Geek Gestalt

On Thursday, Popular Mechanics magazine will unveil its 2009 Breakthrough awards. Included on the list is a series of innovators, as well as a number of products, including this lawn mower, the Hustler Zeon, which is the world's first all-electric, zero-turning-radius mower. It can cover an acre of grass on a single charge.

(Credit: Popular Mechanics)

Popular Mechanics magazine on Thursday will unveil its fifth-annual Breakthrough Award winners, an august collection of designers and products that could do much more than their share to change the world for the better.

From famous inventors like Dean Kamen to a flying car for the Third World to bacteria-powered batteries--and much in-between--the awards are meant to highlight technologies that will shape the way people around the world live and how they interact with everyday products.

Each year, the magazine's editors scour the country for a worthy group of winners, and this year, in the end, Popular Mechanics settled on one leadership award winner, one next-generation honoree, eight Breakthrough innovators and 10 Breakthrough products.

Photos: Popular Mechanics' 2009 Breakthrough Award winners

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"In all cases, there's a really practical application that we see coming about," said Jerry Beilinson, the magazine's deputy editor, "so these aren't theoretical scientific applications. (They're going to) change the world and have a really positive aspect on people's lives."

Beilinson said that after five years of identifying technological breakthrough products and innovators, certain themes have emerged in the editors' preferences. Among the most important, he said, is alternative energy and products and designers that push that category forward.

"If I look back (at the last few years of doing the awards), we looked at aviation and we looked at medicine," he said. "But over the last few years, I think the things that have been clear themes that we've been looking at that have emerged (are) alternative energy and appropriate technologies for the developing world."

And while the themes can be forward-looking, the individual awards celebrate a "moment in time," he said.

"We're sort of picking the moment at which it's become real, and passed the threshold and seems like its worthy of an award," Beilinson said. "But most of these kinds of things do take some time to develop."

For this year's Breakthrough Leadership award, Popular Mechanics honored Dean Kamen, an inventor with more than 440 patents who may be best known for creating the incredible but commercially disappointing Segway personal transporter.

For years, outgoing Demo managing director Chris Shipley has had an on-stage dance. On Wednesday, in celebration of her handing off the reins of the event to VentureBeat founder Matt Marshall, Shipley led Demo owner IDG founder and CEO Pat McGovern in a version of the jig.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

SAN DIEGO--The Demo community--an august group of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and technology reporters--gave a fond farewell Wednesday afternoon here to longtime Demo managing director Chris Shipley.

As is well known, Shipley is leaving the helm of Demo, having now officially handed off the reins to VentureBeat founder Matt Marshall.

But as just about the last official act of DemoFall 09, Pat McGovern, the founder and chairman of IDG, which owns the Demo conferences, led the audience in a standing ovation for Shipley.

The DemoFall 09 crowd gave Shipley a standing ovation for her 13 years of work.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Prior to that sentimental moment, meanwhile, seven Demo God winners were announced, as well as the two winners of IDG's media prize.

The seven Demo God winners were:

• Emo Labs, for its Edge Motion speaker technology
• Intelius, for its DateCheck service
• Zorap
• Hevva, for its Local Dirt service
• Twirl TV
• Pinyadda
• ShareGrove

The last two companies were selected from among the 14 "AlphaPitch" presenters, which had just 90 seconds to make their case, rather than the six minutes given to each of the nearly 60 regular Demo companies.

IDG also awarded its two media prizes, one to a consumer product, and the other to an enterprise play. Each winner will receive up to $500,000 worth of free advertising across IDG properties.

Incoming Demo managing director Matt Marshall (left) and Shipley congratulate the founders of Demo God and IDG media prize winner Emo Labs.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

The consumer winner was Emo Labs, whose Edge Motion technology may well change the way the public experiences speakers. The enterprise winner was Liaise, whose software is meant to help companies with "the capture and management of KeyPoints--tasks, issues, dates, and priorities--buried inside e-mails, IMs, and other communications."

As is generally the case, the acceptance speeches were a bit teary-eyed, especially by Demo God and media prize winner Emo Labs' CEO Jason Carlson, who noted that his company had only come to Demo after being convinced by Shipley that he and his team could put together a coherent six-minute presentation.

Earlier, Shipley gave out a series of Lifetime Achievement awards to tech luminaries like Palm co-founder Donna Dubinsky, Diane Greene, a co-founder of VMware, Better Place founder and CEO Shai Agassi, and (in absentia) Marc Benioff.

In his own defiant and emotional moment, Barry James Folsom, CEO of Demo God winner Twirl TV urged the entrepreneurs in the room to carry on, despite any roadblocks they might encounter along their path to success. "If you do not have an obstacle, or someone telling you it's not a good idea, or someone telling you it will never work, and you believe them, you're not an entrepreneur," Folsom said. "(The) Lifetime Achievement award winners...They did it in spite of everyone telling them they couldn't."

SAN DIEGO--Earlier this summer, I wrote about the blossoming transition movement, in which local communities around the country and the world are beginning to prepare themselves for a post-peak oil world.

One of the best ways for communities to do this is to focus on local food supplies. With oil prices at peak prices, it won't be economical to truck in food from around the country, and those that do continue such a dependence are likely to experience major financial problems.

But those towns and cities that do put an emphasis on building more sustainable local food infrastructures are the ones that are going to be in the best position to take care of themselves with as little outside assistance as possible.

At DemoFall 09 Tuesday afternoon, a company called Hevva unveiled a system that could help just about everyone in such communities to meet those local food needs.

The idea behind Hevva's Local Dirt system is to create a searchable database of local food that can serve farmers, sellers, and buyers alike with the development of a robust market for locally-grown produce and other foods.

According to the company, demand for local food now outstrips that of organic products. Yet it's hard for just about everyone in that ecosystem to find just what they need when they need it.

One of the unfortunate side effects of the inefficiencies in this market, Hevva argued, is that as much as 40 percent of the post-harvest supply is lost to spoilage. As a result, Local Dirt is built around trying to ensure that the market is as efficient as possible.

To begin with, the system provides a simple search that buyers can use. As an example, someone could search for where to buy pesto made within 100 miles and then see a list of all the purveyors who can meet that request. Similarly, the system shows all the online local sellers who offer pesto for sale right now.

Taking the example further, users can narrow their search results to farmer's markets, and can look to see when each such market is open.

To Hevva, while individuals are important buyers in the local food economy, those who can get the greatest advantage from the platform are larger buyers: grocery stores, schools, hospitals, and the like.

That's why buyers can also search for food that can be delivered to such institutions.

Ultimately, Local Dirt is meant as a way for every participant in the ecosystem--the farmers, the buyers and the sellers--to find the best way possible of getting what they need from the local food market.

Whether this helps communities move towards a future independent from large food producers spread around the country is impossible to know. But it is good to know that there are people working now to build systems that could make it easier for such communities to move forward with their goals of focusing more and more on food grown locally.

The administration's cloud computing initiative is getting started immediately, at least in small measure, on the brand-new Apps.gov Web site.

(Credit: Apps.gov)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--The Obama administration on Tuesday announced a far-reaching and long-term cloud computing policy intended to cut costs on infrastructure and reduce the environmental impact of government computing systems.

Speaking at NASA's Ames Research Center here, federal CIO Vivek Kundra unveiled the administration's first formal efforts to roll out a broad system designed to leverage existing infrastructure and in the process, slash federal spending on information technology, especially expensive data centers.

According to Kundra, the federal government today has an IT budget of $76 billion, of which more than $19 billion is spent on infrastructure alone. And within that system, he said, the government "has been building data center after data center," resulting in an environment in which the Department of Homeland Security alone, for example, has 23 data centers.

Obama administration CIO Vivek Kundra on Tuesday unveiled the government's new cloud computing initiative.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

All told, this has resulted in a doubling of federal energy consumption from 2000 to 2006. "We cannot continue on this trajectory," Kundra said.

That's why the administration is now committed to a policy of reducing infrastructure spending and instead, relying on existing systems, at least as much as is possible, given security considerations, Kundra said.

As an example of what's possible with cloud computing, Kundra pointed to a revamping of the General Services Administration's USA.gov site. Using a traditional approach to add scalability and flexibility, he said, it would have taken six months and cost the government $2.5 million a year. But by turning to a cloud computing approach, the upgrade took just a day and cost only $800,000 a year.

But while some of the benefits of the administration's cloud computing initiative are on display today--mainly at the brand new Apps.gov Web site--Kundra's presentation was short on specifics and vague about how long it may take the government to transition fully to its new paradigm.

Indeed, Kundra hinted that it could take as much as a decade to complete the cloud computing "journey."

Three-part initiative
While repeatedly referencing the realities that many government efforts must make allowances in their IT needs for security, Kundra argued strongly that in many other cases, there is little reason that federal agencies cannot turn to online resources for quick, easy, and cheap provisioning of applications.

As a result, the first major element of the initiative is the brand new Apps.gov site, a clearinghouse for business, social media, and productivity applications, as well as cloud IT services. To be sure, the site isn't fully functional yet. In fact, a brief survey of it resulted in a series of error messages. But it's evident that the administration hopes that for many agencies, the site will eventually be a one-stop shop for the kinds of services that to date have required extensive IT spending, and Kundra said he believes that some at the Department of Energy has already been using the site for some of its needs.

The second element of the effort, Kundra said, will be budgeting. For fiscal year 2010, the administration will be pushing cloud computing pilot projects, reflecting the effort's priority and hopes that many lightweight workflows can be moved into the cloud. For fiscal 2011, it will be issuing guidance to agencies throughout government.

Finally, the initiative will include policy planning and architecture that will be made up of centralized certifications, target architecture and security, privacy, and procurement concerns. Kundra said every effort will be made to ensure that data is protected and secure, and that whatever changes are made are "pragmatic and responsible."

Clearly, though, the administration has seen benefits in the way private industry uses cloud computing, and intends to mirror those benefits. Ultimately, he added, the idea is to make it simple for agencies to procure the applications they need. "Why should the government pay for and build infrastructure that may be available for free," Kundra said.

One inspiration, he explained, are advances the government has already seen in the streamlining of student aid application forms. The so-called FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) form is "more complicated" than the federal 1040 tax form, Kundra said. But in a joint effort between the IRS and the Department of Education, it has become possible with one click of a mouse button for IRS data to populate the FAFSA form, Kundra said, eliminating more than 70 questions and 20 screens.

That, then, should be the kind of thing that the government seeks to do across the board, ultimately delivering large savings to taxpayers and significantly reducing the environmental impact of government IT systems.

Vint Cerf, the 'father of the Internet,' is one of the many thought leaders that students at Singularity University get a chance to learn from.

(Credit: Singularity University)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Sitting in a classroom, listening to students explain their approach to an assignment to develop an initiative to impact the lives of a billion people over ten years, one could be forgiven for taking it all with a grain of salt.

After all, student projects like this are usually peppered with holes, naive assumptions, and unrealistic goals.

But here at Singularity University, things are a little different. This group project, which aims to flip the car sharing movement on its head and bring affordable transportation to the masses, started less than two weeks ago but has already won a prize and attracted venture capital interest.

That's because Singularity University is no run-of-the-mill academic institution, and its students are not the usual breed of dreamers with good intentions. Founded by leading futurist and "The Singularity is Near" author Ray Kurzweil, X Prize chairman and CEO Peter Diamandis, and former Yahoo Brickhouse head Salim Ismail, the nine-week course examines exponentially growing technologies like biotechnology and bioinformatics; nanotechnology; AI, robotics, and cognitive computing. As well, the 40 students in the program are focusing on future studies and forecasting, and finance and entrepreneurship.

Those chosen for the program are truly the cream of the crop. After all, they have regular access to superstar teachers like George Smoot, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics; Dan Kammen, co-director of the Berkeley Institute of the Environment and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change team that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore; Vint Cerf, Google's chief Internet evangelist; and Stephanie Langhoff, NASA Ames' chief scientist. And speakers include PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Ethernet co-inventor Bob Metcalfe.

According to program director Ismail, this summer's inaugural Singularity University class of 40 students was chosen from among more than 1,200 applicants from around the world. Ismail said there were three main criteria for selection: students who already had top-level academic rigor and who are already at the top of their respective fields; those who have demonstrated leadership and entrepreneurial skills; and those who have demonstrated interest in global issues.

The result? A class of doctors, advisers to prime ministers, CEOs and successful start-up founders, just to name a few.

Singularity University students get regular access to technology superstars like PayPal co-founder and hedge fund manager, Peter Thiel.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

So when I showed up Wednesday to observe the program in action and first sat in on the car-sharing group project demonstration, I realized this was something I should take seriously.

The 40 students are split into four teams, which get three weeks to come up with a project that, as stated above, could impact a billion people over the next 10 years. The presentation I saw was by a group that was calling itself Gettaround, and which has set as its goal the creation of a new car-sharing program that would incentivize car owners to rent out their vehicles to members, while also making it easier for people to find cars to use for short drives in many more places than are served today by companies like ZipCar or CityCarShare. Ultimately, the idea is to spread the program to developing countries around the world, ideally helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the process.

At the heart of Gettaround's proposal was an iPhone application designed to make it possible for members to locate available cars and, then, when physically approaching them, to start the engines via a low-priced kit installed in the vehicles.

The app was awarded the "best money-making iPhone app" prize at a recent iPhoneDevCamp event in Sunnyvale, Calif., and on the strength of that, the team members said that they've already identified interested venture capitalists and are most likely going to pursue the project as a real business upon completion of Singularity University.

Students speak
After the presentation, I got a chance to speak with some of the program's students about their experiences at Singularity University over the last eight weeks.

This is an amazingly diverse group. Among the 40 students, half are from other countries, and 35 percent are women. The average age is 31.

I first talked to Sarah Sclarsic, 25, of Boston. She's a former medical school student who had previously designed her own emerging technologies major at Harvard University and who has a deep interest in health care and public health.

Sclarsic said the Singularity University course has been hectic, "but for me, that's good."

Among the most valuable aspects of the program, she said, is that students are shown, from the beginning, how the various fields being taught here relate to each other or, at least, can cross over in real-world practice.

She pointed out how she had never before thought about how someone working in quantum computing might have their research converge with health care, or how fields like computational biology, quantum computing, and protein folding intersect.

The results of such convergence down the line? That doctors may be able to design new therapies meant for specific patients, a "huge ability we've never had before."

But this isn't the distant future, she pointed out. The main focus of Singularity University is to teach the students how the various disciplines being taught will converge in the near future, and to help them see how to turn these developing technologies into real-world businesses.

For V.J. Anma, an entrepreneur from Seattle (via India), deciding to come to Singularity University, where tuition is $25,000 (though many students get at least some scholarship help), was based on his conclusion that his career building high-tech start-ups would be enhanced through introductions to his fellow high-powered students and the industry leaders and venture capitalists they'd meet. He was also drawn to the idea of discovering how the various technologies being taught all relate to each other.

"It has definitely lived up to my expectation of being able to learn new ideas and connect with people," Anma said.

One phrase he used to describe the intensity of the program, especially the early weeks, was that it was "like drinking from a fire hose."

Oddly, that was the exact same phrase used by another student, Paul Lem, a doctor and biosciences company CEO from Ottawa, Canada. Lem said Singularity University offers its students so many world-class mentors and "so many amazing opportunities" that, yes, "it's like drinking from a fire hose."

Lem, too, lauded the program's focus on teaching the students to "think about where all these exponential technologies (are) going, and to see where they're all going to intersect."

A huge fan of hockey star Wayne Gretsky, Lem said that one invaluable piece of the program is that it helps students visualize the near future and to "skate to where the puck is going to be." In other words, they will--hopefully--be able to determine where the various fields of technology being taught are heading and be among the first to get there to capitalize on the convergence.

"I'm not sure how it's all going to shake out," Lem said, "but mix enough of this stuff together, and really cool stuff is going to happen. Seeds are being planted in the ground, and they're going to germinate and sprout this cool rain forest of incredible things."

To Ismail, this inaugural Singularity University program has been a revelation about what's possible when you bring together so many talented students with the kinds of world class instructors that are possible in Silicon Valley.

He said he thinks the program has been going "phenomenally well" and said that he's been blown away by some of the ingenuity on display.

For example, he recalled that during a discussion on entrepreneurship, one student registered a domain name, threw up some Google AdWords against it, and started generating real revenues. All during a single lecture.

Ismail didn't use the drinking from a fire hose image, but he did say that he's been amazed at seeing the breadth of what's "coming down the pike" in the various fields being taught in the program and that, "I've been surprised by how mentally drained I am at the end of each day."

He also said that, so far, there are five companies likely to be started by groups of students in the program, including the Gettaround team, and that some of the program's founders are already interested in putting money into some of the projects.

The number of such companies emerging from the program should only increase in future years, as Singularity University will expand from 40 students to 120 next year. But despite a larger class, there's still no way that everyone who wants to take part will be able to attend. And with that in mind, Ismail said, the program is considering how it can share its content with the world at large. One possibility is the Ted conference model, in which lectures and discussions may well be posted online for all to see, free of charge.

For now, though, it's all private, and to the students who managed to get in, an extremely valuable experience. They seem acutely aware that they have been granted access to what could be one of the most exclusive technology clubs in the world, and one that will almost certainly bear important fruit in their careers.

"Creativity is about mixing and matching different building blocks together to build something new and powerful," Lem said. "I've never before been in a place where there are so many building blocks that you can move around."

Correction: This post was updated at 5:40 p.m. PDT with the correct spelling of Salim Ismail's name.

CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman drove this Audi Q7 TDI clean diesel SUV for 5,765 miles on Road Trip 2009. Along the way, the vehicle averaged about 21 miles a gallon on the highway, not bad for a car of its size.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

When I first began talking with Audi about road-testing the company's new Q7 TDI clean diesel SUV on Road Trip 2009, I have to admit that I was more than a little bit suspicious of that term.

"Clean diesel." It sounded a lot like another new term of art, "clean coal," and I think we know pretty well that there really isn't much that's clean about coal. Plus, I think many of us have negative associations with diesel, a technology long known for sooty fumes, loud engines, and a whole lot of pollution.

Still, Audi was talking about high fuel efficiency, low emissions, and an engine that rivaled--or even surpassed--the power of its traditional gasoline counterparts. Indeed, there was even the discussion about outdoing hybrids for overall performance in certain driving conditions.

Since this would be a vehicle I knew I would be driving for more than 5,000 miles, I began to do a little research. Before I signed on, I wanted to have a sense that I wouldn't be one of those drivers leaving dark clouds of exhaust all over America's highways, and that the Q7 wouldn't eat up my budget at the fuel pump.

Among the very first items I found online was a 2008 Popular Mechanics article by Ben Hewitt exploring clean diesel and whether it truly is clean in any real sense of the word.

The article's opening paragraph certainly seemed to say that it was:

"Merging with northbound traffic on Interstate 75 just outside Auburn Hills, Mich., I punch the accelerator, quickly swing left into the passing lane and pull forcefully ahead of the cars around me," Hewitt wrote. "In any other ride, on any other gray morning, it'd be just another Interstate moment. But this rush hour, I'm behind the wheel of a preproduction 2009 Volkswagen Jetta, which is powered by a 2.0-liter turbo-charged, direct-injected diesel engine that, even as I leave the speed limit in tatters, is averaging nearly 50 mpg. Equally important, what's coming out of the tailpipe is no dirtier than the emissions from the 35-mpg econoboxes I can now see in my rearview mirror. Speed, fuel efficiency and minimal emissions? These aren't characteristics usually associated with diesel-powered vehicles. But they will be."

I tend to trust Popular Mechanics as merchants of sober journalism, so after reading Hewitt's piece lauding the coming of clean diesel, I decided it was worth trying the Q7 TDI out. After all, I thought, it looked like a pretty spiffy car, and one that might well even get better gas mileage than my own Subaru Outback.

The Audi Q7 TDI that CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman drove during Road Trip 2009, as seen along Utah's scenic byway, Route 128.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Of course, I wanted to hear from Audi itself why they thought clean diesel was a technology to be reckoned with. So I asked the company a number of questions about it, including what, in fact, makes it "clean?"

According to Brad Stertz, Audi of America's corporate communications manager, there are two main reasons, the first being the adoption across the United States of a new, ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel.

"Cleaner fuel has allowed further advancements in the Audi TDI engine," Stertz said in a written response to my questions. "The injection system, with its maximum injection pressure of 2000 bar, an all-round advanced exhaust gas recirculation system and an optimized turbocharging system are at the heart of this evolution. A new feature is the integrated cylinder pressure control. All of these things have combined to ensure each drop of diesel fuel burns more efficiently during combustion, thereby reducing emissions and improving fuel economy. (Each drop of diesel gets 12% more power than a drop of gasoline and that translates into 25-30% better fuel efficiency.) All of these modifications constituted the first step in radically reducing the engine's raw emissions."

Further, he said, the TDI engine significantly reduces nitric oxide emissions through the use of a DeNOx converter, "which dramatically eliminated nitrous oxide, a leading factor in smog."

In the end, he said, "the ultra low emission system allows emissions to be minimized by combining modifications inside the engine with an innovative exhaust gas after-treatment system. The result is reduced fuel consumption and the world's cleanest diesel engine."

Picking up the Q7
On June 20, I picked up the Q7 TDI in Denver. It was an exciting moment since, as you can probably gather, there's no Road Trip without a vehicle. And I knew I'd be in this car for several thousand miles.

The Audi Q7 TDI that CNET News reporter Daniel Terdman drove during Road Trip 2009, as seen through one of the concrete tubes that make up artist Nancy Holt's great Earthwork, the Sun Tunnels.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

For the first few days, I didn't try much of anything requiring me to change any settings or do much beyond accelerating and braking. I was too caught up in trying to get the trip going and adapting to its pace. Not to mention the high-altitude I instantly encountered in Colorado. In fact, within a day of my arrival, I had already gone from a mile high--Denver--to more than 14,000 feet high on Colorado's Mt. Evans.

I was certainly feeling the effects of the altitude, but the Q7, not so much. It prowled its way smoothly to the top of what is North America's highest paved road without so much as a sputter. I guess it's that Alpine heritage.

Driving it later on more traditional highways, my first impression was that the Q7 was quite powerful, and indeed, with its quiet engine, I often found myself traveling more than 90 miles an hour without any obvious sign that I was going so fast. I suppose I should have used cruise control to prevent such moments, but I never did. I preferred to control the vehicle with my foot.

In fact, I wasn't driving for speed, but when I needed it, it was there. Passing slow drivers was where I'd say the Q7 really shined: time and again, I would fly by folks with no apparent effort. I'd simply step on the accelerator, and off we'd go.

Fuel efficiency
In the literature I'd read about the Q7 TDI, I found that its 225 horsepower, 406 lbs. ft of torque, 3.0 liter V6 TDI clean diesel engine with a six-speed Tiptronic automatic transmission, and all-wheel drive, was capable of more than 25 miles per gallon, at least in highway driving. One reviewer even wrote about achieving 30.2 miles per gallon over 1,000 miles.

My performance, over the nearly 5,800 miles I drove the Q7, was not quite as impressive. I got about 21 miles a gallon on the highway, and somewhat less than that, probably in the 17-to-18 mpg range in urban conditions. Fortunately, I was mostly on highways.

Although it only reads 1,765 miles, this is actually the final odometer reading for Road Trip 2009, a full 5,765.4 miles of driving in Audi's Q7 TDI clean diesel SUV.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Still, I was a little surprised at first about getting just 21 mpg on the open road. But I think the reason is that I generally had the air conditioning on, and truth be told, was probably driving a little faster than I should have been. On the other hand, 21 miles per gallon for a vehicle the size of the Q7 is actually rather impressive. My Subaru, a much smaller car, gets 24 on the highway.

And, with a nice, big, gas tank, the Q7 would tend to get about 280 miles or so on just half a tank. That meant that while diesel turned out to be readily available everywhere I went, I never had to worry about running out of fuel.

Luxury driving
As a luxury vehicle, the Q7 certainly stacks up. From the nice job Audi did of seamlessly integrating iPods and Bluetooth phones like an iPhone for safe, handsfree driving while talking on the phone or listening to music, to comfortable seating with plenty of control over seat configuration to a powerful Bang & Olufsen audio system, I pretty much always knew, getting into the Q7, that the next few hours were going to be comfortable and cushy.

It's not that I have a lot of experience with luxury cars to compare the Q7 to. Indeed, I'm certain that other high-end SUVs from manufacturers like Mercedes, BMW, Infiniti, and others, stack up quite nicely against the Q7.

Regardless, it was a pleasure to drive, a pleasure to sit in and just listen to music, escape the rain, or nap in, all of which I did during the trip.

One area where I was a little surprised was in the Q7's initial pickup. At low speeds, it seemed like the car would usually take a second or so to boost acceleration when I put the pedal to the metal. But only at low speeds since, as I wrote above, accelerating past people on the open road couldn't have been more effortless.

I did end up using the Q7's navigation system quite a bit, but I have to say that from time to time, I found it wanting. That was especially true when trying to find specific addresses or destinations in smaller towns; sometimes, the navigation system simply wouldn't acknowledge that an address even existed, and that could be quite frustrating.

But most of the time, it worked just fine, and I enjoyed having the system give me just the information I need (direction, time to arrival, and distance both to the destination and to the next turn) in a little micro-display to the left of the speedometer. Having that information available made it possible to devote the main multimedia interface to music.

On the other hand, if I wanted to be able to see a map of where I was driving, the Q7 easily showed that and a list of songs in the small display to the left. It was nice to have that choice.

Nice and spacious
When packing to head out on Road Trip 2009, I had tried very hard not to bring too much stuff. One benefit of that was that the Q7 usually felt like, no matter how much I had, there was still plenty of room inside.

I didn't quite realize how much room there was until I arrived home and got in my Subaru, which, suddenly, seemed tiny. I'm sure I'll re-adapt to the smaller interior space of the Outback, but for the moment, I'm quite aware of how big the Q7 was inside.

I'm by no means a professional car reviewer, so I'm well aware that my assessment of the Q7 lacks many of the touchstones of the standard review. Regardless, I can say without reservation that my time in the Q7 TDI was thoroughly enjoyable. It's not a cheap car--the model I tested runs about $50,000--so it's far out of my personal range. But for those who have the means to swing such a transaction and who are interested in getting a vehicle that provides luxury, spaciousness, and impressive performance without sacrificing fuel efficiency, I have no qualms recommending the Q7 TDI.

In fact, I wonder if it's too late for me to go back to Denver, pick it back up, and hit the road again.

Click here for the entire Road Trip 2009 package.

The Glenrock Wind Farm, a 237-megawatt project that can produce power for 66,800 households, sits on the site of the former Dave Johnston Mine.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

GLENROCK, Wyo.--Walking across the former site of the Dave Johnston Mine here, about half an hour outside Casper, you'd never know that over the course of 42 years, 104 million tons of coal was taken out of the ground.

But now, instead of having a heavy carbon footprint--and coal certainly does--these rolling hills have a green footprint. Today, the site is home to a 158-turbine wind farm that produces 237 megawatts of power, enough electricity for 66,800 households for a year.

And what's particularly notable about the site is that while the wind farm is among the newest and most state-of-the-art in the country today, it is also likely the first full-scale wind power project to be installed on the site of a former coal mine.

From 1958 until 2000, the Dave Johnston Mine stretched for 9 miles through this otherwise barren landscape. But in the late 1990s, after the mine's operator, Rocky Mountain Power, determined that it was no longer economical to run it, a full-scale reclamation project began.

Photos: Wind farm rises up from former coal mine

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As part of Road Trip 2009, I visited the wind farm to get a first-hand look at how such a scar on the earth can be successfully converted to a graceful and clean power project.

According to Rocky Mountain Power, a division of PacifiCorp that provides power to Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho residents, "Full-scale final reclamation efforts to restore the nearly 9-mile long stretch of land affected by mining began in 1999 and were completed in 2005. Mountains of dirt were moved, miles of land reseeded with native vegetation and major contouring performed in order to return the landscape to its pre-mining appearance. More than 85 million yards of earth were moved to accomplish this feat."

A big part of the reclamation project was providing long-term grazing land and habitat for a variety of wildlife. To that end, Sagebrush and many other forms of vegetation were planted throughout the property as a source of habitat and food for animals such as pronghorned antelope and deer. Further, the team behind the reclamation concentrated on habitat for birds, including building five nesting platforms for eagles and cover for other, smaller bird species.

And more than 120 "rabbitats," rock shelters for rabbits and other small animals, were built around the property.

All told, the Glenrock Wind Farm is home to antelope, deer, mountain lions, foxes, bobcats, rabbits, and golden eagles.

There are about 1,400 antelope and 600 deer roaming the Glenrock Wind Farm.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

While it's easy to link the reclamation of the former coal mine and the new, giant wind farm, Rocky Mountain Power didn't originally set out to convert its property from greenhouse gas-intensive power to green power. Rather, the company realized after the decision was made to shut down the coal mine that the property was ideally suited to building a big wind farm.

And that's because the company already owned the property, had a significant system of transmission lines already installed nearby, and understood that these rolling hills had the wind strength to support a multi-hundred-million-dollar wind project.

But Rocky Mountain Power has by no means abandoned coal. In fact, it still has a coal-processing plant adjacent to the former Dave Johnston Mine, which is one reason the transmission lines are still there. Still, the company, and other power generators, have certainly begun to see the value--and the economics--of wind farms like these. Indeed, the day after I visited the Glenrock Wind Farm, the front page of the Casper, Wyo., newspaper had an above-the-fold front-page headline trumpeting another giant wind farm that will soon be developed in the same area.

Twenty-one species of vegetation
My hosts for the visit to the wind farm were Chet Skilbred, Rocky Mountain Power's vegetation scientist at the property, and Doug Mollet, the director of wind operations at Glenrock Wind Farm. Skilbred explained that as part of the reclamation project, he and his team were required to replace all the indigenous plants that had been there prior to the coal mine. So, a big part of the project was the planting of 21 different species of vegetation, including warm season grasses, cool season grasses, shrubs, and many more.

But, with 158 soaring wind turbines dominating the landscape today, Skilbred told me a joke about the process: "I had no idea my seed mixture included wind turbines."

This is a photograph of an aerial image showing the coal mine when it was fully operational.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

To get back the remaining $2.6 million of an original $56 million bond that was put up when the coal mine was opened, Rocky Mountain Power must monitor the land through 2017 for things like ground water and surface water hydrology, wildlife, and vegetation. But I have to hand it to them: If they hadn't told me there had been a coal mine here, I never would have known.

Instead, I would have been simply overwhelmed by the majesty and breadth of the wind farm. (See video below, but turn your volume down because of the wind noise.) Big enough to be visible from many miles away, the 158 turbines are breathtaking up close. That's in part because, when the tips of the 125-foot-long blades are pointing upward, the turbines are 340 feet tall.

That, of course, casts a large and long shadow. Many of the animals on the property--no matter where we went, we would see some of the 1,400 head of antelope or 600 head of deer bounding about--use those shadows to escape the intense Wyoming sun.

In a sense, because there is so much new habitat for animals, as well as the fact that there is no hunting allowed on the property, the wind farm area is tantamount to a nature preserve, Skilbred said.

Indeed, while there had been wildlife on the property before, life is better for them now, Skilbred said: They are no longer getting stuck in the mud inside the mine.

Company sees energy mixture in its future
When in operation, the coal mine was at least 180 feet deep, and 9 miles long. So to complete the reclamation project, Rocky Mountain Power had to dig up the mine, reconstitute the soil, and replant all the vegetation.

But to Skilbred, the project has been a big success. "You couldn't ask for a better ending for a coal mine," he said, "to go from a carbon footprint to a green footprint."

For Rocky Mountain Power, wind is just one power source, and the company sees a mixture in its future: wind, natural gas, coal, geothermal, hydro and, likely, nuclear.

But here, driving around amid these giant turbines, it's hard to think of anything but wind power. And what's amazing is that the turbines are so big, you feel like you're always right in front of one. In fact, however, they are a minimum of a half-mile apart, east to west, and 600 feet, north to south. Put them too close together, and the vortexes coming off the blades affect the wind flow of other turbines.

The actual placement of the 158 turbines, done in what is sort of like a staggered, Z-shaped configuration, was done by turbine specialists who examined the property and developed placement models based on the terrain, the topography and the prevailing wind conditions.

You might think that a company spending several hundred million dollars on such a project would expect full-time production. But that's not realistic. Mollet said that over the course of a year, the best the company can expect is 40 percent average production. But of course, that's an average. Between November and March, that number is much higher, and between late August and September, it's much lower.

The turbines, while a simple concept, are controlled by advanced electronics. And among the tasks those systems have is shutting down the turbines if the winds go above 60 miles an hour--otherwise, they can be destroyed--as well as figuring out where the wind is coming from and automatically rotating the head so that the blades are always working with the best wind. The heads can spin around three full times in search of the strongest wind, in fact, before the system runs out of wire and must reset itself.

Tracking the wind is a major innovation for modern turbines. In the past, the heads were stationary, and so wind farms had limited production when the wind shifted. But now, Rocky Mountain Power and other companies with such projects can maximize the power production.

$2 million a 'stick'
Mollet said that the cost of the turbines averaged about $2 million "a stick," and that they are intended to last for 20 to 30 years. However, Rocky Mountain Power thinks of them more as 100-year assets, given that they can replace aging systems within the turbines, or even the blades themselves.

Keeping them working properly means constantly monitoring how they're behaving in the wind. So the wind farm utilizes two types of equipment, anemometers and wind vanes to measure wind velocity and direction to ensure that the pitch of the blades is optimal and won't result in them rotating too fast.

This is all new technology, something previous generations of wind farms couldn't take advantage of. But today, wind power is a growing resource and companies like Rocky Mountain Power are demanding new technology. They're also demanding more people who know how to run and maintain these systems, despite there currently being a shortage.

That's why, for example, the company is working with local colleges in the Casper area to create new, two-year associate degree programs in wind turbine technology.

"We're going to build 1,000 turbines in the next 10 years," Mollet said. "We need to grow some people."

Click here for the entire Road Trip 2009 package.

In 1955, the tiny town of Arco, Idaho, became the first community in the 'free world' to be powered by nuclear-based electricity. With the power coming from the nearby Experimental Breeder Reactor I, operated by the Nuclear Reactor Testing Station. Over time, the idea of using nuclear power for municipal electricity fell out of favor. But today, at the Idaho National Lab, the leading U.S. Department of Energy nuclear energy research institution, the idea is very much at the forefront, as scientists and policymakers alike search for ways to provide more power while creating less of a carbon footprint.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

ARCO, Idaho--On July 17, 1955, this tiny town, which might otherwise have forever escaped notoriety of any kind, was put on the map for a very historic reason: It became the first place in the "free world" to be powered by "electrical energy developed from the atom."

The power was generated by an experimental reactor run by the nearby National Reactor Testing Station, and the flipping of the switch seemed to usher in a new era for the United States and the world: the nuclear era.

Over time, the U.S. and other countries grew more and more attracted to the idea of nuclear power as a major alternative to fossil fuel-based power. But by the 1980s and early 1990s, the country had lost its appetite for the fuel source. It was seen as dangerous, too closely related to nuclear weapons, and too productive of nuclear waste, and gradually, the number of working nuclear power plants got smaller and smaller. In many places, in fact, the mere mention of nuclear power will draw a dirty stare.

But in Arco, there is still a civic pride associated with the events of 1955, and today, there is a growing national enthusiasm for the idea that back then, in the heart of the Cold War, seemed so novel: turning to nuclear power as a major source of energy.

Photos: Inside a nuclear reactor

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Nowhere, perhaps, is that enthusiasm more palpable than at the Idaho National Lab (INL), the U.S. Department of Energy's lead nuclear research institution. Located in and around Idaho Falls, Idaho, INL is at the forefront of developing the technology that could bring nuclear back to the grownups' table, and the researchers there--and clearly, some policymakers in Washington, D.C., as well--feel that nuclear is our best bet for providing a good deal of the power needs of both the general population and industry, while at the same time keeping the carbon footprint small.

I visited INL this week as part of Road Trip 2009, and was given the lowdown on why nuclear is thought to be a better energy alternative than ever before, and why the public shouldn't worry about the kinds of safety concerns that were so prevalent after high-profile reactor accidents at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 and in Chernobyl in the Soviet Union in 1986.

My first stop was for a visit with Phillip Finck, INL's associate director for nuclear science and technology (see video below).

Finck explained that the genesis of his lab, which was formed about four years ago, was a feeling that a nuclear renaissance is coming, driven both by a need for new dependable sources of energy and by major climate concerns.

The vision behind the lab, he continued, is to figure out how to address America's carbon dioxide problems with nuclear. Today, roughly one-third of our domestic power output goes into electricity production, a third into transportation and a third into industrial, home heating, and other applications. Of that total output, nearly 85 percent comes from fossil fuels, while only 6 percent to 7 percent comes from hydropower and an equal amount from nuclear. A very small amount comes from other sources, such as biomass, he added.

As a result, the thinking is that nuclear can be a significant part of the solution, and in several ways.

The first, he explained, would be the building of new nuclear power plants; the second, the extension of the lifetimes of the 104 existing nuclear plants in the country; and the third would be using existing--and new--plants to produce new processed heats and liquid fuels that could replace existing carbon-based fuels.

Of course, there would still be the question of how to deal with the nuclear waste from the plants, but Finck said that is also something INL is working hard on. To begin with, INL is looking into ways to make existing reactors produce less waste, and at the same time, the lab, and other research facilities, are working on technologies designed to take spent fuels and through the process of transmutation, reduce their toxicity. The latter would mean, he added, that it could be possible to reuse much of the radioactive waste and reduce the toxicity of the eventual waste by a factor of up to 100.

What this all means is that the time has come, Finck continued, to pursue the development of what he called fourth-generation nuclear power plants. This is a growing research field that is being worked on in as many as 12 countries around the world, including the U.S., Japan, France, and China, all of which are working together to make these next-generation reactors possible.

The criteria of these new reactors are simple, Finck said: they would need to be cheaper, be more sustainable--meaning that they would produce less waste; have constantly improving safety standards; and would have improved proliferation resistance--meaning they would have less and less applicability for nuclear weapons.

Today, this is all in the research stage, but according to Finck, it's possible that the first fourth-generation plant could come online sometime around 2020.

In the meantime, however, there are factors that make even today's nuclear reactors more of a solution for our national energy problems than ever before, he said. To begin with, the operating and safety performance of the nation's plants have never been higher. There haven't been any notable safety problems in the U.S. since Three Mile Island, Finck said, and today, plants are operating at 92 percent efficiency, meaning that they are online 92 percent of the time.

And that has come as a result of better-than-ever training and discipline and means that existing plants are producing power at the equivalent of several entirely new plants, just from that increased efficiency, he argued.

Hydrogen Production
My next stop was to visit with Stephen Herring, the technical director for High Temperature Electrolysis in the Energy Department's office of nuclear energy nuclear hydrogen initiative.

Herring and his team are working on a number of experiments, but their major purpose is to develop methods, using nuclear reactors, of producing hydrogen as a way of improving the quality of existing liquid fuels and to produce more liquid fuels with zero, or at least much less usage of carbon dioxide.

As well, Herring's lab is all about looking for technical answers to problems raised by industry and then finding out, from industry, if they're on the right track.

At the next facility, the Fuel Conditioning Facility, I was shown a series of what are called "hot cells," which are highly radioactive areas behind five feet and nine layers of lead glass.

One of the first things I saw in the hot cells was a series of spent fuel rods from INL's Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR II), which was a formerly working reactor closed down by congressional decree in 1994.

If someone were to go inside the room, my host for the day, Don Miley, said, they "wouldn't see the sun go down. So we're not going in there."

In a similar facility, the Hot Fuel Examination Facility, we saw a different set of hot cells, this time behind four feet of glass, but no less dangerous on the other side (see video below). There, David Petti, the director of the Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR) technology development office, explained that his program is to work on a gas reactor, a "passively safe reactor" that is cooled with helium, and which has a reactor core made of graphite, and which is "tall and skinny" at 28 meters high and 8 meters wide.

Because it's graphite, which absorbs heat, he explained, it's resilient to accidents. That would mean that even in the case of an accident, it would take hundreds of hours to overheat.

"The joke," Petti said, is that in the case of an accident, "the operators could go to lunch, dinner and breakfast before having to figure out what to do."

Developed after Three Mile Island, the VHTR uses a unique kind of fuel: half-inch diameter and inch-long pellets made from huge numbers of compacted microscopic uranium particles covered in three layers of carbon and silicon carbine and then coated in graphite. The pellets, Petti explained, can take heats up to 1600 degrees Celsius without failing.

Inside the reactor, there are millions of these pellets, as well as tennis-ball sized spheres called "pebbles," and when bombarded with neutrons, they fission and create heat.

But the carbon covering the particles protects the uranium up to temperatures of 3,000 degrees Celsius, and the reactor is designed, he said, not to get above 1,600 degrees. "Everything is designed from that worst-case accident," he said, "so heat is always moved, and so it never gets that hot."

Looking into the cooling pond at the Idaho National Labs Advanced Test Reactor, it is possible to see a blue glow coming off of nuclear fuel stored below, which is based on the Cherenkov Effect.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Another goal, he said, is to increase what is called "burnup," or how much of the fission is used for getting power on the grid. Today's water-cooled plants have a burnup rate of around 5 percent, he said, but at the INL's Advanced Test Reactor, they're working on getting that number up to 19 percent.

The idea, then, is to use the VHTR to prove the model and then begin building out similar reactors for use in industry. Ideally, then, companies like Chevron and Dow would license such plants in order to produce heat at constant cost and low carbon footprint, Petti said. And such a buildout of new reactors would make a big difference, he added, because a company like Dow has the same level of hydrocarbon usage as a country like Kuwait.

National Scientific User Facility
The last stop of the day was at the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR), a fully functional reactor that is used in large part by the Navy for a series of experiments, as well as by universities and government and industry researchers.

A big part of the ATR's mission is as the National Scientific User Facility, under which university researchers submit proposals for time in the reactor to conduct experiments. At any given time, there might be about 45 different experiments underway.

And one of the biggest utilities of the ATR is that because its core is geared towards giving every experiment exposure to as many neutrons as they need, it serves as somewhat of a "time machine," explained Frances Marshall, the ATR experiment program manager. That means, she said, that because neutrons erode metals, researchers can see a 20x aging effect on the metals in their experiments due to the bombardment of neutrons inside ATR.

Ultimately, it's too early to know whether the nation and the world will get behind a re-emergence of nuclear power plants as a major energy source. But at INL, the researchers and scientists there are making the argument that such facilities are both safe and energy and cost effective.

If true, a lot more towns like Arco, Idaho could someday see their power provided by nuclear reactors. In the short term, though, the world is hungry for new clean power, and a lot of people think the best answer is nuclear.

For the next several weeks, Geek Gestalt will be on Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be writing about and photographing the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and Colorado. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.

As Road Trip 2009 hit 2,000 miles, CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman found himself in Terra, Utah, on the way to the Utah Test & Training Center, also the home of the Dugway Proving Grounds.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

TERRA, Utah--It seems like has still just started, but the odometer hit 2,000 miles as I was driving through this tiny hamlet.

Terra is near the entrance to the Dugway Proving Grounds, where I was on my way to visit the Air Force's 388th Range Squadron and its Utah Test & Training Center--the largest bombing range in the country,

Since I hit 1,000 miles just a few days ago, I've done quite a few things and, obviously, covered a lot of ground in the Audi Q7 TDI clean diesel SUV I'm road-testing. From Glenwood Springs, Colo., I head south, toward Moab, Utah, and its famous Arches National Park. I also did a very long drive down into Canyonlands National Park, as well as into southern Utah and its border with Arizona where I had my jaw dropped as I encountered the otherworldly Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. I put it all together in one convenient package for your viewing pleasure.

For some reason, the odometer rolled back to 0.0 instead of 2000.0 miles. Still, this was exactly as Road Trip 2009 hit 2,000 miles.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Later, I took a fantastic, meandering drive north toward the Great Salt Lake and ended up deep in Utah's northern desert, where I spent a day at Dugway learning how the U.S. Army works to protect against chemical and biological weapons.

After a night to digest that sobering reality, it was back to Dugway again. But before I could hit the gates--which were in sight--for my visit with the Air Force, the odometer rolled over. I always like to stop and commemorate the round number milestones, such as 1,000 miles and now, 2,000. Unfortunately, for reasons I don't yet understand but which I'm sure were fully preventable, the odometer reached 1999.9 miles and then reverted to 0.0. Still, 2,000 miles it's been. And while I'm exhausted, there are still many more miles and many more adventures to come.

This is the Audi Q7 TDI, a clean diesel vehicle, that Daniel Terdiman is road-testing on Road Trip 2009.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

For the next several weeks, Geek Gestalt will be on Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be writing about and photographing the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and Colorado. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.