easy removal. Plus, the iron in ferrates precipitates too, leaving pure water behind. Ferrates’ reactivity, however, makes them unstable and difficult to store. The trick, says Luke Daly of Ferrate Treatment Technologies in Orlando, will be to make ferrates on site, for instant use.
New York Times: The ink is barely dry on the White House commission’s investigative report into the Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico, but deepwater drilling seems to be continuing to expand around the world. The New York Times’s Clifford Krauss writes in his Green blog about how BP has now secured permits to drill in the Bight basin in the south of Australia, and will go substantially deeper than the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico.
New Scientist: An automatic driving system—where cars are linked together into a convoy, or “platoon,” and the lead driver has the control—has just been road-tested in Sweden, writes Duncan Graham-Rowe for New Scientist. To join a platoon, a car broadcasts its destination as it drives onto the freeway and a computer system tells the driver of any nearby platoons heading that way. Each car is fitted with a navigation and communication system, which measures the car's speed and direction, constantly adjusting them to keep the car within a set distance of the vehicle in front. Such a system would allow cars to travel more closely together, thus reducing road congestion, and would reduce fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions.
New York Times: To create the illusion of three dimensions, most currently available 3D television sets rely on careful synchronization. Images intended for the left and right eyes are displayed on the screen in rapid succession. Special glasses that the viewer wears are synchronized with the TV set and ensure that each eye sees the appropriate images. Toshiba has developed a method that dispenses with the glasses, which are somewhat bulky. The method relies instead on aiming the left and right images directly at the viewer's eyes. The innovation is noteworthy not only for its possible impact on the new market for 3D television, but also because the team that developed it was led by a woman, Rieko Fukushima. As the New York Times's Hiroko Tabuchi reports, Toshiba stands out in Japan for its efforts to recruit, retain, and promote its female employees.Twenty percent of Toshiba's R&D staff are women.
New Scientist: A noted security researcher, Peter Sommer of the London School of Economics, says we should stop panicking about an impending cyberwar. Coauthor of a report for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, titled Reducing Systemic Cybersecurity Risk, he says online attacks are unlikely ever to have global significance on the scale of a disease pandemic or a run on the banks. A few days earlier, a leading computer industry guru, James Martin, was quoted in the Independent as saying there is ample evidence that hostile foreign agents have already targeted the American electrical grid, and that the effects from such an attack would be devastating and would wreak havoc on the economy. "Governments should take a calm, disciplined approach and evaluate the risks of each type of attack very carefully rather than be swayed by scare stories," says Sommer.
BBC: A telecommunications satellite that had been adrift and incommunicado since last April has abruptly recovered its ability to respond to commands. Launched in 2005, Intelsat's Galaxy-15 had been relaying TV signals to the Americas from a geostationary orbit above the Pacific Ocean. Maintaining such an orbit requires a spacecraft to periodically fire its thrusters in response to commands from the ground station. During its mysterious hiatus, Galaxy-15 had drifted from its orbital perch and was becoming a threat to other satellites before its equally mysterious reawakening. Because Galaxy-15 had lost only its ability to communicate but not its other functions, it acquired the nickname Zombie-sat.
Physics Today: Multiple new gadgets are on display today through 9 January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. New Scientist highlights a thought-controlled iPad app by InteraXon, in which headphones equipped with a pair of sensors use electrical signals from the brain to control movement in the iPad game Zenbound. The Daily Mail discusses the many iPad clones that are being unveiled this week at the CES; among them, the Eee Pad Transformer, which initially looks like a laptop but can split in two to function as a tablet. Another Daily Mail article details a new voice-activated car stereo, the Parrot Asteroid, which not only plays what the user tells it to but also can download apps. And TechNewsDaily highlights a computerized telescope, Sky Prodigy, which automatically focuses on stars and other celestial bodies.
New York Times: Qualcomm, the San Diego–based maker of wireless telecommunications equipment, is set to buy Atheros, the San Jose–based chipmaker, for $3.1 billion. Atheros's expertise lies in developing computer chips for wireless networking and mobile phones. Qualcomm's acquisition of Atheros will strengthen Qualcomm's ability to compete in the growing market for smartphones and tablet computers whose low-power operating mode puts a premium on lean, efficient circuitry.
NPR: For six years, workers processed nuclear waste at a plant outside Buffalo, New York. In its short life, the West Valley Demonstration Project polluted soil, air and water, and may have sickened employees. Four decades later, hundreds of cleanup workers are still at the site decontaminating buildings that will eventually be torn down. Now, workers are preparing to install a massive underground wall designed to stop the spread of a radioactive plume that threatens the region's groundwater. As the West Valley cleanup nears completion, reporter Daniel Robison looks at an environmental disaster that led to a new understanding of how to deal with nuclear waste.
Space.com: A private individual is raising money to buy a communications satellite to provide free internet service to developing countries. Kosta Grammatis, CEO and founder of ahumanright.org, hopes to purchase the TerreStar-1, a spacecraft that launched in 2009 and is owned by a company that filed for bankruptcy. Grammatis and his team plan to pay the bills by allowing telecommunications companies to buy and resell high-speed bandwidth, even as they provide a slower connection speed for free to everyone. Jeremy Hsu of Space.com conducts a brief interview with Grammatis about his plans.
New York Times: The US Department of Energy released a report today that examines the extent to which the development and use of clean energy in the US depends on access to rare earths and other critical materials, some of which are produced abroad. The report's main conclusions, quoted from the executive summary, are that
- Several clean energy technologies—including wind turbines, electric vehicles, photovoltaic cells and fluorescent lighting—use materials at risk of supply disruptions in the short term. Those risks will generally decrease in the medium and long term.
- Clean energy technologies currently constitute about 20 percent of global consumption of critical materials. As clean energy technologies are deployed more widely in the decades ahead, their share of global consumption of critical materials will likely grow.
- Of the materials analyzed, five rare earth metals (dysprosium, neodymium, terbium, europium and yttrium), as well as indium, are assessed as most critical in the short term. For this purpose, “criticality” is a measure that combines importance to the clean energy economy and risk of supply disruption.
- Sound policies and strategic investments can reduce the risk of supply disruptions, especially in the medium and long term.
- Data with respect to many of the issues considered in this report are sparse.
In a news story about the report, the New York Times's Keith Bradsher points out that China produces more than 90% of the world's rare earths. As if to underscore its hold on the rare-earth market, China announced yesterday that it would raise export taxes on some rare earths next year.
New York Times: Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov has invested in the Yo, a small hybrid car that gets 67 miles to the gallon, has a top speed of 80 miles per hour, and a range of 680 miles. The car might not seem much of a hybrid at first glance. Its two generators run on gasoline and natural gas and power an electric motor that propels the car. Three factors account for the car's fuel-sipping performance. First, the car is light. Second, the generators use an efficient design based on the rotary vane pump. Third, thanks to batteries, the generators can run at a steady, efficient rate even when the car and its electric motor are stopping and starting. Andrew Kramer of the New York Times reports that the Yo is expected to go on sale in Russia in mid 2012 and cost about $14 500.
Los Angeles Times: How do you gauge fuel economy when there's no gasoline? asks Tiffany Hsu, writing for the Los Angeles Times. In her article, Hsu details the difficulties encountered by the Environmental Protection Agency, which has had to come up with a way to rate the new hybrid cars. Traditionally, the fuel economy rating for vehicles with internal combustion engines has been calculated from emissions generated during a series of tests. Because the Nissan Leaf runs entirely on a battery, the EPA developed a miles-per-gallon-equivalent rating. Things got more complicated with the Chevrolet Volt, a hybrid plug-in that switches to gasoline when its electricity runs out; the EPA gave the Volt multiple ratings, depending on when it runs on just electricity, just gas, or both. In addition, the EPA's rating may end up sharing sticker space with those of other entities, such as the Federal Trade Commission and the automakers themselves, which may use different testing systems.
Space.com: Space Exploration Technologies Corp, or SpaceX, successfully launched its Dragon capsule on its Falcon 9 rocket today at 10:43am from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. SpaceX, a privately owned company, was founded in June 2002 by PayPal cofounder Elon Musk, and in November of this year it received the Federal Aviation Administration’s first-ever commercial license to reenter a spacecraft from Earth orbit. The Dragon capsule was originally scheduled to launch 7 December but was delayed because of cracks discovered in the Falcon 9’s upper-stage engine nozzle. The mission plans to test the Dragon’s systems in space for nearly two orbits and then the capsule is scheduled to reenter the atmosphere and splash down in the Pacific Ocean about three hours after launch. The Dragon capsule is being designed to carry cargo and crew for NASA.
Mother Jones: Indonesia is an attractive target for international climate-change efforts, because it boasts the third-largest expanse of tropical rainforest on the planet, and one of the most biodiverse. Indonesia is also the world's third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, second only to the US and China. The overwhelming majority—85%—of those emissions result directly from the conversion of jungle to agriculture, as unscrupulous companies cut down mature Indonesian rainforest to produce paper and other commodities. In his Mother Jones article, Robert Eshelman examines how Indonesia is accepting cash from Western governments to protect its rainforests even as its corrupt government enables outside corporations to destroy them.
Computer World: In a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, on Monday, US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu observed that the US is at risk of losing its lead in technology, calling the current situation a “Sputnik moment.” Chu illustrated his concern by describing the decline of the US share of worldwide high-technology manufacturing, which peaked in 1998 at 25% and has declined steadily ever since to about 12–13%. China, in contrast, has seen its global share of the tech export market rise from 6% in 1995 to 20% in 2008. Nevertheless, Chu believes the US can turn this trend around with government policies and investment in such areas as carbon-free technology.
New Scientist: Microsoft is developing a way to create temporary bumps, ridges, and other textural features on a touchscreen, writes Paul Marks for New Scientist. The tactile touchscreen works by using a layer of shape-memory plastic to distort the surface of the screen when different wavelengths of ultraviolet light strike the screen's pixels from beneath. Large table-sized computing displays such as Microsoft's Surface are the target application, rather than phones or tablets. "Creating well-defined bumps on a touch surface is in many ways the holy grail of text entry on touch devices because it would enable touch typing at much faster speeds than on touchscreens today," says Patrick Baudisch, a display interaction expert at the University of Potsdam in Germany.
Washington Post: The man who invented the digital camera didn't really know anything about photography; nor had he ever even mentioned to his wife that he was the inventor. Last week, however, Steve Sasson was one of four people awarded the 2009 National Medal of Technology and Innovation by President Obama—for his invention while working for Kodak in the late 1970s. Monica Hesse of the Washington Post writes an entertaining profile of this quirky, 60-year-old inventor from Upstate New York.
Los Angeles Times: Space Exploration Technologies Corp, or SpaceX, recently received the Federal Aviation Administration's first-ever commercial license to reenter a spacecraft from Earth orbit. The privately owned company needed the certification before its scheduled 7 December maiden launch of the Dragon space capsule, which is being designed to carry cargo and crew for NASA. The Dragon capsule is also being considered for the job of ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station after the space shuttle program ends in 2011, according to W. J. Hennigan of the Los Angeles Times.
BBC: The newly created UK Space Agency has a modest budget of around $400 million. Surprisingly, the total size of Britain's space industry is far higher—$12 billion—and is growing at an annual rate of 15%, despite the recession. According to a report from Oxford Economics, firms in "downstream" industries, such as space-based communication, have the highest revenues, but "upstream" industries, such as spacecraft manufacturing, are also healthy.
Nature: Daniel Zalko of the French National Institute for Agricultural Research in Paris and his colleagues have used radioactive tracers to prove that bisphenol A (BPA) is readily absorbed through the skin. The chemical, which is widely used as an additive in plastics and other consumer products, has been banned in Canada because of its implication in a range of medical conditions, including birth defects. Zalko and company's findings might help clear up a mystery. Some people have higher levels of BPA in their bodies than would be expected if they ingested it in food or drink. Among the BPA-containing products that people routinely touch is the thermal paper used for store receipts.
New York Times: Wind, solar, and other sources of renewable energy face one of the same financial challenges as nuclear energy. In a recession when state budgets are tight and fossil fuel prices are low, renewable energy appears significantly more costly than its climate-threatening alternatives. As Matthew Wald and Tom Zeller of the New York Times report, other countries, notably China and Germany, have made renewable energy a national priority and have been willing through regulations and subsidies to pay for it. The US, however, has no such national policy, leaving cash-strapped states to find the money needed to sustain a renewable energy industry.
"One of the problems in the United States is that we haven’t been willing to confront the tough questions,” said Paul Gipe, who sits on the steering committee of the Alliance for Renewable Energy, a group advocating energy policy reform.
“We have to ask ourselves, ‘Do we really want renewables?’ ” he said. “And if the answer to that is yes, then we’re going to have to pay for them.”
Chronicle of Higher Education: The latest entry in the Chronicle's Manage Your Career column contains advice on how to write an effective cover letter for an academic job. Given that writing papers and grant applications is so important in academia, it's not surprising that would-be professors should take extra care over their cover letters. The column's author, Rob Jenkins, is an English professor at Georgia Perimeter College. He asserts:
Assuming your materials arrive on time and you're actually qualified for the job, an effective cover letter can do more than any other part of the application to help you secure a coveted interview.
New York Times: Despite a federal loan guarantee, Solyndra, a manufacturer of advanced thin-film solar panels, plans to close one of its factories in California. The closure is intended to save money and reflects competition from manufacturers of crystalline solar panels, which, though less efficient than thin-film panels, have recently become considerably cheaper.
Business Insider: In a video interview, Chris Anderson recounts how he went from conducting physics research at Los Alamos National Laboratory to becoming the editor of Wired magazine in 2001. Anderson is also a best-selling book author and the founder of a robot manufacturing company, an enterprise that began as a project to occupy his children.
New York Times: Chinese shipments of lanthanum, neodymium, and other rare-earth elements appear to have restarted, reports Keith Bradsher of the New York Times. In a show of strength that lacked an officially avowed motive, the Chinese government had blocked the export of the industrially important minerals to Japan on 21 September and to Europe and the US on 18 October. Although the Chinese gave no explanation for the resumption, Bradsher noted that
The decision came a day and a half after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced plans to visit China on Saturday. She met on Wednesday in Honolulu with Japan’s foreign minister, Seiji Maehara, and said afterward that the suspension of shipments had been a “wake-up call” and that both countries would have to find alternative suppliers.
New York Times: A Massachusetts company, 1366 Technologies, has found a simpler and more economical way to produce solar panels. The current method of producing silicon wafers, the basic building block of solar cells, is to cast the silicon in huge ingots or grow it in giant crystals, then saw off thin pieces, which wastes about half the silicon. The new method developed by 1366 Technologies is to cast the wafers in their final form, six inches on one side and 200 microns thick, which could reduce the price of solar panels by 40%. The company, which had secured a Department of Energy grant to research the technique, has now raised $20 million to commercialize it. The name “1366 Technologies” is a reference to the amount of solar energy, measured in watts, that falls on a square meter of Earth’s surface.
Space News: Galaxy 15, a telecommunications satellite that was supposed to have shut itself off after going into an uncontrolled drift, continues to operate. The satellite went out of control in April and has been drifting in geostationary orbit ever since, posing potential broadcast interference problems to other satellites. Intelsat, the company responsible for Galaxy 15, had assumed the satellite would be forced to shut down because it would be unable to point its solar arrays at the Sun. Instead, it has taken advantage of time spent in Earth’s shadow to slow down the draining of its momentum system, thus extending its electronically active life. Intelsat is still hoping to recover the satellite's full use after the company completely shuts it down and then restarts it during the period when its solar arrays are pointed to the Sun.
New York Times: The US Environmental Protection Agency is struggling with how to rate the fuel economy of the Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf, and other electric cars. As Nick Bunkley and Bill Vlasic of the New York Times report, the tricky question is more than academic. By law, new cars for sale in dealerships must have their miles-per-gallon ratings displayed on their windows. The Chevy Volt does at least have a gasoline-powered motor that switches on when the battery is low. The Nissan Leaf, however, is wholly electric.
Nature: LS Cable, a South Korean company based in Anyang-si near Seoul, is taking part in a program to modernize South Korea's electricity grid. As part of that effort, LS Cable has ordered 3000 km of high-Tc superconducting wire from the Devens, Massachusetts-based American Superconductor. Although the dollar value of the sale has not been announced, its scale makes it the largest for superconducting wire. Nature's Joseph Milton reports on the deal and its implications.
New York Times: The Atlantic coast is one of the most favorable places in the US for siting wind turbines. To exploit that potential, Google and the investment firm Good Energies have each taken a 37.5% stake in a $5 billion project to build an offshore transmission line from Northern New Jersey to Norfolk, Virginia. The project is being run by Trans-Elect Development Co, which is based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. As the New York Times's Matthew Wald reports, once complete, the transmission line will carry electricity generated from wind turbines being built or planned along the Mid-Atlantic coast.
Science: In the latest Career Profile, Science reporter Elisabeth Pain describes how Francisca Leite became a management consultant at McKinsey & Co in Lisbon, Portugal. Leite originally planned a career in medicine and biophysics. Before joining McKinsey, she studied the brain using nuclear magnetic resonance and functional magnetic resonance imaging. Now, as a management consultant
Leite helps companies in the banking, media, and health sectors solve strategy, operations, organizational, and finance problems. She interviews client-company employees to figure out what the problem is, presents an analysis to the client company, helps them think their way through possible solutions, and builds models to quantify the impact. "Usually, our job is . . . helping them to frame and solve this problem using the knowledge they have," Leite says. One case she particularly enjoyed was helping a hospital reduce long waiting lists, which were causing patients to leave, the hospital to lose money, and the staff members to become frustrated.
Telegraph: Virgin Galactic's SpaceShip Two, a rocket designed to carry tourists into space, made its first solo glide flight yesterday. Previously, the aircraft had only flown attached to the wing of its mother ship. On Sunday, SpaceShip Two and its two pilots were carried up to an altitude of 14 000 meters, released over the Mojave Desert, and flew for 11 minutes before landing at an airport runway. The "flight marks another key milestone towards opening the space frontier for private individuals, researchers, and explorers," said John Gedmark, executive director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation.
Chronicle of Higher Education: Saudi Arabia's higher education system produces more than enough graduates in the arts and social sciences to fill civil service positions. But, as the Chronicle's Ursula Lindsey reports, the country is not able to fill positions in its private sector. Many of those jobs go instead to foreigners. Now, if new education reforms work as intended, Saudi Arabia will produce more graduates with sought-after technical skills.
Washington Post: The Florida-based Lighting Science Group designs and makes lightbulbs that use light-emitting devices. In a news feature, the Washington Post's Peter Whoriskey reports on pros and cons that the company's boss Fred Maxik must weigh as he decides where to manufacture his products: inside or outside the US. Although the US provides incentives to manufacturers in the form of federal grants and local tax breaks, the incentives that Mexico, China, and other countries provide are more generous and easier to obtain.
New York Times: Boeing and Bigelow Aerospace of Las Vegas, Nevada, have won an $18-million NASA contract to develop and test a capsule that can carry seven astronauts into space. Such a capsule could ferry the International Space Station's three-person crew to and from Earth and could also carry up to four fee-paying passengers. If the project runs to schedule, the capsules could be carrying their first space tourists by 2015.
Washington Post: American advances, particularly in green technology, may not necessarily mean more manufacturing jobs for Americans. Because Congress voted to ban incandescent light bulbs by 2014, the factories making them have been forced to shut down, with the last major GE factory in the US closing later this month. Although the savings in energy and greenhouse-gas emissions from changing bulbs may be immense, the manufacture of their replacement—compact fluorescent lamps—has moved almost entirely overseas, mostly to China, because the CFLs’ glass tubes require so much more hand labor, which is cheaper there.
New York Times: The US is entering the 21st century in terms of uranium enrichment for its nuclear reactors. Until the 1990s, the federal government handled uranium enrichment. When the United States Enrichment Company (USEC) bought the enrichment plants from the government, the new owner continued to use their World War II–era systems. USEC is now operating a demonstration facility that uses more modern centrifuge technology. Meanwhile, two other companies have built, or are planning to build, full-scale centrifuge-based enrichment plants in the US: URENCO USA opened a plant in New Mexico in June; Areva plans to build one in Idaho. Centrifuges cut the amount of electricity required to enrich uranium by about 95%.
SPACE.com: The first manned spaceflight to a near-Earth asteroid could be as early as 2025, per President Obama’s April announcement. To discuss the possibilities, NASA held the Exploration of Near Earth Objects Objectives Workshop, 10–11 August, in Washington, DC. The workshop’s goals were “to increase the collective understanding of NEOs, communicate NASA's plans for a human mission to a NEO, and capture external input on proposed mission objectives.” This week, at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Space 2010, representatives from Lockheed Martin will discuss such a mission using the Orion spacecraft, which it has been building for NASA to replace the space shuttle.
Daily Mail: Evidently, the Toyota Prius and other hybrid electric cars are too quiet, particularly at low speeds when only the electric motor is running. So Toyota has decided to produce an “on-board approaching vehicle audible system”—initially in Japan only, where the Prius is the country’s best-selling car. The device will emit a humming sound from a speaker mounted under the hood, and the sound will rise and fall in pitch as the car speeds up and slows down. According to the Daily Mail’s Colin Fernandez, a US study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration last year found hybrids were twice as likely to be involved in a pedestrian crash as conventional cars when reversing and parking.
New York Times: At present, 3D TVs make up only 2.5% of the market for new sets. As Jared Newman of the New York Times reports, cost is one of the main obstacles to wider adoption. On average, 3D sets cost $1200 more than otherwise comparable 2D sets. Moreover, the 3D sets marketed by Panasonic, Samsung, and Sony require electronic glasses that cost $150 a pair. Technology that enables viewers to use cheaper glasses also raises the price of the set. Still, now that more than half of Americans have seen at least one 3D movie, TV makers are optimistic that adoption will increase as prices inevitably decrease.
New York Times: Until the Wall Street crash of 2008 and the worldwide recession that ensued, the financial analysts known as quants were in high demand. The algorithms they devised, running on high-speed computers, gave the firms that employed them an edge. Now, as the New York Times's Julie Creswell reports, the quants, many of whom have physics PhDs, are struggling to recover that edge. Bucking the trend, however, is Jim Simons, a former field theorist and the founder and CEO of Renaissance Technologies. Last year, his firm's Medallion fund made $1 billion in profits, the highest of any hedge fund.
New York Times: A year from now, Portugal will derive 45% of its energy from renewable sources. That impressively large share reflects a host of factors, including the country's lack of fossil fuels, the European Union's energy policies, and the determination of the Portuguese government to revamp the systems for generating and distributing electricity. As the New York Times's Elisabeth Rosenthal reports, Portugal's enthusiasm for green energy has also boosted its exports. She writes:
Indeed, Portugal’s engineers and companies are now global players. Portugal’s EDP Renováveis, first listed on stock exchanges in 2008, is the third largest company in the world in wind-generated electricity output. This year, its Portuguese chief executive, Ana Maria Fernandes, signed contracts to sell electricity from its wind farm in Iowa to the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Daily Mail: Apple has filed a patent for a futuristic “smart” bike that has a docking station on the handlebars for an iPad or iPhone. The device would connect to the bike to provide real-time feedback to riders regarding their performance as well as share information with other bikers about traffic or routes. What’s more, the same principle could be “applied to any suitable vehicle or mode of transportation,” such as cars, motorcycles, or trucks, or even walking, running, or horseback riding, according to Patentlyapple.com, Apple’s patent applications blog.
Wired: Organic light-emitting diodes arrayed in an active matrix of transistor-controlled pixels provide smartphones with high-resolution, full-color displays without the need for a power-sapping backlight. Only three companies in the world make active-matrix OLED displays, which has caused supply problems for Taiwan-based smartphone manufacturer HTC. As Wired's Priya Ganapati reports, HTC has had to switch from using OLED displays to LCD displays, which, though brighter, consume more power.
New York Times: Dozens of companies in the US are pursuing the goal of turning algae into a cost-effective and environmentally friendly source of biofuel. As photosynthesizing organisms, algae already convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into biomass. And they can live in polluted ponds. But natural strains of algae aren't efficient enough for commercial exploitation. That's why, as the New York Times's Andrew Pollack reports, researchers are trying to genetically engineer "superalgae," whose oily bodies can be converted to gasoline, jet fuel, and other useful hydrocarbons.
Los Angeles Times: Reporting from the Farnborough International Airshow in southern England, W. J. Hennigan of the Los Angeles Times has found evidence that the market for commercial aircraft is pulling out of recession as the number of airline passengers increases worldwide. In particular:
European-aircraft maker Airbus sold 133 passenger jets worth $13 billion at Farnborough. Its Chicago rival, Boeing Co, landed 103 orders worth around $10 billion. Makers of smaller commercial jetliners such as Brazil's Embraer and Canada's Bombardier Inc, also struck contracts worth billions of dollars.
"The resurgence of orders indicates an upward trend in the industry," said Michel Merluzeau, managing partner of aerospace consultant G2 Solutions in Kirkland, Wash. "Last year was a very depressed market. It seems we're now entering a growth mode."
New York Times: IBM Corp launched its new Z series of mainframe computers today. The new machines will be a modest 40% faster than their predecessors, but will consume 60% less power. A water-cooled version of the machine reduces power consumption by a further 12%. Those gains in efficiency translate to lower electricity bills and are expected to entice server-intensive industries like banking to upgrade their mainframes.
New York Times: To encourage customers to make the switch from their familiar gas-powered cars to new electric-powered ones, General Motors will offer an eight-year warranty on all 161 components of the battery that powers its Chevrolet Volt electric car. The batteries themselves will be manufactured at a new plant in Holland, Michigan, by Compact Power, a subsidiary of the South Korean company LG Chem.
San Franciso Chronicle: The world's largest maker of computer chips, Intel Corp, yesterday reported net income of $2.89 billion for the quarter that ended on 26 June. That figure amounts to 51 cents per share and exceeds analysts' expectations of 43 cents per share. According to the company's CEO Paul Otellini, the bump in profits arose from the delayed purchasing of new personal computers in offices and homes.
Daily Mail: An implantable miniature telescope has received FDA approval for use in the US.
The device was developed by VisionCare to treat end-stage age-related macular degeneration—when a blind spot develops in the central vision of the eye.
Implanted in the cornea, the device expands an incoming image onto the peripheral parts of the retina that are undamaged from AMD, thereby reducing the blind spot's effect. So far, the device is slated for use in people over the age of 75 and doesn't treat AMD directly; it can only be implanted in one eye, and the patient has to learn how to merge the two images rendered in order to see.
Nature: Earlier this week, the US Supreme Court unanimously upheld a Federal Appeals Court judgment in Bilski v. Kappos, a patent infringement case. In 1997, Bernard Bilski and Rand Warsaw filed a patent application for a new way to hedge financial risk. The US Patent Office rejected the application, stating
The invention is not implemented on a specific apparatus and merely manipulates [an] abstract idea and solves a purely mathematical problem without any limitation to a practical application, therefore, the invention is not directed to the technological arts.
The appeals court upheld the rejection, which was based on applying the so-called machine-or-transformation test. The Supreme Court upheld the rejection. However, even though the test had emerged from previous Supreme Court decisions, the Supreme Court opined that the test should not be the only consideration for patents that involve ideas or processes. As Nature's Heidi Ledford reports, the decision in Bilski v. Kappos has not clarified US patent law as much as some innovators, notably in the medical diagnostics industry, had hoped.
Daily Mail: Terrafugia—a private company located in Woburn, Massachusetts—has developed a “roadable aircraft,” which can take off from an airport runway and fly like a plane or can be driven on the road like a car. The wings extend and retract at the push of a button from inside the cockpit, and only the most basic pilot’s license is required to operate it, as well as a valid driver’s license. However, one has time to save up the $194 000 asking price, because the vehicle won’t be available until the end of 2011. A flying car, a jet-powered AMC Matador, appeared in the 1974 James Bond movie The Man with The Golden Gun.
Wired: Yesterday's public stock offering by Tesla Motors, the California-based maker of electric sports cars, was successful. The initial public offering (IPO) raised $226.1million, and the shares, which opened at a pre-set price of $17, closed yesterday at $23.89. You can follow the latest news about the company and the stock's progress at CNNMoney.com.
New York Times: On Tuesday electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors will become the first US automaker since Ford Motor Co in 1956 to offer its stock to the public. Founded in Palo Alto California in 2003, the company currently sells one model, the two-seat Roadster, and is taking orders for a four-seat coupe called the Model S.
NPR: Thirty years before the Nissan Leaf and the Chevrolet Volt, Mike Brown was creating all-electric cars out of conventional gas-fueled ones. Electro Automotive, which he founded in 1979, sells electric-car conversion kits and hosts how-to workshops. Because the range of electric cars remains modest, Brown focuses on cars for the short-commute market—what he calls “grocery-getters,” which can hold four adults and a load of groceries. Although the emerging electric-car market may negatively affect his business, Brown is optimistic that it could instead help it by increasing awareness.
New Scientist: Microsoft developed Kinect for its Xbox 360 console to “transform the way users play computer games.” Kinect tracks a gamer's physical movements and transposes them onto their onscreen avatars. But some researchers see more applications: Home-security systems, where the movements of an unfamiliar intruder could be distinguished from those of family members; or a remote monitoring system, which could observe the elderly and, by their posture and activity levels, determine how they are doing.
ASD News: An Earth observation satellite, TanDEM-X, was successfully launched today from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan by the public–private partnership of aerospace company Astrium and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). TanDEM-X will fly with its twin TerraSAR-X, a German radar satellite launched in 2007, on a three-year mission to survey all 150 million square kilometers of Earth's land surface for commercial, research, and security applications. "This will be the first time we will ever have had a globally standardized 3D digital elevation model of Earth," said Alberto Moreira, science director of the TanDEM-X mission and director of the DLR Microwaves and Radar Institute.
SPACE.com: Following the successful launch of its Falcon 9 rocket on 4 June, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) has signed the largest ever commercial rocket launch contract, worth almost $500 million, with Iridium Communications. SpaceX will use its Falcon 9 to launch Iridium’s communication satellites from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. SpaceX already has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to ferry cargo to the International Space Station.
USA Today: A cluster of high-tech startup companies has grown up in Toledo, Ohio. Focused on solar power and other clean energy technologies, the new companies are helping to restore the city's once-famous manufacturing industry, which had fallen behind healthcare as the major employer. The transformation isn't entirely radical. Despite its rust-belt status, Toledo remained a center for the production of a key component of solar panels, glass.
SPACE.com: Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), a private spaceflight company, succeeded on its second attempt to launch its new commercial rocket—Falcon 9—from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 14:45 EDT today. The previous attempt, 90 minutes earlier, failed two seconds before ignition when the rocket went into a safe mode. The rocket is designed to replace the soon-to-be decommissioned space shuttle as a means of hauling cargo to the International Space Station. The use of commercial launchers is a key feature of President Obama's new plan for NASA.
Chronicle: Although universities are becoming more adept at finding ways to commercialize technologies invented on their campuses, tech transfer remains challenging—especially to the people responsible for making it a success. Five tech-transfer associations have formed a new international group to make the job of tech transfer more professional. Among the group's aims: establish standards of expertise and conduct.
Physics Today: NSF, the National Institutes of Health, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy will lead a new initiative to determine how America's investment in science raises employment, improves health, and increases knowledge. The initiative is called STAR METRICS, which stands for Science and Technology in America's Reinvestment: Measuring the Effect of Research on Innovation, Competitiveness, and Science. To assess the investments, STAR METRICS will gather and analyze data from research institutions and funding agencies. Patents, business startups, and other kinds of data will be used to assess the payoffs.
BBC: According to a list released yesterday at the International Supercomputing Conference in Hamburg, Germany, two of the world's ten fastest supercomputers are Chinese. By one theoretical benchmark, the Nebulae machine at China's National Super Computer Center in Shenzhen could even be the fastest.
Los Angeles Times: Having invented a better battery, MIT’s Yet-Ming Chiang tried to manufacture the batteries first in the US, then in China. Neither of those early attempts proved successful. The US was too costly; China was too lax about protecting his intellectual property. Now, with the help of a US government grant, Chiang is set to open his first factory—in a former videotape plant in Detroit.
National Geographic: Two brothers, Levi and Corban Tillemann-Dick of IRIS Engines Inc, are carrying on their father’s dream of designing a smaller, lighter, and more efficient automobile engine. Unlike the traditional internal combustion engine, which drives pistons, their award-winning Internally Radiating Impulse Structure drives flanges that open and close like the iris of an eye. Compared with pistons, the flanges have a larger working surface area, which increases efficiency while reducing waste heat.
BusinessWeek: Tokyo Electric Power Co has bought a 9.2% stake in a project to build two 1.4 GW reactors in Texas. Called Nuclear Innovation, the reactor project began life a joint venture between NRG Energy Inc, which is based in Princeton, New Jersey, and Toshiba Corp, which is based in Tokyo. The reactors are expected to begin generating power in 2016 and 2017.
