Discovery News: Material World

The Week (According to Me)

Bionic humans, crowdsourcing the flu vaccine, lemony socks and solar concentrators. These are the coolest tech related stories I read this past week.

July 4 / Guardian
2b or Not 2b
Language is like life. It evolves. Get over it and stop fretting so darn much over whether text messaging will destroy linguistics. In fact, according to professor David Crystal, it improves children's writing and spelling.

July 4 / New Scientist
Do We Have the Technology to Build a Bionic Human?
Scientist can engineer organs, bones, retinas and much, much more. (Yet they still haven't found a way to prevent baldness. Huh.)

July 4 / Guardian
It's the Screens, Not the Internet, That are Making Us Stupid
We may be reading less, but we're staring at computer screens way more. It's enough to give you a stupid headache.

July 7 / Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends
Lemon-Filled Odorless Socks
What's better: socks that smell like citrus? Or those that smell like cheese? You make the call.

July 7 / Wired
Researchers Track Disease With Google News, Google.org Money
What year is it now? 2008. Right. To World Health Organization: Welcome to the age of the Interwebosphere. Finally, you've put together a website that can be used to track new disease outbreaks.

July 9 / Webmonkey
Yahoo’s New ‘Build Your Own’ Search Engine Nips at Google’s Lead
Yikes. Yahoo has a new open source initiative that could allow outside web developers to hack into the company's search engine code to produce customized results and mashups. Yahoo is doing it to compete with search engine giant, Google. Will David defeat Goliath? Duh, duh, duh, duh (dramatic music). Stay tuned.

July 9 / Wired
Nanotubes Hold Promise for Next-Generation Computing
It's carbon nanotube this and carbon nanotube that. Blah, blah, blah. It's all lab talk. Show me the money, man.

July 9 / New York Times
Designing Cars for Low-Carbon Chic
Lighter and sleeker automatically improve gas mileage without even tinkering with the engine. Not only that, but these kinds of cars will just look cool.

July 10 / Discovery News
Implant Designed to Shrink Waistline
Wouldn't an implant for the waistline, by definition, make the midsection bigger? Au, contraire, Monfraire. This one quells hunger pangs and the desire to feed one's pie hole.

July 10 / Super Duper Sustainable Tech
Solar-Powered Home, No Panels Needed
Special dyes designed to capture specific spectrums of sunlight could turn regular old windows into  solar-harnessing power panels. That's genius-level thinking, guys.

July 10 / Wired
Crowdsourcing the Flu Vaccine
More words about how the internet (via data sharing and networking) could help health workers develop a better flu vaccine.

July 10 / IEEE Spectrum
Our First Electric Cars May Be Trucks
Personally, I'd like an electric scooter, but more fuel-efficient trucks could sure help bring those food prices down. 

Steel-melting solar mirror, eco-friendly fireworks, freeing oneself from email's grip and more!

June 27 / The New York Times
Data Centers Explore Novel Ways to Cut Energy Use
Data centers make the Web possible. Make my job possible. But electricity consumed by microprocessors in those data center is rising by 16 percent per year. That kind of voracious appetite for energy is expensive and not very green. But people at the recent Data Center Energy Summit are brainstorming solutions to curb the beast's energy appetite, including reusing hot water from cooling systems to filling a town's swimming pool.

June 28 / The New York Times
I Freed Myself From E-Mail’s Grip
Gasp! This guy stopped using email. On purpose. His server didn't even go down or anything!

June 29 / Guardian
Calls for ID Card to Replace Passwords
Passwords be damned! Finally, an industry group known as the Information Card Foundation is advocating that we replace our passwords with an electronic ID card. Advantages: security and signing in just once.

June 30 / Guardian
Welcome to the Particle Menagerie
Up, down, top, bottom, charm, strange, axions, sleptons and quarks. How do physicists dream up such whimsical names for the fundamental particles they discover? Simon Singh explains

June 30 /  Guardian
The Brains Behind the Operation
Cern scientists have invented a new way to network computers, and it could be the next leap forward in computing.

June 30 / Discovery News
Meet the Steel-Melting Solar Mirror
Enterprising kids know you can melt crayons by focusing light on them with a magnifying glass. MIT students are now vaporizing wood, and can theoretically melt steel, by focusing sunlight with mirrors.

July 1 / Popular Science
Powering Cars With Toxic Waste
Scientists invent a uranium-eating molecule that could help turn nuclear junk into fuel.

July 1 / Technology Trends
Toward Eco-Friendly Fireworks
Researchers are developing new pyrotechnic formulas that burn cleaner and produce less smoke.

July 1 / Scientific American
Farming Solar Energy in Space
Japanese scientists are working on the hardware needed to realize orbital generators as a form of clean, renewable energy, with plans to complete a prototype in about 20 years.

July 1 / The New York Times
Google’s Ethos, Applied to Dining
Crowdsourcing sommeliers and open source recipes. Let's eat.

July 1 / Guardian
Hybrid Embryos: U.K. Team Plans Stem Cell First
British scientists got the okay from their gov to create the world's first human stem cells from embryos that are part human and part animal.

July 2 / Nature
How to Weave an Invisible Rug
You've heard of an invisibility cloak. Researchers calculate that a carpet, not a cloak, would be the most realistic kind of cloaking device. It would produce a controlled mirage.

July 2 / The New York Times
Obama Voters Protest His Switch on Telecom Immunity
Senator Barack Obama’s Web site has netted him lots-o cash. Now it's netted him lots-o backlash. When followers heard he supported legislation granting legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants, they protested electronically.

July 3 / Wired
Laugh at High Gas Prices With a 282-MPG VW
Fuel efficiency seems like oxymoron. But now Volkswagen is upping the ante with a new bullet-shaped car that gets triple-digit mpg. Muh-ha-ha-ha-ha.

July 3 / Scientific American
Who Will Die?: Computer Predicts Which Death Row Inmates Will Be It
Sounds like a gruesome game that no one would want to play. But the predictions could actually lead to a fairer appeals process.

July 3 / The New York Times
See Spot Run. Now Find Out Where He Went.
Track everyone, everything with GPS, for under $130.

July 3 / Guardian
Environment: Climate Risk From Flat-Screen TV
The rising demand for flat-screen televisions could have a greater impact on global warming than the world's largest coal-fired power stations, a leading environmental scientist warned yesterday.

July 3 / IEEE Spectrum Online
Crimeware Pays
Adware, phishing, and spam are a strange -- and big -- business.

July 3 / IEEE Spectrum Online
Iraq Electricity, By the Numbers
The scorching truth about electricity use and need in Iraq.

The Week (According to Me)

I've read and scanned hundreds of articles this week from some of the big technology mags and papers. Here are the stories that stood out for me. Let me know if I missed anything.

June 20 / The Engineer
Matching Tatoos
Researchers have created a system that could allow police to identify individuals by matching marks on their body with those stored in a computer database.

June 21 / Guardian
Boss Hu Avoids Tricky Questions In Online Chat
Chinese president, Hu Jintao, made his mark with a four-minute online debut in front of the world's biggest population of Internet users.

June 23 / Guardian
Contraceptive Pill Goes On Sale Online
Women will be able to order the contraceptive pill online from today without having to visit a doctor or clinic.

June 23 / Discovery News
Flying Saucer Craft Set to Fly
A new wingless, saucer-shaped aircraft is scheduled to take to the skies. Just don't call it a UFO.

June 23 / Guardian
Hydrogen Cars and Hot Air
The new breed of hydrogen fuel cell-powered auto isn't as environmentally friendly as you think

June 23 / New Scientist
PC Population Reaches a Billion as E-Waste Piles Up
The number of personal computers in use around the world has surpassed one billion, research firm Gartner reports.

June 23 / Technology Review
Curating Yourself Online
In the old days, the issue was keeping your data secret. Now, the challenge is making sure your data isn't mixed up with someone else's, and controlling it as it spreads out over the Web. This means managing and curating it.

June 24 / Wired
Greener Jet Engine Could Reduce Aviation's Carbon Footprint
One of the biggest names in aviation has developed a jet engine that is more efficient, less polluting and cheaper to use than almost everything else in the sky, and it could revolutionize an industry facing skyrocketing fuel prices and mounting pressure to clean up its act.

June 24 / The Engineer
100 miles per gallon
A experimental version of a 2006 Toyota Prius sedan modified by U.S. researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has achieved a record 100 miles per gallon.

June 24 / The New York Times
The High-Tech Job Capital Is…The Big Apple?
If you’re looking for a tech job in the United States, the best place to go is not Silicon Valley. It’s New York.

June 24 / Popular Science
Oscillate Wildly
Metronomes generally keep their own beat -- that's why we love them -- but when several get together, a compromise is hammered out.

June 24, 2008 / ScienceDaily
Building Giant 'Nanoassemblies' That Sense Their Environment
Researchers in Texas are reporting the design, construction, and assembly of nano-size building blocks into the first giant structures that can sense and respond to changes in environmental conditions.

June 25 / The New York Times
U.S. High Tech Said to Slip
The United States may be synonymous with the high-tech revolution, but it is in danger of losing its high-tech edge, according to Cybercities 2008, a report released Tuesday by AeA, a technology industry trade association.

June 26 / Guardian
Website Domain Names: Any Suffixes Could Be Possible After Landmark Vote
Icann, the organisation that regulates the internet domain name system, has passed a landmark vote to relax rules limiting web addresses to "top-level" suffixes, such as .com and .uk, a move that could see people and companies register almost anything they want.

June 26, 2008 / ScienceDaily
Cooperative System Could Wipe Out Car Alarm Noise
The persistent, annoying blare of an ignored car alarm may become a sound of the past if a cooperative, mutable and silent network of monitors proposed by Penn State researchers is deployed in automobiles and parking lots.

June 26 / Technology Review
Want to Enhance Your Brain Power?
Research hints that electrically stimulating the brain can speed learning.

The Week (According to Me)

Don't spend all that time scanning your RSS feed reader. Just read my list.

13 June 08 / The Atlantic
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Nick Carr writes about how the Internet is changing the way we think.

June 13 / Tech Crunch
Quillpill: A Twitter For Cell-Phone Novelists
Even if they could, few people have the time to write a book. But what if they could Twitter one? For all those aspiring novelists out there, Quillpill might be the app to get them started.

13 June 08 / Guardian
Where Are All the Older Female Geeks?
Since starting her blog, Natalie d'Arbeloff has found that she is not the only older woman in the cybervillage. But they are still in the minority. Come on, she says, what are you waiting for?

June 13 / Wired
Potential New Weapon Against TB: Free Cell Minutes
Researchers at MIT believe they've discovered a new weapon in the battle against tuberculosis: Free cell phone minutes. For years, doctors have struggled to get some TB patients to take all their medication, which generally involves a six-month regimen of multiple drugs. Now a student-led group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a way to use cell phones to let patients test themselves. And if the tests show patients are following doctor's orders, they get rewarded with free minutes.

June 13 / Wired
IBM's Drumming Car Reads Your Lips. Seriously
The people at IBM are hard at work developing technology we never knew we don't need -- a steering wheel that reads your lips, responds to your facial expressions and turns into a drum machine. Tapping out a beat on the steering wheel while jamming to your favorite tunes will never be the same again.

June 13 / Technology Review
Doubling Laptop Battery Life
Intel's new integrated power management could dramatically reduce power consumption in your laptop by shutting down operations not being used.

June 13 / Technology Review
You've Had a Genetic Test. Now What?
A new project aims to incorporate the results of genetic screening into medicine.

June 16 / Discovery
Robots to Become Lovers, Predict Researchers
Romantic human-robot relationships are no longer the stuff of science fiction -- researchers expect them to become reality within four decades.

June 16 / Science Daily
Using Brainwaves To Chat And Stroll Through Second Life: World's First
On 7th June 2008, Keio University succeeded in the world’s first demonstration experiment with the help of a disabled person to use brainwave to chat and stroll through the virtual world.

June 16 / Nanowerk
NASA nanotechnology research into shape-shifting airplanes
Aircraft of the future will not be built of traditional, multiple, mechanically connected parts and systems. Instead, aircraft wing construction will employ fully integrated, nanotechnology enabled embedded 'smart' materials and actuators that will enable aircraft wings with unprecedented levels of aerodynamic efficiencies and aircraft control.

June 17 / BBC News
Victim of Its Own Success
Life without the internet is unimaginable for the millions who use it every day. But one of the world's leading academics on the impact of the net warns we could be facing its destruction.

June 17 / New York Times
Philadelphia Revives Citywide Wi-Fi Project
Philadelphia revived an effort on Tuesday to provide free citywide wireless Internet access in a project to be run by a new group of investors. The city aims to provide free-of-charge outdoor Web access throughout its 135 square miles, which would be the largest area covered by public Wi-fi of any U.S. city.

June 17 / Webmonkey
Clock Browser Speeds with Webmonkey’s Stopwatch
With Firefox 3, Opera 9.5 and Safari all claiming “faster than ever” speeds with its latest versions, we started wondering which one is really the fastest. After loading some pages and scratching our heads, we hacked together a small JavaScript stopwatch to find out.

June 17 / Discovery
Talking Robofish to Swim in Puget Sound
Marine creatures have communicated with each other for millions of years. Now swimming robots can too.

June 18 / Scientific American
Hands On Computing: How Multi-touch Screens Could Change The Way We Interact With Computers and Each Other
Multi-touch computing could one day free us from the mouse as our primary computer interface, the way the mouse freed us from keyboards.

June 18 / Scientific American
Wi-Maxing That Wireless Internet Connection
A wireless technology called Wi-Max has a much bigger range than Wi-Fi, making it possible to supply wireless internet accessibility to large areas with a few base stations. Christopher Intagliata reports.

June 19 / Etherized
Snail (And We Do Mean Snail) Mail
A group of artists, whose URL reads "boredomresearch," have created Real Snail Mail, the world's first web mail service using live snails. Yep. Three snails (Cecil, Austin and Muriel) have been fitted with RFID chips and antennae that can pick up data from hardware located in their enclosure. You fill out an email form, hit send and they take things from there.

June 19 / Technovelgy
Never-Stop Rail Transit System Proposed
Taiwanese inventor Peng Yu-lun imagines a main track with a large commuter train that does not stop. The train is serviced by smaller train cars that drop off new passengers while picking up those who wish to leave the train.

June 19 / The Engineer
Solar System
A team from MIT has tested a prototype of a new solar power system that consists of a 12ft-wide dish made from a frame of thin, aluminium tubing and strips of mirror.

June 19 / Discovery
New 'Terminator' Robots Go in Harm's Way
IRobot, best known for their cute Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner, has teamed up with Metal Storm, purveyors of the million-rounds-per-minute electric gun, to create a slick, Terminator-like war robot for the U.S. military.

June 19 / New Scientist
Scrapping MPG Could Boost Sales of Greener Cars
What sounds like an arithmetic brain teaser could in fact hold the key to reducing the amount of gas consumed by Americans – and by extension their CO2 emissions. Richard Larrick and Jack Soll of Duke University in the US say that a simple switch from expressing a car's fuel efficiency in miles per gallon (mpg) to gallons per 100 miles makes it much easier for people to assess how much money they could save on fuel.

The Week (According to Me)

Starting today and every Friday hence, I'm going to post a summary of the coolest tech stories and blogs I came across over the past week. The post will be here and also on my website, Discovery Tech. This week: Engineered cells, shape-shifting cars, wirelessly networked cows, bacteria that eat plastic, and gold nanoparticles that block HIV caught my attention, among others. Enjoy

06 June 2008 / Wired
ITP: The Ultimate Sweet-Talking Jacket for Geeks
The CyranoSuit, uses a series of sensors embedded in the arms and chest to detect physical interaction with a woman and then a hacked receipt printer delivers romantic lines straight to the breast pocket.

07 June 2008 / Powrtalk
Un
The Man wants us to write about technology. Energy and technology. But sometimes we want to write about un-technology. About not doing things. Avoidance strategies. Nega-watts. Nega-barrels. Things that are related to energy but that are distinctly un-tech.

08 June 2008 / Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends
Wirelessly Networking Cows
U.S. researchers have developed a Walkman-like headset for cows. This device enables them to 'whisper wireless commands to cows to control their movements

09 June 2008 / New Scientist
Bacteria Make Major Evolutionary Shift in the Lab
A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers' eyes. It's the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait.

10 June / Super Duper Sustainable Stuff
Los Angeles Has Got Some Balls. No, Really.
The the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power unloaded 400,000 black plastic "shade balls" into the 58-million-gallon reservoir to protect it--nearly one for every customer.

10 June 2008 / Wired
BMW Builds a Shape-Shifting Car Out of Cloth
Instead of steel, aluminum or even carbon fiber, the GINA Light Visionary Model has a body of seamless fabric stretched over a movable metal frame that allows the driver to change its shape at will.

10 June 2008 / Scientific American
The Midas Touch: Using Gold Nanoparticles to Block HIV
Researchers find that attaching 12 molecules of a drug compound to one gold nanoparticle restores the drug's ability to prevent HIV infection.

10 June 2008 / Scientific American
Scientists Close to Reconstructing First Living Cell
Harvard Medical School researchers report in Nature that they have built a model of what they believe the very first living cell may have looked like, which contains a strip of genetic material surrounded by a fatty membrane.

11 June 2008 / The Guardian
Can Mobile Phones Really Be Ssed to Cook Popcorn?
If four separate homemade videos on YouTube are to be believed, it's now possible to cook popcorn using the energy emitted from ordinary ringing mobiles.

11 June 2008 / Discovery News
Experiment Mimics Earth’s Spinning Core
By spinning a 26-ton steel sphere filled with boiling metal at about 90 miles an hour, Dan Lathrop, a scientist at the University of Maryland, hopes to unlock Earth's spinning magnetic heart.

11 June 2008 / New Scientist
Human Egg Makes Accidental Debut on Camera
These are the clearest pictures ever taken of what is the starting point of every human life: ovulation occurring inside a woman's body.

11 June 2008 / The Engineer
Towering Fuel Cell
The New York Power Authority (NYPA) has inked a $10.6m deal with UTC Power that will make the redeveloped World Trade Center the site of one of the largest fuel cell installations in the world.

12 June 2008 / Technovelgy.com
Bacteria Eats Plastic; What Could Go Wrong?
Microorganisms dine on polythene bags

12 June 2008 / Science Daily
U.S. Still Leads the World in Science and Technology
Despite perceptions that the nation is losing its competitive edge, the United States remains the dominant leader in science and technology worldwide, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

12 June 2008 / BBC
Thinking Up Beautiful Music
Musicians may soon be able to play instruments using just the power of the mind.

Photo: BMW

Electric Cars, Then and Now

On Jan. 15, I posted a blog about Toyota's and GM's announcement to offer electric hybrid cars for sale by 2010. Reader "AnneA" posted the comment/question below.

I wonder what the differences are between this "plug-in" and the electric car from the mid 1990's, the GM EV1.  After seeing the documentary "Who Killed The Electric Car", I must say that I'm skeptical about how this will play out, although I'd love to be wrong. [annea]

Good question. Reader "Mysterymeat" replied with a brief explanation, but I wanted to go deeper. So I called up Tony Markel, a senior engineer and hybrid electric car expert at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO. Here's the gist of what he said:

The first generation EV1 had a lead-acid battery. But it was heavy, not very efficient, and could only hold enough charge to take the car about 80 miles or so.

The second generation EV1 (above) had a nickel-metal-hydride battery. It was lighter and more efficient than the lead acid, but could only hold enough charge to take a car about 100 to 120 miles. (For a copy of the specs, down this PDF.)

Now, even though the average American doesn't drive more than 100 miles per day, he or she still gets "range anxiety," said Markel, which is why the hybrid electric cars being developed today are more attractive to consumers.

Unlike the EV1, which was all electric, hybrid electric cars use a combination of electricity and gas to make the engine run efficiently, use less gas, and offer long range driving when needed.

As Mysterymeat pointed out, some hybrid electric cars can be plugged in to recharge the battery (they're called PHEVs). Other hybrid electric cars do not have to be plugged in (they're called HEVs).

The battery on a HEV (also made from nickel-metal-hydride) gets charged while the car is being driven. This means that, ultimately, you need gas in the tank in order to get the battery charged.

I like the idea of PHEVs best. They also need gas in the tank, but you can recharge the battery (also nickel-metal-hydride) much more cheaply by plugging it in. You generate fewer emissions this way, too.

What's more, cars that plug into an electrical socket could lead to a vehicle-to-grid system that's attractive to consumers and utility companies. With this system, batteries from electric cars would be used collectively to store and release excess power from utility companies that normally fluctuates throughout the day. "One interesting statistic," said Markel, "is that a typical vehicle is used only 5 percent of the day for driving. The rest of the time it’s parked."

Parking lots full of cars-as-electricity-sponges would also help utility companies incorporate renewable yet ofttimes fickle energy sources, such as solar and wind, into their power generation models.

You can read more here about a vehicle-to-grid plan. And just yesterday, the NY Times published an article about a project in Israel to sell electric car transportation similar to the way cell phones are sold. (See my blog about this here.)

Toyota, GM Promise Plug-Ins By 2010

When it comes to the future of cars, I'm all about the plug-in. Biofuels, unless they are made from  existing organic waste, require too much land, jack up agricultural prices, and in the end dump just as many pollutants into the atmosphere as fossil fuels. So electrically powered vehicles are the way to go, especially if that energy can be generated by some renewable source, such as solar or wind.

That's why I'm excited to hear the news this week from both Toyota and GM announcing their plans to have plug-ins by 2010!

This past Sunday, Katsuake Watanabe, president of Toyota, said that the company is accelerating its global plug-in hybrid research and development program. By 2010, they want to be selling a million cars a year (left). As part of that plan, Toyota will partner with Panasonic in a joint venture and expand a battery factory the car company already operates.

On Monday, Saturn announced that it may begin production as soon as 2010 on a plug-in hybrid electric version of the Saturn Vue Green Line (below). The vehicle will use a modified version of GM's hybrid system and plug-in technology and a lithium-ion battery pack.

Both companies are claiming that they will be first. Should we lay down some bets on who it will be (for entertainment purposes only)?  

Big Surprise: Drivers on Cell Phones Slow Traffic

Wanna get somewhere fast? Avoid using your cell phone in the car. A new study from the University of Utah finds that drivers who talk on their cell phones drive slower on the freeway and take longer to complete their trips. The research, lead by psychology professor Dave Strayer, builds on previous work that showed that motorists on cell phones are five times more likely to be in an accident than non-blabbers,that hands-free cell phones are no less dangerous while driving than hand-held cell phones, and—get this—that drivers talking on cell phones are as impaired as drivers with a 0.08-percent blood-alcohol level.

The new study used a driving simulator (see image) equipped with a gas pedal, brakes, steering, and realistic traffic scenes. The participants drove under freeway conditions while holding a real conversation with another person.

Although the drivers were told to obey the 65-mph speed limit, they drove an average 2 mph slower and took 15 to 19 seconds longer to complete the 9.2-mile course. Sure, that doesn't seem like a big deal, but if everyone's talking, the problem compounds with slow downs all around, even for those not talking on a cell phone.

The researchers are presenting their results Wednesday, Jan. 16 at the Transportation Research Board’s annual meeting.   

Car Drives Underwater

In the 1977 film, "The Spy Who Loved Me" James Bond evades the bad guys by driving his Lotus Esprit underwater.

Now a two-seater car called the sQuba can do the same. Developed by the Swiss company Rinspeed, the vehicle can drive on land and then, with the push of a button, dive to depths of 33 feet.

On land, an electric motor drives the car forward. Underwater, two propellers in the stern and two jet drives in the bow propels it. In both environments: zero emissions. A self-contained oxygen system supply occupants with fresh air for breathing.

The car will be on display at the Geneva Motor Show in March, 2008. But don't hold your breath. Mass-production of the car is not being planned.

Electric Bike-Share Program Coming to the US

Despite the fact that Asia and Europe seem gung-ho over the notion of citywide bike-sharing programs, the U.S. still lags behind. We are a car-loving country with people who guard their autonomy and worship the vehicles that give it to us.

This week on Discovery's News site, I wrote a piece about a foldable electric scooter being developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The idea is to make these scooters available to commuters at conveniently located, one-way rental racks. While researching the piece, I was pleased to find out that there is one bike-share project being implemented next fall at the University of Washington, Seattle. Forty bikes from Intrago will be distributed among four station located at the edge of campus and made available to students, faculty and staff.

Bike-sharing is not a technology, but a transportation solution that could impact technology. For example, a lot of research is going into developing more fuel-efficient cars, but fuel-efficiency doesn't  solve congestion problems in urban areas. Electric bikes or scooters made available as part of city's mass transit plan could go a long way to preserving our autonomy while reducing pollution and traffic.

For more bike-sharing news and to see a world map of bike-sharing locations, see Paul DeMaio's blogspot.