While home?thermostats?aren't exactly the most exciting area of technology, the Nest made a splash last year with its good looks and intuitive interface. Now there's a new Nest with a few design tweaks and new features.
Thermostats, unlike smartphones and other personal gadgets, don't really need to be replaced all the time, so the point isn't to make people update their old device, but to make it possible for more people to buy their first one.
The new Nest is 20 percent thinner and has a snazzy new mirror-finish steel border, which should help picky interior designers square themselves with the idea of a big gadget sticking out of the wall. Nest also?claims its?device is now compatible with 25 percent of low-voltage heating and cooling systems.
It also ships?with a few new?features, which existing Nest owners will be happy to learn will also be coming to their original Nests shortly in a software update.?They've improved the scheduling function, allowing the device to learn when it should be hitting the heat or A/C early, and when it should be shutting them off as soon as you're out the door. It should also work better with some less conventional heating systems and those of you with?radiators.
You can now set it to use Spanish or French as the display language, and the app has been upgraded to support Android tablets. You can use the app to adjust schedules and temperatures, or to track your household's energy usage.
The new Nest keeps the same price as the old one ? $249 ? or you can pick up the original now for $229. There's more information on the new features and compatibility at the blog post announcing the device.
Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC?News Digital. His personal website is coldewey.cc.
HONG KONG (Reuters) - At least 36 people died and dozens were injured when a ferry carrying more than 120 revelers on a company outing collided with another ferry and sank near an island south of Hong Kong on Monday night, in one of the city's worst maritime accidents.
The ferry belonging to the Hongkong Electric Company, controlled by billionaire Li Ka-shing, was taking staff and family members to watch fireworks in the city's Victoria Harbour to celebrate China's National Day and mid-autumn festival when it hit the other ship and began sinking near Lamma island.
Survivors said they had little time to put on life jackets before the ferry flooded, trapping passengers.
"Within 10 minutes, the ship had sunk. We had to wait at least 20 minutes before we were rescued," said one male survivor, wrapped in a blanket on the shore.
Some survivors said people had to break windows to swim to the surface. "We thought we were going to die. Everyone was trapped inside," said a middle-aged woman.
HongKong Electric, a unit of Power Assets Holdings which is controlled by Asia's richest man Li, said the boat had capacity to hold up to 200 people.
The tragedy was the worst to hit Hong Kong since 1996 when more than 40 people died in a fire in a commercial building.
The other ship, owned by Hong Kong and Kowloon Ferry Holdings, suffered a badly damaged bow in the collision but made it safely to the pier on Lamma, an island popular with tourists and expatriates about a half-hour boat ride from Hong Kong.
Several of its roughly 100 passengers and crew were taken to hospital with injuries.
"After the accident, it was all chaos and people were crying. Then water began seeping in and the vessel began to tilt to one side and people were all told to stand on the other side and everyone started putting on life jackets," a male passenger who was on the Lamma ferry told reporters.
SEARCH FOR SURVIVORS CONTINUES
Hong Kong is one of the world's busiest shipping channels, although serious marine accidents are rare.
The waters around Hong Kong were busy on Monday with numerous passenger ferries, private leisure boats and fishing vessels out to watch the city's fireworks, but it is unclear why the two ferries collided.
"Our ferry left Lamma island at 8.15 pm to watch the fireworks display out at sea, but within a few minutes, a tugboat (ferry) smashed into our vessel," Yuen Sui-see, a director for Hongkong Electric, one of the city's two main electricity generators, told reporters.
A spokeswoman for Hong Kong and Kowloon Ferry said they were assessing what had happened.
"Our captain is not well and we have not been able to talk to him so far," the spokeswoman told local television.
A maritime department spokesman told reporters: "Normally vessels ought to stay and help other vessels in distress. But what we heard was that the other ship had passengers who were injured and needed help."
The nighttime collision sparked a major rescue operation involving dive teams, helicopters and boats that saw scores of people plucked from the sea.
Television pictures showed the red and blue bow of the Hong Kong Electric Company ferry pointing skywards, surrounded by rescue vessels. By Tuesday a large crane on a barge had been connected to the stricken ferry.
"We will continue our search. We also don't rule out that some may have swam to shore themselves and haven't contacted their families and so may not be accounted for," Ng Kuen-chi, acting deputy director of fire services told local television.
The search was hampered by the vessel being partly sunken, poor visibility and too much clutter inside the vessel, Ng said.
Teams of men in white coats, green rubber gloves and yellow helmets carried corpses off a police launch in body bags on Tuesday. Local media reported that children were among the dead.
At one of the city's public mortuaries around 50 grieving relatives gathered, some crying, while others were called into identify the dead.
More than 100 people were sent to five hospitals and nine people suffered serious injuries or remain in critical condition, the government said in a statement.
Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying visited survivors of the collision and pledged a thorough investigation into the crash.
Flags flew at half mast at Li's Cheung Kong Group headquarters in the heart of the city's financial district on Tuesday, as well as at government headquarters.
Thousands of Hong Kong residents live on outlying islands such as Lamma, which lies about three km (two miles) southwest of Hong Kong island.
(Additional reporting by Stefanie McIntyre, James Pomfret, Farah Master, Venus Wu and Tyrone Siu; Editing by Anne Marie Roantree and Michael Perry)
Iran's currency, the rial, hit a record low on Tuesday, threatening to worsen job losses and lower living standards within the?Islamic republic.
By Yeganeh Torbati,?Reuters, Marcus George,?Reuters / October 2, 2012
In this January 2012 photo, an Iranian street money changer holds Iranian banknotes with a portrait of late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, in the main old Bazaar of Tehran, Iran.
Vahid Salemi/AP/File
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The Iranian currency fell to a record low on Tuesday as the Islamic republic struggles under the impact of Western economic sanctions and nervous citizens rushed to change their savings into hard currency.
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The Iranian government blamed speculators for the rial's collapse and ordered the security services to take action against them.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rejected criticism of his policies and insisted the country could ride out the sanctions, imposed because of Iran's nuclear programme, after the rial lost about a third of its value in a week.
"Enemies have managed to reduce our oil sales but hopefully we will compensate for this," a combative Ahmadinejad told a news conference. He suggested domestic criticism of him was part of a "psychological war" against Iran.
"According to a report from one of the security services, 22 individuals are ringleaders of the recent turmoil in the currency market, and since these individuals are known, security institutions must act," Ahmadinejad said.
The rial tumbled to a record low of around 37,500 to the U.S. dollar in the free market on Tuesday, from about 34,200 at the close of business on Monday, foreign exchange traders in Tehran said. On Monday last week, it traded at around 24,600.
Late on Tuesday, some Iranian media reported that the currency had recovered to around 32,000, but traders contacted by Reuters could not confirm this, saying they had stopped dealing because of the extreme volatility.
The rial's slide suggested the Western sanctions were doing serious damage to the country's economy.
On Sunday, Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said Iran's economy was "on the verge of collapse".
By freezing Iran out of the global banking system, sanctions have made it hard for Tehran to obtain payment for its oil exports. Iranians have responded by rushing to change their savings into hard currency, fuelling the rial's slide.
"This is going to cause a shutdown in transactions in Iran. All the main distributors of electronics and household items will be concerned about trading - they'll want to know where the bottom is and how long it will continue," said Mehrdad Emadi, an Iranian-born economic adviser to the European Union who is based in Britain.
One of my favorite unconferences is the European edition of Stream, the WPP/Yossi Vardi hosted extravaganza held annually just outside Athens. Last year, I interviewed Sir Martin Sorrell, WPP's ebullient CEO, about the global advertising economy. And this year, I had the good fortune to sit down with Mark Read, the CEO of WPP Digital, to talk more specifically about the company's digital strategy. Read stressed to me the importance of digital inside the WPP empire, explaining that it currently represented 32% of the company's $17 billion annual revenue, thereby making it the seventh largest digital media company in the world. And this will only grow in the future, Read told me, so that in ten years time "everything will be digital."
Genetics Society of America's GENETICS journal highlights for October 2012Public release date: 1-Oct-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Phyllis Edelman pedelman@genetics-gsa.org 301-634-7302 Genetics Society of America
Bethesda, MDOctober 1, 2012 Listed below are the selected highlights for the October 2012 issue of the Genetics Society of America's journal, GENETICS. The October issue is available online at www.genetics.org/content/current. Please credit GENETICS, Vol. 192, October 2012, Copyright 2012.
Please feel free to forward to colleagues who may be interested in these articles.
ISSUE HIGHLIGHTS
Energy-dependent modulation of glucagon-like signaling in Drosophila via the AMP-activated protein kinase, pp. 457 Jason T. Braco, Emily L. Gillespie, Gregory E. Alberto, Jay E. Brenman, and Erik C. Johnson
How organisms maintain energetic homeostasis is unclear. These authors show that the actions of a known cellular sensor of energythe AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK)cause release of a glucagon-like hormone in Drosophila. They further show that AMPK regulates secretion of adipokinetic hormone. This suggests new roles and targets for AMPK and suggests metabolic networks are organized similarly throughout Metazoa.
The relation of codon bias to tissue-specific gene expression in Arabidopsis thaliana, pp. 641 Salvatore Camiolo, Lorenzo Farina, and Andrea Porceddu
This article reports systematic differences in usage of synonymous codons in Arabidopsis thaliana genes whose expression is tissue specific. The authors propose that codon bias evolves as an adaptive response to the different abundances of tRNAs in different tissues.
Integrity and function of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae spindle pole body depends on connections between the membrane proteins Ndc1, Rtn1, and Yop1, pp. 441 Amanda K. Casey, T. Renee Dawson, Jingjing Chen, Jennifer M. Friederichs, Sue L. Jaspersen, and Susan R. Wente
Budding yeast face an unusual challenge during cell division: they must segregate their chromosomes while the nuclear envelope remains intact. Consequently, mitosis begins with insertion of the duplicated spindle pole body (a.k.a. centrosome) into the nuclear envelope, a process that parallels the generation of new nuclear pore complexes. These authors report data that suggest new mechanisms for linking nuclear division and transport.
Cellular memory of acquired stress resistance in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, pp. 495 Qiaoning Guan, Suraiya Haroon, Diego Gonzlez Bravo, Jessica L. Will, and Audrey P. Gasch
Cells can retain memory of prior experiences that influence future behaviors. Here, the authors show that budding yeast retains a multifaceted memory of prior stress treatment. Cells pretreated with salt retain peroxide tolerance for several generations after removal of the initial stressor. This is due to long-lived catalase, produced during salt treatment and distributed to daughter cells. These cells also display transcriptional memory dependent on the nuclear pore subunit Nup42 that functions to promote reacquisition of stress tolerance in future stress cycles.
Genomic variation in natural populations of Drosophila melanogaster, pp. 533 Charles H. Langley, Kristian Stevens, Charis Cardeno, Yuh Chwen G. Lee, Daniel R. Schrider, John E. Pool, Sasha A. Langley, Charlyn Suarez, Russell B. Corbett-Detig, Bryan Kolaczkowski, Shu Fang, Phillip M. Nista, Alisha K. Holloway, Andrew D. Kern, Colin N. Dewey, Yun S. Song, Matthew W. Hahn, and David J. Begun
This article greatly extends studies of population genetic variation in natural populations of Drosophila melanogaster, which have played an important role in the development of evolutionary theory. The authors describe genome sequences of 43 individuals taken from two natural populations of D. melanogaster. The genetic polymorphism, divergence, and copy-number variation revealed in these data are presented at several scales, providing unprecedented insight into forces shaping genome polymorphism and divergence.
Estimating allele age and selection coefficient from time-serial data, pp. 599 Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas, Orestis Malaspinas, Steven N. Evans, and Montgomery Slatkin
The relative importance of the four fundamental processes driving evolutiongenetic drift, natural selection, migration, and mutationremains undetermined. These authors propose a new approach to estimate the selection coefficient and the allele age of time serial data. They apply their methodology to ancient sequences of a horse coat color gene and demonstrate that the causative allele existed as a rare segregating variant prior to domestication. This illuminates the debate on the relative importance of new vs. standing variation in adaptation and domestication.
DNA replication origin function is promoted by H3K4 di-methylation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, pp. 371 Lindsay F. Rizzardi, Elizabeth S. Dorn, Brian D. Strahl, and Jeanette Gowen Cook
What defines a DNA replication origin? It is becoming increasingly apparent that post-translational modifications of nucleosomes near replication origins help mark them and control their activity. The genetic analysis presented in this article implicates di-methylated histone H3 lysine 4 (stimulated by histone H2B monoubiquitination) as part of the definition of active replication origins. Since these histone modifications are highly conserved, these findings are relevant to genome organization in other eukaryotes.
Comparative oncogenomics implicates the Neurofibromin 1 gene (NF1) as a breast cancer driver, pp. 385 Marsha D. Wallace, Adam D. Pfefferle, Lishuang Shen, Adrian J. McNairn, Ethan G. Cerami, Barbara L. Fallon, Vera D. Rinaldi, Teresa L. Southard, Charles M. Perou, and John C. Schimenti
This study of a mouse model of genomic instability indicates that NF1 (Neurofibromin 1) deficiency can drive breast cancer. ~ 63,000 people in the United States annually will develop breast cancer with an NF1 deficiency. Together with evidence that NF1 depletion confers resistance of human breast cancer cells to tamoxifen, these findings suggest therapeutic strategies for patients with NF1-deleted tumors.
###
ABOUT GENETICS: Since 1916, GENETICS has covered high quality, original research on a range of topics bearing on inheritance, including population and evolutionary genetics, complex traits, developmental and behavioral genetics, cellular genetics, gene expression, genome integrity and transmission, and genome and systems biology. GENETICS, a peer-reviewed, peer-edited journal of the Genetics Society of America is one of the world's most cited journals in genetics and heredity.
ABOUT GSA: Founded in 1931, the Genetics Society of America (GSA) is the professional membership organization for scientific researchers, educators, bioengineers, bioinformaticians and others interested in the field of genetics. Its nearly 5,000 members work to advance knowledge in the basic mechanisms of inheritance, from the molecular to the population level. GSA is dedicated to promoting research in genetics and to facilitating communication among geneticists worldwide through its conferences, including the biennial conference on Model Organisms to Human Biology, an interdisciplinary meeting on current and cutting edge topics in genetics research, as well as annual and biennial meetings that focus on the genetics of particular organisms, including C. elegans, Drosophila, fungi, mice, yeast, and zebrafish. GSA publishes GENETICS, a leading journal in the field and an online, open-access journal, G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics. For more information about GSA, please visit www.genetics-gsa.org. Also follow GSA on Facebook at facebook.com/GeneticsGSA and on Twitter @GeneticsGSA.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Genetics Society of America's GENETICS journal highlights for October 2012Public release date: 1-Oct-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Phyllis Edelman pedelman@genetics-gsa.org 301-634-7302 Genetics Society of America
Bethesda, MDOctober 1, 2012 Listed below are the selected highlights for the October 2012 issue of the Genetics Society of America's journal, GENETICS. The October issue is available online at www.genetics.org/content/current. Please credit GENETICS, Vol. 192, October 2012, Copyright 2012.
Please feel free to forward to colleagues who may be interested in these articles.
ISSUE HIGHLIGHTS
Energy-dependent modulation of glucagon-like signaling in Drosophila via the AMP-activated protein kinase, pp. 457 Jason T. Braco, Emily L. Gillespie, Gregory E. Alberto, Jay E. Brenman, and Erik C. Johnson
How organisms maintain energetic homeostasis is unclear. These authors show that the actions of a known cellular sensor of energythe AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK)cause release of a glucagon-like hormone in Drosophila. They further show that AMPK regulates secretion of adipokinetic hormone. This suggests new roles and targets for AMPK and suggests metabolic networks are organized similarly throughout Metazoa.
The relation of codon bias to tissue-specific gene expression in Arabidopsis thaliana, pp. 641 Salvatore Camiolo, Lorenzo Farina, and Andrea Porceddu
This article reports systematic differences in usage of synonymous codons in Arabidopsis thaliana genes whose expression is tissue specific. The authors propose that codon bias evolves as an adaptive response to the different abundances of tRNAs in different tissues.
Integrity and function of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae spindle pole body depends on connections between the membrane proteins Ndc1, Rtn1, and Yop1, pp. 441 Amanda K. Casey, T. Renee Dawson, Jingjing Chen, Jennifer M. Friederichs, Sue L. Jaspersen, and Susan R. Wente
Budding yeast face an unusual challenge during cell division: they must segregate their chromosomes while the nuclear envelope remains intact. Consequently, mitosis begins with insertion of the duplicated spindle pole body (a.k.a. centrosome) into the nuclear envelope, a process that parallels the generation of new nuclear pore complexes. These authors report data that suggest new mechanisms for linking nuclear division and transport.
Cellular memory of acquired stress resistance in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, pp. 495 Qiaoning Guan, Suraiya Haroon, Diego Gonzlez Bravo, Jessica L. Will, and Audrey P. Gasch
Cells can retain memory of prior experiences that influence future behaviors. Here, the authors show that budding yeast retains a multifaceted memory of prior stress treatment. Cells pretreated with salt retain peroxide tolerance for several generations after removal of the initial stressor. This is due to long-lived catalase, produced during salt treatment and distributed to daughter cells. These cells also display transcriptional memory dependent on the nuclear pore subunit Nup42 that functions to promote reacquisition of stress tolerance in future stress cycles.
Genomic variation in natural populations of Drosophila melanogaster, pp. 533 Charles H. Langley, Kristian Stevens, Charis Cardeno, Yuh Chwen G. Lee, Daniel R. Schrider, John E. Pool, Sasha A. Langley, Charlyn Suarez, Russell B. Corbett-Detig, Bryan Kolaczkowski, Shu Fang, Phillip M. Nista, Alisha K. Holloway, Andrew D. Kern, Colin N. Dewey, Yun S. Song, Matthew W. Hahn, and David J. Begun
This article greatly extends studies of population genetic variation in natural populations of Drosophila melanogaster, which have played an important role in the development of evolutionary theory. The authors describe genome sequences of 43 individuals taken from two natural populations of D. melanogaster. The genetic polymorphism, divergence, and copy-number variation revealed in these data are presented at several scales, providing unprecedented insight into forces shaping genome polymorphism and divergence.
Estimating allele age and selection coefficient from time-serial data, pp. 599 Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas, Orestis Malaspinas, Steven N. Evans, and Montgomery Slatkin
The relative importance of the four fundamental processes driving evolutiongenetic drift, natural selection, migration, and mutationremains undetermined. These authors propose a new approach to estimate the selection coefficient and the allele age of time serial data. They apply their methodology to ancient sequences of a horse coat color gene and demonstrate that the causative allele existed as a rare segregating variant prior to domestication. This illuminates the debate on the relative importance of new vs. standing variation in adaptation and domestication.
DNA replication origin function is promoted by H3K4 di-methylation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, pp. 371 Lindsay F. Rizzardi, Elizabeth S. Dorn, Brian D. Strahl, and Jeanette Gowen Cook
What defines a DNA replication origin? It is becoming increasingly apparent that post-translational modifications of nucleosomes near replication origins help mark them and control their activity. The genetic analysis presented in this article implicates di-methylated histone H3 lysine 4 (stimulated by histone H2B monoubiquitination) as part of the definition of active replication origins. Since these histone modifications are highly conserved, these findings are relevant to genome organization in other eukaryotes.
Comparative oncogenomics implicates the Neurofibromin 1 gene (NF1) as a breast cancer driver, pp. 385 Marsha D. Wallace, Adam D. Pfefferle, Lishuang Shen, Adrian J. McNairn, Ethan G. Cerami, Barbara L. Fallon, Vera D. Rinaldi, Teresa L. Southard, Charles M. Perou, and John C. Schimenti
This study of a mouse model of genomic instability indicates that NF1 (Neurofibromin 1) deficiency can drive breast cancer. ~ 63,000 people in the United States annually will develop breast cancer with an NF1 deficiency. Together with evidence that NF1 depletion confers resistance of human breast cancer cells to tamoxifen, these findings suggest therapeutic strategies for patients with NF1-deleted tumors.
###
ABOUT GENETICS: Since 1916, GENETICS has covered high quality, original research on a range of topics bearing on inheritance, including population and evolutionary genetics, complex traits, developmental and behavioral genetics, cellular genetics, gene expression, genome integrity and transmission, and genome and systems biology. GENETICS, a peer-reviewed, peer-edited journal of the Genetics Society of America is one of the world's most cited journals in genetics and heredity.
ABOUT GSA: Founded in 1931, the Genetics Society of America (GSA) is the professional membership organization for scientific researchers, educators, bioengineers, bioinformaticians and others interested in the field of genetics. Its nearly 5,000 members work to advance knowledge in the basic mechanisms of inheritance, from the molecular to the population level. GSA is dedicated to promoting research in genetics and to facilitating communication among geneticists worldwide through its conferences, including the biennial conference on Model Organisms to Human Biology, an interdisciplinary meeting on current and cutting edge topics in genetics research, as well as annual and biennial meetings that focus on the genetics of particular organisms, including C. elegans, Drosophila, fungi, mice, yeast, and zebrafish. GSA publishes GENETICS, a leading journal in the field and an online, open-access journal, G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics. For more information about GSA, please visit www.genetics-gsa.org. Also follow GSA on Facebook at facebook.com/GeneticsGSA and on Twitter @GeneticsGSA.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Big diesel-powered trucks, buses, and off-road machines have large, complex drivetrains that suffer from similarly oversize energy losses as they operate. These so-called heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs) currently produce 8% of the UK?s overall CO2 emissions, but their fuel efficiency (and thus their carbon footprint) could improve by 2 to 5% if energy losses stemming from their gears, bearings, and lubrication systems could be halved, said Chris Thorne, program manager for heavy-duty vehicles at the UK Energy Technologies Institute (ETI).
ETI is a public-private partnership between global energy and engineering companies and the UK government that is aimed at accelerating development and deployment of affordable low-carbon-technology solutions in the UK, according to Thorne. The consortium helps ?bridge the gap between government- and industry-supported R&D work and the market.? The collaboration includes BP, Caterpillar, EDF, E.ON, Rolls-Royce, and Shell, as well as the UK Government?s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and Technology Strategy Board, and Departments for Business Innovation & Skills, and Energy & Climate Change.
Lower Parasitic Losses
The goal of a three-year, ?2.5-million ($3.9-million) project launched recently by the ETI is to boost the fuel efficiency of large trucks and off-road machines by cutting in half the amount of parasitic losses that occur in their lower drivetrain system. Such an advance, he said, ?has the potential to make a beneficial step change to the HDV industry.? The HDV category includes tractor-trailer trucks, coaches, construction and mining machines, tractors, back-hoe loaders, wheeled loaders, agricultural equipment, and articulated quarry trucks.
An earlier ETI feasibility study on the topic that was conducted by Ricardo, Caterpillar, and Rolls-Royce in June 2010 found that investment in, and the testing of, a range of basic platform technologies is the surest way to accelerate green vehicle technology.
?
Specialist Tiger Team
The ETI commissioned Nottingham-based driveline consultants Romax Technology to lead the joint effort, which will also include Castrol Ltd of Pangbourne, Reading, UK and ANSYS Inc. of Canonsburg, Pa. Romax will use its decades of know-how in gearboxes and software simulation to address the lower drivetrain design and analysis tasks, whereas lubrication/tribology specialists from Castrol Ltd will handle the oil development issues, and CAE analysts at ANSYS will model the HDV lubrication system with its latest engineering simulation technology.
?We have over 20 years experience of drivetrain design,? noted Peter Poon, chief executive and founder of Romax Technology. ?The ETI has set an ambitious target for parasitic loss reduction in this project but we are confident it is achievable as it matches our thinking in this area. It will make a big difference to future HDV drivetrain design technology, and with our consortium partners Castrol Ltd and ANSYS, we are keen to begin development.?
?We want to get each of these parties?specialists in engineering, modeling, and lubrication?around the same table to co-engineer a general solution in an environment where the normal business-related constraints have been removed,? Thorne said. The hope is that a different R&D framework will engender novel improvements, he explained.
The team will study parasitic losses deriving from waste energy expended in the agitation of the lubricating oil and surface-to-surface component friction, which together can account for more than a tenth of overall vehicle energy losses. This project will look to improve the overall system design, with a synergistic focus on improving the mechanical and operational efficiency of gears, bearings, surface treatments, lubricant flow, and lubricant composition, according to ETI.
Articulated Truck Demo
The driveline technology will be demonstrated on a Caterpillar AT725 articulated off-highway truck, which is considered representative of other models in the HDV category. Installation of the new technology will take place at Caterpillar?s Peterlee, UK, factory. ?ETI?s HDV program, executed by Caterpillar, will help us identify the next generation of breakthroughs in vehicle efficiency and carbon dioxide emissions reduction for these trucks and other Caterpillar products,? said Caterpillar vice president and chief technology officer Tana Utley at an introductory ceremony at the Peterlee plant in March.
This project is the first of a ?40 million ($65 million) ETI program designed to boost HDV efficiency by one-third. The joint research effort will focus on the concept engineering of a range of innovative and efficient land vehicles. Incorporating individual technology developments into packages that can be implemented across a range of vehicles will be critical. During phase 2 of the program, the ETI will invest in the under-developed technology areas prior to a full-scale demonstration of all of the technologies and systems in phase 3. The expectation is that vehicles incorporating technologies from this program will reach the market by 2020.
?The creation of this new ?40m program is welcome news as we move forward in our transition to a low-carbon economy and renewed growth,? said UK business secretary Vince Cable at the Peterlee ceremony. ?Initiatives like this help underpin the Government?s commitment to developing greener automotive solutions.?
California Governor Jerry Brown struck down a privacy bill that would have required a warrant before tracking the location of a citizen's mobile device, signaling a trend among Democrats and Republicans, at all levels of power, that warrantless spying has become a staple of American life. Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union reported that wiretapping has nearly quadrupled under President Obama. After Senate Democrats refused to pass a cybersecurity law for America's infrustructure installations, such as power plants, the Obama administration is reportedly penning an executive order to push through some of the measures.
One of my favorite unconferences is the European edition of ![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tXst2npQwOXeRhh5uyvT0y_QENsUDR1tjArcK-X7-_N4ki5Bhi7WR95rntP3wwHPkK6eSMXnjdra4ipoGRCya9YfmxB6RDhyJRDyvebHE=s0-d){kind=small}
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California Governor Jerry Brown