Category: tech

General Motors, a hefty if hesitant complier in greener technology to cut down on CO2 emissions, has teamed up with two other companies to further clean up their energy usage.  With approval from the government of Aragon, Spain, GM will soon own the world's largest solar power station.

Veolia Environment and Clairvoyant Energy are designing the solar power station with a capacity of 10 Mega Watts at GM's Zaragoza plant, which assembles more than 480,000 vehicles a year.  According to GM, the power the station conducts from the sun could meet "the demand of 4,600 households with an average annual consumption of 3,300 kWh."

The massive solar array will consist of 85,000 light-weight solar modules with a surface area of 183,000 square meters, and provide for an annual reduction in CO2-emissions of 6.7 thousand tons.  It marks the third solar power station on GM facilities worldwide.  

This information was taken from a GM press release available here, and surely it serves to boast the company's reputation and "good work."  But any addition to green technology is good, and perhaps others can learn from the automaker's example, since apparently powerful financial deals can be arranged among growing green companies like Veolia and Clairvoyant.  

There has been a lot of debate about whether or not it is safe to consume animals reared for consumption that have been cloned. But the argument may be moot as cloned animals and their offspring most likely have already entered America’s food supply.

In January, The Food and Drug Association proclaimed that meat and milk from cloned cattle, swine and goats and their offspring were as safe for consumption as traditional animal products and byproducts. Before that, farmers and ranchers followed a voluntary moratorium on selling cloned sources.

While the FDA proclaimed it safe, it was up to the US Department of Agriculture to assimilate the cloned animal products into the general food supply.

An FDA spokeswoman, Siobhan DeLancey, says that it is theoretically possible that the offspring from clones are already in the food supply.

There are currently about 600 cloned animals in the United States.

Proponents of cloning, like the Biotechnology Industry Organization, feel that cloning may be a way to create disease free animals and agree with the FDA that cloned animals area as safe as their traditional counterparts.

Opponents of allowing cloned animals, including Charles Margulis, a spokesman with the Center for Environmental Health, say that not enough is known about cloning technology to ensure its safety or ensure the ethical treatment of the animals.

It is unlikely that very many cloned animals or their offspring have entered the food supply because of their relatively small number.

"But they would be a very limited number because of the very few number of clones that are out there and relatively few of those clones are at an age where they would be parenting," said Bruce Knight, USDA's undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs.

Despite assurances from the FDA and USDA, many are still unconvinced about the safety of cloned animals. Major food companies including Kraft Foods Inc, General Mills Inc, Campbell Soup Co, Nestle SA, California Pizza Kitchen Inc and Supervalu Inc have joined a list saying they will not use cloned food sources, not only because of the questionable safety but also because of public perception of consuming cloned animals.

Susan Davison, director of corporate affairs with Kraft, said in a letter to the Center for Food Safety, "We must also carefully consider additional factors such as consumer benefits and acceptance ... and research in the U.S. indicates that consumers are currently not receptive to ingredients from cloned animals.”

I couldn't help but think of Buster Keaton movies, old time factories, and black, waxed mustaches after stumbling upon a press release by Clean Power Technologies Inc. today.  It seems the company developed a technology that successfully achieved a 40% reduction in vehicle fuel consumptions, and they owe it to the wonders of steam technology.

Steam technology--something once prominent in the 19th century in Victorian era England, and making up a popular aesthetic movement known as "steampunk," is proving itself to still be practical in our modern times.  CPT engineered the CESAR system, a design that increases fuel economy and reduces emissions by capturing, storing, and reusing otherwise wasted heat from the exhaust of a conventional combustion engine.  The company explains how it works:

A heat exchanger captures waste energy, which is then stored in the form of steam in an accumulator, enabling a vapour engine to use the steam on demand. Once the combustion engine is shut down, vehicle power can be produced solely by the auxiliary vapour engine. The CESAR process will provide all the auxiliary power requirements (e.g. refrigeration and air conditioning) of light cars and trucks, with further potential for application in locomotive and marine applications.

The goal is to now build a second generation of the steam accumulator, making it lighter and more efficient for ordinary automobile use.  Based in East Sussex, CPT conducted successful tests with a Mazda RX8 engine, as well as the more industrial-purposed  Caterpillar C18 diesel engine.

President and CEO Abdul Mitha said, "Combustion engine and steam hybrid technology offers huge potential for green transport and our technology will be able to be adopted by vehicle manufacturers cost-effectively without any government subsidy support or need for new delivery or transporation systems. Our technology is unique, effective and elegant in its simplicity and I am extremely proud of what our dedicated team has achieved."

Now, if the company can start designing vehicles with this sort of Jules Verne-like aesthetic, I'll really be on board:

One of the oldest and most sacred documents known to man is about to become electronically viral.  Israel announced that the earliest written record of the Old Testament is to be digitally photographed in high resolution and then made available to the public via the internet.

Dubbed the "Dead Sea Scrolls," the document consists of 900, 2,000-year-old scrolls of inked parchment and papyrus.  They were discovered 60 years ago by shepherds in caves close to the Dead Sea.  Since then they've been kept under particular conditions in a vault in Jerusalem, and only four specially-trained curators are allowed to handle them.

The Guardian writes:

Now, in a project that could take five years and will cost millions of dollars, the fragments will be photographed first by a 39-megapixel colour digital camera, then by another digital camera in infra-red light and finally some will be photographed using a sophisticated multi-spectral imaging camera...

Eventually all the fragments will be available online, and readers will be provided with translations, scholarly interpretations and bibliographies for academic study.  The documents merge with modern technology is especially fascinating, as they were written in a time that couldn't be further different from our own.  Some of the writings come from a religious sect that existed in the time of Jesus, and all together the scrolls are made up of the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek languages.

Bringing the scrolls to the digital era may even shed light on new revelations.  The Guardian reported the findings of Simon Tanner, an academic from King's College:

The new infra-red photography has picked out letters that had not previously been visible to the naked eye. "The ink stays dark and the leather becomes light and suddenly you can see text that you may no have been able to see," said Tanner. "We have revealed some text that has not been previously seen by scholars."

If the Dead Sea Scrolls start sending friend requests through MySpace, we could very well be in the most surreal time of mankind.

 Who knows what surprises could be in store for you from your latest eBay purchase? Andrew Chapman, who purchased a computer for only £35.88 on eBay this week, found one million bank customer’s personal information stored onto it.  He's getting a bit more than what he paid for to say the least!

Chapman, a 56-year old IT manager from Oxford, was browsing the hard disk when he discovered “highly sensitive information on American Express, NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland customers stored on the machine’s hard drive.” (Dan Newling, The Daily Mail)

The data includes names, addresses, mobile phone numbers, bank account numbers, sort codes, (European) credit card numbers, mother’s maiden names and even signatures. The information has been described as a ‘data thief’s treasure chest,’ with anything anyone would ever need to clear out a persons bank account and assume a false identity.

The breach of security may spell trouble for the United Kingdom’s Data Protection Act, which promises to keep all personal information of this kind under lock and key. This scandal is featured merely days after the British Home Office admitted to losing the details of 127,000 criminals.

Liberal Democrat spokesman Tom Brake says, “This is yet another example of a seemingly trusted organization appearing to be sloppy with people’s personal information. This kind of data is invaluable and needs to be treated as such.” American Express, NatWest and the Royal Bank of Scotland all admit there needs to be more established data on how many customers have been affected by the travesty before they decide how to proceed. Financial Services Authority, a company involved in the scandal, could also be fined for its irreparable behavior. 

After the eBay purchaser turned the information in to the police, a second computer from the same site has reportedly gone missing, meaning even more information could be out on the loose. It’s likely that every individual involved in the data will have to change their credit card and bank information after all is said and done.  

Special effects are about to to reach a pinnacle in realism for Hollywood movies.  Image Metrics, a huge company in the realm of facial animation, just created the most photo-realistic computer-generated (CG) face yet known.  

At the Siggraph Expo in Los Angeles, they recently demonstrated an animation of actress Emily O'Brien that has entertainment industry types in a joyous uproar.  The video, available here, depicts a short a video clip of O'Brien sitting and engaging in a dialogue that, in my opinion, looks just like an HD image of the real deal.  

According to an Image Works press release, the animation was created with a patented high-resolution image scanning process:

This newest process from the ICT Graphics Lab places the actor inside a sphere of LED lights, illuminating the talent with a set of polarized spherical gradient illumination patterns while a pair of high-resolution digital cameras takes around 15 photographs in under three seconds.

These patterns allow the shine of the skin to be photographed independently from the main skin tone so that precise colors and characteristics can be calculated at hundreds of measurements per square millimeter. The resulting CG models provide unprecedented detail of natural facial expressions - down to skin pores and fine wrinkles - with perfectly aligned shading information that allows photo-real faces to be rendered under any illumination and viewpoint with standard rendering packages.

David Barton, Image Metrics' producer said, "Out goal was to create a completely convincing, animated computer-generated face...Given the caliber of creative work and talent in our industry, it was a challenging goal, but one we were confident we could accomplish..."  Currently ICT's scanning method is the only one capable of acquiring such high-definition images. 

Expect James Cameron, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg to make some jaw-dropping films in the coming years.  

A while back we reported (with some skepticism) a report coming out of China that said that country would be producing over 100 gigawatts of wind by 2020, a 1,500% increase.

In the future, advertisers will likely find a way to beam images directly into our brains. While that is fortunately a long way off, Holosonics has developed what they call “Audio Spotlight Systems” to make sound audible only in certain designated locations.

Created by Dr. Joseph Pompei, the founder of Holosonics, the technology works by focusing sound into a narrow beam, just like light. In this way, advertisers can get messages to customers in certain parts of a store that can’t be heard in other parts.

The technology has several practical uses currently in play -- museums and libraries can keep large spaces quiet while offering Audio Spotlight systems in specific areas. The equipment might also prove useful for home audio systems, and end the time-honored battle of television volume or choice of music.

Reactions in test stores have varied from amazement to fright.

To learn more about the specifics of the technology, click here

Across the country, windmills are starting to appear as alternative energy sources are explored. But along with new energy, new feuds are starting as the unsightly and noisy windmills tear families apart.

In upstate New York, farmer John Yancey hates the 24-hour sights and sounds of the windmills.  His father recently allowed an energy company to place seven of the white towers on his land. Ed Yancey sold out for his family, a minimum of $6,600 for each turbine. But the younger Yancey says all he wants is “to be able to get a good night's sleep and to live in my home without these monstrosities hovering over me."

Tug Hill project, where the Yancey’s farm is located, is the largest area of windmill turbines in the state of New York. T. Boone Pickens and Al Gore have hailed the windmills as the wave of the future.

But like John Yancey, whose family have farmed Tug Hill, for generations,  more and more small towns grappling with big money and big wind are asking, "Is it worth destroying families, pitting neighbor against neighbor, father against son? Is it worth destroying a whole way of life?"

As gas prices and global warming concerns rise, The U.S Department of Energy recently released a report that examines the feasibility of harnessing wind power to provide up to 20 percent of the nation's total electricity by 2030. U.S. wind power plants now produce less than 1 percent.

For many, the income from the windmills is lucrative enough to risk upsetting family and friends; even when the sun goes down and red spots gleam eerily atop the windmills.

Read the full article here

New mind-reading research funded by the U.S. military causes new suspicions concerning their motives. The outfit is claimed to be using the research in hopes that its findings could lead to “a gadget capable of translating the thoughts of soldiers who suffered brain injuries in combat or even stoke patients in hospitals.” (Alicia Chang, Associated Press) This is all very well and admirable; however, the criticism lies in the worry that such technology could also be used in interrogating the enemy.

Scientists at the University of California, Irvine, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Maryland, who’ve been given 4 million dollars by the Army, are studying brain signals in hopes of discovering what a person is thinking and to whom the person wants to direct “the message.” They use brain wave-reading technology called electroencephalography, (try saying that 5 times fast) which can measure the brain’s electrical activity when electrodes are placed on the scalp. They conduct tests with volunteers who wear an electrode cap. The subject is asked to think of a word chosen by the scientists, who then try to analyze the person’s thought process.

As far as using this concept on the enemy in spy games, most researchers on the project are skeptical. “To have a person think in a free manner and then figure out what that is, we’re years away from that,” said lead researcher Michael D’Zmura from UC Irvine. He believes such a feat would require “extensive training by people trying to send a message.” He doesn’t believe thoughts can be forced out. “This will never be used in a way without somebody’s real, active cooperation,” he added.

Scientists hope they will someday be able to develop thought-recognition software, but are far from being able to use the technology and are still in the “proof of principle stage” according to John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, based out of Virginia.