Greenwheel

Scientists at MIT have created a bike wheel that houses its own electric motor to provide extra power to standard pedal bikes. The idea is simple, remove your existing tire and replace it with the Greenwheel. Inside the 2 inch thick aluminum frame sits the 3 major components, an electric generator, batteries, and an electric motor. Unlike many other systems for bikes which create electric power have many cords running throughout out the bike to the throttle, but the Greenwheel uses wireless technology. Instillation does require some amount of knowledge about bikes but a quick stop at a bike shop will easily do the trick. The Greenwheel can be installed on any type of bike or frame. The greenwheel can be equipped on the front, rear, or both parts of the bike. It is estimated that a rider can travel up to 25 miles on the batterie and that distance is doubled with the pedals being utilized. Also the batteries can be recharged through plugging it into a wall or pedaling also charges the batteries. The Greenwheel is also durable, researchers  believe the Greenwheel has a range of about 40,000 miles, or about 8 years of use with 20 miles driven per business day. The team hopes to turn out over a dozen Greenwheel configurations to hard-core bikers and novice riders by this spring. Once the team finds the optimal power, speed, and cost they hope to begin large scale production. In preparation for the 2010 world cup Copenhagen and South Africa have shown interest in utilizing the Greenwheel for public transportation. Many people are finding the advantage of the Greenwheel in the form of getting people out of cars and onto bikes and public transportation to help cut the use of fossil fuels and carbon emissions. Also the Greenwheel is  made from environmentally friendly materials. An exact cost has not been found for the product but one of the Greenwheel designers Ryan Chin believes a privately purchased Greenwheel will be around several hundred dollars. Rod Sadowski of the Active Transportation Alliance thinks the Greenwheel could encourage people to ditch their car and turn to biking but he also says "The biggest barrier to people getting out of cars and riding is that they don't feel safe, as a society we need to place a stronger focus on creating laws to stop incidents from occurring and on upgrading infrastructure to make every road bike-friendly." I feel the Greenwheel is a great invention that will help promote biking and also help people during these tough economic times. Also the product is great for the environment which is on everyone's mind during these times. I agree with Sadowski many people are afraid of biking on open roads so they just keep using their cars. The Greenwheel is only appealing to certain people. Those who live in close proximity to their jobs and places that they frequent often are attracted to this product. People who live at a longer range of such places are not very tempted to engage in the use of a Greenwheel instead of their cars. 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29259226/

Mechanical Armies

Ever since 1921 when Czeck writer Karl Capek invented the word robot in his play "Rossom's Universal Robots" about highly intelligent mechanical slaves who mount a revolt and kill all humans on earth but one, people have been infatuated about the idea of such a happening. Author P.W. Singer who at 33 years old is a serious fellow at Brookings Institution and can't resist the topic. Though he does not write fiction, he takes the idea as a serious possibility in his book "Wired for War" an account of  the recent military robots. He has written two books about some of the 21st century's most intriguing questions. One is titled "Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry" about the reemergence of the ancient profession of mercenaries. The other book is "Children at War" about the illegal enslavement and recruitment of teenagers and often younger children into armies. Singer says there is around 40 countries making military robots at this time. As he quoted from a unit commander "When a robot dies, you don't have to write a letter to it's mother." Reduced human casualties is the main reason for such robots. Robots are being made with more endurance, firepower, and precision than human soldiers. The idea is to make then more autonomous, able to take decisions according to built in commands, with no fear, pity, revenge, or other human emotion. A big question is whether they should have a system of ethics able to tell soldiers from civilians. Scientists foresee robots with strong A.I. or high level intelligence which worries some. Singer quoted Vernon Vinge a mathematician and computer scientists who predicted over 15 years ago "Within the next 30 years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence, Shortly after, the human era will be ended." Singer hints in his book that he is worried also. "We are creating something exciting and new, a technology that might just transform humans' role in their world, perhaps even create a new species" he concludes " But this revolution is mainly driven by our inability to move beyond the conflicts that have shaped human history from the very start. Sadly, our machines may not be the only thing wired for war." I feel that at this time the military should keep making robots to help save lives and as they say "unman the front line". The program should definetly be monitored closely to ensure that no such robot occurrences can ever become reality. Although I am not particularly worried about the prospect of robots becoming violent because humans create the robots and we create the software that the robots run off of and live by. Also about what singer said at the end of the article I totally agree that robots would not even be needed if the human race was able to put war behind them but as he implies the human race is just wired for war. The topic is very interesting and fun but I hope we only see these circumstances in the movies and maybe we can see robots ruled obsolete because of the absence of war but that is very wishful. 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29142213/

Human cloning has been researched for some time now but recently developments have brought scientists one step closer. They have put adult human DNA into animal eggs in which sends the DNA back to a embryonic state. This would create a days old ball of cells which scientists can extract stem cells to help treat diabetes, spinal cord injury, Parkinson's disease and other such ailments. If the DNA came from the patient the stem cells would be a genetically perfect match, eliminating the risk of the patients immune system rejecting the stem cells. The reason scientists use animal eggs and not human eggs is because human eggs are very difficult to acquire, there are not many willing participants. When the scientists use human eggs they found that they could produce an embryonic state that would not just become a ball of cells but rather continue forming into that of an embryo that could  produce a baby. This means that if the study hold up it will be very likely that there will be no technical obstacles to reproductive cloning. The creation of human clones. I don't know exactly what the advantage of human clones would be. I think the stem cell research is very important because it can help with diseases and humans with genetic problems. I don't think that we need to clone people, we already have couples who take care of that for us. There may be advantages to cloning such as producing desirable attributes. I personally do not think we need to clone people. I do like the fact that we have the technology and science to do so if at some point we need to clone people. Once cloning is possible and performed I believe it should not be pursued further. 

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/labnotes/archive/2009/02/03/human-clones-one-step-closer.aspx

The Ionian sea off the coast of Albania has been cutoff from the world for some time due to the area being under communist control. Recently researchers from the U.S. and Albania have been combing the waters searching for lost shipwrecks. They have already uncovered various wrecks that consist of Greek ship dating from the 6th to the 3rd century. They have discovered numerous pottery crafts that date back to the 6th century. they were found in a wrecked merchant ship 1.8 miles off the coast. They craft were possibly made in the Greek city of Corinth. If the the dating is correct the pottery would be only the 5th of its kind ever discovered in the world. They have also found a 4th century B.C. amphora and roof tiles, a north african jar from the 1st to 3rd century A.D. The team also found a sunken ship carrying a complete load of tiles which has never been discovered. In an attempt protect the sites from looting the team is keeping the locations a secret. Mission leader George Robb estimates that if everything found was excavated a new museum would be need to house it all. The team has search about 84 square miles of a 220 mile coastline. Each day of work costs an estimated $25,000. After the 5 year search the team will discuss the prospect of excavating the material properly with robotic submarines and divers. I think that anytime new discoveries are made they are significant because it helps us learn about the human culture and they way people lived long ago. Also the amount of money that is available for items such as these is surprising and often interesting. The area was cutoff from research for so long because of communist control and to finally search the area and find so much lost artifacts is amazing. 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28963784/