"The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science and Technology Come Alive" by John Graham-Cumming could be the answer to the yearly Father's Day gift dilemma.
(Although I know a lot of women who would love this book, too.)
Graham-Cumming's book is not of the tacky so-and-so-slept-here variety, but a compendium of locations of true worth in the history of science and tech breakthroughs.
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O'Reilly Media)
The book, which is organized by country, includes latitudes and longitudes for GPS devices, and info like whether a historical site is free or available for a price. It's heavy on U.K. and U.S. sites (it lists the U.S. sites by state) but does attempt to cover the entire world.
Some of the recommendations are little-known science museums that happen to have one or two holdings of great worth, but many are a bit more unusual and creative. Graham-Cumming includes things like the descendant of Isaac Newton's apple tree at Trinity College in Cambridge, England, and the first bridge ever constructed from cast iron which visitors can still walk across at the Severn River in Ironbridge, England.
In addition to listing the historical sites, the author gives background and factoids on the inventor, or team of inventors, and the story behind each breakthrough.
For example, Isaac Newton's official position at the University of Cambridge was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, the title currently held by the British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking.
Graham-Cumming discusses why Alan Turing's contribution to computer science was so significant and arguably more important than his role in breaking the Nazi Enigma code at Bletchley Park, England. He explains in detail the Turing Machine and Turing's Halting problem complete with formulas.
The thorough stories and science lessons make the book, which includes a lot of photos and illustrations, a fun summer read for the astute armchair traveler as well as a guide for those looking to explore more than the usual church, museum, and park routes of sightseeing vacations.
The author, a former programmer and computer scientist by degree, also used social-network creator Ning to build a companion social-networking site to his book, GeekAtlas.com, where readers and travelers can share their experiences, and post photos and videos of their travels.
While in this economy you may not be able to go to see Léon Foucault's Pendulum still swinging in the Pantheon in Paris, the U.S. list is so comprehensive, chances are you live within easy driving distance from at least two places and probably more.
The "The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science and Technology Come Alive" will be available June 3 with a list price of $29.99 (some sites are also listing it for pre-order at $19.79).
An unmanned aerial vehicle that's intended to use a combination of solar power and stored electricity is being developed by Ascent Solar Technologies and Bye Aerospace, both companies announced Tuesday.
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Bye Aerospace)
Ascent Solar will be supplying flexible thin-film photovoltaic modules designed for Bye's drone, the Silent Sentinel.
Bye will be using a Williams International FJ33 turbofan engine that will draw power from stored electrical power in a lithium-ion battery and the photovoltaic panels on the plane.
The result will be a quiet, low-emission hybrid UAV with added endurance, according to Bye.
The Silent Sentinel is intended for military surveillance purposes, but could also be used in the commercial world for things like pipeline and power line inspection, forest fire watch, and aerial photography.
While Bye said it has had proposal meetings with U.S. government officials, no contract for the vehicle has yet been signed with the U.S. military.
Bye will not be the first to combine solar panels with a drone-type aircraft. British defense contractor Qinetiq built and tested the Zephyr, a 66-pound glider that flew an unofficial record 54 hours straight (according to Qinetiq's own report) over White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico in 2007. In early 2008, DARPA announced it was developing the Vulture, a solar-powered aircraft that would "fly" for 5 years straight, though arguably that UAV could be considered more of a satellite in orbit.
Matthew T. Mason, director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, has won an award for his "pioneering contributions to the fundamental understanding of the mechanics of robotic manipulation and to graduate education in robotics."
The Robotics and Automation Society, which bestowed Mason with its annual Pioneer Award, is part of the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE). So while the monetary prize for the lifetime achievement award is only $2,000, a lot of prestige comes with the plaque he was given over the weekend.
Matthew T. Mason heads the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.
(Credit: Carnegie Mellon)Mason's body of work includes robotic juggling, legless robotic travel, robotic locomotion, handless robotic manipulation of objects (robot soccer), and robotic origami. Mason's famous robotic origami project, in which robots build origami cranes from paper, was lauded for the progress it made in developing robotic agility with soft objects.
Mason also wrote the book "Mechanics of Robotic Manipulation."
But the general public will likely remember Mason for something else entirely. With the help of Mason--and under Jim Morris, who was computer science school dean at the time--Carnegie Mellon opened the Robot Hall of Fame in 2003.
The hall of fame honors both real and fictional robots as a way to engage public interest in robotics and engineering. While the Robot Hall of Fame technically rewards the robots themselves and not their creators, Mason would be a likely candidate if the rules change.
Mason, who is a fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence and the IEEE, earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctorate in computer science and artificial intelligence from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He has been a Carnegie Mellon faculty member since 1982.
For more insights on his work and thoughts on robotics, read CNET's Q&A with Mason.
Here is a mock-up of the EyeStop bus shelter.
(Credit: MIT Senseable City Lab)High-tech bus stops so cool they might actually entice you to take a ride will be installed next year in Florence, Italy.
The urban fixtures have been designed by a group of researchers led by Carlo Ratti, head of the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The EyeStop is a touch-screen bus shelter that monitors environmental conditions and real-time bus movement and also provides information and communication tools that can interact with your cell phone.
The EyeStop, which has touch sensitive e-Ink screens as well as LEDs, features a bus map plotting locations in real-time, e-mail and Web access, tools for planning a best route and getting directions, a community bulletin board, and, of course, a place for silent video advertisements. It will also use sensors to monitor and display local air quality.
Riders can choose to have their local EyeStop bus stop sync with their cell phone. The EyeStop you normally frequent, for example, could twitter you that your usual bus is running late that morning.
Intended for tourists as well as locals, the EyeStop tools will be accessible in several languages.
About 1,000 EyeStop bus poles will be installed in Florence, Italy, in 2010.
(Credit: MIT Senseable City Lab)A bus pole version of the EyeStop with similar mapping, info, and communication tools will also be introduced. It glows brighter as the next bus nears the stop to signal pedestrians from afar.
The design for the EyeStop was unveiled this week at the Genio Fiorentino festival in Florence, and a prototype will soon follow.
Florence residents will start testing the high-tech bus stop's usefulness, durability, and limitations in October. Following that, about 200 bus shelters and 1,000 bus poles are expected to be installed next year. The EyeStop was developed by Ratti's project team, in collaborartion with the Province of Florence and Florence's local transportation authority.
The bus shelter and bus pole versions of the EyeStop will power themselves with solar energy, but they won't be one-size-fits-all.
Each EyeStop will be customized by a computer program that takes into account the stop's immediate surroundings. As a result, each can be built to fit into the existing space using steel, glass, and gray stone local to Florence. The software also considers maximum sunlight exposure for the location to determine power generation needs.
But is it graffiti proof?
"We have looked into special glass surfaces that are self-cleaning and graffiti proof," Ratti said in an e-mail. "However, we will perform some real tests before building the prototype in October."
This is EyeStop bus shelter with an imaginary user.
(Credit: MIT Senseable City Lab)"If we were to sum this up in a bumper sticker, it would say something like: 'America, the U.S. military gave you the Hummer. Now we're taking it back."
Dennis McGinn, a retired vice admiral in the Navy and former commander of the U.S. Third Fleet, spoke those words Monday during a teleconference.
McGinn is on the military advisory board of the not-for-profit Center for Naval Analyses. The group issued a report (PDF) on Monday, stating the U.S. military must, as a matter of national security, work to reduce its dependence not just on foreign oil, but on natural gas, coal, and an increasingly unstable U.S. electrical grid.
"We believe in the study that national security, energy security, and climate change are interdependent. We've come up with a list of findings and priorities, a challenge to the DOD, an opportunity to lead," John Napman, a retired admiral, said during the teleconference.
McGinn added: "We're heavily dependent on a global petroleum market that's volatile, but it's not just restricted to oil. Natural gas and coal also ran huge spikes in the last year."
Center for Naval Analyses logo
The transfer of wealth (via fuel purchases) to nations associated with terrorism has essentially put the U.S. in the position of financing both sides of conflicts and has been a wake-up call to the military, according to McGinn.
To some degree, the Department of Defense has already made strides toward increased use of electrical vehicles for light-use and of some hybrid and alternative fuel vehicles for other uses, according to Gordon Sullivan, a retired general and former U.S. Army chief of staff.
"Throughout DOD installations, you'll find a lot of the pick-up trucks. (There's a lot of) natural gas being used. And I think in the administrative fleets, you'll see a lot of that. And some of these things that look like John Deere Gators or whatever. They're like golf carts fueled by natural gas," said Sullivan.
But reducing foreign oil dependence is not enough, according to the report.
Military installations "are almost completely dependent on commercial electrical power delivered through the national electrical grid," according to the report signed by 12 former U.S. generals and admirals, and sponsored by the Bipartisan Policy Center, the Energy Foundation, and the Grayce B. Kerr Foundation.
Considering the military's increased reliance on computers to analyze data, provide tactical support to troops, and remotely fly UAVs like the Predator, the "outdated, fragile, and overtaxed national electrical grid is a dangerously weak link in the national security infrastructure," said the report.
The report also recommended a slowdown of the development of coal-to-liquid fuels for the U.S. Air Force in favor of fossil- and alternative-based blends. It pointed to DARPA's $100 million in research and development toward JP-8 blends from nonfood crops such as algae and other plant-based biomass as an area in which the DOD has already expressed interest.
By addressing its own needs with regard to developing electrical smart grids, fuel efficient vehicles, and even jet fuel, the Department of Defense can influence the general market as it did with the invention of the Humvee, according to both Sullivan and McGinn.
Only this time, that crossover vehicle from military to civilian drivers will likely be a lot more fuel efficient.
An elastomer made with mechanophore-linked polymers changes color when stretched.
(Credit: Beckman Institute Imaging Technology Group, Darren Stevenson, and Alex Jerez)Scientists at the University of Illinois have developed polymers that change color when the material becomes overstressed.
The materials science invention could be used in things like parachute cords, climbing ropes, or added to smart coatings for bridges.
The polymers contain mechanophores--molecules that create a chemical reaction that makes the synthetic material change color when a certain amount of force is exerted upon it.
One of the polymers offered by the scientists as an example of their work is an amber-colored elastomer that turns progressively more orange as it's pulled and then finally red right before it reaches its point of failure and snaps (see photo). In another example, the group made a hard little bead that turned from translucent to purple when compressed.
The group, whose project is funded by the U.S. Army Research Office MURI program, had previously done work with mechanophore-linked polymers in liquid. This latest invention is with solids .
The University of Illinois research was led by Nancy Sottos, a Willett Professor of materials science and engineering and a professor at the university's Beckman Institute; and Douglas Davis, graduate research assistant and lead author on the project.
Davis noted that the material can go back to its original color once relieved of stress and perform the same function over and over.
"Mechanical stress induces a ring-opening reaction of the spiropyran that changes the color of the material. The reaction is reversible, so we can repeat the opening and closing of the mechanophore," Davis said in a statement.
Keeping that in mind, the group hopes to create mechanophore-linked polymers that could actually self-reinforce each time they're met with increased stress. If created, the material could be used in things like airplanes as a temporary solution to damaged or stressed parts. In a plane, for example, parts made of the polymer could self-reinforce to minimize damage until the plane could safely be landed and fixed.
Details of the group's invention can be found in the May 7 issue of Nature.
Ford Motor offered a glimpse into one of its testing labs on Tuesday. The showcase was assumably to promote the new safety features in its upcoming lineup of cars, and as you can imagine, the peek into this world of crash test dummies is rather amusing.
One of the technologies Ford talked about testing was a new air bag system, which was put in the 2009 F-150 and will be in the 2010 Ford Taurus. Instead of being acceleration-based, the new sensors are pressure-based, which makes them more accurate, according to Ford, but also more sensitive.
The company wanted to make sure the highly sensitive system in its cars was not set off by minor everyday annoyances. Obviously, there's no need for an air bag to deploy when things like shopping carts, baseballs, and bicycles hit the side of a car. To that end, Ford's safety group engineers incorporated real-world scenarios combined with robots and other sophisticated lab equipment that go beyond the usual car collision tests.
One of its tests involves a robot plowing a shopping cart filled with 110 pounds of weight (roughly one kid and a full cart of groceries) into the side of a Taurus at 10 miles per hour.
Another test has Ford engineers driving the cars at high speeds on a test track of curbs, potholes, and ditches to re-create the real-life carelessness most drivers engage in at some point, but likely never admit to.
Is this method really necessary, or just something Ford engineers came up with to break up the monotony of sifting through safety testing data?
"Blasting and ramming cars may seem over-the-top, but they're part of a serious testing regimen that Ford had to invent, because increasingly sophisticated technologies require more advanced testing," Sue Cischke, vice president of Ford's Sustainability, Environment and Safety Engineering Group, said in a statement.
Ford's new air bags are sensor-based so they can deploy before the full impact of a crash occurs, but not so sensitive they go off from an errant baseball or shopping cart. (Click above to see more photos.)
(Credit: Ford Motor)
Ford's Michigan Assembly Plant in city of Wayne.
(Credit: Ford Motor)Ford Motor plans to spend $550 million to retool its Michigan Assembly Plant so it will be capable of producing its new line of Ford Focus cars, the company announced Wednesday.
More than $160 million of the money Ford plans to invest in the Wayne, Mich.-based plant will come from tax credits and grants from the state of Michigan, Wayne County, and the city of Wayne.
The rebuilt plant, which Ford expects to support more than 3,000 jobs, will produce the new Ford Focus, and, eventually, the battery-electric version of Focus that the company plans to begin producing in 2011 for a 2012 release.
About 155 jobs will be salaried positions, and 3,180 jobs will be hourly worker positions at the Wayne location, according to Ford.
"This is about investing in modern, efficient and flexible American manufacturing. It is about fuel economy and the electrification of vehicles," Ford President and CEO Alan Mulally said in a statement.
The Michigan Assembly Plant (formerly known as the Michigan Truck Plant) originally opened in 1957 and has produced the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator, as well as the Ford Bronco and Ford F-Series, according to Ford.
The Michigan change is part of Ford's plan to convert three of its North American plants so that it can introduce six small cars to the American market by the end of 2012. The other two plants undergoing renovation are the Cuautitlan Assembly Plant in Mexico, which will begin producing the Ford Fiesta in 2010, and the Louisville, Ky., plant, which will begin producing cars build with the Ford Focus platform starting in 2011.
Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels
(Credit: City of Seattle)The City of Seattle has partnered with Nissan North America to promote the development of an electric vehicle charging network in anticipation of Nissan's release of its highway-legal EV, Renault-Nissan Alliance and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels announced Tuesday.
Nissan's commercially sold EV will have a different look than its EV-02 prototype, but the same functionality. The Nissan EV is expected to have a range of 100 miles on a single charge and be able to be charged within four to eight hours via a 220-volt outlet. The City of Seattle is planning to work with its local utility to come up with a program for installing the outlets--already commonly used in homes for electric laundry dryers--in interested residents' garages. It will also work to develop electric charging stations throughout Seattle.
The announcement is just one in a list of many U.S. communities that have begun to develop electrical charging stations in anticipation of Nissan's commercial EV release in the U.S. in 2010.
Last week Renault-Nissan Alliance announced a program in Tennessee. In March and April, Nissan announced partnerships with local Arizona governments to development a corridor of electric charging stations that would encompass the 116-mile stretch between Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz. as well as their surrounding areas.
That particular project includes a partnership with tech company Ecotality. Its CEO Jonathan Read has told CNET it will be building the Arizona stations to accommodate any EV that adheres to Society of Automotive Engineers standards for electric vehicles, not just Nissan's EV.
Nissan now has projects geared toward establishing electric charging stations in anticipation of its 2010 EV launch in the U.S. in Sonoma County and San Diego, Calif., Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz., Oregon, and Tennessee.
But the Seattle announcement is unique because the power source for the electric charging stations will be from http://www.ci.seattle.wa.us/light/Seattle City Light, the publically-owned utility who's claim to fame is that it's "net zero" for greenhouse gas emissions.
"From light rail to street cars to electric vehicles, we're reducing the impact of transportation on our climate. Electric-powered transportation is particularly attractive in a city with a carbon-neutral utility, generating clean electricity through hydropower," Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels said in a statement.
Correction at 9:20 a.m. PDT: The time span for Office Depot's figures is one year.
Last year, Office Depot recycled almost 1.5 million pounds of old tech equipment through its service for consumers, the company said Wednesday.
That sounds like a lot. It makes you realize how quickly all those landfills must be filling up since that figure represents only the junk from people who 1) actually bother to recycle, and 2) chose to go with Office Depot's recycling program.
For a comparison, I decided to check how other company-sponsored recycling programs are doing. Unfortunately, as sustainability expert Kevin Wilhelm told CNET, there is yet to be a standard way for companies to calculate such statistics. What's included in recycling statistics varies from company to company, but the data I dug up offers a rough idea of what's going on in this arena.
Staples, an Office Depot competitor, began offering an in-store recycling service in May 2007. It charges $10 per large item regardless of where you originally bought it; recycles small items like keyboards, mice, and speakers for free; and offers $3 in Staples rewards for Hewlett-Packard, Lexmark or Dell brand printer cartridges.
By the end of the 2007, Staples had recycled 2 million pounds of tech junk, including almost 24 million printer cartridges in the U.S., according to the company's 2007 sustainability report.
What about the computer manufacturers themselves?
Hewlett-Packard has had a recycling program since 1987 and in January 2009 launched a new program that offers money for old tech equipment. As of June 2007, the company had recycled more than 1 billion pounds of electronics and printer cartridges and expanded to include consumer programs in 50 countries. HP's new goal is to reach 2 billion pounds by the end of 2010.
Unlike Office Depot, which asks customers for pay $5, $10, or $15 for a box they can fill with everything from printers to digital cameras, HP offers credit that can be put toward the purchase of an HP product.
Apple has consumer recycling programs in 95 percent of the countries where it sells its computers. In 2007, it collected about "21 million pounds of e-waste," according to the company's 2008 environmental report.
Dell offers consumer recycling programs worldwide. In the U.S., it's free. Between 2006 and 2008, Dell recycled about 255 million pounds of its own products. Its goal is to recover about 275 million pounds by the end of 2009, according to its 2008 Global Corporate Responsibility Report.
Big Blue seems to have recycled the most, or at least calculated the most.
Between 1995 (when it began keeping track) and the end of 2007, IBM "collected and recovered (resold, refurbished, or recycled)" more than 1.5 billion pounds of product and product waste worldwide, according to the company's latest corporate sustainability report.
In the U.S., IBM offers consumer recycling programs on a state-by-state basis.
While recycling tech equipment is definitely a positive way to do your part for the environment, it's also important to keep your computer information secure. Always remember to properly wipe computers clean of your personal information before giving away or recycling them. Coincidentally, CNET's Seth Rosenblatt did a piece on wiping hard drives clean earlier this week.
