A map mess

APPLE ditches Google Maps on its new mobile operating system, Kickstarter embraces its roots and MySpace attempts a reboot

via Babbage http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/09/babbage-september-26th-2012?fsrc=gn_ep

An encyclopedia for a genomic jungle

OUR correspondents explain newly released papers from the ENCODE project, which look in detail at the whole human genome and find function where there was long thought to be none

via Babbage http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/09/parts-list-dna?fsrc=gn_ep

Difference Engine: The PC all over again?

WHAT could well be the next great technological disruption is fermenting away out of site—in small workshops, college labs, garages and basements. Tinkerers with machines that turn binary digits into molecules are pioneering a whole new way of making things—one that could well rewrite the rules of manufacturing in much the same way as the PC trashed the traditional world of computing.



The machines, called 3D printers, have existed in industry for years. But at a cost of $100,000 to $1m, few individuals could ever afford one. Fortunately, like everything digital, their price has fallen. So much so, industrial 3D printers can now be had for $15,000, and home versions for little more than $1,000 (or half that in kit form). “In many ways, today’s 3D printing community resembles the personal computing community of the early 1990s,” says Michael Weinberg, a staff lawyer at Public Knowledge, an advocacy group in Washington, DC.



As an expert on intellectual property, Mr Weinberg has produced a white paper that documents the likely course of 3D-printing's development—and how the technology could be affected by patent and copyright law. He is far from sanguine about its prospects. His main fear is that the fledgling technology could have its wings clipped by traditional manufacturers, who will doubtless view it as a threat to their livelihoods, and do all in their powers to nobble it. Because of a 3D printer's ability to make perfect replicas, they will probably try to brand it a piracy machine.

Manufacturers of famous brands have had to contend with ripoffs since time immemorial. Whole neighborhoods exist in Hongkong, Bangkok and even Tokyo that turn out imitation designer handbags, shoes and watches. China has flooded the world with cheap replacement parts based on designs pirated from the original equipment manufacturers.

But while the pirates' labour rates and material costs may be far lower, the tools they use to make fakes are essentially the same as those used by the original manufacturers. Equipment costs alone have therefore limited the spread of the counterfeiting industry. But give every sweatshop around the world a cheap 3D printer coupled to a laser scanner, and pirated goods could well proliferate.

The first thing to know about 3D printing is that it is an “additive”, rather than a “subtractive”, form of processing. The tools are effectively modified ink-jet printers that deposit successive layers of material until a three-dimensional object is built up. In doing so, they typically use a tenth of the material needed when machining a part from bulk. The goop used for printing can be a thermoplastic such as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), polylactic acid or polycarbonate, or metallic powders, clays and even living cells depending on the application (see “Making it”, November 25th 2011).



As far as intellectual property is concerned, the 3D printer itself is not the problem. But before it can start making anything, it needs a CAD (computer-aided design) file of the object to be produced, along with specialised software to tell the printer how to lay down the successive layers of material. The object can be designed on a computer using CAD software, or files of standard objects can be downloaded from open-source archives such as Thingiverse and Fab@Home. Most likely, though, the object to be produced is copied from an existing one, using a scanner that records the three-dimensional measurements from various angles and turns the data into a CAD file.



This is where claims of infringement start—especially if the item being scanned by the machine’s laser beam is a proprietary design belonging to someone else. And unless the object is in the public domain, copyright law could well apply. This has caught out a number of unwitting users of 3D printers who have blithely made reproductions of popular merchandise.



Earlier this year, for instance, one hobbyist worked out how to print the popular “Penrose Triangle”, an optical illusion that cannot exist in normal three-dimensional Euclidean space, and released a video challenging others to say how it was done. Another 3D modeler not only figured it out but uploaded the CAD file of his own solution to Thingiverse. Whereupon the initial designer threatened Thingiverse with legal action under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998.



The issue was only resolved when it was pointed out that someone else actually invented the Penrose Triangle (a Swedish artist in the 1930s), and the optical illusion itself could be considered a useful object—and therefore did not qualify for copyright protection (which covers only non-functioning intangibles such as art, music and literature). The designer subsequently dropped the case and dedicated the rights to the community. There are now five versions of the Penrose Triangle on Thingiverse.



In another instance, a couple of engineers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh created the CAD files for printing a kit of plug-in parts that allow toy construction sets from different makers to be interconnected. The patents on the various toys involved had long since expired, but any copyright involved still had decades to run. The object was to send “a shot across the bow” of any company that might try to control how their physical designs were copied, remixed or improved upon in future. “We don’t want to see what happened in music and film play out in the area of shapes,” one of the engineers told Forbes magazine.



What they were referring to, of course, were the DMCA “takedown” notices used by record companies and film studios to force file-sharing websites to remove pirated content. While no one can object to a law that penalises those who wilfully infringe the copyright of others, Mr Weinberg is concerned that the ability to copy and replicate can also be used to create, expand upon and innovate. Inhibit that and society gets short-changed. Certainly, DMCA notices can stifle free expression, jeopardise fair use, and impede competition (by, say, blocking designs for aftermarket replacement parts like brake pads or toner cartridges). Similarly, DMCA notices have been used to enforce “walled gardens” surrounding products like the iPod. Such actions limit choice for consumers.



As with any disruptive technology—from the printing press to the photocopier and the personal computer—3D printing is going to upset existing manufacturers, who are bound to see it as a threat to their traditional way of doing business. And as 3D printing proliferates, the incumbents will almost certainly demand protection from upstarts with low cost of entry to their markets.



Manufacturers are likely to behave much like the record industry did when its own business model—based on selling pricey CD albums that few music fans wanted instead of cheap single tracks they craved—came under attack from file-swapping technology and MP3 software. The manufacturers' most likely recourse will be to embrace copyright, rather than patent, law, because many of their patents will have expired. Patents apply for only 20 years while copyright continues for 70 years after the creator's death.

So expect manufacturers to lobby for their own form of DMCA, with copyright protection expanded to cover functional objects that contain elements of design. “This would create a type of quasi-patent system, without the requirement for novelty or the strictly limited period of protection,” says Mr Weinberg.



The biggest lesson the record industry learned from its copyright battles with file-swappers was that going after individual infringers was prohibitively expensive and time consuming. So instead, the record companies lobbied to get copyright liability extended to cover not only individuals who infringe, but also those who facilitate infringement—namely, the internet service providers (ISPs) and file-swapping websites.



In that, the record industry was remarkably successful. Today, websites and ISPs have to block or remove infringing material whenever they receive a DMCA takedown notice from a copyright holder—something that happens more often than actually justified. Google reckons that more than a third of the DMCA notices it has received over the years have turned out to be bogus copyright claims. Over a half were from companies trying to restrict competing businesses rather than law-breakers.



Rallying under the banner of piracy and theft, established manufacturers could likewise seek to get the doctrine of "contributory infringement” included in some expanded object-copyright law as a way of crippling the personal-manufacturing movement before it eats their lunch. Being free to sue websites that host 3D design files as “havens of piracy” would save them the time and money of having to prosecute thousands of individuals with a 3D printer churning out copies at home.



Some also expect incumbent manufacturers to try to stigmatise CAD file-types, in the same way the record companies hounded the bit-torrent and MP3 formats as piracy tools. That could slow the mainstream adoption of 3D printing and imply that anyone uploading CAD files to a public site was somehow infringing on rights, notes Cory Doctorow, a Canadian science writer who blogs for Boing Boing.



Today’s 3D printing crowd—tucked away in garages, basements, small workshops and university labs—needs to keep a keen eye on such policy debates as they grow. “There will be a time when impacted legacy industries [will] demand some sort of DMCA for 3D printing,” says Mr Weinberg. If the tinkerers wait until that day, it will be too late.

via Babbage http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/09/3d-printing?fsrc=gn_ep

Robots in the shurbbery

EVEN in the developed world farming can be a labour-intensive business, relying on lots of migrant workers. Cereal agriculture is heavily mechanised, with one combine harvester taking over from hundreds of labourers, but other tasks have proven difficult to automate. That is changing.



Meet Harvey, otherwise known as Harvest Vehicle HV-100. This is the first agricultural robot from Harvest Automation, a firm based in Massachusetts. It will work in horticulture where the traditional sources of cheap labour are becoming scarcer, in part because of changing demographics and immigration laws.



Harvey will begin moving potted trees and shrubs in plant nurseries. These are bunched closely together in winter, spaced wider in summer and rearranged as they get bigger. There may be hundreds of thousands of pots at one nursery and, says Greg Timbol, in charge of business development at Harvest Technologies, each pot typically needs to be moved at least five times, at a labour cost of about two cents per move. Hence the opening for a robot.



The robot is a battery-powered machine weighing 40kg with grippers to move any pots of up to about 10kg. It is designed to work safely alongside humans, unlike industrial robots which have to be fenced off to prevent accidents. And it can beaver away in all weathers, day or night.

Harvey has a variety of sensors to avoid obstacles and people and navigate with high precision. The developers have made the interface as simple to use as possible; the operator instructs Harvey by setting five parameters and laying down a single line of yellow tape as a reference marker. Multiple Harveys can also work together co-operatively as a team without obstructing each other.



Prototypes were successfully tested earlier this year. Human workers were happy to leave the arduous task of moving pots to the patient little machines. The first production versions will be delivered in September. They cost about $30,000 but, adds Mr Timbol, should pay for themselves in 12-25 months.



Upgrades are likely to follow, so the robots can spray, trim or prune, grade and move stock. This might involve novel ways of working; for example, the robot carrying trees would pass through an automated trimmer or sprayer. They may also start harvesting pumpkins and watermelons, using their sensors to determine which ones are ripe.



Other firms are looking at making robots for agriculture. The Vineland Research and Innovation Centre in Ontario has three robotic projects. One involves planting tulip bulbs and replanting seedlings, another will harvest, trim and package mushrooms and the third will package potted plants. All are based on conveyor belts and use commercial robots equipped with suction cups to handle small objects. Vision software developed by Anoven, also of Ontario, allows the robots to orient bulbs the right way and determine which mushrooms to pick.



Both Harvest Automation and Vineland have concentrated on robots working in structured environments, where they can achieve immediate gains. Tasks like fruit picking, with robots operating in a complex natural setting, are far more challenging and will require better sensors and more intelligence. But robots, like all workers, have to start somewhere.

via Babbage http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/09/agricultural-technology?fsrc=gn_ep

Frequent travel may be required

BECOMING an astronaut sounds to most like something only small children and fighter pilots would seriously aspire to. Preparing to be one would be like getting ready to win the lottery or be hit by a meteorite. So, despite longing to float free among the stars ever since she can remember, your correspondent long ago took her fascination with the cosmos in a different direction and became an astrophysicist. Yet here she is, filling in the paperwork NASA requires from people it deems "highly qualified" applicants for the Astronaut Candidate Class of 2013.

Last year, at an astronomy meeting, Babbage bumped into an astronaut she had last seen on NASA's live spacewalk webcast, climbing into the Hubble space telescope. Himself an astrophysicist, John Grunsfeld worked on the Hubble three times. After a mildly embarrassing display of fawning adulation, Babbage told him she would love to be an astronaut and asked if it was crazy to apply. He said it would be crazy not to. So when the call for applications appeared a few months later—publicised on geeky websites and an equally science-heavy Facebook feed—the decision was a no-brainer.

Rather than apply to the astronaut programme directly you in fact file an application for the astronaut-candidate programme, a two-year training course during which hopefuls are evaluated in a range of skills that might come in handy on an actual mission. The online form, which goes up every couple of years, is straightforward. First, a number of requirements must be met. You have to be an American citizen, 62 to 75 inches tall (157-190cm, a range apparently dictated by the dimensions of Russia's Soyuz spacecraft that ferries NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station these days) with 20/20 vision (or suitable correction) and healthy blood pressure. You must also be able to swim three lengths of a pool wearing a flight suit and shoes. This makes sense—in training, low gravity (or, in the jargon, microgravity) environments are simulated under water in swimming pools; and a mission might end with the re-entry vehicle landing somewhere in the ocean.

Next, you need at least a bachelor's degree in a scientific, mathematical or engineering discipline, as well as professional experience in science, mathematics, or teaching, either as a civilian or as active-duty military. Alternatively, professional experience flying commercial jets can be traded off for science. You have to provide university course records and references. (In your correspondent's case, these were requested from six academic supervisors, who not only did not disparage the idea as unrealistic, but responded with enthusiasm; one, it turned out, had even considered applying himself.) Finally, you must comb your resumé for any relevant skills. Experience in aviation is mentioned a number of times since, if selected, you are probably going to have to learn to fly a plane anyway (the application information refers to "aircraft flight readiness training"). Knowledge of Russian no doubt also boosts the odds of success, since learning the language of the Soyuz is also part of the programme. But neither is a prerequisite—otherwise Babbage, with experience limited to being an airliner passenger and having read some Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy in translation, would not have got past the first hurdle.

The selection period is about a year and a half long, all told, and consists of several stages. In the first cut, the hopefuls (roughly 6,300 this round) are whittled down to around 400 "highly qualified" applicants and asked to obtain an Astronaut Selection Pre-Screening Medical History and Examination. This is similar to an exam a corporate or private pilot would need, and has to be performed by a certified aviation medical examiner. This turned out not to be nearly as invasive as Babbage feared. It was basically a regular physical: height and weight, blood pressure, vision tests, a bit of strictly external prodding.

After the pre-screening and reference checks are in, NASA will pick 100 or so applicants and invite them in small groups for preliminary medical evaluations, interviews and orientation activities at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston. About half will then return to Houston as finalists for a week of medical and psychological tests and more interviews. The tests are, well, intense. (Proctoscopy is said to be involved; or, as the astronaut Mike Collins refers to it in his autobiography, the "steel eel".) The lucky few selected as Astronaut Candidates, nine to 15 of them, should be known in May.

So far, Babbage has had her pre-screening exam and her referees have been contacted. Promisingly, the aviation doctor agreed with her last physician, who had once quipped that with Babbage's eyesight she should be a sniper—and added that her reflexes qualify her for a career in kickboxing. Yet your correspondent might very well be disqualified for something medical in the end. A colleague with intimate knowledge of the European astronaut-selection programme has warned that a successful candidate must be "basically physically perfect". No doubt NASA demands much the same. Even a likelihood of developing a problem in the future can be disqualifying. Such risk analysis sounds harsh but it makes sense on a long mission where calling in sick or seeing a specialist is not an option.

Astronauts have to be as faultless as the equipment they fly. Or better, since extra redundancy cannot be built into a human being. Babbage, though fit and healthy, would hesitate to use the term "basically physically perfect". Her space-walking future will probably remain out of reach. But being "highly qualified" for the astronaut program is itself a nice consolation prize. And there's always kickboxing.

via Babbage http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/09/becoming-astronaut?fsrc=gn_ep

An unfair advantage?

IN THIS week's programme our correspondents discuss a new controversy over prosthetics in sport, spying on online file-sharers and augmented-reality adverts

via Babbage http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/09/babbage-september-5th-2012?fsrc=gn_ep

The world's biggest book club

INFORMATION hygiene is a must on a website with a billion titbits about millions of books. In the case of Goodreads it is maintained by an army of volunteer editors, over 40,000 at last count, who fix misspellings in authors' names, correct page counts or ensure the right cover appears. Unlike many other crowdsourced ventures, though, the book-discussion and recommendation website is operated on a solidly for-profit basis.

Goodreads, which passed 10m registered users earlier this year, taps avid readers' passion for consuming book after book—and their desire to tell others to grab, or avoid, copies. That is an abundant resource, as the (currently) 73,776th review of Twilight attests. It is also one much in demand. Traffic continues to grow, with the firm claiming 22m unique monthly visitors, many of whom browse without joining. A link-up with Facebook in January brought a surge of users, who can use the social network and other tools to discover and forge connections with other readers.

In effect, the website is the world's biggest book club—or independent bookseller. Part of its appeal is how little the site's management inserts itself into an individual's experience, acting more like a good host at a party introducing like-minded individuals and coaxing them to chat. Once an account is created, the site's homepage turns into a list of recent activity by friends: a review written, a comment posted, a title they plan to read next.

Revenue remains subdued (and secret), relying almost entirely on advertising from publishers and authors (clearly labeled as such). Unlike Amazon, whose homepage greets a visitor with things to buy, Goodreads offers idea of what to read using a recommendation engine launched last year. There is something for everyone; Goodreads' long tail is very long indeed. At present, its users have read, are reading or plan to read 360m volumes.

Under the surface, though, there is plenty of commerce ticking away, according to Otis Chandler, the site's founder and boss. Book pages link to various online stores where they can be purchased in e-book or print format. The link is subtle, but frequently used. Its focus on adding books to a "to read" list helps drive purchases, as people must at some point obtain the book. Goodreads also includes a link to the title at Worldcat, a system run by library cataloguer OCLC that lets a visitor discover if a local public lending library has a given book in its holdings.

Mr Chandler says programmes with publishers have been quite well received. After all, the site's visitors are there to find out about books, so advertisements often pique their interest. The firm's approach is to engage publishers ctively. They provide advance reading copies to Goodreads members, who help to spark interest when a book is released with early reviews and buzz. (The firm demonstrates with a case study of its work with Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit released early this year.)

Goodreads also encourages authors' participation. It does not act as intermediary between author and reader, though it does solicit well-known authors to participate in question-and-answer sessions that unfold over days through a discussion thread. Authors are also free to talk to and hear from readers directly whenever they wish. They may also purchase ads, whether for self-published novels or books marketed by major publishers.

Independent bookshops were predicted to be extinct by now. They remain under pressure, but continue to champion mid-list titles, which sell in the thousands or tens of thousands of copies and produce a tidy, albeit small profit for a publisher. Such stores' staff "handsell" books, making patrons aware of a sleeper they might like, some of which then sell enough copies to make the author a little money and get another contract signed.

Mr Chandler notes that a bookshop's greatness is a function of its staff's knowledge; a customer must believe that a book is being offered because it's good, and trust that judgment because of the offerers extensive bibliophile nous. In this respect, no brick-and-mortar comes close to Goodreads' collective bookishness.

via Babbage http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/09/books-and-internet?fsrc=gn_ep

Difference Engine: The last greenfield

AFTER nine months of wrangling, Verizon Wireless—America’s largest mobile-phone company—has been given the go-ahead by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to buy a swathe of unused frequencies from a consortium of cable-television companies that includes Comcast, Time Warner and Bright House Networks. Apart from receiving a large sum of money, the deal allows these cable companies to repackage Verizon’s mobile-phone service under their own brands. Verizon has also struck a similar deal to acquire spectrum from Cox Communications, another cable and wireless provider.

Overall, Verizon will pay around $4 billion for 20 megahertz of spectrum in the valuable Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) band—popularly known as “the last greenfield” in the wireless world. Verizon already has one of the best 20 megahertz chunks of AWS spectrum. So that the present acquisition would pass muster with the antitrust authorities, it agreed to sell seven megahertz of its existing AWS spectrum to T-Mobile, a much smaller rival.



Verizon reckons it needs the additional spectrum to add capacity to its 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE) network. This network, the deepest (ie, touches more people) in America by far, was rolled out two years ago using frequencies in the 700 megahertz Ultra High Frequency (UHF) band. Verizon paid $4.7 billion for the latter when they were auctioned off by the FCC in preparation for television’s switch from analogue to digital broadcasting.



The AWS band uses frequencies in two segments, each 45 megahertz wide. One (1,710 to 1,755 megahertz) is employed by mobile phones to talk to the nearest cell tower. The other (2,110 to 2,155 megahertz) is used by phones to listen to signals from the tower. These frequencies are prized because they are ideal for densely populated areas.

Unlike waves in the 700 megahertz band, which travel long distances and penetrate all the nooks and crannies within buildings (that is why they were chosen for television in the first place), higher-frequency AWS signals have a much shorter range. But they can carry far more data or simultaneous conversations than UHF. That allows carriers to provide services to a greater number of customers within a given area. Having both UHF and AWS spectrum means Verizon is able to offer services competitively in rural and urban areas alike.



Verizon has certainly played its cards better than AT&T, its chief rival. Last December, AT&T had to abandon a $39 billion bid to acquire T-Mobile, America’s fourth largest wireless carrier. It was ready to pay such a large sum mainly to get it hands on the AWS spectrum T-Mobile had acquired, plus its customer-base and compatible network (both AT&T and T-Mobile use the popular GSM technology favoured by cariers abroad).

The takeover was scuttled, however, when it became clear that anti-trust officials were preparing to block it. Between them, Verizon and AT&T control more than 70% of the American mobile market. Allowing AT&T to acquire T-Mobile, the trust-busters argued, would reduce competition to even more of a duopoly than it already was. With a presidential election looming, the fear of further job losses, along with the possibility of a noisy consumer backlash, quickly eroded support for the deal in the White House and elsewhere.



What seems clear, though, is that the carriers' current land grab is a panic response to projections made by the FCC for future traffic growth. Media-friendly devices like smartphones and tablet computers—plus the trend to watch video, often in high-definition, via the internet instead of on television—are driving a huge increase in mobile data traffic. People with smartphones typically download 24 times more data (ie, movies, television shows, photographs and music tracks) than those with ordinary mobiles. The average tablet owner hogs over 120 times more bandwidth than a traditional mobile user.



In its National Broadcast Plan, released a couple of years ago, the FCC reckoned it would need to auction off at least 500 megahertz of additional spectrum by 2020 to meet this surging demand. More recently, the commission has warned that, if no new sources of spectrum can be found, carriers will face a “spectrum deficit” of 275 megahertz by as soon as 2014. But will they?

Spectrum is go

The way spectrum has been licensed by the FCC and other wireless regulators is a relic of the early days of broadcasting. At the time, licensing was done by dividing the radio spectrum up into bands, which, in turn, were sliced into channels that were then licensed to various broadcasters around the country.

To ensure that a broadcast could be received clearly, it was allocated a channel between two vacant ones. That is why the tuning dial on old VHF television sets had (apart from channel two) only the odd channels from three to 13. When UHF broadcasting came along, empty guard bands were similarly added to each channel, to prevent signals on adjacent frequencies causing interference (see “Bigger than Wi-Fi”, September 23rd 2010).



Unfortunately, the need to avoid interference continues to influence the way spectrum is allocated. This was as much a myth in Marconi's day as it is now. The whistling noises heard on a radio and the echo of adjacent stations are not the result of some phenomenon of physics. They are caused simply by the failure of the receiving equipment to process the signal properly. Try moving the antenna, or replacing it with a better one, to prove that it is the processing, not some law of nature, that affects reception.



Better radios are the answer. Modern agile transmitters and receivers avoid interference by hopping to different frequencies if they encounter another signal. Such frequency-hopping was first used during the second world war. So separating different broadcasters—whether they happen to be mobile phones or television stations—by putting them on different frequency bands is not actually necessary.

In truth, the companies know this. They are already finding ways to get more out of the spectrum they already have. One method has been to divide their networks into smaller cells, to get closer to individual customers. Doing so allows them to re-use the same frequencies elsewhere in the area. Another is to equip cell towers with smart aerials that can point their beams at individual customers and activate them only when required, rather than simply broadcasting continuously to all and sundry. A third way is to offload some of the data traffic onto Wi-Fi’s publicly owned channels. AT&T has built 30,000 Wi-Fi hotspots around the country to do precisely that.



Even then, it is not as though all the spectrum that has been licensed to carriers and network operators is actually being used. A study done last year by Citigroup, a financial conglomerate, reckoned that only 192 megahertz out of the 538 megahertz of licensed spectrum had actually been deployed. And 90% of that was being used by "legacy" 2G, 3G and 3.5G services. If this spectrum were repurposed, the carriers would have more than enough to build their 4G networks.



Unfortunately, there is little incentive to do so. For a start, it would mean investing heavily in advanced technologies like VoLTE (Voice over LTE) as well as new frequency-hopping transmitters, ultra-wideband equipment, software-defined radios and intelligent antennas. If they did, the voice traffic that is normally carried on legacy networks could travel along with data on LTE. And more subscribers in a given area could be served using the same set of frequencies.



But why bother when the FCC is squeezing the armed forces, NASA and other government agencies, as well as the television companies, to release more of their underutilised spectrum, so mobile-phone companies may prosper? It is easier to increase network capacity by adding spectrum than by developing costly new technology.

Because spectrum is seen as a finite resource, with allocation a zero-sum game, the rule has been grab it while you can. The more one carrier can amass for its exclusive use, the less there is for the others—who are then at a competitive disadvantage. In essence, then, the scarcity of wireless spectrum is an artificial one, exacerbated by the way it is allocated.



As explained by David Reed, one of the architects of the internet and a former professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, photons—whether they are in the visible, radio or gamma-ray part of the electromagnetic spectrum—simply pass through one another when they cross paths. As they do not occupy the same space, they cannot cause interference.

The only thing that distinguishes one type of photon from another is its frequency—ie, its energy level. Thus, to all intents and purposes, radio and light are the same thing and follow the same laws of physics. Therefore, in licensing frequencies to broadcasters, the FCC is essentially trying to regulate colour, jokes Dr Reed. His point, though, is that there is no more scarcity of wireless spectrum than there is a shortage of, say, the colour purple.



On a more serious note, Dr Reed believes the hoary metaphor of spectrum as real estate that needs to be subdivided to avoid interference is misleading. The rise of “co-operative” wireless networks—where the network architecture organises users in a way that allows them to help one another transmit and receive messages—makes a mockery of ideas about spectrum being as finite as land. Experiments show that as the number of users in a co-operative network increases, its capacity actually rises. So much for a precious and diminishing commodity.



All this has been known for a decade or more. Yet spectrum continues to be allocated as if it were a finite resource which, like common land, needs to be carefully managed so as to avoid some “tragedy of the commons” caused by over-exploitation and interference. “When the capacity of the commons can increase with the number of users,” notes Dr Reed, “we clearly need a different regime to allocate capacity among users.”

via Babbage http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/09/spectrum-licences?fsrc=gn_ep

For whom the call tolls

STAND on the south side of the Peace Arch in Blaine, Washington, an old-fashioned monument to American-Canadian comity, and a mobile call placed within the United States costs nothing (with a monthly calling plan) to 10 cents per minute. Pass through border control and place that same call on the arch's north end, out of range of American antennas, and you pay through the nose. Try loading a web page and your eyes will bulge from their sockets.

As regular international travellers know all too well, foreign mobile operators maintain a precious fiction that their costs of placing calls, relaying text messages and other data are as much as a thousand times higher when they must collect the fees through a caller's home operator. Forget the fact that such charges are handled automatically by electronic clearing houses, and that mobile subscribers that qualify for such roaming already have established credit with the home carriers and thus reduce operators' credit risk. One European Union report put the actual costs to operators of routing international voice call at a piffling 25 euro cents or so, and often much less: double that of carrying a call domestically plus a few cents to cover carriers' settlement of fees among each other. Data, however, incurs no additional cost over domestic operations except for settlement fees.

The high cost of roaming was brought home to your correspondent before a brief family trip to Vancouver, a few hours from Seattle. In planning the trip, he and Mrs Babbage found excellent lodgings and charted out piles of potential activities for the kids, yet failed to consider connectivity until a day or so before departure. The hotel would have free Wi-Fi, but we had forgotten how much we rely on our smartphones as a walkie-talkie when we head off in different directions. The prices to keep the mobiles switched on proved appalling.

Our carrier, AT&T, offers pay-as-you-go calling for $0.79 per minute in Canada, and plain text messages (SMS) cost $0.50 to send and $0.20 to receive. One Canadian carrier, Rogers, charges a bit less than half that in a prepaid-plan. While high, these rates are not usurious. Still, AT&T pays substantially less wholesale (likely close to its own per-minute domestic rate), and has reciprocal agreements with Rogers and other Canadian carriers whose customers visit the United States. (AT&T does have a variety of subscription plans for frequent travellers that slash fees substantially, especially to Canada.)

Then there are the data rates. AT&T's standard rate for Canadian data roaming is 1.5 cents per kilobyte, or $15,000 per gigabyte. It is 25% higher ($19,500 per gigabyte) in the 130 or so other countries with which AT&T has roaming agreements. Those rates are a stark contrast to what AT&T and other American carriers charge domestically: $10-50 per gigabyte depending on the usage plan. (Even that is a large mark-up.) AT&T will slash the price considerably, to $150-250 per gigabyte for an extra $30-120 month subscription.

These voice, text and data rates seem particularly egredious since in most countries it is easy to buy a prepaid SIM card or rental phone, and pay something close to domestic rates for intra-country calling and data use. However, American carriers routinely lock phones so that SIMs from other carriers, foreign or domestic, cannot be used in the devices. This is pitched as insurance that the subsidised cost of a phone is recouped through subscription, even though subscribers remain on the hook for cancellation fees that cover the subsidy if a service plan is cut short.

The EU stepped in and capped roaming fees European operators may charge their customers. The latest tariffs went into effect in July, setting low rates for calls, texts and, for the first time, data fees. Data charges may not exceed €0.70 ($0.88) per MB, a quarter of what one would have expected to pay in 2007, though still a whopping €700 per gigabyte. (Some firms do offer cheaper flat roaming rates.) The cap is set to fall to 40 euro cents per megabyte in 2014. Whether such top-down price-setting is wise in the long run remains moot, but most European holiday-makers no doubt approve.

Your correspondent and his wife dutifully flipped switched their phones to "airplane mode" to disable the mobile radios before reaching the Canadian border, left the hotel's office number with relatives and basked in the luxury of not being able to reach for a phone while away from the hotel. Perhaps the extortionate fees are not all bad.

via Babbage http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/08/mobile-roaming?fsrc=gn_ep

When back-ups fail

TUBERCULOSIS is hardly a new scourge. Lately, however, the disease—caused by bacteria that travel through air and attack the lungs—has become much harder to fight. Drugs that once quashed the bugs have become, if not completely useless, then only sporadically effective. A big new study, published in the Lancet, provides a global portrait of the bacteria’s resilience.



Tracy Dalton of America’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) led the far-flung research team, working with scientists from Peru, the Philippines, South Korea, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, South Africa and Thailand. Other studies have reported a rise in bacteria resistant to drugs. Use of back-up drugs, in turn, has bred resistance to the back-ups. Dr Dalton set out to tally where these bacteria were most prevalent and just how resistant they had become.



The findings are not encouraging. Dr Dalton and her colleagues examined patients from eight countries. Researchers collected sputum, the polite word for coughed-up mucus, then shipped it to the CDC to test the bacteria’s response to drugs.



In total, 43.7% of the 1,278 patients did not respond to at least one so-called second-line drug, used when the most popular medicines fail. The results varied widely from one country to another. In Thailand the figure was 33.3%; in Latvia a staggering 62% of samples showed resistance.



Dr Dalton also looked at extensively drug-resistant, or XDR, tuberculosis, which is almost untreatable, failing to respond to back-ups to the back-ups. Researchers observed XDR tuberculosis in 6.7% of patients, ranging from 0.8% in the Philippines to 15.2% in South Korea. Worryingly (but unsurprisingly), resistance was higher in those countries which had had access to second-line drugs for a longer period of time. This suggests that, unchecked, it is only a matter of time before XDR tuberculosis arises in countries where second-line drugs arrived more recently, such as Thailand and the Philippines.



On an individual basis, the best predictor of whether drugs would work in a patient was whether he had been treated for tuberculosis before. Other risks included factors such as unemployment and alcohol use. This may be because these patients would be less likely to adhere to a strict medical regimen, giving bacteria a chance to evolve around existing drugs. The study, however troubling, offers only an incomplete picture. India and China, home to the largest number of tuberculosis cases, are not included.

via Babbage http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/08/tuberculosis?fsrc=gn_ep

Wooden skyscrapers

WHEN life hands you lemons, goes the old saw, make lemonade. But what if life should hand you 18m hectares (44m acres) of dead trees? That is the problem faced by the province of British Columbia in Canada, which could lose over half its pine trees to the depredations of the fearsome mountain pine beetle. The beetle, no bigger than a grain of rice, is native to the forests of Western North America, where it kills trees by releasing a blue stain fungus that prevents the flow of water and nutrients. While the insect was historically kept in check by spells of cold weather, years of mild winters have unleashed an outbreak whose spread and severity is unlike anything seen previously.

As a result, the province is peppered with billions of dead, grey trees. If they are simply left standing, they will eventually either decay or burn in forest fires. In either case, they will release the carbon dioxide they stored while growing, swelling Canada's total carbon footprint from 2000 to 2020 by 2%.

So, to deal with the problem, in 2009 British Columbia's parliament passed a Wood First Act that requires wood to be considered as the primary construction material in all new buildings erected with public money. The striking Richmond Olympic Oval for example, used for ice-skating events during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, features 1m board feet (2,360 cubic metres) of beetle-affected wood. But harvesting trees for traditional purposes will make barely a dent in the massive wood pile, especially while one of Canada's main outlets for wood, the American residential-housing market, remains depressed.

Other big customers, such as the Japanese, dislike the blue-tinged lumber. One solution is turning the beetle-kill pine (BKP), as the stuff is known, into innovative wood products. Cross-laminated timber (CLT) is a layered panel built up from thin wooden boards, glued together in alternate orientations. Not only can the panels be made from BKP, hiding the worst-stained wood, they are actually robust, rigid and fire-resistant enough to replace the pre-fabricated concrete panels used in many commercial buildings. Buildings made with CLT use six times as much wood as those made with conventional framing techniques, but given the material's abundance that might be seen as a virtue.

FP Innovations, a private non-profit forest-research organisation based in Vancouver, estimates that using engineered wood for commercial construction could unlock 3 billion board feet of demand for BKP. It would also help to reduce the construction industry's reliance on concrete, which today accounts for around 5% of global carbon emissions.

European architects have been using CLT for years: a nine-storey CLT apartment block in London is the tallest wooden building in the world, and plans are afoot in Norway to build a 14-storey block by 2014. But their Canadian counterparts are now thinking even bigger. Michael Green, an architect based in Vancouver, has come up with a building system that he says enables 20-storey skyscrapers to be erected safely using engineered wood products like CLT. He is now offering the system free to architects worldwide under an open-source licence.

Canadian researchers have discovered other uses for BKP. Sorin Pasca, a graduate student at the University of Northern British Columbia, found that rain and snow conveniently wash out sugars and other organic compounds from dead pine trees. By grinding up the dry BKP and adding it to normal cement, he created a hybrid material that is waterproof, fire-resistant and pourable like concrete but that can be worked, cut and nailed or drilled like wood. The material, dubbed Beetlecrete, has already been used to make countertops, benches and planters.

Even more esoteric uses for BKP are on the table. Nanocrystalline cellulose, made up of microscopic needle-like fibres, is a lightweight, ultra-rigid material that can be extracted from wood pulp. Currently used to improve the durability of paints and varnishes, nanocrystalline cellulose promises strong, iridescent films that may find uses in industries ranging from optical computing to cosmetics. And, as a last resort, dead and fallen pine trees can feed British Columbia's 800MW of bio-mass power plants, which burn pellets of BKP and other waste wood to generate electricity.

While technology marches on, regulations lag behind. British Columbia recently revamped its building codes to allow taller buildings to be made from wood, but still capped their height at a modest six storeys. (In comparison, Britain, Norway and New Zealand place no height restrictions on safely-made wooden skyscrapers.) That will need to change if products like CLT are to help solve the pine-beetle problem—and quickly. If dead trees are not harvested within 10 to 15 years of being killed, they will have rotted or burned to the point of uselessness. Like freshly-made lemonade, BKP has a shelf-life.

via Babbage http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/08/building-materials?fsrc=gn_ep

The final frontier?

OUR correspondents discuss attempts by the Indian government to block social networking and text messaging, a new motor-racing series for electric cars and the legacy of Neil Armstrong

via Babbage http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/08/babbage-august-29th-2012?fsrc=gn_ep

Difference Engine: Driven from drink

IN CALIFORNIA and other car-dependent parts of America, teenagers can apply for a learner’s driving permit at the age of 15 years and six months. When they are 16, they can take the actual driving test—provided they have already passed their state’s written examination and eye test. In normal circumstances, those who pass the driving test are allowed on public roads for the following 12 months only if they are accompanied by an adult. All provisional restrictions generally cease at the age of 18. The newly minted motorist is then free to drive alone, at any time of the day or night, and to use a vehicle to earn a living. High schools with adequate space generally provide parking slots for pupils in their final year.



The whole process of a first-born learning to drive can strike trepidation into the hearts of parents. So much so that an industry has sprung up to supply wireless aids and apps that warn teenage motorists (and their parents at home) when seat-belts are not fastened, the speed limit is broken and family rules are flouted. Such devices either attach to the windscreen, like an add-on navigation system, or plug into the vehicle’s OBD II (on-board diagnostics) port by the steering column under the dashboard.



Using dedicated websites, parents can set the maximum speed the car may be driven, the geographical zones to be avoided (“geofencing”) and any destinations that are specifically forbidden. If the car is driven too fast, starts behaving erratically or breaks any of the parental rules, the fledgling driver gets a warning, and a text message or e-mail is sent to the parents.



Your correspondent is tempted by this technology. But the whole idea reeks of surveillance gone silly: trust has to come into the equation somewhere. When the time comes, he will probably install such a device, switch off the home reporting functions, set the parameters jointly with his teenage daughter, and leave it to function strictly as a coach for reinforcing safe and courteous driving habits.



Thankfully, such aids are still just that—gizmos that provide helpful alerts, but take no autonomous action. But it is only a short step from today’s passive technology (GPS receiver, wireless transmitter plus accelerometers and other sensors, along with the necessary logic and memory) to more autonomous systems capable of taking control behind the wheel. The next generation of driver aids may well be able to over-rule an inexperienced driver’s actions.



That could cause problems. For instance, an active safety system might apply the brakes just as the driver needs to accelerate to avoid being T-boned in an intersection. Side impacts caused by drivers running red lights or failing to stop at intersections are among the most common forms of collision.



Driver aids that interact with a vehicle’s brakes and throttle already exist. Soon they will be able to intervene with the steering as well. Adaptive cruise control, which relieves the driver of having to brake and accelerate when trying to maintain a constant distance from the vehicle ahead, has been around for more than a decade. The same goes for traction-control systems, which step in when the driven wheels start slipping as a result of the driver accelerating too aggressively or cornering too fast. Likewise, electronic stability control automatically applies individual brakes and reduces the throttle setting if there is a chance of the vehicle rolling over in a bend.



In all instances, so far, the aim has been to give drivers additional assistance rather than subtract control from them. While such safety systems usually default to being on, the driver has the choice (via a button on the dashboard or steering wheel) to use the assistance or to drive without it. And because the driver can always over-ride the system, he remains in charge of the vehicle. That makes him legally responsible for it at all times.



This is important, because the last thing carmakers want is to be held liable for accidents caused by a driver’s inexperience, distraction or carelessness—no matter how effective the vehicle’s computerised assistance may be. The fear of class-action suits brought as a result of “computer-aided accidents” sends shivers down the motor industry’s spine.



Recall how adamant Toyota was three years ago about its “runaway cars” being the result of floor mats getting jammed under the accelerator pedal, rather than software bugs in the vehicles’ electronic throttles (see “Computer-aided crash?”, November 13th 2009). And yet liable carmakers could become if, in the name of safety, the present trend towards giving vehicles greater active control continues.



Active systems work by reducing a vehicle’s speed by, say, increasing the throttle pedal’s resistance, reducing the fuel supply to the engine or cutting the ignition in one or more cylinders. By comparing a vehicle’s speed with the posted limit from a GPS’s digital maps, motorists can be prevented from speeding illegally. Such active controls could be commonplace before the decade is out.



And what if the “ignition interlock” systems, which require motorists with previous drunken-driving convictions to breathe into a blood-alcohol sensor to unlock the ignition, were built into every new car? The current interlock technology is too invasive for the vast majority of motorists who drive soberly and sensibly. However, a five-year research programme called Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety (DADSS), run jointly by the motor industry and the American government, seeks to make blood-alcohol monitoring far less obtrusive.



One technology DADSS is exploring uses a touch-based approach to estimate the alcohol in human tissue. Another employs multiple sensors surrounding the driver to detect the concentration of carbon dioxide exhaled, as a proxy for his blood-alcohol concentration. In either case, if the sensors determine the driver is over the limit, the car cannot be started.



What is there to object about that? Several things. First, like all driver aids that cannot be switched off, any system failure could have serious implications. Even if designed to fail gracefully, there could be no guarantee that the user would never be locked out of the system. Nor could anyone guarantee that the inability to start a vehicle would never cause harm. The potential for product-liability suits would seem endless.



Second, the DADSS programme seeks to reduce accidents caused by drunken driving not through stiffer penalties or by increasing public awareness along the lines of the successful Mothers Against Drunken Drivers campaign. Instead, it intends doing so simply by making the offence impossible to commit in the first place. That has raised red flags among lawyers.



Writing recently in the New York Times, Michael Rich of Elon University School of Law in North Carolina called the DADSS programme part of a trend to the “perfect prevention” of crime. Technologies that make it impossible to commit a crime—eg, break the speed limit, run a red light or share copyrighted material—deprive people of the choice to commit the offence in the first place.



People do not, of course, have the right to commit crimes. But conventional crime prevention balances society’s desire for safety and security against the individual’s right to act freely. The circumstances of an action, as much as the action itself, determine whether that action is criminal—and even technically criminal acts may be discharged by the judgment of a court if a greater good in involved. A driver who breaks the speed limit to get someone to hospital faster than an ambulance might is unlikely to face the full weight of the law.

Perfect prevention, then, while politically attractive, would seem a poor solution for most offences. It requires an omniscient awareness of what people were thinking before they were prevented from perpetrating the act the machine defines as a crime. As Mr Rich says, “perfect prevention threatens our right to be free in our thoughts, even when those thoughts turn to crime.”

via Babbage http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/08/smart-cars?fsrc=gn_ep

Neil Armstrong

ASTRONAUTS do not like to be called heroes. Their standard riposte to such accusations is to point out that it requires the efforts of hundreds of thousands of backroom engineers, mathematicians and technicians to make space flight possible. They are right, too: at the height of its pomp, in 1966, NASA was spending about 4.4% of the American government’s entire budget, employing something like 400,000 workers among the agency and its contractors.

But it never works. For Neil Armstrong, who commanded Apollo 11, the mission that landed men on the moon on July 20th 1969, the struggle against heroism seemed particularly futile. The achievement of his crew, relayed live on television, held the entire planet spellbound. On their return to Earth, the astronauts were mobbed. Presidents, prime ministers and kings jostled to be seen with them. Schools, buildings and roads were named after them. Medals were showered upon them. A whirlwind post-flight tour took them to 25 countries in 35 days.

As the first man to walk on another world, Armstrong received the lion’s share of the adulation. All the while, he quietly insisted that the popular image of the hard-charging astronaut braving mortal danger the way other men might brave a trip to the dentist was exaggerated. “For heaven’s sake, I loathe danger,” he told one interviewer before his fateful flight. Done properly, he opined, spaceflight ought to be no more dangerous than mixing a milkshake.

Indeed, the popular image of the “right stuff” possessed by the astronaut corps—the bravery, the competitiveness, the swaggering machismo—was never the full story. The symbol of the test-pilot school at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave desert, where Armstrong spent years testing military jets, is a slide rule over a stylised fighter jet. In an address to America’s National Press Club in 2000, Armstrong offered the following self-portrait: “I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer, born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace and propelled by compressible flow.”

He had an engineer’s reserve, mixed with a natural shyness. Even among the other astronauts, not renowned for their excitability, Armstrong was known as the “Ice Commander”. Mike Collins, one of Armstrong’s crew-mates on the historic moon mission, liked his commander but mused that “Neil never transmits anything but the surface layer, and that only sparingly.” In one famous incident, Armstrong lost control of an unwieldy contraption nicknamed the “Flying Bedstead” that was designed to help astronauts train for the lunar landing. Ejecting only seconds before his craft hit the ground and exploded, Armstrong dusted himself off and coolly went back to his office for the rest of the day, presumably to finish up some paperwork.

That unflappability served him well during the lunar landing. The original landing area turned out to be full of large boulders, and so Armstrong had to take control from his spacecraft’s primitive computer and skim across the lunar surface by hand, looking for somewhere suitable to set down. By the time he found his spot, there was only 25 seconds of fuel left in the tanks.

It served him well back on Earth, too. The astronauts knew from the experiences of their predecessors on the Mercury and Gemini flights that their trip would transform them into celebrities. But theirs was the biggest achivement yet, and none were prepared for the adulation that awaited them. Puzzlingly for the pragmatic spacemen, their trip to the moon seemed to have elevated them to the status of oracles, and people pressed them for their thoughts on everything from religion to the future of the human species and the chances for world peace.

Unlike some of his fellow astronauts (two of whom became senators), Armstrong chose a comparatively quiet retirement, teaching engineering at the University of Cincinnati. He returned to NASA twice, both times to serve on boards of enquiry, the first into the near-disaster of Apollo 13, and the second into the disintegration of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986. He spent his final years on his farm in rural Ohio, flying gliders in his spare time (it was, said the supposedly emotionless engineer, the closest humans could come to being birds).

For all mankind

Half a century after the event, with the deaths of many of its participants, the Apollo project is beginning to fade from living memory and pass into the history books. It was one of the mightiest achievements of the potent combination of big government and big science; in many ways the apotheosis of the post-war American political consensus. Viewed from an age in which America’s government aspires to smallness and in which grand projects are regarded with suspicion, it seems more alien with every passing year.

Nevertheless, it is one of the few events of the 20th century that stands any chance of being widely remembered in the 30th. Despite its origins in Cold War paranoia and nationalist rivalry, Mike Collins recalls in interviews a brief moment of global unity: “People, instead of saying ‘you Americans did it’, they said ‘we—people—did it’. I thought that was a wonderful thing. Ephemeral, but wonderful.”

Perhaps the most unexpected consequence of the moon flights was a transformation of attitudes towards Earth itself. Space was indeed beautiful, but it was beauty of a severe, geometrical sort. Planets and stars swept through the cosmos in obedience to Isaac Newton’s mathematical clockwork, a spectacle more likely to inspire awe than love. Earth was a magnificent contrast, a jewel hung in utter darkness, an exuberant riot of chaos and life in a haunting, abyssal emptiness. The sight had a profound effect on the astronauts, and photos of the whole Earth, which had never been seen before, nourished the nascent green movement.

As for the man himself, his reserve was not limitless. One of the most famous photos of Armstrong shows the Ice Commander in the Lunar Module after he and Buzz Aldrin had completed their historic walk on the moon’s surface. He is dressed in his space-suit, sports a three-day beard and is clearly exhausted. On his face is plastered a grin of purest exhilaration.

(Picture credit: NASA)

via Babbage http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/08/obituary?fsrc=gn_ep

Difference Engine: Competition at the pump

YOU would be forgiven for thinking a stake had been driven through the heart of the ethanol lobby in Washington, DC. The contentious tax credit it used to get, which put $6 billion a year of taxpayers’ money into the pockets of wealthy agri-business concerns, expired on January 1st with barely a whimper. Faced with demands for an end to the subsidy from critics on both the left and the right of the political divide, bio-refiners who use maize as their feedstock seemed simply to have accepted their fate. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.



The reality is that, despite this summer’s scorching temperatures and record drought, America's maize farmers are doing just fine. Their corn is currently selling for around $8 a bushel—four times its price in 2005, and up over 30% since June. The handouts had become virtually irrelevant anyway, thanks to a mandatory requirement that demands an increasing amount of corn-based ethanol be used to dilute petrol sold at the pump.



The petrol Americans put in their cars nowadays contains up to 10% ethanol (E10). In the Mid-West, where many of the bio-refineries are located, a blend containing 85% ethanol (E85) is also available for so-called “flex-fuel” vehicles. Lately, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has approved a blend with 15% ethanol (E15) for use in ordinary petrol-powered vehicles built from 2001 onwards.



For all this and more, ethanol producers can thank the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which established a controversial mandate known as the Renewable Fuel Standard. Originally, the RFS programme required that 7.5 billion gallons (28 billion litres) of renewable fuel (ie, corn-based ethanol) be blended annually into petrol by 2012, to help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, cut oil imports and keep the farm lobby in clover.

Following the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, the mandated schedule was upped to 13.2 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol annually by 2012, rising to an unprecedented 36 billion gallons by 2022. Today, around 40% of America’s field corn goes to making ethanol for blending purposes.

But consider this: if 36 billion gallons of ethanol are to be produced from corn, America will be diverting all its current field-corn capacity to ethanol production by 2022. To meet the needs for just domestic animal feed, as well as ethanol production, farmers will then have to devote additional acreage normally reserved for food crops to growing yet more field corn. Whether mandated or not, market forces will impel them to do so.



The world has already witnessed the negative knock-on effects of America’s food-to-fuel mandate. The United States accounts for 60% of the maize exported globally. Apart from providing feed for cattle, pigs and chickens, corn flour is a staple for millions of people in poorer parts of the world. With agricultural-commodity prices everywhere on the rise again (corn futures are up 50% since early July), the bread riots of several years ago are threatening to return. And so the law of unintended consequences wreaks its merciless havoc.



Today's situation is a far cry from ethanol’s original role as a mere additive for boosting petrol’s octane rating. After tetra-ethyl lead was banned from petrol for health reasons in the 1990s, the octane-boosting additive of choice was methyl tertiary-butyl ether. But MBTE was later found to have its own problems (it contaminated drinking water supplies), and was replaced with ethanol. Since then, ethanol has been added to petrol in increasing quantities—not for health, environmental or performance reasons, but solely to fulfill the mandated requirements set by the politically charged RFS programme.



While the ethanol added to petrol helps the air-fuel mixture in the engine burn smoothly rather than explode prematurely (ie, “knock") when under heavy load, it does not give the fuel more punch. In fact, the consensus is that motorists get 5-10% fewer miles to the gallon from petrol containing 10% ethanol (E10) compared with pure petrol. They do 25-30% worse when switching from E10 to E85.



That is only to be expected. A gallon of ethanol contains 67% the energy stored in a gallon of regular-grade petrol. Any blend is therefore bound to deliver inferior fuel economy. Motorists with flex-fuel vehicles reckon they have to fill up nearly twice as often when using E85 as opposed to E10.



The hassle aside, is it worth it? To simplify matters, take the present average rack price (ie, the price refineries charge their customers) for a gallon of ethanol ($2.13) versus a gallon of regular petrol ($2.84). Thus, the ethanol delivers 67% of the energy for 75% of the price. Answer: stick with petrol.



The ethanol lobby plays up the fact that ethanol produces fewer harmful emissions of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter than either petrol or diesel. That is all true. But what is rarely mentioned is that, when burned in a car engine, ethanol produces significantly larger quantities of formaldehyde and related compounds such as acetaldehyde.



The United States government has declared formaldehyde are carcinogen, and lists acetaldehyde as a probable carcinogen. Such compounds are also adept at triggering photochemical reactions. As such, they generate greater amounts of ground-level ozone. Overall, an ethanol exhaust produces over twice as much ozone as a petrol engine’s. That means more smog. So much so that the California Air Resources Board—ever concerned about the millions of vehicles in the Los Angeles basin, with its pollution-trapping inversion layer—has set special emission standards for formaldehyde and its relatives alongside those for nitrogen oxides and other pollutants.



To get matters in proportion, aldehydes in general, and acetaldehyde in particular, may be pretty nasty pollutants, but they are not as bad as some of the original emissions found in petrol exhausts. Carmakers have done an impressive job over the decades cleaning those up. They will presumably do the same for ethanol's remaining emissions.



Meanwhile, much remains to be done on weaning America off corn-based ethanol. Like Brazil's, the United States' ethanol policy remains tilted exclusively towards renewable sources. For political reasons, this nowadays means corn, but eventually that will change. Ethanol is currently being made in non-commercial quantities from cellulosic materials (eg, corn husks, wood pulp and even switchgrass) that do not compete with food or feed crops. Whether these demonstration processes can be scaled up to produce ethanol commercially for $2 a gallon or less is an open question.



What is not in doubt is that ethanol can be made from fossil fuels—including natural gas, coal and petcoke (the coke residue from cracking oil)—for a good deal less than the cost of producing it from corn. Celanese, a chemical company based in Dallas, has a “game-changing” acetyl technology called TCX that can convert natural gas, coal or petcoke into ethanol for $1.50 a gallon—equivalent, the company says, to making petrol from crude costing no more than $60 a barrel.



The advantage of processes like TCX that use non-renewable feedstocks is that they do not strain the food supply. Nor are they affected by the weather or crop yields. Celanese is currently building one such ethanol plant, in China, and plans another in Texas. With America’s super-abundance of cheap natural gas, ethanol from a TCX plant would seem an ideal candidate for the forecourt. But without a change in the law, that is never going to happen.



Things would alter dramatically, though, if a couple of bills moving through Congress actually make it onto the statute book. One is the Open Fuels Standard Act, introduced in May 2011, which is stuck in committee. If passed, this would require flex-fuel vehicles capable of running on any combination of petrol, ethanol or methanol to account for 95% of each manufacturer’s fleet by 2017. The cost of adapting a petrol-powered vehicle to run on these other fuels is nowadays marginal (less than $100) when the modifications are incorporated on the assembly line. Motor manufacturers have long since replaced all the natural rubber seals and cork parts in fuel systems that ethanol used to attack.



The second bill, the Domestic Alternative Fuels Act, was introduced in January 2012. This would allow ethanol produced from any domestic hydrocarbon, other than petroleum, to satisfy the RFS mandate. In other words, ethanol made from natural gas could be used to fill the quota that is satisfied today solely by corn-based ethanol. The farmers and their agri-business partners hate the very idea. Though it has bipartisan support, the bill’s chances of becoming law would therefore seem slim.



Letting motor fuels compete at the pump is the obvious way to go. But even if both bills were enacted, such competition would be available only to the 13m or so new vehicles that join the American fleet each year. Left out of the equation, notes Joseph Cannon, chief executive of the Fuel Freedom Foundation, a campaign group based in Irvine, California, are the 250m petrol-powered vehicles that are on American roads today. For there to be real competition at the pump, these cars and light trucks also need to be given the option to use the most competitive fuel available.



As the EPA’s regulations stand, it is illegal to convert existing petrol-driven cars to run on ethanol or methanol, or even battery power. Doing so invalidates their emissions certificates. Tesla Motors, an electric-car company based in Palo Alto, California, was fined $275,000 by the EPA because the emissions certificate of the vehicle its battery-powered roadster was based on (a featherweight Lotus Elise from Britain) had been invalidated by removing the source of those emissions and using a pollution-free electric drive instead.

But what if the EPA'S rigid cerification rules were relaxed in a way that allowed the engines in existing vehicles to be made less polluting? The result, Mr Cannon believes, would be a surge in kits for converting cars and trucks that are already on the road to flex-fuel vehicles—which would then be free to use the most competitive fuel of the day.

As for the cost of conversion, a couple of years of innovation would probably beat the price of after-market kits down to a $100 or so. At a stroke, the EPA would then have succeeded, beyond its wildest dreams, in reducing overall vehicle emissions, cutting the cost of motoring, and replacing much of America's imported oil with at least home-grown, if not home-brewed, alternatives.

via Babbage http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/08/alternative-fuels?fsrc=gn_ep

Hot, dry or flooded

HOT summers, wildfires and drought are anomalies no longer. They are the visible products of climate change, and more can be expected, says James Hansen. One solution may appeal to conservatives

Read the related article here

via Babbage http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/08/james-hansen-climate-change?fsrc=gn_ep

Flushed with pride

“IF Thomas Crapper were around today, he would find our toilets quite familiar,” says Bill Gates, referring to the Victorian manufacturer of sanitary ware whose name has become attached to one of the body’s most fundamental functions. “They haven’t seen many advances apart from handles and paper toilet rolls.” In fact, with the exception of S-traps to contain odours, flush toilets have changed little since Sir John Harrington installed one in Richmond Palace for Queen Elizabeth I.

Mr Gates considers it time for a change. On August 14th his charitable institution, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, announced the gold-, silver- and bronze-medal winners in its Reinvent The Toilet Challenge, which aims to bring safe, affordable and “sustainable” loos to the 40% of the world’s population who lack access to basic sanitation, thus preventing many of the 1.5m childhood deaths from diarrhoea that now occur each year.

The Challenge is nothing if not ambitious. It seeks a toilet that costs less than five cents per user per day to operate, that requires neither a supply of clean water nor sewerage infrastructure to take the waste away, and that will generate energy and recover salts, water and other nutrients. Remarkably, despite the challenge being little more than a year old, the award winners claim to be on track to achieve all of these goals.

In third place is a toilet designed by researchers at the University of Toronto. This treats urine and faeces separately, using a material freely available in many of the world’s poorest regions: sand. Urine is filtered through sand, and the resulting liquor is exposed to ultraviolet light to sterilise it. Faeces are dried slowly within the toilet before being fed into a smouldering sand-filled reactor. The system can sanitise the waste of ten people in two hours, leaving only sand and fresh(ish) water behind.

The runner-up, from Loughborough University in Britain, brings chemical-engineering principles to bear. A tank feeds mixed urine and faeces through a rig that heats it to 200°C under high pressure, killing pathogens. Returning the superheated mixture suddenly to atmospheric pressure causes it to separate into its liquid and gaseous components. The gas is used to heat the feed tank. The liquid is fed into a digester that produces enough methane to power the entire system—and some to spare.

The winning toilet, however, is smarter still. It has been developed by Michael Hoffman of the California Institute of Technology, and has earned him the $100,000 first prize. Dr Hoffman’s toilet uses solar panels to power an electrochemical system that produces two things. One is hydrogen. The other is a compound which oxidises the salts in urine to generate chlorine. This creates a mildly disinfecting solution that can be used to flush the toilet. The hydrogen is suitable for cooking or for powering a fuel cell to produce electricity. The solid residue from the process can be employed as fertiliser.

The Gates Foundation will now pay for prototypes to be tested in the field, probably of all three winners and possibly of some other ideas, and Mr Gates hopes that the foundation’s reinvented toilets will start being deployed for real in as little as two years. They will thus be able to contribute to achieving what is the most off-track of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, to halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to basic sanitation. As the chairman of the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation, the Prince of Orange, observes, “politicians and leaders worldwide don’t like to be associated with toilets, even state-of-the-art toilets. This sanitation stigma distorts international and national development agendas.”

Dr Hoffman agrees that sanitation is insufficiently sexy. He says the technology behind his winning solar-powered toilet had been sitting on the shelf since he demonstrated it to NASA, America’s space agency, in the early 1990s, for use on the International Space Station. “It is,” as he puts it, “hard to get a scientific grant for treating faeces.”

Even the Gates Foundation itself, which hands out around $3 billion each year, has so far devoted just $6.5m to its Reinventing The Toilet Challenge. But that will change as the project goes from conception to delivery. The foundation now intends to spend up to $80m a year on sanitation, an investment that the World Health Organisation estimates will produce a return of 900% in the form of social and economic benefits coming from increased productivity and reduced health care costs.

via Babbage http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/08/sanitation?fsrc=gn_ep