Recently in How cool is this? Category

Lynne Kiesling

Over the past six years here at KP I've discussed the development of high-temperature superconductor technologies and their application to electric power systems, and today we have reached a milestone in that development:

Power executives, engineers, and the media gathered recently to officially throw the switch at the $60 million Holbrook Superconductor project, the world's first transmission power cable transmitting waves of electricity from the grid to a substation that feeds actual U.S. homes.

This project, using American Superconductor technology, involves 99 miles of 138 kV high-temperature superconductor lines that are cooled cryogenically using liquid nitrogen. It transmits power via 6 outdoor connectors to the Long Island Power Authority's customers. LIPA's Ken Law stated the significance of this development well:

Law, who joined the officials celebrating the launch of the Holbrook Superconductor project after two years of construction, pointed out that much of the technology in the grid hasn't had a major upgrade since Dwight Eisenhower lived in the White House in the 1950s.

"We have a high-tech economy but we have a low-tech electrical grid," Law said. "We need to bring our electrical grid into the 21st century. Our system here is about 60 years old. And just like in any area, technology is improving on a daily basis."

Law said the superconductors offer the opportunity to transmit on lines that take up much less space and hold much more power.

Transmission lines that take up less space and have fewer line losses economize on a resource that will only get more and more scarce over time, because of its fixed supply: space. Right now, transmission rights of way take up wide swathes of land, and on average transmission wires lose 7-8% of the power they transmit (UPDATE: Ed correctly corrects me in the comments; transmission losses are closer to 1%). Economizing on land use and reducing line losses will be substantial value propositions for technologies like this, even though they cost more because of the materials and the cooling requirements.

For further information, see a video on the project, their FAQ on the project.

Lynne Kiesling

Those Prius engineers at Toyota keep working and working ... a third-generation version of the hybrid vehicle is due on the market next year, and they are already working on rooftop solar panels to generate the power to run the car's air conditioning.

See also the the picture available at Engadget.

I'd like to see more such innovations, where we use solar panels to capture solar energy in places where the sun beats down even in northern climes.

Michael Giberson

That is the goal. Few numbers show up in the Christian Science Monitor article to support that claim, but the people discussed are launching a business with the goal of improving the design further and then go to production. The key innovations appear to be in the cheaper process to produce the appropriately shaped mirrors and build the supporting structure.

Whether they ultimately succeed or not, the article comes with a video showing a board bursting into flames, so at least the designers are having fun:

Out on a lawn at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with joggers and traffic passing nearby, Spencer Ahrens is demonstrating what looks like either the future of solar power - or perhaps a death ray.

Thrusting a 12-foot board up into the air in front of a large mirror-covered satellite-type dish, Mr. Ahrens, an MIT graduate student, waves the board, looking for an elusive sweet spot where reflected sun rays converge.

With three student teammates looking on, he steadies the board once its tip begins to glow. Shining white in the reflected solar rays, the wood suddenly bursts into flames. Students laugh as smoke billows in the breeze.

This burning-board trick may seem like a YouTube stunt, but it's actually a visceral demonstration of a device with a serious purpose: to make super-cheap solar heat.

Lynne Kiesling

There are a couple of very interesting recent solar developments that have substantial economic implications. First, the blue sky stuff: courtesy of Slashdot, a team of researchers in the Netherlands have demonstrated avalanche effects in semiconductors that can be used in solar cells (here's the original article). Avalanche effects mean that instead of having a 1:1 relationship between a photon and an electron, in which 1 photon releases 1 electron, it's physically possible in these nano-scale semiconducting materials to have 2:1 or even 3:1 -- 2 or 3 electrons released per photon in the material. This means twofold or threefold increase in the possible energy intensity of the solar cell material. These nanocrystals are even inexpensive to manufacture. How cool is that?

What are the economic implications of this new material and new knowledge? The low energy intensity of solar cells has been a factor in making solar a less cost-effective means of generating electricity than fossil fuels, which are extremely energy intensive. This avalanche effect can mean smaller, more energy intensive solar cells, which changes the cost structure for solar. I think it will certainly shift the long-run average cost curve downward, which creates an opportunity for solar retailers to reduce prices. A lower solar retail price shifts the price ratio between solar power and all other electricity power sources. For example, the price ratio between solar-generated and coal-generated electricity would shift such that at the margin, consumers would substitute out of coal-powered electricity and into solar-powered electricity. If I were better at generating the isoquant and indifference curve graphs electronically, I'd show it here graphically ... but the logic is straightforward.

In brief, innovations like this one increase the margin on which solar can compete with fossil fuels.

Another solar development that's amenable to economic analysis is described in this Financial Times article from Monday.

The solar power business is bracing itself for a collapse in prices that could lead to a shake-out in one of the most promising areas of the renewable energy sector.

However, a price slump could hasten the take-up of the technology which would help boost the overall volume of future activity, even as margins fall, industry analysts and officials add.

Expectations of falling prices have been partly sparked by a surge in the level of manufacturing capacity for solar panels. This is likely to lead to demand outstripping supply for the first time in years.

Another factor driving prices is uncertainty over the degree of government subsidies in some key markets for the technology.

Interesting, interesting, interesting. Over the past decade the demand for solar cells has shifted out, leading to increased prices and to supply pressure on inputs like silicon (which is also an input into a lot of other products, so it's a very competitive global market). Now we are starting to see the supply response, with more solar manufacturing capacity coming online and the use of other materials, as entrepreneurs wanting to enter the market innovate around input supply constraints and costs. This market entry is shifting out the supply curve, and from the sounds of the FT article, the magnitude of the supply shift is large relative to current demand. Consequently, they anticipate a fall in solar cell prices due to the large supply shift. Even if the demand curve stays the same, this supply shift means that retail prices of solar cells would fall, leading to increased adoption of solar technology. More realistically, demand is likely to continue shifting out, which may mitigate some of the price reduction.

Another interesting fact in this article: where is a lot of this new manufacturing capacity coming online? China.

Think about the economics of the interaction of these two developments. Taken together, they imply a potentially dramatic decrease in solar power manufacturing costs and retail prices. It will be fascinating to see how this market continues to develop.

Lynne Kiesling

Want to buy the freshest in-season local produce? Here's the tool for you: Epicurious' seasonal ingredient map. Right now I should be eating lots of asparagus and potatoes ...

Michael Giberson

David Pogue in the New York Times:

I can't tell you how huge this is going to be. There will be thousands of iPhone programs, covering every possible interest. The iPhone will be valuable for far more than simple communications tasks; it will be the first widespread pocket desktop computer. You're witnessing the birth of a third major computer platform: Windows, Mac OS X, iPhone.

Lynne sees herself as "an early-but-not-bleeding edge adopter."

Not me. I mean, sure, I love a good gadget. Sometimes I crack open Wired purely for the technolust frisson. But I'm usually happy keeping my technolust fantasies on a virtual level. I don't need to own the things to enjoy the feelings of wonderment and coolness that come with knowing these things are out there existing in the world. I don't "love a good gadget" so much as love the ideas of all the good gadgets out there in the world. In fact, owning actual, physical things often spoils the fantasy.

My current cell phone is a beat up, two or three-year old (I forget which) Motorola with a weak battery. No built-in camera, no music player, no web browsing. Apparently it can download ring tones, but I've not been too keen on running snippets of popular song through the tinny little speaker. I believe it is possible to upload images to the tiny little screen, but don't believe it is worth the trouble to figure out how.

More from Pogue:

The release of iPhone 2.0 is over three months away, but I'll stick my neck out and make a prediction: it will be a gigantic success, spreading the iPhone's popularity both upward, into the corporate market, and downward, into the hands of the masses. iPhone 2.0 will turn this phone into an engineering tool, a game console, a free-calls Skype phone, a business tool, a dating service, an e-book reader, a chat room, a database, an Etch-a-Sketch...and that's on Day One.

I just may have to risk my technolust fantasy and actually enter into a physical relationship with one of these devices.

(Maybe I should have included the warning message that Pogue started his column with, "this column is about the iPhone. If you're one of those people who are sick and tired of hearing about the iPhone, then scroll on while you still can." Oh well. If you were one of those people, you be gone by now.

If you are still reading iPhone stories, but haven't yet read Lynne's more substantive post commenting on the technology and economics of Apple's iPhone SDK release, you should read it.)

Lynne Kiesling

This certainly qualifies for a "how cool is that?": new research on amine sponges to separate and absorb carbon dioxide from flue gas. The idea is that they make a sponge material customized specifically to absorb carbon dioxide by combining amines with different metals to create pores of the right size.

The researchers built pores to measure by blending the metals cobalt or zinc with imidazolates – chemicals related to the amino acid histidine. Banerjee likens these pores to rooms served by a revolving door.

"The beauty of the chemistry is that we have the freedom to choose what kind of door we want, and what goes through it," he says.

This is only one of several interesting carbon sequestration technologies, including the baking soda and piping the carbon dioxide to where it's useful.

Lynne Kiesling

Both overall energy use and data center/server farm energy use are pressing energy policy issues, and one of the reasons is the waste heat generated by computer chips. This Boing Boing article describes a new technique for creating cooler computer chips by building in something called a Peltier cooler:

North Carolina's Nextreme has announced a chip with its own built-in Peltier cooler -- a cooling system that uses electricity to move heat from one side of a surface to the other. These are historically very expensive to use -- bulky and energy hungry -- but many overclockers swear by them to keep their PCs running cool. Nextreme proposes to use this to make self-cooling chips that spot-cool different places on a chip, shunting exhaust heat towards fans or vents.

How cool is that?

Lynne Kiesling

From New Zealand, a newly-discovered bacterium that lives at high temperatures and eats methane. Is it possible to add them to landfills without creating invasive species problems? Maybe.

Still, quite interesting. Thanks to Slashdot for the link.

Lynne Kiesling

Kevin Bullis at Technology Review has a nice post that dispels some misunderstandings about plug-in hybrid vehicles. I encourage you to follow his links and to learn more about plug-in hybrids, how they work, and what benefits they introduce into the entire electricity ecosystem, in particular, their article on "how plug-in hybrids will save the grid".

Kevin's not entirely correct when he says that PHEVs cannot cause blackouts, because depending on how many of them plug in and either draw or provide current relative to the other activity on the network, they could be a destabilizing factor. The interconnection of distributed devices that can either take current or produce current is a complicated physical problem for which the existing distribution system is not built, so there are some tweaks required to make sure that bad things don't happen. But for the most part, PHEVs are not a destabilizing force, but will instead contribute resilience to the network ecosystem.

If you are intrigued by PHEVs, check out Tesla, which makes electric vehicles that are downright sexy. Think of a network of Teslas providing power to buildings from their batteries in a hot-hot-heat high peak hour during the day, and then recharging in a cheaper hour. The mind boggles at how cool this could be ...

Michael Giberson

I just set up a market for predicting the winner of the Women's World Cup 2007 tournament, which is kicking off in China this weekend and wrapping up on September 30. (Women's football/soccer.)

Took me about 45 or 50 minutes, start to finish. A lot of it was just cut-and-paste team names and info. Sixteen teams, each with a name, abbreviation, description, and starting price. A bit of general market information, an image uploaded. The market even includes a link to the official FIFA RSS feed that puts news headlines right on the market page! It was easy to manage.

Check it out!

If you are curious about how prediction markets work, Inkling makes it easy to get started.

(Still haven't figured out how to embed the Inkling chart widget into a blog post, so the above chart is a static image that links to the market page at Inkling. You'll have to click through to see the latest prices.

By the way, I also have an MLS Cup market running at Inkling too!)

Lynne Kiesling

Here's some new interdisciplinary research that is using nanotechnology to create energy storage in a paper-like material.

Details of the project are outlined in the paper “Flexible Energy Storage Devices Based on Nanocomposite Paper” published Aug. 13 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The semblance to paper is no accident: more than 90 percent of the device is made up of cellulose, the same plant cells used in newsprint, loose leaf, lunch bags, and nearly every other type of paper.

Rensselaer researchers infused this paper with aligned carbon nanotubes, which give the device its black color. The nanotubes act as electrodes and allow the storage devices to conduct electricity. The device, engineered to function as both a lithium-ion battery and a supercapacitor, can provide the long, steady power output comparable to a conventional battery, as well as a supercapacitor’s quick burst of high energy.

The device can be rolled, twisted, folded, or cut into any number of shapes with no loss of mechanical integrity or efficiency. The paper batteries can also be stacked, like a ream of printer paper, to boost the total power output.

“It’s essentially a regular piece of paper, but it’s made in a very intelligent way,” said paper co-author Robert Linhardt, the Ann and John H. Broadbent Senior Constellation Professor of Biocatalysis and Metabolic Engineering at Rensselaer.

“We’re not putting pieces together – it’s a single, integrated device,” he said. “The components are molecularly attached to each other: the carbon nanotube print is embedded in the paper, and the electrolyte is soaked into the paper. The end result is a device that looks, feels, and weighs the same as paper.”

As with all such research, the proof of concept is cool, but they have not tested for manufacturing scalability yet. Unlike some other storage media, though, in this case the component parts are all inexpensive; no expensive catalyst is required because this is simply a storage device. So we'll see what happens ...

Hat tip to Slashdot, naturally.

Lynne Kiesling

Lately in the KP household we've been marveling even more than usual at the extent to which technology has beneficially transformed our lives. Yesterday we had a macabre, earthy sharing of stories, while visiting with friends and meeting their new daughter, about 19th-century doctors not realizing a woman was pregnant with twins, or thinking she was pregnant only to find out 10 months later that the woman had a bouncing baby (benign) tumor. The miracle of ultrasound.

Here's another installment, one that is less dramatic and evocative but is still cool nonetheless: wireless parking meter networks with pay-by-phone capabilities. This Information Week article describes the technology and its benefits for parkers and for municipalities:

PhotoViolationMeter, or PVM, calls drivers to warn them that the meter is running out of time and provides a pay-by-phone option to refill the meter. When drivers first park, they can pay with debit or credit cards, or spare change.

"We designed the meter so that you're not slapped with a $30 fine simply because you ran out of change," Fred Mitschele, president and CEO of Photo Violation Technologies, said in a statement. "The No-Fine feature offers you the option of automatically paying in timed increments with your credit card so you avoid the risk of a ticket. Or you can take advantage of the Grace Period option. The city gives you a grace period by pre-programming a certain amount of time that you can pay for extra minutes before it turns into a parking violation. No other meter can do that."

PVM runs on a wireless network and also offers free Internet hotspots for drivers who carry their laptops and other electronic devices in their cars. Hotspots are also open to emergency responders who may need additional options for communications in large-scale situations.

The benefits for local governments go beyond emergencies, however.

The meters also photograph license plates, providing evidence for prosecution when cars do violate parking laws. The meters' sensors reset each time a car parks in the corresponding space, decreasing the likelihood cities will lose money on scofflaws who are not caught by traffic police.

How cool is that? Once you start thinking about parking meters as a distributed communications network, think about the potential value ... this idea has my mind reeling, excitedly! The article does not mention the incremental cost of this system, but if you could have consumers pay for hotspot access in 10-minute intervals, etc., I bet you could defray quite a bit of the cost and have a pretty short payback period on the investment.

Lynne Kiesling

Toyota has prototyped a plug-in hybrid Prius, which will enable the vehicle to be plugged in to charge its battery instead of using the gasoline engine to do so. This type of versatility can have a variety of implications for the electric power network in the future, most interestingly (at least to me), the possibility of reversing the direction and using our vehicles as distributed mobile storage. At this point the charge would only provide 8 miles worth of driving capability, but as the technology matures you could, say, drive home from work at night and use your car to provide your overnight power in your home, or to provide power during peak hours so you don't have to pay peak prices if you face dynamic pricing.

Versatility and adaptability are going to be the hallmarks of valuable energy technologies for us in the future.

Lynne Kiesling

How cool is this? Purdue engineering researchers have made major progress on a new internal combustion engine design, using variable valve actuation. One remarkable innovation in this research is removing the connection between the crankshaft and the camshaft, which is what drives the pistons up and down. This design has been at the core of engines since the late 18th century, and finding a way to create work without that connection is a true breakthrough. It also means that the pistons can be tuned independently, and the ignition will be controlled with electronic sensors and software algorithms, which makes the engine more flexible in terms of fuel mix and can reduce engine wear and depreciation as well.

The concept, known as variable valve actuation, would enable significant improvements in conventional gasoline and diesel engines used in cars and trucks and for applications such as generators, he said. The technique also enables the introduction of an advanced method called homogeneous charge compression ignition, or HCCI, which would allow the United States to drastically reduce its dependence on foreign oil and the production of harmful exhaust emissions.

The homogeneous charge compression ignition technique would make it possible to improve the efficiency of gasoline engines by 15 percent to 20 percent, making them as efficient as diesel engines while nearly eliminating smog-generating nitrogen oxides, Shaver said.

This improved combustion efficiency also would reduce emission of two other harmful gases contained in exhaust: global-warming carbon dioxide and unburned hydrocarbons. The method allows for the more precise control of the fuel-air mixture and combustion inside each cylinder, eliminating "fuel rich" pockets seen in conventional diesel engines, resulting in little or no emission of pollutants called particulates, a common environmental drawback of diesels.

The variable valve actuation system makes it possible to "reinduct," or reroute a portion of the exhaust back into the cylinders to improve combustion efficiency and reduce emissions. The system also makes it possible to alter the amount of compression in the cylinders of both conventional and HCCI engines and to adjust the mixing and combustion timing, allowing for more efficient combustion.

This is a good example of why focusing all of our research resources on technologies other than the internal combustion engine is ill-advised. Technology does make leaps, but it doesn't usually make the dramatic platform leaps that would be the equivalent of the leap from internal combustion to hydrogen fuel cell. The hybrid engine and the variable valve actuation engine are two examples of incremental innovations on an existing technology platform that produce different outcomes from the standard engine platform, in terms of energy use and emissions, but are still essentially internal combustion engines. These innovations on the existing engine platform can enable us to meet our energy and emission objectives without having to wait for the next platform to evolve into a commercial product.

HT to Slashdot for the link.

Lynne Kiesling

I'm going to spend a couple of days in London on the way home from my conference, and in the course of looking up a shop address I found this fantastic resource: Street Sensation. For many neighborhoods in London, you click on a map and there will be a panning landscape of all of the store fronts on that side of the street.

For example: the south side of Brompton Road, between the Knightsbridge tube station and Harrod's.

Whether you are interested in shopping or just wandering, these maps are fantastic, and a great use of technology. And if you're looking for me Monday morning, I'll be puttering around and running errands on Marylebone High Street.

How cool is that?

Michael Giberson

In a post a year ago, I had this to say about Inkling Markets:

The crowd has wisdom (maybe). You want it (certainly). Inkling wants to give you a shot at capturing it.

With a recent redesign of their homepage, Inkling has added a few user quotes, including the above words of wisdom (maybe) by yours truly.

In the same post I said:

I've been playing in their markets for a few weeks, and I have a few quibbles with how they do things, but in taking this step they are trying to make it to their own "next level." It might be fun, it will be messy, and Inkling stands to learn a ton about how to make their system better. What better way for them to discover how to do it?

My impression, after a year or so of off and on playing in Inklings 'play money' prediction markets, is that Inkling has in fact learned a ton about how to make their system better.

And while I'm drawing attention to myself here in an immodest fashion, I'll mention that what it says about me in the blurb caption remains true: I'm the "#1 Trader All Time" (at least as of the time of this posting). Sometime in the next week or two I'll reveal some of the secrets of my success. Just promise you won't tell the #2 trader on the list, who seems to be catching up to me rapidly.

Lynne Kiesling

While we're in the "how cool is this?" department, pro cycling team CSC has announced that we'll be able to track all of their riders on the upcoming Tour de California using GSM cellular technology and Google Earth:

During this year's edition of the pro cycling race, the Computer Sciences Corporation, or CSC, will outfit seven contenders with specially designed tracking devices. Information about the riders' locations and relative positions in the race will be made available as a map mashup during each of the tour's eight daylong stages. ...

"This is more than just GPS," says CSC's Identity Labs chief technologist Dan Munyan. "This is object field tracking. We want to be able to focus on a field of objects in motion, looking not only at where they are on the route, but also where they are relative to each other.

Yay, a whole new way to cheer on Zabriskie and Julich! How cool is this? Amazingly cool. And it helps the riders to prep for the race:

Julich says the devices will also help the riders study the route more closely and better prepare for the race. But after rolling across the start line, turning in a winning performance is totally up to the rider.

Lynne Kiesling

I've often wondered how nanotechnology can contribute to increased efficiency, load factor, and conservation of energy. My first thoughts were probably wrong; we don't need nano-scale devices to perform remote monitoring and automated repair and self-correction within the wires network itself. Regular small-scale devices can do just fine for that.

But here's some very interesting nano research that holds some promise for the holy grail of electrical energy, which is storage: self-assembling nanotech batteries.

Self-assembly is attractive because it could potentially reduce manufacturing costs and allow molecular-level control of the structure of the batteries, leading to materials and devices not easy to make using conventional manufacturing methods. Self-assembly has already been used to create a number of materials and a handful of simple devices, including half a battery.

This is pretty cool for a lot of reasons. Many people worrying about power storage worry at a much larger scale -- ways to store megawatts of wind-generated power, for example, for later use -- while this technology would enable more power storage at lower levels within devices themselves, in teeny weeny crevices. It's also cool at a pure science level, because to achieve this outcome the researchers developed a deeper understanding of how the materials they used exert small forces on each other at extremely small distances, and how they could exploit these short-range forces to create potential, which is what you need for storage. [OK, you scientists out there, remember I am not a scientist, so don't rip me apart for that one -- ed.]

The researchers used lithium cobalt oxide and microbeads of graphite for the electrodes--materials commonly used in lithium-ion batteries--pairing them with a carefully selected liquid electrolyte. The electrolyte serves as an insulator, allowing ions to shuttle between the electrodes but forcing electrons to move through an external circuit, where they can be used to power a device.

In the researchers' prototype battery, the graphite microbeads pack together to form one electrode and connect to a platinum current collector, all the while staying clear of the lithium cobalt oxide that forms the other electrode. The researchers tested the battery and showed that it could be both discharged and recharged multiple times.

As you would expect, at this time self-assembling batteries are not competitive on either storage intensity or on cost. But they do use space more efficiently than existing batteries, so these batteries would be likely to find their first uses in applications where the relative value of space is high.

Lynne Kiesling

I am playing a little hooky this weekend and going skiing through Monday. In the interim, here are some thought-provoking reads:

This Technology Review article on technological change in small-scale coal gasification that could be done on-site, in the home.

Michael Dell is back in the news today, after taking back the CEO position of his eponymous company. He also recently proposed giving Dell customers an opportunity to choose to donate for tree planting to offset the carbon footprint of the new computer they are buying. Clever.

I'm shocked, shocked to hear that Archer Daniels Midland's (ethanol rent-seekers to the world) quarterly profits rose 20% last quarter. Thanks to Russ Roberts for the link, and the ever-important reference to ADM as the chief bootlegger in Bruce Yandle's bootleggers-and-baptists bandits model of rent seeking. Relatedly, in response to Arnold Kling's question of whether any economists support ethanol subsidies, given that the political gamut of opposition to them runs from Paul Krugman to Jerry Taylor: I know of no economist who supports them. I do not. The only people I know who do support them believe that such subsidies induce technological change, and that such industrial policy is net-net socially beneficial.

Cathy Young's Reason article on fan fiction is an interesting and informative read, although she does not explore the most important economic issue in fan fiction: where does copyright protection begin and end when it comes to characters that authors create? Should J. K. Rowling prevent/be able to prevent fanfic authors from using Harry Potter in their work?

Arnold Kling has a proposed list of foundational libertarian principles, which he offers for comment in the same way that the volunteer organizations that govern the Internet do. Tyler Cowen offers his comments. I will ponder them and may offer my comments upon my return.

Wonderful French chef Joel Robouchon is opening a restaurant in Chicago. I salivate just thinking about it; one of the best meals I've ever had was at one of his bistros (not even the three-star Michelin restaurant) in Paris in 1998. He totally rocks.

Right now Chicago is in the throes of enduring a painful upgrade to the CTA elevated tracks on the north side, including the closure of several stops to build new platforms that are long enough for longer trains and ADA compliant. The CTA is botching several dimensions of project management, leading to a diminution of the sympathy one might have in the face of such a daunting civil engineering task. This week's Time Out Chicago has a series of feature stories on the El and the CTA, touching on several of these issues. Note in particular that they interview transportation experts, including my engineering colleague Joe Schofer.

Outta here! Have a great weekend.

Lynne Kiesling

Woman does not live by economics alone (although sometimes I come pretty close!). I made this sweater:

This is the popular Rogue hoodie, which lots of folks have been knitting over the past two years. I started this in October, and finished it on New Year's Day.

Yes, it was a lot of work, and for you economist non-knitters, this is a good pattern to illustrate the extent to which knitting truly is a mathematics hobby. Lots of axial and radial symmetry, and spatial logic.

Plus it's beautiful and comfortable!

More pictures, taken on a gorgeous winter day in Chicago, after the fold.

Lynne Kiesling

OK, this is the kind of creative thinking that makes life beautiful. This CNET News article discusses a new service, Qunu, that aims to unleash distributed tech geek knowledge on tech support problems.

In my experience, the best technical support on any product will come from somebody who actually uses and likes the product, not a paid support rep following a script. That's why people use open message boards. Message boards have always amazed me, though because so many people are willing to chip in and help people they don't know. But they work, and whatever the topic you need help with, there's almost certainly a group of people online willing to lend their earnest advice.

If you can't wait for a response in a message board, you can try a new service, Qunu, which is trying to replicate the message board community spirit, but in real time. Qunu connects you via instant message to an expert on the topic you need help with.

Qunu experts register themselves and tell the system what they know about. People who need help select a topic, and the system then connects the two people via IM.

How absolutely, utterly, totally cool is that? Qunu has an embedded reputation mechanism (which the article doesn't describe), and is in limited use right now because it does not use the more widely-available IM platforms. But the developers are working on that.

It's only been up for 39 days, and already 1,500 experts are registered. This will be fun to watch.

Thanks to Slashdot for the link.

Lynne Kiesling

Check out this very cool idea for reinventing capacitors with nanotubes to provide energy storage for portable devices. The capacitor, a 300-year-old technology for modulating current flow by storing small amounts of energy, stores energy via electrodes that separate a charge and thus maintain potential. But it can only store energy in proportion to the surface area of the electrodes, so the way to reinvent the capacitor is to figure out a way to increase the electrode surface area.

Rechargable and disposable batteries use a chemical reaction to produce energy. "That's an effective way to store a large amount of energy," he says, "but the problem is that after many charges and discharges ... the battery loses capacity to the point where the user has to discard it."

But capacitors contain energy as an electric field of charged particles created by two metal electrodes. Capacitors charge faster and last longer than normal batteries. The problem is that storage capacity is proportional to the surface area of the battery's electrodes, so even today's most powerful capacitors hold 25 times less energy than similarly sized standard chemical batteries.

The researchers solved this by covering the electrodes with millions of tiny filaments called nanotubes. Each nanotube is 30,000 times thinner than a human hair. Similar to how a thick, fuzzy bath towel soaks up more water than a thin, flat bed sheet, the nanotube filaments on increase the surface area of the electrodes and allow the capacitor to store more energy. Schindall says this combines the strength of today's batteries with the longevity and speed of capacitors.

"It could be recharged many, many times perhaps hundreds of thousands of times, and ... it could be recharged very quickly, just in a matter of seconds rather than a matter of hours," he says.

This kind of research could prove extremely valuable, because it focuses on a way to increase the amount of storage in a given physical area. One of the challenges facing batteries and fuel cells is getting them to be useful storage technologies while being small enough to be practical and user-friendly; recall the article I mentioned last Sunday that discussed methanol cartridge prototype laptops.

Reinventing old technologies is great.

Michael Giberson

You have read about prediction markets, maybe you have even participated in one, and now you want to go to the next level. You have an idea for a market, but you don�t know how to make one. Even if you have the technical know how to set up a market, if you build it will they come?

Inkling is coming to your rescue. The company has developed a prediction market system and offers a free-to-use play money version online. Current markets cover everything from World Cup predictions to the liklihood of U.S. airstrikes against Iran before the end of May to whether Ken Lay or Jeffrey Skilling will get jail time. Just announced, on their new blog, Inkling says they will soon take the wraps off their "do-it-yourself market manager."

Soon you will be able to set up a prediction market of your own and make it public (or limit access to a select group, if that's the way you want to do it). Will New Orleans flood again this summer? Will any Virginia wine from 2006 earn a 95+ rating from the Wine Advocate? Will Tony Blair still be Prime Minister in the U.K. on January 1, 2007? How many George Mason University economics professors will not have blogs as of August 31, 2006? Will they be sacked? The crowd has wisdom (maybe). You want it (certainly). Inkling wants to give you a shot at capturing it.

I've been playing in their markets for a few weeks, and I have a few quibbles with how they do things, but in taking this step they are trying to make it to their own "next level." It might be fun, it will be messy, and Inkling stands to learn a ton about how to make their system better. What better way for them to discover how to do it?

UPDATE: Following the instruction in the Inklings blog post, I emailed them for permission to manage my own "do it yourself" prediction market. They emailed me back within a few minutes saying they had updated my account, and I was able to log on to their site immediately to discover I have "Create Market" and "Manage Markets" options.

I'm going to think about it for a day or two and then try it out. Send suggestions for my first prediction market via the comments. I will probably do a private market with a short, one- or two-week duration for my first attempt; email me (Mike) at the address on the KP sidebar if you want in. I'll announce the market here when it goes live.

Michael Giberson

In fact-checking myself on �Rivers of Babylon� (discussed in the continuation of my previous post), I saw in the Wikipedia entry that Sublime covered the tune too. I had just used the Wal-mart.com website to download the Virginia CutUps version of the tune � yeah, I�m not too hip to download music from Walmart � and so I returned to see if they carried the Sublime version.

After a moment�s churning, the Walmart.com website spit back the following message:

We notice you're not using Internet Explorer. To continue, please visit this page using Internet Explorer 6.0 or later.

As if. I may be square, but I�m not that square.

(See also these posts by Lynne and Grant McCracken.)

Lynne Kiesling

From Technology Review today, news of new research from Penn State on liquid fuel from coal:

Schobert and his colleagues make the fuel using refined coal oil, which is a byproduct of coke manufacture; the byproduct is mixed at an oil refinery with a product of crude oil called light cycle oil. This mix is then hydrogenated using equipment that already exists at refineries, and then it's distilled into various products -- mostly diesel fuel and jet fuel (about 40 percent of each), as well as some gasoline and heating oil.

Other potential benefits of the coal-based fuel: it can replace the three or four different jet fuels used by the military for aircraft and missiles, and the same fuel can be used in diesel engines if those engines are modified slightly. The fuel could also be used without modification in high-temperature stationary fuel cells for generating electricity, Schobert says.

But significant hurdles remain before the fuel can see widespread use. So far, only 500 gallons of it have been produced, far too little to assess production costs, Schobert says. Nevertheless, he suspects that the coal-based fuel could compete with other fuels.

One interesting thing about this development is its lack of asset specificity on the production and consumption end; it can be produced using existing refining technologies, and can be used in diesel engines with only a small amount of adjustment. That lack of asset specificity means that this fuel could contribute to a more flexible and adaptable fuel portfolio, because it doesn't require customized plants or engines. It can even be used in fuel cells.

Lynne Kiesling

Researchers have used a nematode to clone pigs that produce meat that is high in omega-3 fatty acids (see articles from Wired and the International Herald Tribune, for example). Yay, bacon as a health food!

The Wired article notes how consumer tastes are driving this research:

Hoping to create healthier, cheaper and tastier products that consumers crave, Monsanto of St. Louis and its biotech farming competitors like DuPont are developing omega-3-producing crops that yield healthier cooking oils. Kang said 30 academic laboratories are now working with his omega-3 gene, presumably pursuing similar projects.

Notwithstanding the prissy whingeing of the anti-GM crowd, this is a great example of the power of human creativity and technological change. It doesn't nullify the saturated fat content of pork, or the effects of consuming that saturated fat. But it does open up the opportunity for people who don't like oily fish, or can't easily get access to oily fish, or are worried about mercury content in tuna, to consume healthy fats without having to do flaxseed oil shots (yuck).

How cool is that?

Lynne Kiesling

Courtesy of Londonist, check out the fascinating Digitally Distributed Environments. It's the blog of Andy Hudson-Smith, from University College London's Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. He can take historic information about a city, in this case London, and import it into Google Earth to see how London would look if it still retained some historical features, buildings, etc. Boundless human ingeneuity.

One great example is the overlay of 1690 London into Google Earth (note also the correction in the comments and a follow-up post). Andy notes the shifting of the shape of the Thames due to the contruction of the Embankment. I am particularly interested in this because I know London pretty well; one of my favorite things to do is to wander its streets and see what I stumble upon. Combine that with my love of the rich geographic detail of London in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, and I think that means that this site is a place where I could spend hours and hours.

If you like maps and history, and London, do check it out.

Lynne Kiesling

In his last column in Technology Review in December 2004, Michael Schrage talked about the importance of the diffusion of innovation. He made a lot of very trenchant observations, including

The challenge for policymakers and populations alike is how to cope with the pervasive-and perverse-consequences of ever more people gaining access to ever more innovations that offer ever greater impact for ever lower costs. Why? Because diffusion is inherently messy and unpredictable, and because the ingeneuity of a technology's adopters more than rivals the creativity of its original innovators. We ignore this at our peril.

I am going to use this quote as a stepping-off point for several posts this week, and I start with a "how cool is this?" example that illustrates the multi-dimensional dynamic of innovation. You know the story: you get a new technology, you say "gee, that's cool, but I wish it could also do X". Then you get on with your life. But chances are, there are other people out there who also want it to do X. One of those folks, imbued with entrepreneurial spirit and seeing an opportunity, innovates a new product or service that does X. Not only do those of you who wanted X to begin with benefit, but those of us who didn't realize we wanted X before also benefit, because in the process of creating the innovation and bringing it to market we discover our preferences over X relative to other product and service offerings out there, given our budget constraint. Our preferences feed into innovation, and what's more important and more overlooked, innovation feeds into our preferences. All the more reason why Hayek was bang-on right when he said that competition is a discovery procedure: the action is in the dynamics of innovation, not in the static discovery of my liking Fresca better than Diet Pepsi.

I offer as Exhibit A a somewhat frivolous example, but when I saw it, it made me metaphorically smack my head and say "of course!" 411song will, for 99 cents, identify a song and send you a text message with the song and artist information, and a link to get the mp3 of the song.

• Hear a song you love.
• Call (866) 411-SONG.
• Wait for the beep and hold your cell near the music for just 15 seconds.
• We identify the song and send you a text with all the song info (artist and song name) and a link to GET it.

Sure, it's frivolous, but I'd be willing to wager that it'll profit.

Hat tip to Daily Candy, one of my favorite daily fun reads.

Lynne Kiesling

Check out this Wired article about methane capture from a trash dump in Bangaledesh. Methane capture technology can serve three objectives here: generating power, improving the utilization of the dump, and creating fertilizer that can enrich the thin soil in the area. When it gets going, this system can produce enough electricity to power 50,000 Bangladeshi households.

Lynne Kiesling

We here at KP are a bit in the futurist optimist vein, so we pay attention to fuel cell technologies. One of my personal favorites is work to commercialize small methanol cartridges for use in phones, PDAs, and other small devices.

So my instant thought when I saw this article on the development of methanol cartridges for IBM ThinkPads was "how cool is this?":

IBM and Sanyo Electric have put together a prototype of a fuel cell system for ThinkPad notebooks.

The methanol-based fuel cell is designed to work with most standard ThinkPad systems and could provide power for up to eight hours, the companies said Monday.

The new battery does not require any change in the internal power architecture of the ThinkPad. The fuel cell can be charged by means of an auxiliary docking station, which also provides an alternative power supply.

Eight hours. Methanol. Developments like these intrigue me so much because they get us closer to two Holy Grails: better energy storage and "the hydrogen economy". But IBM gave no date for commercialization.

Still, life is good in the dynamic world.

Lynne Kiesling

Randall Parker at FuturePundit has a post about using nanoscale silica to release hydrogen from ammonia borane, and how that technology could lead to more feasible hydrogen storage for vehicles and other uses. This interesting finding is a result of research at Pacific Northwest National Lab.

Lynne Kiesling

Over at Truck and Barter Ian cook has a post on a new nanotech solar achievement. This company claims to have used nanotech's self-organizing properties to get the cost of generating power using solar energy to 5 cents per kilowatt hour.

I hope that this breakthrough is robust. Another solar nanotech entrepreneur is Konarka, which is focusing on thin film polymers.

I would be interested to know if that 5 cent per kwh estimate takes into account that nanotech solar only produces electricity at 7-10% efficiency.

Also courtesy of Slashdot, this New York Times article (registration required) describes the flywheels that the NY Port Authority has installed in the subway to collect and use the energy given off when subway trains brake. What a win-win -- their energy bills go down, and subway stations are less hot!