Israel to Get Electric Car Battery Swap Stations

Next month, Better Place, a startup based in California, will begin selling electric cars in Israel that come with subscription packages that include a leased battery and the cost of recharging it. Gasoline is expensive and taxes on gas-powered cars are high in Israel, and the company says the packages could make owning an electric car 20 percent cheaper than owning a gasoline-powered car.

Better Place is trying to solve the biggest challenge to the widespread adoption of electric cars: the limitations imposed by battery chemistry. A battery big enough to give an electric car the same range as the average gas car would be far too large and expensive; and recharging battery packs takes hours at standard outlets, compared to the minutes it takes to refuel a conventional car.

Better Place will sell a new electric sedan made by Renault that has a range of just over 100 miles on a charge?enough for most daily commutes. For longer trips, Better Place provides battery swap stations, where an automated system switches out a depleted battery for a fully-charged one in less than five minutes. Instead of owning the batteries, the car owners buy subscriptions for a certain number of kilometers of driving per year. They can choose from several plans, much the same way mobile phone owners subscribe to minutes.

The size of Israel limits the number of swap stations needed. What's more, high taxes on gas-powered cars, as well as high prices for gasoline (about $8 a gallon), should help make electric cars more attractive.

Better Place offers one package that includes the cost of the car and three years of driving 25,000 kilometers per year for $46,000. The company says this price amounts to a 35 percent savings over buying and fueling a gas car in Israel over three years. Other packages include a cost of about $36,000 for the car, with monthly subscription fees ranging from $320 to $470 a month for 20,000 to 30,000 kilometers of driving per year, respectively. For both packages, the price includes the installation of a charging station at home.

Michael Granoff, head of oil dependence policies at Better Place, says the company has 20,000 individual customers on a waiting list to buy the cars, and 70,000 tentative orders from fleet customers. "That's nearly half the car market for Israel," he says.

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UK's Secretary of State for Education: video games will save the classroom

Michael Gove, UK's Secretary of State for Education, believes that video games can help aid the study of mathematics and science in the nation's classroom. He used Marcus Du Sautoy, a professor of mathematics at Oxford University, and his work as an example to illustrate how games can make the British education system more engaging for children.

"Computer games developed by Marcus Du Sautoy are enabling children to engage with complex mathematical problems that would hitherto have been thought too advanced," Gove said to the Royal Society in London, according to an official transcript (via Edge). "When children need to solve equations in order to get more ammo to shoot the aliens, it is amazing how quickly they can learn. I am sure that this field of educational games has huge potential for maths and science teaching and I know that Marcus himself has been thinking about how he might be able to create games to introduce advanced concepts, such as non-Euclidean geometry, to children at a much earlier stage than normal in schools."

Sautoy's Manga High allows educators to schedule online assignments that automatically reward items in accompanying Flash games. The system represents the future of early science and math education, according to Gove. His department is working with Hong Kong's Li Ka Shing Foundation and the Stanford Research Institute in the US to develop computer games that help teach students.

The official Manga High website even offers short versions of the free math games. To play full length versions for free, a teacher needs to create a school account and issue logins to its students. It's unfortunate that the full version of the games aren't simply offered for everyone in the world to play.

When I was younger, my parents bought me a Math Blaster game. I spent quite a bit of time doing exactly what Gove is referring to: shooting aliens and learning math. I remember being frustrated, just like when I learn a difficult math concept the standard way, but I also remember being ecstatic much more often when I figured out a a problem, a puzzle, or a brainteaser and as a result progressed in the game.

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Building Bigger, Better Wind Turbines

Wind power is one of the fastest-growing forms of power generation in the United States, with more capacity added onshore than coal and nuclear generation combined over the past four years. But to sustain that high growth rate into the next decade, the industry will have to start tapping offshore wind resources, creating a need for wind turbines that are larger, lower-maintenance, and deliver more power with less weight.

To support research in this area, the U.S. Department of Energy has awarded $7.5 million to six projects, each aiming to develop advanced drivetrains for wind turbines up to 10 megawatts in size. Five of the projects use direct-drive, or gearless, drivetrain technology to increase reliability, and at least two use superconductivity technologies for increased efficiencies and lower weight.

Current designs can't be scaled up economically. Most of the more than 25,000 wind turbines deployed across the United States have a power rating of three megawatts or less and contain complex gearbox systems. The gearboxes match the slow speed of the turbine rotor (between 15 to 20 rotations per minute) to the 2,000 rotations per minute required by their generators. Higher speeds allow for more compact and less expensive generators, but conventional gearboxes?a complex interaction of wheels and bearings?need regular maintenance and are prone to failure, especially at higher speeds.

On land, where turbines are more accessible, gearbox maintenance issues can be tolerated. In rugged offshore environments, the cost of renting a barge and sending crews out to fix or maintain a wind-ravaged machine can be prohibitive. "A gearbox that isn't there is the most reliable gearbox," says Fort Felker, direct of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's wind technology center.

To increase reliability and reduce maintenance costs, a number of companies?among them Enercon and Siemens of Germany, France's Alstom and China's Goldwind Global?have developed direct-drive or "gearless" drivetrains. In such a setup, the rotor shaft is attached directly to the generator, and they both turn at the same speed. But this introduces a new challenge: increased weight.

To achieve the power output of a comparable gearbox-based system, a direct-drive system must have a larger internal diameter that increases the radius?and therefore the speed?at which its magnets rotate around coils to generate current. This also means greater reliance on increasingly costly rare-earth metals used to make permanent magnets.

Kiruba Haran, manager of the electric machines lab at GE Global Research, one recipient of the DOE funding, says direct-drive systems get disproportionately heavier as their power rating increases. A four-megawatt generator might weight 85 tons, but at eight megawatts, it would approach 200 tons.

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UK's Secretary of State for Education: video games will save the classroom

Michael Gove, UK's Secretary of State for Education, believes that video games can help aid the study of mathematics and science in the nation's classroom. He used Marcus Du Sautoy, a professor of mathematics at Oxford University, and his work as an example to illustrate how games can make the British education system more engaging for children.

"Computer games developed by Marcus Du Sautoy are enabling children to engage with complex mathematical problems that would hitherto have been thought too advanced," Gove said to the Royal Society in London, according to an official transcript (via Edge). "When children need to solve equations in order to get more ammo to shoot the aliens, it is amazing how quickly they can learn. I am sure that this field of educational games has huge potential for maths and science teaching and I know that Marcus himself has been thinking about how he might be able to create games to introduce advanced concepts, such as non-Euclidean geometry, to children at a much earlier stage than normal in schools."

Sautoy's Manga High allows educators to schedule online assignments that automatically reward items in accompanying Flash games. The system represents the future of early science and math education, according to Gove. His department is working with Hong Kong's Li Ka Shing Foundation and the Stanford Research Institute in the US to develop computer games that help teach students.

The official Manga High website even offers short versions of the free math games. To play full length versions for free, a teacher needs to create a school account and issue logins to its students. It's unfortunate that the full version of the games aren't simply offered for everyone in the world to play.

When I was younger, my parents bought me a Math Blaster game. I spent quite a bit of time doing exactly what Gove is referring to: shooting aliens and learning math. I remember being frustrated, just like when I learn a difficult math concept the standard way, but I also remember being ecstatic much more often when I figured out a a problem, a puzzle, or a brainteaser and as a result progressed in the game.

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Gaming 27 - The PlayStation Ryvita

Perry Breaks With a Fellow Texan: Bush

But in recent years, Mr. Perry has broken politically with Mr. Bush, questioning his credentials as a fiscal conservative, accusing him of going on ?a big-government binge? and playing down some of Mr. Bush?s accomplishments in Texas in light of his own.

Mr. Perry?s public statements exposed a long-simmering rivalry that had been little known outside the political fraternity here but underscores the rightward drift of the Republican Party since Mr. Bush was president. More acutely, Mr. Perry?s criticism holds potential peril and benefit for him should he decide to mount a presidential campaign, allowing him to establish an identity distinct from Mr. Bush but risking a guerrilla campaign against him by the former president?s inner circle.

Mr. Perry, who aides say will make a decision within weeks, has been meeting around the country with potential fund-raisers, went to Colorado last week for a gathering of prominent conservative rainmakers held by members of the Koch family, which helped finance the Tea Party movement. An inevitable question is whether Republicans will be willing to nominate another Texas governor so closely connected to the last one.

On government spending, immigration and education, Mr. Perry?s criticisms of Mr. Bush have given him cachet with conservatives, especially with Tea Party voters who blame the former president for allowing spending and the reach of government to grow rapidly.

Those criticisms have burnished the Perry image as less prone to ideological compromise or a fuzzy ?compassionate? brand of conservatism, an appealing trait to those Republican primary voters seeking purity in their nominee. And they have helped Mr. Perry escape the shadow of Mr. Bush, whose sponsorship, along with that of his chief political strategist, Karl Rove, was critical to Mr. Perry?s rise.

But it antagonized Mr. Bush?s old team, many of whom endorsed Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison in her unsuccessful primary challenge to Mr. Perry last year. Some are indicating that they will oppose Mr. Perry should he join the presidential race with an anti-Bush message.

One close associate of the former president, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid a personal confrontation with the governor, warned Mr. Perry against establishing his own conservative bona fides by criticizing Mr. Bush, saying, ?If you?re really trying to be the nominee and want to go the distance, you just don?t want the former president of the United States and his people working against you.?

Another, speaking anonymously as well, said, ?He?s going to need all the help he can get from all the Republicans he can muster, so he ought to be prudent about that.?

The rivalry has become lore here in the state capital, at times bordering on urban legend. ?An eight-foot alligator in the sewer,? said Mr. Perry?s chief political strategist, David Carney. Emphasizing that the two men were friends with more similarities than differences, Mr. Carney said, ?They are in the same church, different pews.?

Neither Mr. Bush nor Mr. Perry would be interviewed for this article, and people close to both said the rivalry existed far more between their aides than between them personally.

The relationship between the camps includes a rich mix of political differences, class distinctions, loyalty questions and perceived slights of campaigns past. And it is a uniquely Texas story, opening in the Western dust bowl where both emerged ? Mr. Perry as a conservative Democratic state lawmaker from a modest farming family and Mr. Bush as a failed Republican Congressional candidate of famous New England stock.

Mr. Bush had returned to his hometown, Midland, in 1975, to break into the oil business, after his years at Phillips Academy, Yale and Harvard Business School ? time away from the state that Mr. Perry?s close associates brought up frequently in interviews. Mr. Perry returned to his struggling family farm in Paint Creek roughly two years later, after graduating from Texas A&M and serving as a captain in the Air Force.

Successfully running for the Texas House of Representatives in 1984, he won early attention as a dogged campaigner who flew himself to his own events in a beat-up propeller plane.

In 1989, Mr. Rove, already a powerful Texas political consultant, helped persuade Mr. Perry to join the Republican Party and run for agriculture commissioner.

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Hard Lines iPhone Review

Hard Lines iPhone Review

Posted on 26th Jun 2011 at 10:44 by David Hing with 9 comments

Back when mobile phones were still thought of as a new idea, Nokia's 3210 was highly sought after in many circles for its built in version of the highly addictive game Snake. Fast forward a decade, and Hard Lines is attempting to be a worthy successor to that classic title.

The mechanics of Hard Lines are simple. With simple directional strokes of your finger, you steer a line around the screen towards randomly spawning markers, accruing points while avoiding other lines that enter from the sides of the screen.

Slick and neatly designed, Hard Lines is clearly influenced by the Light Cycles from Tron, yet it doesn't limit itself to that one style of play; there are several variations. In some modes, you gain points by getting opposing lines to crash into you or the walls; in others you race against the clock, or just try to last for as long as possible. There are also some good bonuses, such as the occasional power up that enables you to crash through any other competing lines without killing yourself.


The gameplay is occasionally made overly complicated, however, via the addition of dialogue that bikes may utter in the middle of a match. This appears as a single line of text and, while it's often funny, it's usually just a distraction that obscures your view.

Aside from this, though, the balancing is beautiful and the game manages to be both punishing and forgiving at once. Each line is only a single pixel wide, for example, but you only need to pass near an item on the screen to collect it, avoiding any frustrating situations where you might end up circling it forever. Not only this, but the very narrow nature of your line means the game can afford to throw a lot of competing lines at you at any one time. In particular, the Gauntlet mode continually spawns large numbers of other lines rapidly, resulting in an intense session that's highly satisfying when it goes your way.

Verdict: Hard Lines is a well designed, easily controlled, multifaceted version of Snake with enough new material and creativity behind it to stop it being called a straightforward clone.

Hard Lines is available from the AppStore for 59p / 99c.

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Was the Space Shuttle a Mistake?

Forty years ago, I wrote an article for Technology Review titled "Shall We Build the Space Shuttle?" Now, with the 135th and final flight of the shuttle at hand, and the benefit of hindsight, it seems appropriate to ask a slightly different question?"Should We Have Built the Space Shuttle?"

After the very expensive Apollo effort, a low-cost space transportation system for both humans and cargo was seen as key to the future of the U.S. space program in the 1980s and beyond. So developing some form of new space launch system made sense as the major NASA effort for the 1970s, presuming the United States was committed to continuing space leadership. But it was probably a mistake to develop this particular space shuttle design, and then to build the future U.S. space program around it.

The selection in 1972 of an ambitious and technologically challenging shuttle design resulted in the most complex machine ever built. Rather than lowering the costs of access to space and making it routine, the space shuttle turned out to be an experimental vehicle with multiple inherent risks, requiring extreme care and high costs to operate safely. Other, simpler designs were considered in 1971 in the run-up to President Nixon's final decision; in retrospect, taking a more evolutionary approach by developing one of them instead would probably have been a better choice.

The shuttle does, of course, leave behind a record of significant achievements. It is a remarkably capable vehicle. It has carried a variety of satellites and spacecraft to low-Earth orbit. It serviced satellites in orbit, most notably during the five missions to the Hubble Space Telescope. On a few flights, the shuttle carried in its payload bay a small pressurized laboratory, called Spacelab, which provided research facilities for a variety of experiments. That laboratory was a European contribution to the space shuttle program. With Spacelab and the Canadian-provided robotic arm used to grab and maneuver payloads, the shuttle set the precedent for intimate international cooperation in human spaceflight. The shuttle kept American and allied astronauts flying in space and opened up the spaceflight experience to scientists and engineers, not just test pilots. The space shuttle was a source of considerable pride for the United States; images of a shuttle launch are iconic elements of American accomplishment and technological leadership.

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Obama Summons G.O.P. and Democratic Leaders for Deficit Reduction Talks

Mr. Obama, who met secretly with Speaker John A. Boehner at the White House on Sunday to try to advance the talks, called House and Senate leaders from both parties to the White House for further negotiations on Thursday. And he rejected talk of an interim deal that would get the government past a looming deadline on raising the federal debt limit without settling some of the longer-term issues contributing to the government?s fiscal imbalances.

?We?ve got a unique opportunity to do something big, to tackle our deficit in a way that forces our government to live within its means,? he said in an appearance in the White House briefing room, casting himself as much an honest broker as a partisan participant in the talks. ?This will require both parties to get out of our comfort zones, and both parties to agree on real compromise.?

Mr. Obama?s previously undisclosed Sunday meeting with Mr. Boehner suggests that the talks are entering a critical phase. There were also intense staff-level negotiations between the White House and Congress over the details of a multi-trillion-dollar package of spending cuts that could clear the way for a vote to raise the debt ceiling, constrain the growth of government and radically reshape the role of government in American society.

The two sides remain in a deadlock over the president?s insistence that the package contain tax increases as well as spending cuts. While Mr. Obama did not retreat from that demand Tuesday, he coupled it with a pledge to take on spending in ?entitlement programs,? a promise likely to unsettle many Democrats.

While a broad-based agreement may appeal to the White House, neither Senate Republicans nor Democrats may be as eager to embrace one. Democrats worry that a deal that cuts Medicare could rob them of what they see as their political advantage on the issue; Republicans trying to win the majority next year might not like an agreement that is seen as giving Democrats credibility on reducing the deficit.

But Mr. Boehner, while again saying that higher taxes were a nonstarter, expressed pleasure at Mr. Obama?s willingness to single out entitlements. ?I?m pleased the president stated today that we need to address the big, long-term challenges facing our country,? he said in a statement.

The speaker?s session with Mr. Obama was their first face-to-face encounter since the talks presided over by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. collapsed last month, officials with knowledge of the meeting said, though the speaker and the president also met privately just before those discussions broke up.

The substance of their talks was not disclosed. But Mr. Boehner?s meeting was evidently made known to other House and Senate Republican leaders.

Mr. Obama said the two sides needed to reach a deal within two weeks to pass legislation before Aug. 2, when the Treasury Department says the government risks defaulting on its debt. And he restated that Congress should not procrastinate and let negotiations ?come down to the last second.?

Senate Republicans have suggested in recent days that a ?mini-deal? be struck, which would allow the government to get past the Aug. 2 deadline but leave the larger fiscal choices to be thrashed out in the 2012 election.

The president rejected that, saying: ?I don?t think the American people sent us here to avoid tough problems. That?s, in fact, what drives them nuts about Washington, when both parties simply take the path of least resistance.?

Still, Mr. Obama eased his tone noticeably from his feisty news conference last week, in which he compared the work habits of lawmakers unfavorably with those of his daughters, Malia and Sasha.

?It?s my hope that everybody?s going to leave their ultimatums at the door, that we?ll all leave our political rhetoric at the door,? he said.

Mr. Obama also eschewed a populist tone, making no reference to ?millionaires and billionaires? or owners of corporate jets, even as he spoke of the necessity of eliminating tax breaks and loopholes.

The budget impasse is dominating the White House and Congress. With Republicans protesting that the Senate should be concentrating on fiscal issues this week, Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and majority leader, conceded the point on Tuesday and abruptly called off a planned debate on Libya.

After complaints by Republicans that their Fourth of July break had been canceled to deal with the debt-limit fight and not Libya, Mr. Reid essentially threw in the towel and said the Senate would instead take nonbinding votes later this week on how to address the debt-limit dispute.

?Notwithstanding the broad support for the Libya resolution, the most important thing to focus on this week is the budget,? Mr. Reid said.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, restated his opposition to any budget deal containing new taxes. He accused Democrats of a ?cheap attempt? at making Republicans look bad by saying that Republicans refused to consider ending a tax break for corporate jets.

Senate Democratic leaders last week called off their planned Fourth of July break due to the Aug. 2 deadline. But the budget talks are occurring mainly off the floor in leadership offices and at the White House so Mr. Reid scheduled the bipartisan Libya resolution for floor debate.

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