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ambermichelle writes:
A couple of years ago, I took part in a land-use seminar in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One of the speakers was Michael Dukakis, the state’s former governor and the 1988 Democratic candidate for president. Dukakis’s topic, about which he has been evangelical, was high-speed rail — trains that travel fast enough to compete not just with cars but also, often, with airplanes. Like other proponents, including President Obama, Dukakis spoke of fast trains as a commonsense green solution to some of the country’s energy and emissions problems, as well as a job creator and promoter of economic health.
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ambermichelle writes:
Ovens can’t text us to say we forgot to turn them off and refrigerators can only bleet gently when they’re left open. But soon, they’ll have the ability to talk to their owners and each other.
The next big thing in the home is dishwashers, refrigerators and water heaters that can communicate with each other and homeowners in real time. These chirping machines – many of which are already in our homes – are equipped with wireless communications that broadcast over a small area, a technology General Electric calls Brillion. But they need a hub for their communications.
That’s where GE’s Nucleus home energy management system comes in. The device connects to all of the appliances in a home, allowing them to talk to one another, saving historical usage patterns and passing messages to users.
28305120
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ambermichelle writes:
It can take anywhere from six weeks to six months to build a 2,800-square-foot, two-story house in the U.S., mostly because human beings do all the work. Within the next five years, chances are that 3D printing (also known by the less catchy but more inclusive term additive manufacturing) will have become so advanced that we will be able to upload design specifications to a massive robot, press print, and watch as it spits out a concrete house in less than a day. Plenty of humans will be there, but just to ogle.
Minimizing the time and cost that goes into creating shelters will enable aid workers to address the needs of people in desperate situations. This, at least, is what Behrokh Khoshnevis, a professor of engineering and director of the Center for Rapid Automated Fabrication Technologies, or CRAFT, at the University of Southern California, hopes will come of his inventions.
28280052
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ambermichelle writes:
Time was, building a subway line in New York City was a relatively easy, if terribly dangerous, task. Workers simply cut holes in the middle of streets then covered them up. These days, Gotham’s underground is a mess of fiber optics, century-old steam pipes and electrical lines, some mapped, some not. It’s the job of MTA Capital Construction President Michael Horodniceanu to scoop out yet more space for additional projects, notably: the East Side Access tunnel, which will connect the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Station; a western expansion of the 7 line; and the long-awaited Second Avenue Subway.
Horodniceanu, whose resume includes stints in academia and as a co-owner of the transportation consultancy Urbitran, is a man on an endless charm offensive. His job is to negotiate crises that would reduce lesser mortals to tears – shoring up buildings with shaky foundations that delay tunneling, haggling for infrastructure funding with various government agencies, allaying the concerns of Second Avenue residents who must live through the blasting campaigns.
28159996
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ambermichelle writes:
Logging into your iPhone and managing your home heater or washer over the Internet may still seem like a far-fetched idea, unless you live in Warner Robins, Georgia.
Ten households in this southern city, perhaps best known for the nearby Robins Air Force Base, will have their homes fitted with GE’s Smart Grid technology and the company’s Brillion suite of “intelligent” ovens, refrigerators and other efficient ecomagination-qualified appliances.
The Warner Robins families will be part of a two-year pilot program run jointly by GE Appliances and Flint Energies, a Georgia utility company. The project is aimed at reducing the use of electricity during peak hours, when it typically costs more to generate and deliver power. “This pilot will provide the utility industry with tremendous insights on how to engage consumers in efforts to overcome some our greatest energy challenges,” said Dave McCalpin, general manager of GE’s home energy management business.
28114122
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ambermichelle writes:
We have a problem. Faced by the civilizational challenge of climate change, we have collectively responded by developing and purchasing ever more efficient phones, cars and homes. But, historically, our drive for efficiency in all things has just created new avenues for using our devices.
David Owen, a staff writer at The New Yorker, has been worrying about this problem for years. His newest book, The Conundrum, pierces the magical thinking that has repackaged high-end luxury goods, such as hybrid cars, as virtuous and the idea that we can consume our way out of trouble. The only way we can forestall, much less avert, disaster is to consume less.
28087066
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ambermichelle writes:
The perils of climate change leave many governments in a bind. They need to provide their citizens with power, but business as usual will do little to keep the weather from veering into extremes. The answer is new, innovative technology, such as GE’s ecomagination-qualified integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) power plant. This technology takes available resources, even low quality coal, and converts it into “cleaner” power.
Cleaner coal may sound like an oxymoron. But take a look at GE’s first IGCC project in South Korea. The country is among the world’s top ten coal consumers. Over the last two decades, the use of coal for power generation more than doubled from 17 percent to 47 percent, making coal the nation’s leading source of electricity. But the country also committed to cut greenhouse gases, speed up clean and renewable energy projects and boost power efficiency.
28077692
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ambermichelle writes:
In November 2011, NASA launched its biggest, most ambitious mission to Mars. The $2.5 billion Mars Science Lab spacecraft will arrive in orbit around the Red Planet this August, releasing a lander that will use rockets to control a slow descent into the atmosphere. Equipped with a “sky crane,” the lander will gently lower the one-ton Curosity rover on the surface of Mars. Curiosity, which weighs five times more than any previous Martian rover, will perform an unprecedented battery of tests for three months as it scoops up soil from the floor of the 96-mile-wide Gale Crater. Its mission, NASA says, will be to “assess whether Mars ever was, or is still today, an environment able to support microbial life.” For all the spectacular engineering that’s gone into Curiosity, however, its goal is actually quite modest. When NASA says it wants to find out if Mars was ever suitable for life, they use a very circumscribed version of the word. They are looking for signs of liquid water, which all living things on Earth need. They are looking for organic carbon, which life on Earth produces and, in some cases, can feed on to survive. In other words, they’re looking on Mars for the sorts of conditions that support life on Earth. But there’s no good reason to assume that all life has to be like the life we’re familiar with. In 2007, a board of scientists appointed by the National Academies of Science decided they couldn’t rule out the possibility that life might be able to exist without water or carbon. If such weird life on Mars exists, Curiosity will probably miss it.
28044110
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ambermichelle writes:
In the U.S., green building can mean a lot of things — recycled greywater, roof gardens, solar panels and the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification all come to mind. But in Europe, many green builders focus laser-like on the amount of energy a building consumes, half of which typically comes from heating and cooling. Twenty years ago, German physicists erected a home that demonstrated how little energy a building would need if built with, among other things, thick insulation and airtight walls. The so-called “Passive House” was soon replicated throughout the continent. Today, there are tens of thousands of Passive Houses in Europe, mostly in Germany and Austria. To attain the label, buildings must hit benchmarks for energy use and air tightness, and Europeans apply the standard to just about every construction imaginable – homes, apartment complexes, schools, gymnasiums and others. These buildings share one trait: they use about 90 percent less energy for heating and cooling than a traditional structure.
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ambermichelle writes:
The electric vehicle market has been stuck in low gear. One of the big opportunities where this can be changed is in the commercial vehicle sector. There are over 230 million commercial cars and light-duty trucks on U.S. roads. But large companies, government and other fleet operators have hesitated to make the switch. GE just started on a project that drives at changing that. Researchers at GE’s Global Research Center in Niskayuna, New York, will design and build a better commercial fleet charging station that will incorporate GE’s existing smart grid technology and help dramatically cut installation costs. The project also received support from the U.S. Department of Energy.
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ambermichelle writes:
Going to Mars? Expect to stay a while. Because of the relative motions of Earth and Mars, the pioneering astronauts who touch down on the Martian surface will have to remain there for a year and a half. For this reason, NASA has already started experimenting with a habitat fit for the long-term exploration of Mars. Last year, students at the University of Wisconsin won the XHab competition to design and build an inflatable loft addition to a habitat shell that NASA had already constructed. The final structure now serves as a working model that is being tested in the Arizona desert. Like any home, it’s a sacred bulwark against the elements; but not just the cold, heat and pests of Arizona. A Mars habitat will have to protect astronauts from cosmic rays, solar flares and unknown soil compositions all while keeping inhabitants happy and comfortable.
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ambermichelle writes:
Leave it to the wonky crew at GE’s Global Research Center to give Christmas a high-tech makeover. Last year, they applied some of their new technologies and tricked out Santa’s sleigh with ultra-light, super-durable blades from ceramic matrix composites for more efficient flight, added self-powering OLED lights, and sprayed it with icephobic coatings made of nanoparticles to prevent ice build-up.
This year, they took aim at the Christmas tree. Clearly not content with the available selection of glass balls, icicles, stars, and other ornaments, they cracked up the machinery inside their new additive manufacturing lab and made their own.
27337996
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ambermichelle writes:
The previous year has forced us to confront difficult science questions: Was processing patents Einstein’s real strength? Are there any other planets out there like Earth? Why is the universe composed of matter as opposed to, say, antimatter? It was a bumper year for fascinating science and technology stories, so many that it’s impossible to call ten stories “the top.” So we plucked ten notable ones from a long list. Below, in no particular order, our picks for the year’s most interesting stories.
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ambermichelle writes:
Since 2002, the Colorado Rockies have stored their baseballs in a special humidor at a constant 70 degrees and 50 percent humidity. The humidor is necessary, the Rockies say, because the thin air at Coors Field would otherwise make the baseballs lighter, slicker and harder than the balls used by the other major league teams.
It’s clear that the climate has an impact on baseball, but it’s not just Coors Field where batters are getting a boost: there is evidence that climate change is having subtle but noticeable effects on baseball performance.
Robert Adair, author of “The Physics of Baseball”, says the increased temperature probably improves a batter’s chance of hitting a home run because the ball can be hit up to a foot farther. If these changes had happened years ago, baseball history would be quite different.
27271964
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ambermichelle writes:
It’s become a vexing cliché to bemoan the lack of student interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). In response to this STEM crisis, the White House has launched the Educate to Innovate campaign. There is also the National STEM Video Game Challenge, where kids learn STEM skills by designing games. GE has some experience experimenting with play and fun in an effort to attract young minds to science and engineering. In the 1950s, comic books were as popular with kids as video games are today, and just as decried by parents.
