Stackable car

Image: Franco Vairani/MIT

Problem finding a parking space? Problem solved with a stackable car. Created primarily for metropolitan areas, the stackable car of the future has a small footprint and runs on electricity. Ok, its not cool for a long trip, but what about a trip across town?

“”We have to think of city cars as not just small-footprint vehicles that can squeeze into tight spaces but ones that can work in unison and also be almost like a parasite that leeches on to mass-transit systems,” says Mr Chin. While Smart changed the way people think about parking and size, the MIT engineers felt that, as it had not been widely adopted and congestion and pollution problems had got no better, its success had been limited.

So the MIT team started from scratch to come up with their own concept: a stackable, shareable, electric, two-passenger car. “Imagine a shopping cart – a vehicle that can stack – you can take the first vehicle out of a stack and off you go,” says Mr Chin. “These stacks would be placed throughout the city. A good place would be outside a subway station or a bus line or an airport, places where there’s a convergence of transportation lines and people.””

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“The MIT concept car is a complete re-think of vehicle technology. For a start, there is no engine, at least in the traditional sense. The power comes from devices called wheel robots. “These are self-contained wheel units that have electric motors inside,” says Mr Chin. “The interesting thing is that the wheel can turn a full 360 degrees so you can have omni-directional wheel movements. You can rotate the car while you’re moving, any direction can be front or back and you can do things like crabbing or translate sideways. It’s almost like you imagine yourself driving a computer chair.”

The wheel robots, complete with their own suspension, remove the need for a drive shaft and even the engine block, freeing up designers to make new use of the space in the car.

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Add wafer-thin, programmable displays that cover the interior and exterior of the car like a layer of paint, and you have a vehicle that can be customised at will. “You can imagine signalling being not just a static signal light but something more dynamic,” says Mr Chin, who suggests the words “reversing” or “turning left” could roll across the car’s body to declare the driver’s intentions. “From a heating and cooling point of view, you might want your car to be darker or lighter depending on weather. On the interior, you can customise”

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Scientists Discover a Gene That Regulates Lifespan

“Genes that control the timing of organ formation during development also control timing of aging and death, and provide evidence of a biological timing mechanism for aging, Yale researchers report in the journal Science.

“Although there is a large variation in lifespan from species to species, there are genetic aspects to the processes of development and aging,” said Frank Slack, associate professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and senior author of the paper. “We used the simple, but genetically well-studied, C. elegans worm and found genes that are directly involved in determination of lifespan. Humans have genes that are nearly identical.””

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Revealed: the pill that prevents cancer

More health benefits from vitamin D.

“A daily dose of vitamin D could cut the risk of cancers of the breast, colon and ovary by up to a half, a 40-year review of research has found. The evidence for the protective effect of the “sunshine vitamin” is so overwhelming that urgent action must be taken by public health authorities to boost blood levels, say cancer specialists.

A growing body of evidence in recent years has shown that lack of vitamin D may have lethal effects. Heart disease, lung disease, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, schizophrenia and multiple sclerosis are among the conditions in which it is believed to play a vital role. The vitamin is also essential for bone health and protects against rickets in children and osteoporosis in the elderly. “

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Rock on, indie labels…

The web-based distribution of music is speading the music. The “long tail” concept is impacting business and spreading the music downstream, giving a boost to “indies”. Also, technology is allowing better quality music to be recorded using computers and software that can be used to create high-quality musical recordings.

With digital recording and digital distribtion, the bureaucracy can be slimmed down, bringing artist and listener closer together. The way it is meant to be.

The Net is a boon for indie labels from CNET News.com:
“On the Rhapsody subscription music service, for example, the 100 most popular artists account for only about 24 percent of the music that consumers chose to play from its catalog last month, said Tim Quirk, Rhapsody’s executive editor. In the brick-and-mortar world, he estimates, the 100 most popular acts might account for more than 48 percent of a mass retailer’s sales.
“It’s no longer about a big behemoth beaming something at a mass audience,” Quirk said. “It’s about a mass of niche audiences picking and selecting what they want at any given time.” “

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Solar powered, Wi-Fi lightposts

In Cameroon, they are putting up lightposts that are Wi-Fi routers…

“A Singapore company, hired to provide street lights for the largest city in Cameroon, has devised a way to use the lampposts to provide internet access to residents.

When the lights go on in the city of Douala next year, Nex-G Systems will also be providing technology to connect people to the internet, said chief executive officer Ronnie Persad.
The company won a $US29 million ($40 million) deal earlier this month to provide “smart” solar powered lamp posts to the African country.

Initially, the idea was to install street lamps that could be remotely controlled from a central point, Mr Persad said.
“We thought, why not put in telecoms infrastructure as well so people can go online and make telephone calls too,” The Straits Times quoted him as saying.

The company plans to install WiFi, a short-range wireless technology, on about 4000 lamps in Douala, providing internet access even to some of the city’s remote areas.”

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The 50 Greatest Gadgets of the Past 50 Years

PC World lists the top 50 gadgets of the past 50 years.

The top 10 are:
1 Sony Walkman TPS-L2 (1979)
2 Apple iPod (2001)
3 (Tie) ReplayTV RTV2001 and TiVo HDR110 (1999)
4 PalmPilot 1000 (1996)
5 Sony CDP-101 (1982)
6 Motorola StarTAC (1996)
7 Atari Video Computer System (1977)
8 Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera (1972)
9 M-Systems DiskOnKey (2000)
10 Regency TR-1 (1954)

Tops in the 2000s are:
2000 M-Systems DiskOnKey (9), Sony PlayStation 2 (11)
2001 Apple iPod (2)
2002 iRobot Roomba Intelligent Floorvac (31), Jakks Pacific TV Games (49), Sanyo SCP-5300 (30)
2003 Handspring Treo 600 (20)
2004 Motorola Razr V3 (12)

“At PC World, we’d be lost without these things. We don’t merely test and write about digital gear, we live and breathe the stuff. In honor of this raging gizmo infatuation, we polled our editors and asked them to name the top 50 gadgets of the last 50 years. The rules? The devices had to be relatively small (no cars or big-screen TVs, for example), and we considered only those items whose digital descendants are covered in PC World (cameras, yes; blenders, no). We rated each gadget on its usefulness, design, degree of innovation, and influence on subsequent gadgets, as well as the ineffable quality we called the “cool factor.” Then we tallied the results. “

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Might as well face it, you're addicted… to tech

According to a recent poll, Americans are addicted to technology.

“Millions of Americans are displaying evidence of being addicted to high-tech gadgets, according to a survey carried out for the Associated Press by market research firm Ipsos Public Affairs.

The poll revealed that PCs, cell phones, and broadband Internet services are considered to be a vital part of everyday life for many Americans.

Those who use gadgets, such as iPods, TiVos, and high-definition digital TVs, told Ipsos that they could live without the devices but would rather not.

But people who use cell phones, the Internet, or a computer, told Ipsos that they “definitely could not” live without these technologies, said Michael Gross, a senior research manager at Ipsos. “

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The DMV wants to track you

The US government is working on a way to track wherever people drive, using GPS technology, so that people can be taxed accordingly. The Office of Transportation Policy Studies, part of the Federal Highway Administration is funding the research.

A GPS would be placed in your car so that you could be remotely tracked by the government (Department of Motor Vehicles) and taxed by the distance you drive (and maybe where and when you drive?). The measure is for our “own good”, so that the extra cost will make us want to take public transportation. Don’t worry, it is all for our own good. That makes me feel better about it.

New technologies will continue to improve, so I am sure there will be a lot of opportunities to make sure people are behaving “properly” via technology in the future. (Tounge in cheek)

“Trust federal bureaucrats to take a good idea and transform it into a frightening proposal to track Americans wherever they drive.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has been handing millions of dollars to state governments for GPS-tracking pilot projects designed to track vehicles wherever they go. So far, Washington state and Oregon have received fat federal checks to figure out how to levy these “mileage-based road user fees.”

Now electronic tracking and taxing may be coming to a DMV near you. The Office of Transportation Policy Studies, part of the Federal Highway Administration, is about to announce another round of grants totaling some $11 million. A spokeswoman on Friday said the office is “shooting for the end of the year” for the announcement, and more money is expected for GPS (Global Positioning System) tracking efforts. “

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The media is liberal (mostly)

A study from UCLA shows that the US media has biases that come out in their news coverage. And, most media leans to the left. I feel like I am stating the obvious, but there seems to be some confusion in this area at times, so hopefully the UCLA study will help clarify the facts.

“I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican,” said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study’s lead author. “But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are.”

There were some surprising findings. While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper’s news pages are liberal. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left (see an explination below). Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.

Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS’ “Evening News,” The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

The most centrist outlet proved to be the “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.” CNN’s “NewsNight With Aaron Brown” and ABC’s “Good Morning America” were a close second and third.

Since Groseclose and Milyo were more concerned with bias in news reporting than opinion pieces, which are designed to stake a political position, they omitted editorials and Op-Eds from their tallies. This is one reason their study finds The Wall Street Journal more liberal than conventional wisdom asserts.

Another finding that contradicted conventional wisdom was that the Drudge Report was slightly left of center. But, most information on the Drudge Report are links to major media outlet, so that skewed the Druge Report findings. By linking to major media, Drudge moves to the left.

“Very little was based on the stories that Matt Drudge himself wrote. The fact that the Drudge Report appears left of center is merely a reflection of the overall bias of the media.”

The study does not explain WHY the mainstream media leans to the left- but maybe that can be a topic for a future research paper.

The results will appear in the latest issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which will become available in mid-December.

Japan's population is shrinking

Population rates in more advanced societies around the world are shrinking. Japans population fell in 2005. In more modern societies, people are having a lot less children. The correlation appears to be that more wealthly and modern (free) nations and more intelligent/ well education people have fewer kids. Also, there will be extremely large elderly populations in many first-world nations in the coming decades. It makes one wonder about the long term scocietal impacts.

From Yahoo!/ AFP:
“Japan’s population fell for the first time in 2005, the government said, calling it a “turning point” that will force the world’s second largest economy to adapt to a rapidly aging society.

With its young people increasingly finding children a burden to their careers and lifestyles, Japan joins Germany and Italy among a club of nations whose populations have started to shrink.

Deaths are likely to outnumber births by about 10,000 this year, the first decline since 1899 when Japan began compiling the data, health ministry figures showed.”

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