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House Committee Torpedoes Military Biofuel Programs

2012-05-16T14:15:14Z

By Tina Casey

Tucked away in the House Armed Services Committee's proposed Pentagon budget is a provision that could bring the U.S. military's ambitious foray into biofuels to a screeching halt.

Earlier this week, the Republican-led committee voted to ban the Department of Defense from purchasing alternative fuels that cost more than "traditional" fossil fuels.
That would eliminate several emerging biofuels that have undergone successful testing by the Air Force and Navy over the past year on aircraft and ships.

The Army has also been developing alternative fuel technologies for ground vehicles, such as a high tech steam engine that can run on a variety of fuels, including biofuels.

The Air Force has been test-flying a 50-50 blend of camelina and jet fuel in public displays of its high-performance Thunderbirds demonstration team. Camelina is a weedy plant in the mustard family.

The Navy has been testing a variety of biofuels in ships and aircraft, including its own Blue Angels aerial demonstration team. Along with camelina, the Navy's tests include algae and waste grease.

Just last month, the Army officially opened the Ground Vehicle Power and Energy Laboratory, a new research complex in Michigan for developing alternative fuels and new vehicle technologies. Public education and outreach for the new laboratory will be anchored by a traveling vehicle and fuel showcase called the "Green Warrior Convoy."

A halt to DOD's biofuel purchases would be a particular blow to the Navy, which has spent the entire year on an all-out effort to launch a Green Strike Group by mid-June, in time to participate in the multinational Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) maritime exercise.

Every member of the Green Strike Group, including both ships and aircraft, will be powered with the help of non-fossil fuels. Though the group is anchored by a nuclear-powered carrier, the intent is to showcase the effectiveness of biofuels.

The Strike Group is an intermediate step toward launching a full Great Green Fleet in 2014.

Beyond the immediate effect on military operations, the House action could also throw a wrench in a major Obama Administration biofuel initiative that was designed to provide a long term economic boost to struggling rural communities.

Launched last summer, the initiative pairs USDA with the Navy and the Department of Energy in a $510 million partnership with the private sector, to develop a biofuel supply chain including research and development, growing and harvesting biofuel crops, transportation, and refining.

The Navy's role is to be the linchpin customer, to kickstart the emergence of a mass market for biofuel.

The loss of the Navy as a ready customer would affect biofuel crop growers in the "breadbasket" states of the Midwest as well as in Arizona and Texas, both of which have been racing to establish themselves as leaders in algae biofuel production.

A slowdown in the growth of the domestic biofuel industry will also cycle around to affect the military's long term energy strategy. Though positioned partly as an economic development program for agricultural communities, a key goal of the rural biofuels initiative is to ensure that the domestic biofuel economy matures quickly to the point where it could supply a significant portion of the military's liquid fuel requirements.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus has made the point numerous times over the past year that the DOD is strategically and logistically handicapped by dependency on fossil fuels to an increasing degree, whether the source is foreign or domestic.

The lack of fuel diversification makes the military budget highly susceptible to price spikes in the global oil market, which would not be alleviated by an increase in domestic production.

The purchase of petroleum products from a relatively small number of countries overseas has also been an issue of grave concern for military strategists and policy makers, as eloquently expressed by Mabus at a speech to the Green Building Council last May:

For the military, it creates a strategic challenge because too much of our oil comes from either potentially or actually volatile places on Earth. We don't have to do anymore than read the headlines about that. We would never allow the countries that we buy petroleum products from to build our ships or our aircraft or our ground vehicles. But we give them a say as to whether those ships sail or those airplanes fly or those ground vehicles operate. We give them a say because they provide fuel for it.

Of emerging long term concern is the Asia Pacific region, as military strategy has been gearing up in that direction while slowly winding down its entanglements with petroleum producers in the Middle East.

Earlier this spring, top Navy officials attended the Sustainable Maritime Fuels Forum in Australia, a key ally, and toured local biofuel facilities to underscore American support for the international biofuel market.

The Navy has also been working with the international community to develop standards for aviation biofuel. The U.S. algae biofuel company Origin Oil has partnered with the Department of Energy to develop fuels for this standard, which would enable the company to supply both the U.S. and NATO forces.

Origin Oil has already established international partnerships to build biorefineries around the world, focusing initially on the U.S. and Australia.

Against this backdrop, the Navy is still planning to send its Green Strike Group to RIMPAC. In an eerie bit of Hollywood timing, RIMPAC is also the setting for the new Hollywood blockbuster "Battleship," which was filmed with the cooperation of the Navy during the same exercise two years ago. The movie features ample footage of a real strike group in action - fast forward two years, and that would be the Navy's biofuel forces arrayed against the aliens.

GM To Pull Ads From Facebook

2012-05-16T10:03:57Z

World's Largest Wind Turbine Test Facility Nears Completion

2012-05-15T08:41:00Z

By TINA CASEY

The U.S. is poised to develop the next generation of highly efficient large-scale wind power technology, as a massive wind turbine testing project in South Carolina reached a critical construction milestone this month. The new facility, to be operated by Clemson University as the Restoration Institute Drivetrain Testing Facility, will be the largest of its kind in the world.

To add an extra sustainability kick to its renewable energy mission, the DriveTrain Testing Facility will require relatively little new infrastructure. It will reclaim a vacant 1940's-era Navy warehouse at Clemson University's Restoration Institute campus in North Charleston, where existing road, rail and dockside resources are close at hand.
The project will also feature energy conservation systems that recapture some of the power used during testing rather than venting it as waste heat.

Planning for the new facility began in 2009 when Clemson University and its partners put up $53 million in funding to match a $45 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, the largest grant in the university's history.

The project broke ground in 2010 and reached a significant phase last week, when contractors began pouring the concrete foundation for the turbine test beds.

The facility is expected to be ready to receive its first turbine by December 2012, give or take a few weeks, and then it will undergo a four-month period to evaluate the control systems and other analytic equipment. The fully commissioned facility will be open for use by any qualified public or private partner early in 2013.

This type of "open source" facility enables private sector companies to share R&D infrastructure that would be prohibitively expensive on an individual basis. The public funding comes in because, ideally, the new technologies produce general benefits to the public in the form of more and better energy sources.

Another recent example of an open source facility is Tulane University's new Riversphere project, which won a $3 million DOE grant in 2010 to build a shared platform for developing next-generation hydrokinetic turbines.

Clemson's Drivetrain Facility will be capable of conducting full-scale tests for wind turbine drivetrains up to the 15-megawatt range (a drivetrain transfers the energy from rotating blades to a generator, which produces electricity).

Given the enormous scale of modern wind turbines, it would be virtually impossible to conduct large-scale tests in a closed facility with the blades attached. The Drivetrain Facility is designed to simulate the force of the blades under actual field conditions.
The new facility will come online at a critical period for the U.S. wind industry.

Though the Department of Energy has estimated that the U.S. could derive 20 percent of its energy needs from wind power by 2030, the domestic wind industry has been beset by uncertainty over the stability of federal support, primarily in the form of a key wind energy tax credit that is set to expire at the end of this year.

The domestic offshore wind sector is in a particularly vulnerable spot. Though the U.S. is a global leader in the development of land-based wind capacity, it has yet to deploy a commercial offshore wind turbine.

To help push the offshore wind industry along, in 2010 the Department of the Interior entered into a memorandum of understanding with 10 East Coast states to form the Atlantic Offshore Wind Energy Consortium.

The consortium was designed to smooth the development of offshore wind resources all along the Atlantic Coast, including the construction of a "backbone" transmission line.
Despite Clemson's partnership with the Department of Energy, though, South Carolina was one of three East Coast states that declined to sign the agreement. The others were Georgia and Florida.

Regardless of the reasons for declining official membership, South Carolina did designate Clemson University to represent the state at consortium meetings, and last summer representatives from Clemson met with several agencies from the federal government and consortium member North Carolina to discuss accelerating offshore wind energy development in the southeast.

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley also expressed support for offshore wind power development earlier this spring during a televised interview with comedian Steven Colbert, who has a relative working on the Clemson project.

Image from Shutterstock

'Virus-Tickling' Device Creates Clean Energy

2012-05-14T16:08:00Z

By TINA CASEY

Researchers are finding new sources of clean energy in the strangest places. In the latest development, a team at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has engineered a tiny device coated with viruses that generate electricity when stimulated by the touch of a finger.

The postage stamp-sized device could lead to the development of a new class of "viral electronics" that run on clean energy harvested from the everyday movements of people such as walking across a floor or opening doors.

The device is based on the principles of piezoelectricity, which refers to the ability of certain materials to generate electricity when put under stress.

Piezoelectricity was discovered in the 1880's and is used to strike a spark in ordinary devices like electric cigarette lighters, microphones and quartz watches. It also has applications in high tech fields including scanning microscopy.

Until recently, crystal and ceramic materials have been the foundation of piezoelectric devices, but biological materials including bone, protein and DNA are starting to join the mix.

New research is also leading to a new class of flexible applications. In the U.K., a team at the University of Bolton is developing a lightweight, flexible piezoelectric fiber that could be woven into a fabric. The fabric could generate an electric charge from a wide variety of forces including wind, rain, and human activity.

One factor that is enabling the piezoelectric field to expand is the development of safe substitutes for lead and other toxic materials that are used in conventional piezoelectric devices.

The virus-powered device is based on the M13 bacteriaophage, which attacks bacteria but is harmless to humans.

As a "building block" for fabricating low cost electronic devices, M13 dovetails perfectly with the nanotechnology concept of self-assembly. It replicates itself rapidly, and it naturally aligns into an orderly film, similar to the way that toothpicks pack into a box.
The first step of the research involved searching for signs of a piezoelectric effect, which the team observed by coating helical proteins (proteins that curve in three dimensions) over M13 viruses and exposing them to an electrical field.

To increase the voltage, they added amino acid residues to one end of the proteins, which increased the difference between the positive and negative ends.
Adding even more punch, the team coaxed the viruses into self-assembling into a multilayered film about one centimeter square. With gold-plated electrodes placed on each side to form a micro-sandwich, the piezoelectric generator was complete.

The initial tests yielded about a quarter the voltage of an AAA battery, which was sufficient to make an attached liquid-crystal display flash the number "1.
Scaled up, such a device could be built into a shoe insert, for example, and used to power cell phones and other mobile devices.

With a low cost, non-toxic foundational material at hand, shoe inserts could be just the tip of the piezoelectric iceberg, and opportunities for piezoelectric energy harvesting are already broadening into large-scale applications as the research field matures.

Things began to heat up in 2008, when a Dutch nightclub made waves with a piezoelectric floor that harvested energy from late-night dancers and the East Japan Railway Company announced that it would test a piezoelectric floor at a Tokyo railway station.

A few years ago, the U.S. company New Energy Technologies began testing piezoelectric harvesters installed as speed bumps in the drive-through lanes at Burger King in New Jersey, and just last year it debuted a full scale version of the system at a convention center in Virginia.

In addition to the virus research, a team at Berkeley has also been developing a new lead-free piezoelectric material based on thin films of an inorganic crystalline material called bismuth ferrite, which is commonly used in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. Bismuth ferrite is just one member of a class of non-toxic materials that exhibit magnetic-electric phenomena and have a potential use in large-scale piezoelectric devices.

For those of you dreaming of an entire electric highway, you might not have long to wait. Last year, California Assemblyman Mike Gatto introduced a bill authorizing the state to embark on a research and development project similar to ones already under way in Italy and Israel.

The Battle To Replace Old Incandescent Light Bulbs With LEDs

2012-05-11T22:23:20Z

Updated 8:12 am ET, Saturday, May 12

Battle lines were drawn in Las Vegas, Nevada this week at the 23rd annual Lightfair International trade show, an exposition of the latest in artificial lighting technology.

Spurred in part by the controversial, misunderstood, national phase-out of energy inefficient incandescent bulbs that began in January, companies are racing to develop light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs that meet the new energy standards, and yet will provide the same lighting quality that consumers are used to getting from the old, inefficient incandescents.

The gradual phase-out begins with 100-watt incandescent bulbs, which won't be allowed to be restocked at stores across the country as of this year. And consumers haven't taken much of a shining to the common replacement, compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs, citing poor lighting quality and color.

So a number of companies, including old stalwarts like GE and young start-ups like Switch Lighting, demonstrated 100-watt-equivalent LED bulbs at Lightfair this week that they believe will illuminate the future.

GE and Switch are in particularly close competition given that both are pursuing a similar technology behind their new LED bulbs, each using built-in cooling systems in order to improve efficiency and the longevity of their bulbs.

Individual LED lights are far more susceptible to the heat they generate than incandescents, especially when several are grouped together, as in the case with the new bulbs, and so they require additional cooling mechanisms in order to avoid burning out.

While GE's system relies on miniature air jets from another company called Nuventix, Switch, a five-year-old San Jose, California-based company, relies on its own homebrewed liquid cooling system.

And though GE may have the heft of 110 years of making Edison's and improving incandescent lightbulbs, Switch is confident that its products will be the ones that define the new lighting era.

"Some of the other products have a very unusual look compared to traditional incandescents," said Gary Rosenfield, Switch's executive VP of marketing, in a telephone interview with TPM from the Las Vegas trade show floor. "They are too high-tech in terms of their appearance. Some of them can't be used in enclosed fixtures due to their cooling systems. Ours you can use it in any orientation, which isn't the case with many of our competitors."

Indeed, while GE's bulbs are a stark departure from the common globular incandescents, equipped as it is with claw-like fins around the bulb center, Switch's bulbs are more toned-down, although still nothing like the bulbs of old, coming as they do with a series of vertical spokes arranged around the lightbulb's head, each of which contains its own tiny LED light.

"Our innovation team has tackled a previously insurmountable technical challenge: cooling a 100-watt A-19 shaped replacement LED bulb without making it physically bigger," said Steve Briggs, GE Lighting's general manager of LED systems, in a press statement. "Each subsystem such as optics, electronics and thermals needed to be designed for miniaturization and cooperative performance. We explored the limits of what's possible and pushed far beyond industry expectations and competitors' thinking and product offerings."

But Rosenfield said that it was also a matter of being first to market. While GE isn't planning on having its 100-watt LED out until "the first half of 2013," Switch is ready to begin shipping within just over a month.

"With all due respect, we have a product we will be shipping in the next 30 to 40 days," said Rosenfield. To be fair, Switch said that its first products will include its less bright 40-watt and 60-watt equivalent bulbs, but Rosenfield said that the 100-watt would be available in the "August time frame."

Of course, with lightbulbs, price is also a major, if not predominant factor. Switch said its initial line of bulbs will sell between $40 and $60 per bulb, depending on the model, which is quite high, even for LED bulbs. GE hasn't announced pricing for its 100-watt equivalent, but its 40-watt equivalent bulbs start at $50, though they are available for $36 a pop on Amazon, as CNET points out.

But LEDs last considerably longer than their inefficient predecessors, with both Switch and GE promoting its 100-watt equivalent bulbs at 25,000 hours.

Still, its unlikely that the average consumer is ready to plunk down that much cash for a single bulb, at least for now. That's why Switch, for one, is targeting the commercial market first, having already conducted test-runs of its bulbs in selected hotels beginning in November 2011. Switch declined to reveal the names of the test hotels to TPM.

"There's tremendous excitement in the commercial market," Rosenfield told TPM. "I can tell you that biggest distributors in country for electrical products are interested in going as fast as they and we can to get these bulbs out there. I don't see any issues in getting business, but we have to meet their demand."

Correction: This article originally incorrectly stated that LED bulbs generate more heat than incandescents, which is not the case. In fact, incandescent bulbs generate far more heat per bulb, which results in their inefficiency. The reference has since been corrected in copy and we regret it.

Facebook Not Required To Disclose Reported FTC Probe To Investors

2012-05-11T20:00:13Z

The drama surrounding Facebook's upcoming debut on the stock market has encompassed more than just critiques of the CEO Mark Zuckerberg's fashion sensibilities.

Facebook's $1 billion deal to purchase the popular mobile photo sharing app Instagram, announced in April, two months after Facebook filed documents for an initial public offering of stock, is reportedly the target of an investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, according to a Financial Times article published online Thursday.

The investigation itself won't necessarily have any bearing on the date of Facebook's public offering of stock, which hasn't been officially announced yet, as an FTC spokesperson explained in general to TechCrunch, but it could delay Facebook's stated expectation to finalize its purchase of Instagram and clear it with regulators by "in the second quarter of 2012," or by July 1.

In fact, if it so chooses, the FTC could flag the transaction as anticompetitive and file in U.S. district court to halt the transaction, or turn the case over the Justice Department, which would have much the same effect. In that case, Facebook has promised Instagram $200 million for its trouble.

That, in turn, could add to some investor worries about the overall risk of buying Facebook, which despite reporting revenue of $3.7 billion in 2011 and $1 billion for the first three months of 2012, still hasn't answered tough questions about how it will continue to monetize its user base in the long run.

Another tough question that Facebook isn't necessarily required to answer soon: Whether or not it is under an FTC investigation. Neither the company or the FTC have confirmed the probe to TPM or any other press outlet at the time of this report.

And despite companies having to report a wealth of information about potential risks to investors, the Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees asset trading in the U.S., does not as a rule require Facebook, or any other company for that matter, to disclose ongoing investigations to potential investors, sources close to the agency told TPM.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the SEC itself, who also declined to comment about a potential Facebook investigation, was able to explain to TPM that "the overarching principle when a company makes a disclosure is that it can't be materially misleading."

That principle, according to the SEC, generally means "no omissions or misstatements" about a company's current status with regulators.

"The question is, 'would this information change what the average investor thinks of this security and their decision to buy or sell it?'" an SEC spokesperson told TPM.

Still, Facebook has been up front with investors about its previous brushes with the FTC and the Irish Data Protection Commissioner agency, both of which investigated Facebook over user privacy concerns in 2011. Neither of those agencies concluded that Facebook violated any laws, but Facebook did enter into a settlement with the FTC to undergo privacy audits and agreed to change its privacy and data use policies according to the Irish DPC. In fact, Facebook just announced new global data usage policies on Friday.

An FTC spokesperson was able to tell TPM that the provision that would trigger such an investigation, if one were launched, would be the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvement Act of 1976, which states that a company must file documents explaining why its merger would not reduce competition. If the FTC disagrees, it can either file court action to block the merger or reach a settlement with the companies.

Brookhaven National Lab Solves Hydrogen Fuel Puzzle With Nanotech

2012-05-11T18:03:37Z

TINA CASEY

A team of researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, has opened the door to a future of clean, cheap hydrogen fuel by ditching a popular platinum catalyst in favor of one based on two low cost alternatives, nickel and molybdenum.

Until now, the manufacture of hydrogen gas has faced a huge and somewhat ironic obstacle: Though hydrogen gas is produced from a chemical reaction in plain water, one of the cheapest and most abundant substances imaginable, the most efficient catalyst for generating that reaction is platinum - which currently weighs in at a hefty $50,000 per kilogram price tag, and rising.

In contrast, nickel costs only $20 per kilogram. Molybdenum, a silvery gray metal, costs $32.

If successfully commercialized, the new catalyst could have a powerful impact on the price of hydrogen, leading the way to a new generation of emission-free hydrogen-fueled vehicles as well as hydrogen fuel cells for many other uses.

Drawing more juice out of nickel and molybdenum was a complex project that Brookhaven describes as "Goldilocks chemistry:"

"For a catalyst to facilitate an efficient reaction, it must combine high durability, high catalytic activity, and high surface area. The strength of an element's bond to hydrogen determines its reaction level - too weak, and there's no activity; too strong, and the initial activity poisons the catalyst."

By itself, nickel is not nearly as efficient a catalyst as platinum. To get to that "just right" point, the team tried infusing a nickel-molybdenum combination with nitrogen.The nitrogen expanded the metals into two-dimensional, lattice-like forms, resulting in nanosheets of nickel-molybdenum-nitride.

The 2-D nanosheets provide far more surface area for the reaction, boosting the new catalyst's performance beyond the team's expectations.

Though developing the new catalyst was complicated, according to Brookhaven, the production of the nanosheets is a simple process that could easily be ramped up to a commercial level and used for the bulk manufacture of hydrogen.

Similar research is also being conducted at a more modest end of the spectrum by Daniel Nocera of Harvard University (formerly of MIT). Nocera has also been deploying a nickel-molybdenum compound combined with another relatively cheap material, zinc, to create a low cost catalyst for producing hydrogen gas.

Nocera's signature device, which he calls an "artificial leaf," is designed as a cheap source of clean, renewable energy for households in the developing world.

It consists of the catalyst and a pocket-sized solar cell that can be dropped in a jar of water placed in the sun. The solar cell provides electricity to power the reaction and produce hydrogen, which can be stored for use at night.

Big Bang Machine Scientists Prepare For 'Data Overload'

2012-05-11T15:53:44Z

Scientists using the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator, to try and locate the missing so-called "god particle" Higgs Boson, are preparing to deal with an unprecedented onslaught of particle collision data this year, now that the accelerator has been cranked up another power level.

"Last year, on average, 10 protons colliding simultaneously, this year we might end up with 30," said Andre David Tinoco Mendes, a scientist with the European Organization For Nuclear Research (CERN), which oversees the particle accelerator, in a new video posted online by CERN late Thursday.

"We have protons colliding every 25 nanoseconds. What that means it the collision rate is about 40 megahertz, or 40 million times per second," said Tulika Bose, another CERN scientist and assistant professor at Boston University.

The increased rate and number of proton collisions inside the particle accelerator will increase the researchers chances of discovering the Higgs Boson, a long-sought particle and the last missing piece needed to verify the Standard Model, the particle physics theory that informs much of our present understanding of the laws of the universe.

However, along with the new particle collisions comes more "garbage" events, as CERN notes it its video, that is -- particle collision debris that isn't helpful in the quest for the Higgs Boson and must be discarded. But distinguishing between "interesting" events and garbage events is a difficult challenge given the magnitude of the data, as CERNs scientists readily admit in their new video series. Check out part one below:

CERN notes that every year, the Large Hadron Collider produces 15 petabytes of data based on the collisions, or enough data to fill 1.7 million DVDs.

Carrier IQ Wants Smartphone Users To See What It Tracks

2012-05-11T13:06:00Z

Updated 10:49 am ET, Friday, May 11

Carrier IQ, the beleaguered California software company that was accused of logging smartphone users' keystrokes without their knowledge or permission in late 2011, is planning to rehabilitate its image with new applications that will allow consumers to see exactly what data the company is accessing, and what it is storing and transmitting to users.

Carrier IQ, which vehemently denied all keylogging accusations, first revealed its plans to give customers a detailed look at what information the software was collecting in February, announcing that it would be creating an application programming interface, or API -- a standard for developing applications around software programs.

In the case of Carrier IQ, its software analyzes phone usage data -- such as recording when dropped calls occur -- and transmits this information to its customers, which include some of the nation's largest wireless carrier companies -- AT&T, T-Mobile and formerly Sprint.

Carrier IQ said at the time it announced its API in February that it hoped to have it rolled out by the second quarter of 2012, which would be June. Now representatives from the company have told TPM it is on track to do so.

"We will ship at the end of this quarter, by the end of June," said Carrier IQ's vice president of marketing, Andrew Coward, in a telephone interview with TPM.

Mira Woods, a marketing representative with Carrier IQ, further told TPM that it had engaged with its customers to let them know about the new API and to encourage them to develop their own, phone-specific "dashboards" to allow customers to see what information the software is tracking.

"There have been ongoing conversations already," Woods told TPM by phone. "From our end it [the API] will have the same functionality for all operators."

However, when asked about how they would use Carrier IQ to better keep users informed about what information of theirs was being recorded, America's large mobile wireless companies shrugged.

An AT&T spokesperson provided TPM with the following statement: ""We haven't seen the software so we're unable to comment on it."

Sprint, which in December said it had disabled Carrier IQ due to customer concerns over the software, told TPM: "Carrier IQ Client has been taken off of Sprint devices. We are considering our diagnostic needs, but have not made any decisions yet on how to meet them."

That's somewhat at odds with what Carrier IQ told TPM.

"We haven't lost Sprint as a customer," Coward told TPM. "They have been deactivating their smartphones, but we are continuing discussions with them."

Correction: This article originally incorrectly quoted AT&T's spokesperson. We've since updated the quote in copy and regret the error.

TPM Interview: The Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal

2012-05-11T09:58:00Z

The Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal -- a senior editor who covers technology -- answered TPM's questions about his own relationship with tech and what to pay attention to in the years to come.

What's an average day as Atlantic Tech editor like?

I live out in the Bay Area, so I get up around 6 to get prepared for our morning meeting, which happens to occur at 6:30 a.m. my time. As soon as the meeting starts, I put my phone on mute and make a pot of French press coffee for my wife and me. As soon as the call ends, I start editing, which usually ends around the middle of the day, then I start in on my writing. I usually call it quits by around 4 p.m., during which time I may or may not have gone outside. I would say my overall motto is: production over pants.

The Atlantic Tech channel didn't really exist before you joined as editor in 2010. What was the biggest challenge in getting the channel up and running?

I think the biggest challenge, as it is for everyone, is just figuring out what not to do. There are so many tech blogs and almost all of them look at the same stuff. You go on Techmeme and the big story of the day will have 100 follow-ups. Meanwhile, very significant stories down the page receive zero blog follow-ups, or maybe a couple. There's just too much chasing in our business because so few people are actually bringing a philosophy of technology and society that extends beyond, "Yay!" or "Boo!" So, the big challenge was to figure out, "What's an Atlantic Tech story look like? Why? How do we execute?" I knew I wanted to show people how we got the world we have today by telling them about the history of technology. À la David Edgerton, I also knew that I wanted to focus on the technology people were using, not just what the newest thing was. I wanted to see the tech in everything, not just in digital media. While our mission isn't to be an investigative shop full-time, I knew that I wanted to invest big in stories that were important (like Threat Level or Danger Room at Wired).

How is Atlantic Tech different from the Wired Science blog, which you used to be in charge of?

Well, technically, I was just the lead writer over there. So, my role was different and the blog itself was different. There, we were pretty much in straight science journalism. The Atlantic stuff, both because of the field (technology) and the publication, is much voicier. We have takes and a point of view. We're more in the discourse rather than sitting next to it.

You also recently took over as interim editor of The Atlantic Health channel. What about that position appealed to you?

It offered a bit of a return to my old science writing days, where I got to spend a lot of time digging into academic research and figuring out how and why it's relevant to people outside the field of biomechanics or pharmacology. Also: you think people care about their phones until you start editing stories about their prostates. Whatever else is true of the way humans interact with their technologies, they still really, really, really care about their bodies.

The Atlantic Tech channel features a thoroughly diverse mix of breaking news, in-depth analysis and opinion and old but interesting tech, like patents and forgotten inventions. How do you maintain this diversity and what do you think is the overriding theme that ties everything together?

If you believe your company's motto, you are probably an idiot or at least naive. But you know what, I really feel like we have a mission at The Atlantic that's real. Our owner has two principles that I have taken to heart: force of intellect and spirit of generosity. There are plenty of smart people out there on the Internet, but I feel like we distinguish ourselves when we use that spirit of generosity to temper our instincts to know it all. I'm thinking about the way that Jim Fallows or Ta-Nehisi Coates work with their communities of readers and also how their minds work, the way they let characters stand in 3D and don't flatten them into tools for their own propositions. The most amazing thing is that smart empathy is a rare and powerful thing on the Internet, so the moral posture also generates buzz and traffic. For me, that is the best thing about working at The Atlantic: I get to do what I think is right and for whatever mix of branding and history, people want that for us.

You've written a lot about online advertising lately, including an in-depth analysis of the numerous advertising companies tracking users around the Web every day without their expressed knowledge. What fascinates you about this industry so much and why do you think it is important for people to understand more about online advertising now?

My initial fascination was just the sheer volume and variety of companies doing data tracking. I mean, what the hell were all these places up to? I was also intrigued by how almost valueless user data is, and yet everyone collects it because they can and because they can glean some tiny amount of money from trading it.

Plus, I just don't think people really understand the tradeoffs that they are making in exchange for the free stuff on the Internet. I think it's probably worth it, but there are downsides. You're giving a lot of power away and helping companies understand not just you but people like you. We should know we're doing that.

You have also written about the essence of technology itself, and humanity's relationship to our inventions. How would you describe your own relationship to technology?

I feel like part of being a human is to use, make, and remake technologies. It's like dancing or telling jokes or liking salt. Finding ways to empower our fragile bodies, to give our ideas greater range and permanence: this is what technology is all about. That said, we live in a time when many technologies are developed by very powerful corporate and government entities that may limit people's freedom to live their lives the way they want to. In the thinking of priest and philosopher Ivan Illich, "the means overtake the ends" with certain technologies. We do Facebook to do Facebook, not to connect with friends. Basically, convivial tech should help people lead healthy, good, meaningful lives without coercing them to do so.

What's the most useful technology -- gadget or service online etc. -- in your own daily life?

Well, obviously all the Google tools. But the one I love is Rdio, which lets me play music from all the phases of my life. Plus, I signed my dad up, so I get to see what he's listening to. I think that's a powerful tool for us to connect.

What do you think the most important tech issues are going to be in the next 10 years?

How we end up bridging the knowledge we have in the physical and digital realms, respectively. We call it augmented reality now, but it is going to be simply reality in the future. We already use GPS to locate ourselves on maps or Yelp standing right in front of a restaurant. How does that evolve? The sheer weight of expectation behind things like augmented-reality glasses or contacts makes me think that things might go another way. The future is rarely that easy for so many people to get right.

What's on your desk?

My cat.

Sen. Franken Wants Justice Dept. To Reveal When It Sought Cell Phone GPS Data

2012-05-10T22:30:29Z

Updated 9:55 am ET, Friday, May 11

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) is concerned that law enforcement agencies are asking the nation's wireless carrier companies to turn over GPS location data of users without a search warrant.

So, Franken asked the Justice Department directly on Thursday in an open letter addressed to Attorney General Eric Holder: How many times has the agency sought location data from cell phone companies over the past five years, for how many individuals, and how much money has it paid to get the data?

"I am eager to learn about how frequently the Department requests location information and what legal standard the Department believes it must meet to obtain it," Franken wrote in his letter, giving the DOJ one month to answer them.

The American Civil Liberties Union quickly applauded the move, with ACLU lobbyist Chris Calabrese writing in a blog post: "Letters like these are the first step in oversight. We can't wait to hear the answers."

The ACLU itself has been aggressively pursuing further information on how widespread the practice of cell phone location snooping is, publishing the results of its Freedom of Information Act and public records requests for such records from the Justice Department and state and local law enforcement authorities.

The local results alone revealed that most of the nation's law enforcement agencies don't seek a warrant and yet regularly request cell phone location data, "routinely violating American's privacy rights."

But the Justice Department recently pushed back on the ACLU's work, with Jason Weinstein, deputy assistant attorney general for the DOJ's criminal division, telling Congress in May that requiring probable cause for a warrant in order to obtain all types of location information from cell towers would "cripple" law enforcement.

Cell phone companies, too, seem to agree, at least in California, where CTIA, the trade agency that represents the industry, has come out in opposition to a state bill requiring that police get warrants to obtain cell phone GPS data.

As Franken and the ACLU and others have pointed out, though, the practice would seem to come uncomfortably close to the practice of law enforcement officers attaching GPS tracking devices to a suspect's car without a warrant, which was specifically ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in a historic case, U.S. vs. Jones, in January.

Now it's up to the Justice Department to respond. Stay tuned.

Correction: This story originally incorrectly characterized Weinstein's comment as stating that requiring warrants for GPS information would cripple law enforcement. In fact, Weinstein was talking about requiring how requiring the same uniform standard of probable cause to obtain a warrant for "all types of location information" would be a mistake and would "cripple" many national law enforcement investigations.

How Microsoft Is Going Carbon Neutral

2012-05-10T20:20:02Z

Microsoft is full of surprises. Before the company on Thursday unveiled a new version of its search engine Bing designed to better compete with Google by adding a layer of social networking posts to user searches, it had another shocker to announce on Tuesday: Microsoft as a whole will be going carbon neutral -- or offsetting as many carbon emissions as the entire company produces -- effective July 1, 2012.

The company said it will reach this milestone through a combination of internal carbon offsets for each of Microsoft's divisions in over 100 countries, clean power purchases and a program to make buildings "energy smart," or more energy efficient.

As Microsoft chief operating officer Kevin Turner acknowledged in a blog post: "We recognize that we are not the first company to commit to carbon neutrality, but we are hopeful that our decision will encourage other companies large and small to look at what they can do to address this important issue."

Indeed, Google and Dell have also been among those to commit to carbon neutrality in the past five years. And while Dell has quietly backed off its commitments, Google is still going strong after reaching its goal in 2007.

"We've been carbon neutral since 2007 -- meaning we went carbon neutral for the 2007 calendar year, and have been since then," Parag Chokshi, Google's manager of clean energy public affairs, told TPM via email.

However, Microsoft's approach on its own is worth noting given that Microsoft's data centers alone derived over 30 percent of their energy from coal-burning sources, according to a 2011 report from enviromental advocacy group Greenpeace. Microsoft's own data found that 40 percent of its carbon footprints came from its buildings.

Here's how Microsoft plans to meet its goal, according to Robert Bernard, the company's first chief environmental strategist:

"For three-plus years now, we were thinking about continuously updating how we use IT [information technology] to monitor energy usage at our buildings across the world, and changing buildings to make them more energy efficient, and then we thought, 'what if we apply that to our carbon emissions?'" Bernard told TPM in a telephone interview.

Specifically, Bernard said that Microsoft's movement toward carbon neutrality was outlined in several white papers: One, published in October 2011, outlined the results of Microsoft's "pilot program" for improving the energy efficiency of buildings at Microsoft's sprawling, 118-building headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

Though that pilot program only evaluated 13 buildings, it found that by spending just 10 percent of what Microsoft spends annually for energy on a new "layer" of energy-usage monitoring software, it could recoup the amount spent on that software in energy-savings within 18 months.

Microsoft took a similar approach in deciding to reduce its overall carbon footprint across the company, but expanded it, Bernard told TPM. The new plan is outlined in Microsoft's most recent whitepaper, published Tuesday.

But the challenge was much greater, as it involved "actually gathering the data across multiple disparate systems operating in over 100 countries arrant he world, in some cases where Microsoft was just one small tenant in larger office building," Bernard said. "Figuring out how to gather that data, plus data that looks at air travel, and bringing that all together in real-time or near real-time, that was the toughest part."

To do that, Microsoft partnered with an Australian firm called, fittingly if plainly enough, Carbon Systems, which it picked out of some 50 other similar firms that offer cloud-based IT solutions for managing sustainability data. Of course, Carbon Systems and the rest of the candidates were all Microsoft Windows-based.

"One of the things we wanted to do, one of the things that was important to us, was to work with carbon systems to make their system even more robust," Bernard explained. "Then they could make that system available to everybody."

Further, Bernard said that Microsoft was committed to making sure that it wasn't just paying lip service to the goal of carbon neutrality, as previous carbon neutral companies, namely Dell, have been accused of doing -- due to the fact that they don't take into account their entire supply chain, e.g. the factories that assemble their products and ship them.

Bernard declined to say how far down Microsoft's supply chain the company was committing to making carbon neutral. However, he pointed out that the company's new whitepaper on carbon neutrality acknowledges this issue, stating:

We are working with the top direct suppliers of the hardware products that we sell (such as Xbox) and piloting an emissions program with non-direct suppliers that provide us with the hardware we use for our internal operations to accurately measure and actively reduce the emissions associated with our global supply chain.

Further, Bernard added that Microsoft convened with "a number of the world's leading NGOs [non-governmental organizations]...folks like the World Wildlife Fund, the National Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund," among others, to establish the appropriate benchmarks for measuring and reporting the company's carbon output.

"If they were take a significantly different perspective than ours, we would adapt to that," Bernard said. "As we start to roll this out in fiscal year 2013, we will share broadly what we're finding out and learning on our blog and website."

Greenpeace, for one, was not wholly convinced.

"Today's announcement by Microsoft to become 'carbon neutral' is a good first step that shows that the company is hearing from its customers who want a clean cloud," Greenpeace Senior IT Analyst Gary Cook said in a statement on Tuesday. "The question now is whether Microsoft's ambition will create the transformational real-world impact we expect from the IT sector's biggest leaders. Microsoft should move quickly to back up its goal by committing to renewable energy for its growing data center fleet and using its influence to demand a shift away from dirty energy, as its peers Google and Facebook have done."

Correction: This article contained numerous typographical errors when published, retained from an earlier draft form. We have since corrected them in copy and regret them.

The Future Is Now: Anything Can Be A Touch Screen Thanks To Disney Research

2012-05-10T14:15:03Z

Never mind touchscreen phones, tablets and TVs. Now virtually any material, including liquid water, can instantly become an incredibly sensitive, multi-touch interface thanks to an ingenious new sensory system designed by a scientist from Disney Research in Pittsburgh, PA, and collaborators at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Tokyo, Japan.

The system, called Touché, has already been demonstrated in a number of impressive practical prototypes created by the researchers -- from a "smart doorknob" that can sense precisely how it is being gripped and lock or unlock itself accordingly, to a container full of water that can detect when a person's hand is skimming the surface or completely submerged to even a person's own body, which can be turned into an input for controlling the volume of a smartphone or other digital music player.

A "sensing couch" using Touché automatically detects when a user is sitting and turns on their TV, then adjusts the room's lighting when the user reclines, finally turning the TV and lights off if the person falls asleep in front of their TV.

See all the prototypes in action in the following video:

The technology, which Disney and Carnegie Mellon researchers have outlined in an academic paper, was on May 7 given a "Best Paper," award at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in Austin, Texas.

Ivan Poupyrev, the Disney senior research scientist who first came up with the idea two years ago, explained to TPM via email the technology behind his team's incredible multi-touch input system.

"The dream of any user interface researcher is to make the world alive, where everything is responsive and reactive to the user in a good, 'smart' way," Poupyrev wrote. "It is a very hard problem to solve and a lot of people have been trying to find how can we make the world responsive yet not obstructed by buttons, touch screens, panels and etc."

The way that Poupyrev and his two colleagues, Carnegie Mellon's Chris Harrison and University of Tokyo's Munehiko Sato, solved the problem, was by turning to a type of technology called Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing (SFCS), which depends upon an electrode, or a small electrical conductor, that can be attached to any object. A low power electrical signal is sent through this electrode by a wire attached to a power source.

When the electrically-conductive human body comes into contact any object to which the electrode has been attached, it forms a charge. Depending on where the human body is touching the object and how much of the body is touching the object, the signal alters across various electromagnetic frequencies.

The Touché system sweeps across a wide array of frequencies and hundreds of data points, and its software algorithms are able to distinguish from these just what is being touched, where and how much.

As such, because it is measuring signal frequency, the system requires that a material to be electrically conductive to be able transform it into a touch interface.

"Materials that cannot conduct electricity at all, e.g. wood or stones," wouldn't work on their own with the system, Poupyrev said.

But there's a work around, as Poupyrev explained: "If you paint wood with copper-based conductive paint, then it will work perfectly. So the question is how much modification of materials you can afford."

Even more astoundingly, Touché can already reliably distinguish between "categories" of users, detecting whether a child, an adult or even a pet dog or cat is the one doing the touching, and the varying responses of the device being touched can be customized accordingly.

"Of course sometimes it may make mistakes, but in general it was reliable," Poupyrev said.

The effective range of the sensing area is around 50 centimeters for now, but it Poupyrev said that it can easily be increased by turning up the signal. He also told TPM that it took him and his colleagues about a year to develop the working prototypes shown off in their video, and that they have a patent pending on the work.

"A tiny detail would make a difference between having great working implementation and nothing working at all," Poupyrev said.

As for what other companies or government agencies have contacted Poupyrev about using Disney's fantastical new multi-touch, he declined to comment.

"I am afraid that we cannot disclose this information," Poupyrev told TPM.

Twitter Defense Of Occupy Protester's Tweets Is Landmark Case, Experts Say

2012-05-09T21:10:09Z

Updated 5:40 pm ET, Wednesday, May 9

Usually, it's Twitter's users that make and break news. But on Tuesday, the company itself became the subject of headlines after filing a motion in New York City criminal court arguing that it should not have to turn over a user's tweets to authorities.

Twitter's motion came after the Manhattan District Attorney's office subpoenaed the San Francisco-based company in January, ordering it to turn over three-months worth of tweets and personally identifying information of a user, Malcolm Harris, who had been arrested along with many others during an Occupy Wall Street protest in New York in October.

Harris had attempted to challenge the subpoena on his own but a New York judge ruled against him in late April, ordering Twitter to turn over the information.

Twitter, though, says it won't be doing so, at least for now, because doing so would violate several other existing laws, among them the Fourth Amendment right to unreasonable search and seizure.

Experts in cyber law told TPM that Twitter's stance in Harris' case was undeniably important and could prove to be a landmark one for user privacy and law enforcement's ability to access user information going forward.

"Twitter's argument that tweets are content, that users own their tweets, and that the Supreme Court's Jones decision means that the public nature of tweets doesn't detract from users' privacy interest in them is new and important," said Susan Freiwald, a professor in cyber law at the University of San Francisco, in an email to TPM.

Freiwald was referring to the Supreme Court's ruling in January against law enforcement using GPS to track suspects without a warrant.

Freiwald is a staunch civil libertarian, and "regularly assists the Electronic Frontier Foundation," an advocacy group dedicated to protecting Web user rights, and has served on the board of the ACLU of Northern California. The ACLU's national arm applauded Twitter on Tuesday for taking the stand against the Manhattan DA.

Another legal expert, professor Jonathan Zittrain at Harvard Law and the co-founder of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, told TPM via email that the case was further complicated by the mechanics of Twitter itself.

"The interesting twist here is that the tweets are, or were, public -- they just scrolled off," Zittrain said, referring to the tweets that the Manhattan DA was seeking Twitter turn over. "Twitter presumably reserves the right through its terms of service to decide that the tweet archive will jump to, say, one year instead of several weeks, and if Twitter can do that, goes the argument, why can't the government simply request the materials?"

Zittrain said that the Supreme Court's ruling against warrantless GPS tracking also bolstered Twitter's arguments: "It's just not as easy as that, from my point of view, and Twitter's brief crystallizes the arguments why, particularly in light of the recently-decided Jones case," Zittrain said.

However as Zittrain noted, the the fact that tweets are fast-paced and short-lived may contribute to the very success of the medium itself, as well its adoption by activists around the globe.

"People right now may tweet more freely publicly because they know those tweets are a little evanescent, and that could be a good thing," Zittrain wrote.

Zittrain, it should be noted, is also a co-founder of Chilling Effects, a website that documents free speech and curtailing efforts online. Twitter committed to using Chilling Effects to post requests to takedown or censor content, which it routinely receives from governments around the globe.

Both Zittrain and Freiwald declined to speculate on the judge's likely ruling, and thus the outcome of, Twitter's motion.

However, both agreed that the Twitter case was important in determining the future of "third party doctrine," that is, that doctrine the information users share with a third party company, such as Twitter or a bank, may be given by that third party to law enforcement without a warrant, so long as law enforcement agencies obtain a subpoena. However, Twitter argues out that according to the Stored Communications Act of 1986, handing over user communication that is over 180 days old requires a warrant, which the Manhattan DA has not yet obtained.

Editor's note: Updated to correct Prof. Zittrain's quote from "in like" to "in light." Also updated with further information on "third party doctrine."

Wall St. Analyst Defends Criticism Of Facebook Founder's Hoodie

2012-05-09T18:11:16Z

Updated 6:00 pm ET, Wednesday, May 9

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's efforts this week to promote his company's debut on the stock market to investors haven't gone over so smoothly.

First, Facebook's unique video presentation reportedly struck a sour note in New York, leading the company to drop it when Zuckerberg went to court investors in Boston.

Then, on late Tuesday night, entertainment and tech analyst Michael Pachter, of the firm Wedbush Securities, resoundingly critiqued Zuckerberg's choice of clothing to meet and greet investors ahead of Facebook's record-breaking $77 billion to $96 billion initial public offering on the NASDAQ, which is expected imminently, though no date has been officially set.

Zuckerberg wore what's become his signature attire, a hooded sweatshirt, or hoodie, during his presentation to investors.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Pachter said that: "Mark in his signature hoodie -- I mean he's actually showing investors he doesn't care that much, he's gonna be him and he's gonna do what he's always done, and I think that's a mark of immaturity. I mean I think he has to realize he's bringing investors in as a new constituency right now and I think he's got to show them the respect that they deserve because he's asking them for their money."

Pachter's remarks provoked a tremendous backlash from many bloggers, who in turn blasted Pachter for his old fashioned attitude and judgements.

But Pachter defended and elaborated on his comments to TPM via email, explaining that he didn't have an issue with hoodies overall, just in this context.

"I wear a hoodie all the time and am a flip-flops/t-shirt/shorts kind of guy," Pachter wrote to TPM, linking to a photo of himself wearing a hoodie on the videogaming blog Kotaku.

As for his indictment of Zuckerberg's garb during the investor roadshow, Pachter said his comments had nothing to do with the hoodie itself, but entirely with the situation and protocol.

"I personally could care less what Mr. Zuckerberg wears and when he wears it," Pachter told TPM.

"However, when asked what I thought about whether he would consider the needs of investors in making decisions about how to run Facebook, I pointed out that his wearing of a hoodie reflected his indifference. I believe that if he cared to show them that he respects their views and will serve their interests, he would show respect by dressing appropriately for the event. I never said he should wear a suit, but said that he should lose the hoodie and show some respect. That means jacket/t-shirt/jeans."

Pachter equated the investor roadshow process to other formal situations such as "weddings, funerals, church services." He told TPM that routine investor conferences carried no such social expectation to dress formally.

Pachter further said that he understood where his critics were coming from, but that he disagreed with them.

"There are many commenters who say 'he's built a fantastic company, he can wear whatever he wants,'" Pachter explained. "I don't disagree that this is true in almost any circumstance. However, when he fails to conform to established standards of behavior, he will be judged by some as being immature. I'm one of those who believes that it is appropriate to wear a jacket and not a hoodie when asking people for money. The commenters are free to disagree...I never made a blanket statement that EVERYBODY thinks he's immature; rather, I said that I think he displayed immaturity. It's my view, and while it may be a minority view, it is a reasonable one."

For what it's worth, Pachter and Wedbush issued the first "buy" recommendation for Facebook at a price of $44 per share, nine dollars over Facebook's own upper-limit pricing recommendation.

Late update: Right on cue, someone created a @ZucksHoodie account on Twitter shortly after this story was published. @ZucksHoodie has already lashed out at Michael Pachter on Twitter, to which Pachter replied: "Was just called out by @zuckshoodie. Meant no disrespect to you, sir. I have a closet full of them."