World-first Sustainable Racing Car Runs On Chocolate

Here's one for the choca-holic racing fans - a esearch team at the University of Warwick, have designed and built the worldfirst fully sustainable Formula 3 racing car:

The car is made from woven flax, recycled carbon fibre, recycled resin and carrot pulp for the steering wheel. It runs on biofuel made from chocolate and animal fats and is lubricated with plant oils. But it's not just an environmentally friendly car, it is also fast. The car has a top speed of 135 mph, can achieve 0-60 in 2.5 seconds and is turbo charged to give it more torque.

Having got the seal of approval from drivers such as Lewis Hamilton and Adam Carroll as well as F1 team boss Ross Brawn, the car will make its first competitive debut in the Formula 3 Championship final at Brands Hatch on 17th October. The team hope to prove that high performance, competitive cars can be built from sustainable materials.

According to Dr Kirwan the idea behind the project is to show that: "being sustainable and green can be incredibly sexy, fun and fast." He goes on to say that even though people's perception of motorsport is that it's wasteful, this project is "aiming to show ways for the future, for people to race and be green."

Read original article - 'World-first Sustainable Racing Car Runs On Chocolate'

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The pocket spy: Will your smartphone rat you out?

NewScientist Tech has an article on how firms are able to extract personal information from mobile phones... sometimes at the behest of jealous partners.... a new trend! The post states that:

THERE are certain things you do not want to share with strangers. In my case it was a stream of highly personal text messages from my husband, sent during the early days of our relationship. Etched on my phone's SIM card - but invisible on my current handset and thus forgotten - here they now are, displayed in all their brazen glory on a stranger's computer screen.

I've just walked into a windowless room on an industrial estate in Tamworth, UK, where three cellphone analysts in blue shirts sit at their terminals, scrutinising the contents of my phone and smirking. "If it's any consolation, we would have found them even if you had deleted them," says one.

Worse, it seems embarrassing text messages aren't the only thing I have to worry about: "Is this a photo of your office?" another asks (the answer is yes). "And did you enjoy your pizza on Monday night? And why did you divert from your normal route to work to visit this address in Camberwell, London, on Saturday?"

I'm at DiskLabs, a company that handles cellphone forensic analysis for UK police forces, but also for private companies and individuals snooping on suspect employees or wayward spouses. Armed with four cellphones, which I have begged, borrowed and bought off friends and strangers, I'm curious to know just how much personal information can be gleaned from our used handsets and SIM cards.

Read article at - 'The pocket spy: Will your smartphone rat you out?'

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Wi-Fi Making a Leap Forward

Apparently a new Wi-Fi 'certification' is nearing completion ...'to allow direct connections between Wi-Fi devices without joining a traditional Wi-Fi network. Known as Wi-Fi Connect, Alliance plans to begin certifying devices by mid-2010.' Read more:

The Wi-Fi Alliance is nearing completion of a new specification to allow Wi-Fi devices to connect to one another without joining a traditional home, office or hotspot network. The Wi-Fi Alliance expects to begin certification for the new specification in mid-2010 and is currently called Wi-Fi Direct. In its early stages of development it was known as Wi-Fi Peer-to-Peer.

The new specification can be implemented in any Wi-Fi device, including mobile phones, cameras, printers, notebook computers, keyboards and headphones. Certified devices will also be able to create connections with Wi-Fi certified legacy devices already in use. Devices will be able to make a one-to-one connection or a group of several devices can connect simultaneously.

The new specification targets both consumer electronics and enterprise applications, providing management features for enterprise environments and includes WPA2 security. Wi-Fi Direct devices will support typical Wi-Fi ranges and the same data rates as can be achieved with an infrastructure connection, so devices can connect from across a home or office and conduct bandwidth-hungry tasks.

Read original article - 'Wi-Fi Making a Leap Forward'

U.S. Spies Buy Stake in Firm That Monitors Blogs, Tweets

Wired's Danger Room has a post on how America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates — even check out your book reviews on Amazon!

Read on... but you may be tracked...

In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ”open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.

Visible crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. (It doesn’t touch closed social networks, like Facebook, at the moment.) Customers get customized, real-time feeds of what’s being said on these sites, based on a series of keywords.

Read more at - 'U.S. Spies Buy Stake in Firm That Monitors Blogs, Tweets'

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Health study links mobile phone use to four kinds of cancer

Wow..... that was a strange time-warp I just stepped through.... 1 day turned into 4 months...!

Anyway, here's the latest from a 10 year research investigation done by the Interphone project, funded by the World Health Organisation and mobile phone companies:

A major international health study has shown that excessive mobile phone use can be linked to four different kinds of cancer. The research, which has taken 10 years and cost £20million, found that heavy mobile users suffered up to 50 per cent more tumours.

Scientists now say there is a "significantly increased risk" of people developing three different kinds of brain tumour and one of the salivary gland. News of the findings, which are to be published within the next eight weeks, has led to calls for mobiles to carry health warnings...

Previous studies have been inconclusive, but Interphone draws together the most recent research from 13 countries and involved interviewing 12,800 people. Dr Elisabeth Cardis, head of the study, said: "I am globally in agreement with the idea of restricting the use by children, though I would not go as far as banning mobiles."

The Department of Health has not updated its guidance in four years, saying only children should be "discouraged" from too many calls.

Read original article - 'Health study links mobile phone use to four kinds of cancer'

As in all things - moderation is the key....

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Absolut introduces world map of cocktail orders

Now here's the latest example of consumer brands 'mobilizing' the world of mobilities... the vodka brand Absolut is now tracking people's cocktail consumption! Read:

The application also utilizes GPS, social media and users’ collective behavior to show in real time what cocktails are being ordered around the world. These are displayed in a live Top List feed.

GPS and users personal beverage choices combine to offer users a new "live badge" that can be embedded in your blog like a widget and that reflects your most recent order history etc.

The version for Google Android mobile interface is also expected for release, making Absolut one of the first lifestyle consumer brands to develop a branded app on the google G3 platform.

Click here to download the free application on iTunes

Watch the presentation video here

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England supermarket is powered by shoppers’ kinetic energy

Now here's a novel way of 'stealing' peoples' power..... by harvesting the kinetic energy of shoppers! A recent article reports that

An English supermarket is deploying a green energy system that allows it to harvest energy from the natural movement of its shoppers.

Sainsbury, England’s third largest supermarket chain, has decided to deploy a road plate technology developed by AEST from California that generates electricity whenever pressure is applied on it, for example, a car running over it.

AEST says that a system of 20 plates can generate about 10,000 to 12,000 kWh of energy per day, and cost $2.5 million. The system generates energy which allows saving of approximately $300,000 a year.

The Sainsbury system will generate 30kW per hour, which is enough to power the store’s lighting and computers.

Read more at 'England supermarket is powered by shoppers’ kinetic energy'

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World's megacities ripe for 'megadisaster'

According to the UN's humanitarian chief in a recent speech, some of the world's biggest cities are at growing risk of "megadisasters". He also warned that climate change was behind a rising number of natural catastrophes:

"We are going to see more disasters and more intense disasters as a result of climate change," said UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes.

"The trends in disasters particularly from climate change are of enormous concern. We can only expect that this trend is going to continue," he told journalists on the sidelines of a conference on reducing disaster risks.

Some 90 per cent of disasters are of climatic origin, caused by storms, floods, drought or other extreme weather conditions, according to the UN's weather agency.

Holmes said some of the world's biggest cities housing millions of people were highly exposed to disasters, being located in coastal areas that would be threatened by rising sea levels, or in earthquake zones.

Read more at 'World's megacities ripe for 'megadisaster''

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GPS phones could spy on swine flu sufferers

Now here is a worrying development.... as health authorities in Japan think they might have the answer to tracking and blocking the spread of swine flu - keep an eye on the population through mobile phones!

The idea is to track every individual on their phone's global positioning system (GPS).

Then people can be warned if they have crossed paths with anyone diagnosed with a highly contagious illness.

Radio Australia's Connect Asia program reports the scheme is part of an initiative to promote new uses of internet and mobile technology.

It is funded by the Government and will be carried out by Softbank, a big internet and mobile phone provider.

Trials are due to start in a Japanese school in the next few months, but some people are concerned the technology will not be able to keep up with the mass of data to be collected.

Read original article - 'GPS phones could spy on swine flu sufferers'

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Virtual Smart Home Controlled By Your Thoughts

ScienceDaily has a post on how 'light switches, TV remote controls and even house keys could become a thing of the past thanks to brain-computer interface (BCI) technology being developed in Europe that lets users perform everyday tasks with thoughts alone'. The post continues by saying:

The technology, which was demonstrated at CeBIT in Hannover in March, provides an innovative way of controlling the interconnected electronic devices that will populate the smart homes of the future, granting increased autonomy to people with physical disabilities as well as pleasing TV channel-surfing couch potatoes.

“The BCI lets people turn on lights, change channels on the TV or open doors just by thinking about it,” explains Christoph Guger, the CEO of Austrian medical engineering company g.tec that developed the application.

Read more at - 'Virtual Smart Home Controlled By Your Thoughts'

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PACHUBE

Usman Haque has launched a terrific project called Pachube. It's a service for sharing and monitoring real time sensor data between remote buildings, devices, and environments, both physical and virtual. The idea is to facilitate remote interaction, open source home automation, sensor logging, environmental data visualisation etc.

See more at - http://www.pachube.com/

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Camera grid to log number plates

A national network of cameras and computers automatically logging car number plates will be in place within months, according to this BBC post:

Thousands of Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras are already operating on Britain's roads.Police forces across England, Wales and Scotland will soon be able to share the information on one central computer.

Officers say it is a useful tool in fighting crime, but critics say the network is secretive and unregulated.Kent's Chief Constable, Michael Fuller, commented: "We've seen an increase of some 40% of arrests since we've been using this technology.

"I'm very confident that we're using it properly and responsibly, and that innocent people have nothing to fear from the way we use it."

A number of local councils are signing up their Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) systems to the ANPR network. As long as the cameras are technically good enough, they can be adapted to take the software.

Well, not a complete surprise... just another rung on the ladder towards Total Awareness (similar to the US program); yet using the issue of personal mobility as the 'vehicle'.


Read more at - 'Camera grid to log number plates'

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AFTER THE CAR - Now published!

KINGSLEY DENNIS & JOHN URRY - After The Car

Finally the book has hit the streets... and currently sits in various off-line and on-line stores:

• A provocative exploration of a possible future without the car, from two leading sociologists.
• Examines the impact of global warming, global population increases and the peaking of oil supplies, among other things, on the future of how we travel.
• Argues that there will come a time in the future where, by necessity, the present car system will be‘re-designed’ and‘re-engineered’.
• After The Car will interest sociologists, policy makers, industry, as well as the general reader. It will be of interest to every ‘car user’.

Let us hope the book gains some mobility through human energy!

And any reviews would be welcome...

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Amsterdam Schiphol airport has taken delivery of an electric car

Some good news in that an airport is trying to compensate for its energy pollution by introducing electric cars. Here's the news:

Amsterdam Schiphol airport has taken delivery of an electric car. The Th!nk City vehicle will be test-driven by employees of the airport for the next twelve months. If the electric car proves successful, the airport plans to buy more. An electric re-charging point has been installed outside the head office of the Schiphol Group.

According to an official statement "Amsterdam Schiphol Airport places great value on the introduction of sustainable transport as a contribution towards the improvement of air quality". The electric car isn't the first environmentally-friendly vehicle at the airport. Since May 2008, electric scooters have been used on the airfield, and ten percent of the wagons at Schiphol use biodiesel.

The Th!nk City is an urban car with an electric motor of about 40 hp which runs on sodium or lithium batteries. It has a top speed of around 100 km per hour and can travel up to 180 km on a single charge.

Schiphol wants its own activities to be climate neutral by 2012. By 2020 the airport hopes to provide at least 20 percent of its energy needs though the generation of sustainable energy.

Read original article here - 'Amsterdam Schiphol airport has taken delivery of an electric car' - (thanks to RA!)

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Doctors of Tomorrow

Now it seems that family doctoring is going Facebook style into online networking. A new neighbourhood doctor outfit called Hello Health says on their website:

"Once upon a time, going to your doctor was simple. You knew his first name, or perhaps just called him 'Doc'. He lived just down the street and made house calls. And if you were sick, you would see him that day, because, well, you were sick. Then things started to change. Although medicine has made some amazing advances in keeping us healthy, we now have to contend with dietitians, insurance premiums, running shoes, deductibles, HMOs,OTC drugs, specialists, fat-free salad dressing, and therapists. Daunting, isn't it? But don't worry, we've made going to the doctor easy again". Hello Health combines the virtues of the old-fashioned neighbourhood doctor, with new tech platforms. "We love technology, the Internet, and especially our iPhones", say Hello Health; "You can talk to us like you're talking to a friend: through

emails, texts, phone calls, instant messages, or face-to-face conversations. Also, everything's online, from making appointments to accessing your records. It also helps we're close by, living and working in your neighborhood". Anyway, the whole thing is quite brilliant - and to cap it all, Hello Health's principal communication platform is a video on YouTube:



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Social Innovation Camp

The organisers of Social Innovation Camp claim that it is 'an experiment in creating social innovations for the digital age', and they are currently looking for the best ideas for web-based tools that can change stuff that matters. A camping weekend in Glasgow brings together some of the best of the UK's software developers and designers with those at the sharp end of social problems. Their mission is to turn six back-of-the-envelope ideas that could change the world into social start-ups - complete with working software. And all in under 48 hours - and there's only one week to go!!:

You’ve got until Friday 22nd May 2009 to send us your idea that uses the web to create social change and you could be joining 100 other participants to try and make it a reality.

And this week, we’re really pleased to be able to announce some of our prizes for the weekend.

At the end of each Social Innovation Camp, we run a Show and Tell where everyone pitches what they’ve built in the weekend.

We’ll be awarding some prizes to the ideas we think have shown most promise. And this time around, we’re lucky enough to be supported by our partners Firstport, IfLooksCouldKill and O Street.

Go to their website

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The future does not have a driver

It seems that driverless public transport is the new hype in the Netherlands, and Rotterdam has the scoop for so far!

A driverless suttle bus in Rotterdam follows a magnetic strip embedded in a concrete roadway. Photo Dirk-Jan Visser

The main disadvantage of public transport is that it requires drivers, and the driver is not only the most expensive but also the most dangerous part of the equation. "Computers are cheaper, they never get tired and they are much better drivers," says Jan van Dijke of the Dutch research institute TNO Automotive. "Nine out of ten traffic incidents are the result of human error."

Van Dijke is in charge of the European Citymobil project, which studies the advantages of driverless public transport, among other things. One current experiment is in Rotterdam, where for the past few weeks a driverless bus has been shuttling passengers from the Kralingse Zoom metro station to the Rivium industrial zone. The shuttle is a miracle of efficiency and punctuality. It follows a magnetic strip embedded in a concrete roadway. The shuttle started running four years ago but the project was halted after a frontal crash, which the technicians assure was due to human error.

Driverless public transport is on the rise in many other places. Amsterdam plans to do away with metro operators from 2014.

Read more from original article here (thanks to RA)

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The city and the crowd

Here's an interesting video-post from over at Space & Culture that looks at early city film montage from 1928:

The city montage from King Vidor’s 1928 silent film, The Crowd

The montage of the busy city streets, enormous crowds, and speeding trains that is Johnny’s introduction to New York City is frantic and a bit awe-inspiring, especially the great shot that climbs the side of the building where Johnny works. Many of the crowd shots were done with a hidden camera, and in one scene, when a traffic cop seems to tell us to move along, he was actually instructing Vidor and his crew to move.”

From 'The city and the crowd'

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Virgin Galactic’s Test Flight

Looks like Wired's 'Autopia' managed to get its hands onto Virgin Galactic's latest - so the trip's still on! (if you can afford it, of course)

Space junkies and wannabe astronauts rejoice - we’ve got exclusive video of Virgin Galactic’s recent test flight in the Mojave.

Wired.com got its mitts on the first official cockpit video and other footage from the recent test of Virgin Mothership Eve at the Scaled Composites skunkworks operation in sunny SoCal. Scaled Composites and Virgin tend to keep the test results hush-hush but say “several recent published articles have been sufficiently inaccurate and negative” to make them “set the record straight.”

They could be referring to reports by FlightGlobal that VMS Eve, the prototype of the White Knight 2 that took to the air, suffered a tail strike during an April 20 flight and experienced rudder problems. Scaled Composites, in a statement (.pdf), called the test “very successful” and said, “we only needed to adjust the rudder forces.”

Read more here - Virgin Galactic’s Test Flight

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Another EV supercar

It seems that the Silicon Valley trend for expensive EV supercars continues...

Another day, another start-up promising an electric car with awesome range.

This time it’s EV Innovations, the same guys behind the Inzio electric supercar we told you about a few weeks back. The Inzio is billed as a Tesla-beater and has a $139,000 price to match. That’s a lot of scratch, which is why the company says it’s working on an electric commuter car that’ll carry a $34,000 sticker price when it goes into limited production in a year.

It’s called the Wave, and EV Innovations says it will have a range of up to 170 miles and a top speed of 80 mph. That’s a bit shy of the top speed claimed by the Aptera 2e. But Ron Cerven, director of product development at EV Innovations, says anything the Wave gives up to the Aptera in terms of speed it makes up for in size.

Read here for more -Riding the EV Wave

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