Wed, 01 Sep 2010 23:45:09 +0000

Porsche’s concept car from the Geneva Motor Show is going to production with 78 miles per gallon.  The 918 Spyder hybrid supercar can drive up to 16 miles on pure electric.  Other specs include 500 horsepower, 0 to 62 miles per hour in 3.2 seconds, and a top speed of 198 miles per hour.  Though [...]

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 18:33:31 +0000

Not all countries have their own carbon-fuel sources to rely on, but some European countries are finding ways to become less reliant on importing oil and gas by tapping into their own renewable resources. Portugal is investing in wind and solar energies at a rapid rate and has even become an energy exporter. [...]

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 19:10:54 +0000

As another reminder of the need to reconstruct America’s power grid in order to move forward with renewable energy sources, wind surges in Oregon are forcing grid managers to shut off the wind farms.  Storms can cause production to spike so much that the power lines just can’t transport it all out fast enough.  When [...]

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:48:43 +0000

Data centers are major power-hogs in industry, so when companies look at how to reduce their carbon footprint, they become targets of scrutiny.  The energy they use goes not only to powering the center, but also to cooling it.  In fact, $18.5 billion was spent on running the data centers of 2005, and that cost [...]

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 17:56:05 +0000

Unfinished with finals week, seventeen Northwestern University students packed up on June 10, 2010 and began our drive down to Texas as NUsolar.  After two days on the road, the team (half of which was made up of freshmen) arrived at the MotorSport Ranch in Cresson, Texas.  This is where solar cars came from across [...]

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 14:26:12 +0000

Somewhere, parents are eating their words after years of telling their children not to play with their food. In order to teach students about the field of microfluidics, three researchers from the University of British Columbia decided to turn to a delicious, wiggly gelatin – JELL-O. But first, what is microfluidics, anyway? The [...]

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 20:48:11 +0000

In my last posting, I introduced some issues at the intersection of robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and morality. While I’ve long been interested in this nexus, the most immediate impetus for the posting was meeting Peter Singer, author of the excellent book “Wired for War” about the rise of unmanned warfare, while simultaneously working for [...]

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:07:57 +0000

Soon to be fact, if researchers at Virginia Tech are to be believed. A group of undergraduates working with Dennis Hong at Virginia Tech’s Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory are making a car that can be driven by the blind and already have a working prototype in place. This project was initiated by the National Federation [...]

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:05:41 +0000

Two parts of my life recently collided. Two ironies, really. First, after growing up off the grid, without TV (or school, for that matter, but that’s another story), with parents who had only disdain for TV and popular culture, I find myself working for a new cable TV show.  The show, called “Caprica,” is about [...]

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 20:39:37 +0000

I recently had lunch with a friend who had just returned to Chicago after a few months at Intel Labs. During an interesting discussion on future directions in computer technology, he asked me to google the term “Light Peak Technology.” It turns out that Light Peak technology is the name of a revolutionary optical cable technology [...]