The new wave of Silicon Valley start-ups

Silicon Valley is the southern part of San Francisco's Bay Area, stretching from the city to San Jose. This is one of the top research and development centres in the world; wherever you look someone is having a good idea.According to the Wall Street Journal, half of the 20 most inventive towns in the US are in Silicon Valley.Nowadays the place is not just about silicon chip makers; all technology is here.It is a string of satellite towns full of clever people, incredibly successful tech companies, and hopefuls looking to make the big time.This place was the centre of the dotcom bubble of the mid 90s, when investors were pouring money into anything with a dot in the title. Of course it was also the hardest hit when the bubble burst. For every surviving big player, hundreds went under.Now the optimism is back, along with the money.
Cash call Each week there are meetings, networking events and presentations in which hopeful start-ups attempt to garner interest from investors. Vincent Lauria, Tech meetup organiser said: "Hi-tech meetups have actually grown phenomenally. We started out pretty small, six people first met up. We met every month and kept growing gradually, bigger and bigger until it hit critical mass and started growing on its own."We are now over 1,500 people," he said."I try to pick companies that either I feel are on a very good course to do well, or have a really unique idea that nobody else is really touching."It is often the simple things that take off. Take Data Robotics which makes high capacity home storage systems called Drobo.Geoff Barrall, Data Robotics boss, said: "Today's storage solutions are all very intensive; you have to move data around, you have to copy files, you have to worry about backing up data. "The Drobo does all of that for you. So once the data is on Drobo it's going to worry about keeping it safe, it's going to worry about letting you add more storage and grow into the future without you having to do anything at all."Simplifying storage and back-up has tapped into a big market. Data Robotics claims it is selling its $500 (£250) boxes faster than it can make them.
Green machines It is not just computer technology that folks in the valley are working on. Green technology is winning investors too, said Drew Clark from IBM Capital Ventures."I think [one of] the major drivers in today's buzz in Silicon valley is clean tech or energy tech or energy 2.0, whatever we are calling it these days," said Mr Clark."If you look at venture capital statistics it is now the third highest place that money is going into.One of the green innovations dreamed up is a highly efficient solar panel. The panels produced by SolFocus reflect sunlight to a central point to harness the energy.Unlike flat panels it means the expensive materials used to convert the energy to electricity are concentrated in one place. SolFocus claims to use 1/1000th of the area needed by flat panels, which keeps the manufacturing costs low.Gary Conley, SolFocus explained: "These cells have efficiency over double that of the best silicon today. We concentrate the sun 500 times on that small amount of cell, hence the 1000th of the amount of material used, or the expensive part."When there is no sun, or you can't see the solar disc, our panels produce zero power. They only produce power in bright sunny locations or when the sun is out."Contracts have already been signed with the Spanish government for a large scale solar farm in Southern Spain.

Nissan studies drink-proof cars

Japanese carmaker Nissan has unveiled new technology designed to detect whether a driver has been drinking.

It includes odour sensors that monitor breath, detectors which analyse perspiration of the palms, and a camera that checks alertness by eye scan.

If the system thinks a driver has drunk too much, the car will not start.

Nissan, Japan's third-largest carmaker, says the technology is still being developed, but it will eventually be introduced to reduce road deaths.

The firm says it has no specific timetable, but it aims to cut the number of fatalities involving its vehicles to half the 1995 levels by 2015.

Nissan general manager Kazuhiro Doi said the sensitivity of the technology still needed to be worked out.

"If you drink one beer, it's going to register, so we need to study what's the appropriate level for the system to activate," he told Reuters news agency.

Measuring sea level rise from space

Meteorologists and climate modellers are eagerly awaiting the launch of a satellite that will be able to measure sea level rise to an unprecedented degree of precision.
Jason-2, scientists hope, will help shed light on the oceans' dynamics by measuring the topography - the "hills" and "valleys" - of the world's seas every 10 days.
The satellite's radar altimeter, Poseidon-3, is designed to measure the sea level height to within a few centimetres. It will do this from its orbit more than 1,300km above the Earth.
Data collected by Jason-2's instruments will help researchers develop more precise forecasts, improve hurricane path projections and reveal how climate change is affecting ocean currents.
"There is more to the dynamics of sea level rise than just a single, global rise," explained Mikael Rattenborg, director of operations for the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (Eumetsat).
"Although we have seen, overall, global sea level rise, there are areas that have decreased for long periods, followed by an increase.
"We can only analyse the significance of regional variability of sea level rise if we have altimetry data available to us," he added. "Jason-2 will help us model and explain this evolution."
The satellite will be able to map 95% of the world's ice-free oceans every 10 days, something that would be impossible using survey vessels on the surface of the planet.
As well as observing variations in sea levels, Mr Rattenborg said the mission would also help researchers map seasonal and inter-annual ocean patterns, such as the Pacific's El Nino effect.
"This has a profound impact on the weather, not only in that region but globally. We can study this phenomenon in much greater detail with the altimetry data.
"All of these processes are coupled to climate analysis, which is the key reason why Eumetsat is interested in altimetry."
Storm tracking
Eumetsat operates and collects data from satellites on behalf of Europe's national meteorological agencies, such as the UK's Met Office, to compile forecasts and climate models.
Mr Rattenborg said the sea surface topography recorded by Poseidon-3 would also reveal tell-tale signs that would help predict the path and intensity of hurricanes.
He used Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the US Gulf coast in 2005, as an illustration.
"It passed over the Florida peninsula into the Gulf of Mexico as a strong hurricane (category three), but not an intense one.
"But suddenly, about 24 hours before it hit New Orleans, it developed into a category five hurricane.
"If you look at the sea surface temperature in the Gulf at the time Katrina passed over, it is fairly homogenous, so it does not explain why the system developed so rapidly."
Mr Rattenborg said the answer could be found in something called the Tropical Cyclone Heat Potential.
"It is a measurement of the heat energy available in the deep layer of the ocean," he explained.
"Altimetry provides us with a measurement of this potential, because the (sea) surface topography reacts to the changes to the heat content beneath the ocean.
"In the area of the Gulf, south of New Orleans where Katrina passed, there was a sea-surface height anomaly, which corresponds to a very deep layer of very warm water.
"This clearly shows that by looking into the ocean, we can monitor the availability of heat energy."
But it is not only the thermal energy stored deep within the oceans that causes the variation in sea level, gravity also has an influence.
The subterranean geology is not uniform, some regions are more dense than others. This causes a subtle but significant shift in the Earth's gravitational force.
To measure the influence of gravity and its impact on ocean topography and currents, the European Space Agency (Esa) plans to launch an arrow-like satellite called the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (Goce). If we want to improve our climate models then we need to improve our knowledge of how the oceans move, and Goce will help us do that," mission scientist Dr Mark Drinkwater, from Esa, told BBC News, combining the data gathered by Goce and Jason-2, meteorologists and climate scientists will advance their understanding of the physical factors influencing the oceans and atmosphere.Jason-2 is the latest addition to a series of satellites fitted with altimeters to map the sea surface.The first, Topex/Poseidon, was launched in 1992 as an experiment to assess the effectiveness of high-accuracy altimeters to measure ocean dynamics from space.Its success paved the way for the Jason-1/Poseidon-2 mission, launched in 2001.Lessons learned from the previous missions have allowed the team building the Poseidon altimeter instrument for Jason-2 to improve its accuracy and reduce the margin of uncertainty to within 2.5cm.

Giant truck set for sky-high task

A colossal 28-wheel truck that will help build a major telescope array in the Chilean Andes has successfully passed a series of tests.The giant vehicle will heave antennas - each weighing 115 tonnes - up a mountainside to the site of the array, a plateau 5,000m above sea level.The Alma telescope will study the night sky at sub-millimetre wavelengths.Astronomers say Alma will illuminate one half of the Universe that has hitherto been shrouded in darkness. Alma stands for the Atacama Large Millimeter Array.When it is completed in 2012, the £470m ($900m) array will be able to observe some of the first galaxies to form after the Big Bang, and catch planets in the act of forming around young stars.The telescope project will initially comprise 66 high-precision antennas, installed at the high-altitude Llano de Chajnantor site in Chile's Atacama desert.Each antenna has a dish measuring about 12m across and a surface engineered to be accurate to within 20 microns (millionths of a metre).
Power and precision The dishes will be electronically combined to provide astronomical observations which are equivalent to a single large telescope of tremendous size and resolution.Alma will be able to probe the Universe at millimetre and sub-millimetre wavelengths with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution, with an accuracy up to ten times better than the Hubble Space Telescope.The antenna transporter is 10m wide, 20m long and 6m high. It weighs 130 tonnes and has as much power as two Formula 1 engines.
The first of two vehicles has been put through its paces at the firm Scheuerle Fahrzeugfabrik near Nuremberg in Germany.The custom-built colossus will be able to transport a 115-tonne antenna and set it down on a concrete pad within millimetres of a prescribed position.Engineers have tested whether the transporter can safely pick up the 115-tonne antenna and very carefully settle it back down again."As it picks up the antenna, the transporter puts its arms under the armpits of the antenna, lifts it up and pulls it slowly up a ramp. It gradually lifts the antenna higher and higher and eventually pulls it right into the vehicle," said Adrian Russell, Alma project manager for North America."When it gets to where the antenna is being relocated, the antenna very slowly and carefully slides back dow. On top of the world He told the BBC News website: "It can then be manipulated left and right, and slowly lowered on to the antenna foundation. That entire mechanism has to be tested very carefully with dummy weights, as well as the independent steering of the wheels."The vehicles will have to haul their heavy cargo safely from the 2,900m-high Alma base camp, where the antennas are assembled, to the array site, which lies at 5,000m - about half the cruising altitude of a 747.The vehicles must therefore be extremely powerful, as the journey will make extraordinary demands on the two 500kW diesel engines.Because of the low oxygen content of the air at 5,000m, vehicle operators will need to wear portable oxygen canisters. The backrests of the driver seats are shaped to allow the driver to wear his oxygen tank while driving.Llano de Chajnantor was chosen as the site for Alma because it is so dry. Water vapour absorbs sub-millimetre waves, interfering with observations using the telescope.If all the water vapour above Chajnantor were collected, it would form a pool just 1mm deep.n the ramp so it is overhanging the edge of the vehicle.

The Astronaut’s Drinking Rules

After a NASA report suggested that some astronauts may have flown while intoxicated, a furor erupted, and NASA ’s alcohol rules — or lack of them — came to light.
The rules regarding alcohol and astronauts are somewhat vague, NASA officials said Friday at a news conference. Its alcohol rules for space flight have historically been the rules it applies to the use of its aircraft, informally carried over into the realm of space flight.
With the new report, NASA announced an interim alcohol policy based on rules for the T-38 training jets that astronauts enjoy the free use of. Those rules call for no alcohol consumption within 12 hours of a flight, and “astronauts will neither be under the influence nor the effects of alcohol at the time of launch.” NASA officials said at the news conference that during the quarantine period of about a week before a flight, alcoholic beverages were available at crew quarters.
They also said that the schedule the day before a launch was very busy, and that the astronauts were in close contact with medical personnel, so that it was hard to understand how such incidents could occur unnoticed. There’s no indication in the new report as to when the alleged incidents occurred: In the last couple of years, in the changed safety climate after the Columbia accident? Before Columbia? Before Challenger? So it’s impossible to know the severity of the problem.
There’s a long tradition of two-fisted hard living among military pilots. Tom Wolfe wrote in “The Right Stuff” about Chuck Yeager having a few drinks at the Muroc hangout, Pancho’s, two nights before breaking the sound barrier and going riding horses with his wife and having an accident that broke two ribs.

Home cells signal mobile change

Standing in the corner of the room; being exiled to the bottom of the garden; or teetering precariously on a chair.People will go to extraordinary lengths to find that elusive one bar of signal that will allow them to make a mobile phone call.But soon the days of despair that occur when you arrive home only to find your new handset does not get any coverage in your house may be over.There is a new home technology on the block, known as femtocells, and if the hype is to be believed, it will end signal problems forever."People I talk to say 'I want one now'," said Stephen Mallinson, CEO of UK femtocell producer ip.access.
Technology trial The paperback sized-boxes are essentially compact, personal, mobile phone base stations that plugs straight in to your internet connection.Make a phone call on your mobile and, instead of routing the call through the network of base stations and masts that cover most of the country, it sends the call over the internet using your broadband connection.Until now, they have been the preserve of big business, but sometime in the next two years they could come bundled with your mobile phone contract. "We always had the vision that the technology would be cheap enough to be in the home," said Mr Mallinson.The company has just launched a 3G femtocell, targeted directly at home users, which could also bring high-speed mobile broadband into the home.It is one of several offerings from companies such as Airwalk or Ubiquisys, which recently rose to prominence when search giant Google invested in the firm.At the same time, large networks operators such as Vodafone and Softel have announced they will trial the technology.And according to research firm ABI, by 2012 there could be 70 million femtocells installed in homes around the world serving more than 150 million users.But for the network operators at least, the technology goes beyond just mopping up those people who cannot make phone calls on their network."In a sense it's mobile taking on wi-fi," said Mike Roberts, principal analyst at research firm Informa Media and Telecoms.
Call hassle Femtocells pack high speed 3G technology or High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) inside, which can have download speeds of up to 7Mbps, similar to many home broadband offerings."In developed markets, their [the network operators] business has matured and they're looking for any growth opportunities they can. Taking on fixed broadband is one of those and femtocells are a great weapon to do that," said Mr Roberts.According to the Oxford Internet Survey, 67% of the UK's population are current internet users and 29% have wi-fi access.Grabbing an increasing share of this market is attractive to mobile operators, said Mr Roberts, and one way of doing that would be to build HSDPA straight into laptops"That way you can connect to your femtocell and you can use it everywhere else as well - that's compelling," he said.But the rise of the femtocell also has other advantages to the mobile networks.Over the last few years various technologies have converged that threaten to make a dent in mobile operator's profits.For example, wireless connectivity on handsets along with VoIP allows people to cut the cost of calls by bypassing the mobile phone network.Companies such as Skype, Jajah and Truphone have all got in on the action."VoiP over wi-fi is starting but it's still early days," said Mr Roberts. "It's a real hassle to use and it's nowhere near the quality, reliability or usability of cellular voice."If mobile operators can get femtocells into the home quickly, then they can prevent the rise of VoIP over home wi-fi."It's kind of like the mobile operator empire striking back," said Mr Roberts.

Mac and iPhone sales boost Apple

Apple has made strong three-month profits, helped by Mac and iPhone sales, even though the phones were only available for two days of the quarter.Apple sold 270,000 iPhones on the first two days of their US launch.Net income was $818m (£398m) between April and June, up 73% from the same period of 2006.Apple shares have risen 62% since the start of the year when chief executive Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone and predicted 10 million sales in 2008. But the shares fell on Tuesday after AT&T, the exclusive US carrier, said it had activated 146,000 iPhones in the first two days after the 29 June launch.Analysts had been expecting the number sold in the first weekend would be closer to 500,000.
Direct sales Mr Jobs says he is confident of selling his millionth phone within the first three months.Apple said it shipped 1.76 million Macintosh computers in the quarter, a rise of 33% from a year earlier, while shipments of iPods were 9.82 million, up 21% from the same period of 2006.The results were also boosted by lower commodity prices and more sales being made in Apple stores, according to its chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer."We did benefit in the quarter from a favourable commodity environment and better mix of direct sales as well," he said.

Economy growing despite energy, housing

WASHINGTON - The economy registered modest growth in the early summer, considering how consumers and some businesses were buffeted by both high gasoline prices and the sour housing market.
That’s the gist of a Federal Reserve region-by-region survey, released Wednesday, which also showed the economy clearly has emerged from a rut at the beginning of the year and is now growing, albeit slowly.
On the inflation front, consumer prices continued to increase “at a moderate rate,” the Fed report said. “Almost every region said that oil and gasoline prices were either rising, high or an issue,” it noted. Gas prices have climbed past $3 a gallon nationwide.
The biggest threat to the economy is if inflation doesn’t recede as Fed policymakers anticipate, Bernanke explained, when he delivered the Fed’s midyear economic assessment to Capitol Hill.
Information from the Fed survey will figure into discussions at the central bank’s next meeting, Aug. 7. Economists predict that the Fed at that time will again vote to hold a key interest rate at 5.25 percent, where it has stood for more than a year.
Consumer spending — a major shaper of overall economic activity — continued to grow in the early summer. However, a number of Fed regions reported that high gas prices restrained purchases. And, five of the Fed’s 12 regions said that retail sales of housing-related items — such as furniture and home repair materials — were weak or declining. Tourism reports, meanwhile, were mostly positive.
The economy has rebounded and is expected to clock in at a pace of 3 percent or better for the April-to-June period. The government will release the second quarter’s results on Friday. Growth in the second quarter is expected to be powered by a revival in business investment, while consumer spending is expected to be somewhat subdued.
The housing slump, which started last year, continued to be felt in most areas.
Most regions said home building declined and residential real-estate activity was weak. New York, however said housing markets were “mixed but stable.” The Cleveland and Richmond regions said sales increased slightly. Reports on home prices around the country were mixed, the Fed said.

Toyota to Test Plug-In Hybrid, Rivaling G.M.

Toyota Motor Company said Tuesday that it was testing hybrid vehicles with rechargeable batteries in the United States and Japan, setting up a direct challenge with General Motors to develop the industry’s first plug-in hybrids.
Toyota’s announcement is its first formal confirmation that it is ready to test plug-in hybrid vehicles, which environmentalists say may prove to be cleaner and more fuel-efficient than current hybrids.
In recent months, Toyota executives have said the company had plug-in hybrids under development, but would not give more details.
Toyota already is the world’s biggest producer of conventional hybrid-electric vehicles, which run off a gasoline motor and a battery. Indeed, for years, executives had played down the prospects for plug-in hybrids, saying consumers preferred the convenience of vehicles that did not need to be recharged.
It has sold more than 1 million hybrid vehicles worldwide, including 750,000 Prius cars, since the Prius went on sale in Japan in 1998. Prius became available in the United States, its largest market, in the year 2000.
Industry experts say plug-in hybrid vehicles, known as PHEVs, may provide a longer battery life and prove more environmentally friendly than current hybrids.
Toyota said it would provide prototype versions of plug-in hybrid vehicles to researchers at the University of California, Irvine, and the University of California, Berkeley. It also said that the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport in Japan had approved the testing of plug-in hybrid vehicles on public roads in Japan.
Toyota is the only Japanese auto company thus far that has requested permission to test plug-in hybrids in Japan.
The prototype plug-in hybrids will be powered by two oversize packs of nickel-metal hydride batteries that are meant to simulate the kind of power Toyota expects future versions of the batteries to yield. The packs are capable of storing significantly more energy than the kind of battery found on the Prius, Toyota said.

Robot to carry out heart surgery

A robotic arm able to carry out an intricate life-saving heart operation is being pioneered by UK surgeons.The robot is used to guide thin wires through blood vessels in the heart to treat a fast or irregular heartbeat.Doctors at St Mary's Hospital in London say it will reduce risk for patients and increase the number of procedures they can carry out.More than 20 patients have been operated on with the robot, which is only one of four in use in the world.During the procedure, known as catheter ablation, several thin wires and tubes are inserted through a vein in the groin and guided into the heart where they deliver an electric current to specific areas of heart muscle.The electric current destroys tiny portions of heart tissue which are causing the abnormal heartbeat.With the Sensei robot, surgeons use a joystick on a computer console to more accurately position and control the wires, which often need to be placed in locations that are difficult to reach.In the future the system could be automated so the robot guides the wires to a point in the heart selected by the doctor from images on a computer screen.
Poor access
When done by hand the operation is highly skilled and a shortage of clinicians able to carry out the surgery means only 10% of people with the condition, called atrial fibrillation, are treated this way.
Tony Blair underwent the operation by hand in 2004.
Around 50,000 people develop atrial fibrillation, which is a major cause of strokes and heart failure, every year and it has been calculated to cost the NHS almost 1% of its entire annual budget.
Numbers are expected to increase even more due to an ageing population, a rising number of people with chronic heart disease and better diagnosis.

Global Positioning by Cellphone

THE man in the Verizon Wireless commercials wearing thick-rimmed glasses may be constantly asking, “Can you hear me now?” But the most commonly asked question over mobile phones might actually be, “Where are you now?”.
The combination of global positioning systems and cellphones may make that question moot. Cellphone carriers are now mandated by the Federal Communications Commission to provide location information for 911 emergency use. Many now have G.P.S. chips that can pinpoint the phone’s location to within a few feet, though others rely on triangulation, a technology that approximates location based on proximity to cellphone towers.
Even some phones without G.P.S. can help you navigate. The iPhone from Apple, for example, cannot precisely locate you or track you as you drive. But its Google Maps feature can be used to plan a route by entering a start address and a destination. It displays directions or a map.
But as more phones come equipped with a small and relatively inexpensive G.P.S. microchip, the technology is being used for all sorts of location services that the carriers and other companies offer for additional fees. The Disney Family Locator service on a Disney-branded mobile phone uses G.P.S. to track a child’s whereabouts. Parents buy special child and parent phones. The child’s phone is programmed to beam locations to the parent’s phone, which has the ability to display and map the approximate street address where the child is at any given time.
Verizon’s child locater, called Chaperone, adds a “geofencing” service that allows a parents to define an area — such as a school or baby sitter’s house — where the child is permitted. The parents receive an alert on their handset when the child’s cellphone enters or leaves the zone.
The G.P.S. phones have adult applications, too. Wherify Wireless offers a line of G.P.S.-enabled phones to track elderly relatives or employees. People doing the tracking can locate the trackees through a Web or cellphone interface or by calling the company’s toll-free number and providing the operator with a password.
The drawback to turning a cellphone into a G.P.S. device is that cellphone screens are generally smaller than stand-alone G.P.S. units and a regular cellphone keypad is not ideal for typing in a destination address. On some phones, you can get knocked out of G.P.S. mode if a call comes in. That can be annoying, especially if you need to take the call to confirm where you’re going or when you’ll get there.
A G.P.S. phone enables many other services. Certain phones using the Sprint/Nextel and Verizon networks can use Bones in Motion’s BiM Active application to track your speed, location, elevation and calories burned while walking, running or cycling. You can view your statistics and a map of your route on the phone or a Web page.
Most G.P.S. navigation systems for cars only receive location information, but Dash Navigation, a Silicon Valley start-up, is now testing its Dash Express, which instead of adding G.P.S. to a cellphone adds a cellphone signal to a G.P.S. unit. The cellular radio transmits information both ways between the car and Dash’s servers. Every Dash unit continuously transmits its location and speed so, once there are a sufficient number of systems deployed to create a network effect, the company can determine the traffic flow on any road where Dash users are driving, including surface streets.
Navigation systems will not only route you around traffic, but take you to restaurants it thinks you will like. The technology for this already exists, but, says, Mr. Williams, “most people won’t use it until they’re confident that it will work properly almost all the time.”

Vibrating rings guide city tourists

Two vibrating rings which can guide the wearer around a city via global positioning satellite (GPS) have been unveiled by a British designer at the Royal College of Art.
The rings are the invention of Gail Knight, who developed them as a way of helping women feel safe in areas they are unfamiliar with.
"I admit that, as it is rings, they're obviously more attractive to women - and I'd been looking at women and their position in the public sphere, and how safe they feel in a public environment," she told BBC World Service's Culture Shock programme.
Buzz for direction
Not all of the necessary electronics could be put into the rings, so the device controller is worn either around the neck or clipped on to clothing. The controller has a display of eight digits, which allows for a postcode to be entered. It also houses an electronic compass and GPS system, which is what powers the device's navigation.
The signal is then transmitted to the two rings, inside of which are a small vibrating motor and antenna.
The rings buzz for left and right, and have different vibrations for forwards and backwards. Both buzz when going in the wrong direction.
Philip Dodd, chairman of Creative Cities Networks, said he thought the rings had a good chance of becoming widespread in the future.
"So the notion I could have a GPS that would direct me and make me a kind of 'literate tourist' in Tokyo would be a wonderful thing - so I think tourism, which is the world's biggest industry, is going to be one of the really important things for this new hand-held satellite device."
The controller has a display of eight digits, which allows for a postcode to be entered. It also houses an electronic compass and GPS system, which is what powers the device's navigation.
The signal is then transmitted to the two rings, inside of which are a small vibrating motor and antenna.
The rings buzz for left and right, and have different vibrations for forwards and backwards. Both buzz when going in the wrong direction.

The car of the future

This car can drive itself from A to B. It's taking part in the Darpa Grand Challenge, a Pentagon contest for inventors to come up with self-driving vehicles - and the ideas are already starting to be used in today's cars.
On a quiet university campus across the water from San Francisco, an enthusiastic bunch of young computer boffins are working on what could be the car of the future.
"Sometimes we talk to it as if it's an unruly child," says co-team leader Ben Upcroft.
Another member of the team jumps out of the front seat, crosses the road and presses a red button on a box in his hand. "The RAV4 is going autonomous," he says into a radio.
The car moves, slowly forward, like a learner terrified of touching the accelerator. The steering wheel is turning. It is driving itself. The speed is frustratingly slow, and from time to time the car veers towards the verge.
But what's impressive is that no-one is sitting inside.
The Sydney-Berkeley driving team are entrants in the 2007 Darpa Challenge, to be held in October. Sponsored by the United States Government, which wants to develop driverless military supply vehicles for war zones, the challenge will end with a 60-mile race through a mocked-up "urban area". The most important rule? No humans allowed.
The location of the challenge hasn't yet been announced. But it's likely to be a US military base, with roads and intersections. More than 50 teams are in the running, with 30 expected to start the race.
Cars will have to navigate by themselves, avoid other cars, circumvent traffic jams, stop at junctions, follow road markings and give way when they're supposed to. A serious test for artificial intelligence. A future where your car is an obedient pet sounds fantastic. Unless you're the law firm of a motor manufacturer. Imagine if the auto-driver fails, and there's injury or death. Instead of the driver getting sued, the car company is in the dock. So much of this technology will be introduced gradually.
But there are other less obvious benefits. Children could be driven to school. The elderly and visually impaired could gain new mobility.

Microsatellites 'pose global threat'

A satellite, no bigger that a domestic fridge, blasts into orbit from a secret military launch site.

Controlled from the ground, it stealthily moves towards the satellite of a rogue enemy country. Suddenly it explodes, destroying the second satellite and shutting down the communication capability of the country instantly.

It may sound like the beginning of a James Bond film, but scientists in the US have warned about the potential misuse of satellite technology.

Commercial companies, universities, space research institutions, such as NASA and ESA, are all in the development of this new spacecraft generation, called microsatellites.

Weighing less than 100kg, they provide GPS navigation, weather predictions, and Earth observation just like traditional satellites, but they are faster to build and much cheaper.

A typical microsatellite can cost as little as 10 million euros as opposed to hundreds of millions for traditional satellites.

About 400 microsatellites have been launched in orbit over the last 20 years for scientific, commercial and military purposes.

"Microsats save costs because the heavier a satellite is, the more it costs to send it into orbit," explains Dr Johan Köhler, a micro technology engineer at the European Space Agency.

"The launch is a major cost to any space mission."

'Indispensable part'

Satellite technology has become an indispensable part of modern society - being used for everything from mapping and weather forecasts to communications.

Physicist Laura Grego, from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), said: "It's amazing how much satellites are involved in the conduct of civil and economic life in a way that people don't appreciate, but they are also very important to the way... the US conducts military affairs."

Dr Köhler explains that miniaturisation of satellites has been possible thanks to the results reached by nanotechnology research, especially over the last two decades. 'Satellite attack'

"If someone interferes with another satellite, or even if the interference is caused accidentally by a piece of debris, this kind of event is likely to start a war, because this can be confused for a satellite attack."

There are about 800 satellites orbiting over our heads at the moment: 66% are for communications, while 6% are in use by the military. The US owns more than half of the total in our skies.

D. Craig Underwood, researcher at the Space Centre of University of Surrey, UK, says the warnings of danger may be overstates.

"The growth of space technology is not something that cannot hold back. It is part of the world we live in," he says.

Surrey Space Centre works in partnership with Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL), the first professional organisation to commercialise low-cost small satellites for telecommunication and monitoring of natural disasters.

'Jules Verne' set for sea voyage

The Jules Verne cargo ship has been packed up ready for despatch to the European spaceport in French Guiana.
The vehicle - the biggest, most complex spacecraft ever built in Europe - will launch in January with up to 7.5 tonnes of supplies for the space station.
Late on Friday it began the transfer by road and canal to Rotterdam, from where it will go by sea to South America.
The Jules Verne - or Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) to give it its generic name - has been split into three parts and put in containers for the journey. The craft heads to the Kourou spaceport as part of a 400-tonne, 50-case shipment that incorporates all the associated parts, apparatus and tools needed to reassemble it and check it prior to launch.
Test programme
The Jules Verne is the first of at least five ATVs that will fly to the International Space Station (ISS) over the coming years.
It will also reboost the station, which has a tendency to drift back to Earth over time. Esa's research and technology centre, Estec, in Noordwijk has put the space ship through an exhaustive series of tests.
The ATV was placed in an acoustic chamber and blasted with sound to ensure it could withstand the noise and vibration of launch; and in a giant vacuum chamber to see that components would function properly in the extreme conditions of the space environment.
"This is like if you had an old car with the radio on and then you switched the windscreen wipers on, you used to get noise on the radio," explained John Ellwood Esa's ATV Project Manager. "We cannot let that happen with the ATV."
The Jules Verne is scheduled to set sail from Rotterdam on Tuesday onboard the French cargo ship MN Toucan. It will take about 11 days to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
Once in Kourou, an 18-week launch preparation campaign will begin. The ATV will be put back together, fuelled and loaded with its dry and wet cargoes. Finally, it will be placed atop its Ariane 5-ES launcher.

Intel and $100 laptop join forces

Chip-maker Intel has joined forces with the makers of the $100 laptop.
The agreement marks a huge turnaround for both the not-for-profit One Laptop per Child (OLPC) foundation and Intel.
In May this year, Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of OLPC, said the silicon giant "should be ashamed of itself" for efforts to undermine his initiative.
He accused Intel of selling its own cut-price laptop - the Classmate PC - below cost to drive him out of markets in the developing world.
"What happened in the past has happened," Will Swope of Intel told the BBC News website. "But going forward, this allows the two organisations to go do a better job and have a better impact for what we are both very eager to do, which is help kids around the world."
Nicholas Negroponte, founder of One Laptop per Child, said: "Intel joins the OLPC board as a world leader in technology, helping reach the world's children. Collaboration with Intel means that the maximum number of laptops will reach children." Price test
In addition, the partnership will have a practical pay off for software developers.
"Any software you build is going to run at least on our two platforms,"said Mr Swope.
An application developed for the XO laptop should work on the Classmate and vice versa.
"That's the exciting thing for me," said Mr Bender.
Currently both laptops are being tested in schools around the world. In parallel, OLPC is finalising orders for the first batch of computers.
Participating countries are able to purchase the XO in lots of 250,000. They will initially cost $176 (£90) but the eventual aim is to sell the machine to governments of developing countries for $100 (£50).
Intel says it already has orders for "thousands" of Classmates, which currently cost over $200 (£100).

Fast forward for computer memory

The memory in our computers is getting faster - it has to, as our processors get more powerful and software more complicated, so memory has to speed up to feed our data-hungry computers.
RAM (Random Access Memory) is the place where your computer stores all the data it needs right now to help you do what you want - be it play a game or write a letter.
It is different to data stored on your hard disk because it goes away when you switch the power off, disks are called storage because the data stays on them when you power them down.
Now, to make your computer to run faster, a new system called dual channel memory has been developed that, as its name implies, splits the RAM memory into two channels.
With single channel memory the data in RAM only has one route to take to the chip. With dual channels it has two.
"Two memory [modules] work in tandem and they both send information to the processor at the same time," said Marc Bernier of memory manufacturer Kingston Technology. "This means that the overall bandwidth is increased."
Faster memory
One obvious way to get more data throughput is just to speed up the memory modules.
Many of the RAM modules these days are Double Data Rate modules which, again as the name implies, makes data zip through twice as fast. As ever in the hi-tech world the hardware changes and now DDR2 is in wide use.
"If someone bought a PC 12 months ago it probably came with DDR, so if you're looking to upgrade your PC you want to be looking at DDR memory," said Chris Gibson of Corsair Memory."Anything less than 12 months ago will have DDR2 in the system, which is effectively a faster module. In the future - probably six to 12 months away - there'll be DDR3," he said.

Digital Planet

The Digital Planet team investigates the technology behind home automation, talks to Czech researchers developing software that might allow people with hearing impairments to hear classic books and takes a 3D-trip through ancient wonders.
MAPPING ANCIENT BUILDINGS
What was it like to enter the Coliseum when the Roman Empire was at its height, or to take a peak into the great palaces of Babylon?
We have long been fascinated with the past and antiquity. But how true is our picture of that past, how accurate are the reconstructions and sketches of buildings and ruins?
For decades scientists have sought to use computing to bring some ancient buildings to life.
The refinement of their technique continues unabated. Recently, software and computer engineers have worked with archaeologists and historians to develop a system for creating faithful 3D models based on archaeological ruins and artefacts.
Ideally, the specialists would be able to go beyond mere surfaces of exteriors and interiors, and create an atmosphere of shade and lighting that would have existed at the time, with oil lamps or candles.
A team of scientists in the English Midlands have devoted several years' worth of programming and analysis to gain a more accurate picture of the past.
Gareth Mitchell talks to Alan Chalmers, Professor of Visualisation at the new Warwick Digital Laboratory.
HOME AUTOMATION
Researchers and developers have been showing off their latest gadgets, at Cedia, the Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association.
The huge gathering in London's docklands reveals the latest, state-of-the-art designs in home automation.
Historically, Cedia has specialised in installing electronic systems for the home that perhaps only the super wealthy could afford.
This year, one of the award categories was for the best Cinema Home Installation costing less than £20,000.
Such luxuries, on show at Cedia, have always been beyond the pocket of the average consumer.
Now, using internet protocols, researchers have been exploring more affordable means of home automation, in which hand held devices such as PDAs or mobile phones might activate everything from your house lights to your security cameras. Gareth Mitchell visits Cedia.

Robot unravels mystery of walking

Roboticists are using the lessons of a 1930s human physiologist to build the world's fastest walking robot.
Runbot is a self-learning, dynamic robot, which has been built around the theories of Nikolai Bernstein.
"Getting a robot to walk like a human requires a dynamic machine," said Professor Florentin Woergoetter.
Runbot is a small, biped robot which can move at speeds of more than three leg lengths per second, slightly slower than the fastest walking human.
Bernstein said that animal movement was not under the total control of the brain but rather, "local circuits" did most of the command and control work.
The brain was involved in the process of walking, he said, only when the understood parameters were altered, such as moving from one type of terrain to another, or dealing with uneven surfaces.
The basic walking steps of Runbot, which has been built by scientists co-operating across Europe, are controlled by reflex information received by peripheral sensors on the joints and feet of the robot, as well as an accelerometer which monitors the pitch of the machine.
These sensors pass data on to local neural loops - the equivalent of local circuits - which analyse the information and make adjustments to the gait of the robot in real time.
How does Runbot walk?
Information from sensors is constantly created by the interaction of the robot with the terrain so that Runbot can adjust its step if there is a change in the environment.
As the robot takes each step, control circuits ensure that the joints are not overstretched and that the next step begins.
But if the robot encounters an obstacle, or a dramatic change in the terrain, such as a slope, then the higher level functions of the robot - the learning circuitries - are used. He said Runbot learned from its mistakes, much in the same way as a human baby.
"Babies use a lot of their brains to train local circuits but once they are trained they are fairly autonomous.
The challenge was now to make Runbot bigger, more adaptive and to better anticipate situations like change of terrain.

The perpetual myth of free energy

Irish company Steorn made headlines around the world when it took out a full page advert in The Economist claiming to have developed a device that produced "free energy".
Throughout early July, the company planned to display the device to the public for the first time.
Professor Sir Eric Ash, electrical engineer and former rector of Imperial College London, visited the demonstration for the BBC News website.
Marvellous things can happen in this world.
As an engineer, whenever I look at a new baby I say categorically that there can be no such thing - it's far too complicated to work.
Yet we know this lack of faith in the marvellous is misplaced.
So, the fact that a device or an invention looks too marvellous to be true is not conclusive evidence that it isn't.
I believe that it is thinking on such lines that encourages inventors - and there have been many since the 12th Century - to pursue what would be a true marvel: a perpetual motion machine.
The most recent attempt is from Mr Sean McCarthy, the Chief Executive Officer of an Irish company called Steorn.
His invention, known as the "Orbo", is a mechanical device which uses powerful magnets on the rim of a rotor and further magnets on an outer shell.
Mr McCarthy is convinced that it is working. He took a full page advertisement in the Economist last year to say so, and to attract volunteer scientists to check the authenticity of his claims.
They are still in the process of doing so.

Constant universe
In the meantime Mr McCarthy was hoping to demonstrate the machine to the public at the London Kinetica Museum, which is devoted to displaying dynamic art, particularly of artefacts at the interface of science and art.
The demonstration was to run over 10 days starting on 6 July. Unfortunately, there was a technical defect, attributed by Mr McCarthy to the excessive heat produced by lights used to illuminate the device so that cameras could stream pictures of it in action across the web.
He hopes to be able to demonstrate the machine at a later date.
Mr McCarthy appreciates that if the device really works it is in contradiction of the law of conservation of energy, which he sees as a dogma of science.
There is an implied reference to religious dogmas, and it is just here that one can see the source of the misunderstanding.
Most religions feature a multiplicity of dogmas.
A person who is an adherent of that religion may not necessarily believe each and every one of the dogmas. Beliefs cannot of course be chosen a la carte - but there is a degree of flexibility which can accommodate quite significant differences.
The law of conservation of energy is not like this.
It states that the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant, although it may change forms, into heat or kinetic energy for example.
In short, law states that energy cannot be created or destroyed.
Denying its validity would undermine not just little bits of science - the whole edifice would be no more. All of the technology on which we built the modern world would lie in ruins.
There is no flexibility in the acceptance of the law as true - at all times, and in all circumstances.
It is the failure to appreciate the difference between this scientific law and a law of religion or of society which is why we know - without having to examine details of a particular device - that Orbo cannot work.