Pepperidge Farm Opens Largest Fuel Cell Plant In United States

Written by Ariel Schwartz

I have Pepperidge Farm to thank for my Goldfish addiction, and now I’d like to thank the company once again for making strides towards sustainability. Earlier today, Pepperidge Farm dedicated the largest fuel cell plant in the United States at its Bloomfield, CT bakery. The 1.2 MW plant will supply 57 percent of the 260,000 square foot facility’s power.

The new plant is Pepperidge Farm’s second foray into fuel cells— the company opened a 250 kW plant in 2006. Together, the two fuel cell plants will provide 70 percent of the bakery’s power. Excess heat from the new fuel cell will be used to support bakery processes, thereby reducing the fuel needs of plant boilers.

Pepperidge Farm’s new DFC fuel cell was built by Fuel Cell Energy, Inc. The cell operates at 47 percent electrical efficiency. When excess heat from the cell is used for bakery processes, it operates at up to 80 percent efficiency. In addition to lowering power costs for the company, the fuel cell will also drastically reduce CO2 emissions from the facility.

Coolest Printer in the World: Alaris 30 Desktop 3D Printer

Posted October 15th 2008 by Andrew

Objet Geometries have kindly offered us (in advance of even their own official press release going live) a tantalising insight concerning their new Alaris 30 Desktop 3D Printer which, despite its decidedly compact design, offers high resolution 600 x 600 dpi resolution 3D printing using PolyJet Photopolymer Jetting Technology to render not only full, and exceptionally detailed 3D objects but which, as is evidenced by the impressive car model sent to us (which is presently sitting on my desk), can even produce models complete with intricate, interacting moving parts.

Admittedly, whilst it would be all too easy to just rave about the quality of the 3D sample we’ve received showing just what Objet Geometries’ Alaris 30 can produce we’ll put that on hold, just for a paragraph or two, as we cover the technology involved.

Measuring in at an impressively compact 32.28” x 24.4” x 23.22” and weighing in at just 83kg, Objet Geometries Alaris 30 Desktop 3D Printer is capable of producing intricate (and, judging by our sample – see below for imagery - extremely detailed and well finished) models up to 11.57” x 7.72” x 5.9” in size courtesy of just two print heads using VeroWhite FullCure830 modelling material with an accuracy up to just 0.1 – 0.2mm resulting in an what Adina Shorr, CEO of Objet Geometries understandably describes as an ‘unprecedented degree of detail while shortening design cycles, reducing cost of errors, promoting team creativity and further ensuring confidentiality – all from the desktop’.

Objet Geometries Alaris 30 Desktop 3D Printer Key Features:

• Build tray size of 300 x 200 x 150mm (11.81 x 7.87 x 5.9in) enables big parts or many small parts to be printed simultaneously.
• Four-cartridge loading delivers up to 36 hours unattended printing whilst high-speed build at full width enables simultaneous building of multiple items in the same print run.
• Highly accurate model size and shape (typically 0.1– 0.2 mm) with precise jetting and advanced material properties allowing the production of parts with fine details and walls down to 0.6mm.
• Turn any 3D CAD file into a part with just a few mouse clicks – Intuitive Objet Studio™ software ensures easy operation.
• Fully cured models (immediately cured and hardened by UV light) can be handled immediately without additional post-curing and are therefore also ideal for vacuum forming.
• Network-enabled to support multiple designers.

At the time of writing we are not privy to the Alaris 30’s pricing or date of availability, however, interested parties can find out more information directly from Objet Geometries via the link provided below.

We would like to thank Objet Geometries not only for sending us a particularly impressive press pack but also for arranging it that TFTS has the jump – by two hours, none the less – on the release of information concerning their Alaris 30 in relation not only to any other website, but also to even their own official release being made available (thanks Shelly).

Alaris 30 Desktop 3D Printer

Airport scanners will show genitals

By Dan Oakes

Domestic travellers leaving Melbourne Airport over the next six weeks will be asked to test new security scanners that can see through clothing.

- Body scanner trial - Voluntary testing - 'Possible to see genitals'

Transport security authorities are trialling the new "X-ray backscatter" body scanner , which has been described by critics as a "virtual strip search".

The scanner uses a low energy X-ray to reveal any objects, metal or otherwise, under a person's clothing, including body features. The testing will be entirely voluntary during the trial , which is being undertaken to test how the new scanners would affect the flow of passengers through the security point.

"It does see through clothing, but it's not a photographic image, it's a low-energy X-ray that reflects off the skin," said Cheryl Johnson, general manager of the Office of Transport Security.

"It will show the private parts of people, but what we've decided is that we're not going to blur those out, because it severely limits the detection capabilities. It is possible to see genitals and breasts while they're going through the machine, though."

However, Ms Johnson said there were a number of measures in place to tackle concerns about privacy.

"The faces are automatically blurred and ... it's only a chalk-style outline, it's not as invasive as some of the other equipment that we've got," she said.

"The security officer that's looking at it is located away from the screening lane, so there's no comparison of the person walking through and the image. The images are not saved, you literally walk through, the screener hits a button to say clear and the image goes."

The new scanners will be tested at Melbourne Airport alongside "next generation" baggage X-ray machines that can detect explosives in luggage.

Hand-held scanners that can detect explosives in liquids are also being tested.

Ms Johnson said these were a direct response to an alleged terrorist plot in 2006 to detonate liquid explosives on-board airliners.

Ms Johnson said all the scanners had tested well in laboratory conditions, but information was needed on how they would impact on passenger amenity.

The trial runs until the end of the November, and the results will be analysed before the technology is rolled out for real, possibly at domestic and international terminals.

© 2007 The Sydney Morning Herald

more info here:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/backscatter.htm
pics here:
http://images.google.co.nz/images?q=Backscatter+X-Ray+Image

Aquatic alien 'thugs' set to meet

By Rebecca Morelle Science reporter, BBC News

Advertisement

Claw to claw - how do the Chinese mitten crab and non-native crayfish size up?

Two of the UK's worst aquatic invasive species are set to meet.

Scientists believe that the ranges of the plague-carrying non-native crayfish and the fierce Chinese mitten crab are beginning to overlap.

Since their introduction, both of these animals have had a dramatic impact on local ecology and are especially harmful to native species in the UK.

Scientists are unsure what will happen when the two alien invaders eventually cross paths.

Various sites around the UK have been highlighted as potential meeting places; they include the River Lee, in the South, and the River Ouse and the Aire in Yorkshire.

See how the crab and crayfish compare

The non-native crayfish was first introduced to the UK in the late 1970s for aquaculture, but it soon began to spread.

Where the non-natives move in, the white claws are lost Stephanie Peay

Several different species now exist in the UK's waterways, but the signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus), which comes from North America, has so far caused the most damage - thanks, in part, to a disease it carries.

Ecologist Stephanie Peay told the BBC: "The plague does not seem to harm the non-natives, but if our native white-clawed crayfish [Austropotamobius pallipes] encounter it, they die within weeks."

Even if the non-native crayfish do not carry the plague, they still cause problems for the UK's white-clawed species.

Ms Peay describes the crustaceans as "aquatic thugs".

See distribution of signal crayfish Enlarge Map

She explained: "Where the non-natives move in, the white claws are lost. Survey work has shown that it only takes between four and seven years from first arrival to achieve a complete local extinction.

"The only future for the white claws is in isolated water bodies that are completely free from non-native crayfish."

See distribution of Chinese mitten crabs Enlarge Map

And it is not only the white-clawed crayfish that are at risk.

The alien species is also having a big impact on other elements of the aquatic ecosystem and its burrows are also causing huge damage to water banks.

Voracious predator

Until now, non-native crayfish have been seen as one of the worst invaders in the waterways - but could another alien crustacean knock them off top spot?

The Chinese mitten crab - so called because of its furry, mitten-like claws - was first recorded in the UK in 1935.

They eat anything that they can get their claws into Paul Clark, NHM

However, it really began to take hold in the 1980s after large numbers were thought to have been unleashed into the Thames and other rivers around the UK from ships' ballast water.

Paul Clark from the Natural History Museum said: "Since the late 80s, their range has been expanding massively.

"It is difficult to estimate the exact population, but I suspect the numbers are in the millions."

The crabs are voracious predators.

Mr Clark said: "They eat anything that they can get their claws into: weeds, fish eggs, snails, molluscs - anything.

"They are just an opportunistic feeder.

Weird water invaders

"It is hugely disruptive to local ecosystems - nobody has been able to do an assessment on how much damage they actually cause, but it could be quite significant."

Chinese mitten crabs inhabit both fresh and saltwater.

The young are born in coastal regions or estuaries, they then migrate up the river to spend their adult lives in freshwater, before returning back to saltwater years later to breed.

Once in freshwater, they can move huge distances.

Mr Clarke said that in China, some studies have shown they can migrate up to 1,500km (930 miles).

Alien versus predator

In the UK, year upon year, the mittens have been increasing their range.

Philine zu Ermgassen, an aquatic ecologist at the University of Cambridge, said: "Mitten crabs are spreading so quickly at the moment.

You could predict a clash between the two Philine zu Ermgassen

"They are now moving further up rivers into areas where there are crayfish - it seems they are starting to encroach upon crayfish terrain."

Scientists do not know what will happen when the two meet.

Ms zu Ermgassen said: "You could predict a clash between the two.

"If this is the case, the mitten crabs do seem to be more dominant as a species - the crabs are very aggressive and very strong. They will also be directly competing for food."

More worrying, however, could be the effect on the local ecosystem of the presence of two aggressive alien crustaceans.

She added: "You could end up with an additive effect. They are both broadly omnivorous and both burrow under banks."

Stephanie Peay says that this could be bad news.

She told the BBC: "What tends to happen when successful invasive non-native species move in is that you tend to get a reduction in the diversity of native species and a reduction in abundance.

"That will be bad for the native environment overall."

Scientific name: Pacifastacus leniusculus	Scientific name: Eriocheir sinensis
Originally comes from North America	Comes from Asia
Habitat: Found in lakes and watercourses	Found in coastal regions, estuaries, lakes, watercourses
Eats anything available, including other crayfish	Voracious predator, eats anything it can lay its claws on
Life expectancy - up to seven years in the wild	Can live up to nine years in the wild
Sources: GB Non Native Species Secretariat; Environment Agency; Global invasive species database; D Holditch; S Peay; Paul Clark; Marlin; National Biodiversity Network

California is Burning - AGAIN!

Email Picture

Ken Hively, Los Angeles Times

An air strike team lays down fire retardant on the La Jolla Canyon area.

Several large fires are buring in southern California. Many homes have been lost and the fires are very difficult to fight due to Santa Anna winds up to 80 MPH. Very dangerous situation. Here are videos and great photos of the blazes.

read more | digg story

OLO to turn your iPhone into a laptop

The iPhone, when you think about it, is really more of a handheld computer than a phone. Sure, it can make phone calls, but any phone can do that. What makes the iPhone unique is its web-surfing abilities and legions of add-on programs. It's just in a phone's form factor.

A company called OLO Computer is working on a small laptop that'll cradle your iPhone and allow you to use it with a large screen and full keyboard. You'll simply pop the iPhone into a space where the trackpad usually sits, turning the iPhone into a trackpad. You'll then be able to type out e-mails or text messages using the keyboard, sending them through your phone. It's a clever idea, one that may or may not catch hold depending on how much it costs. We'll see how this one turns out.

OLO Computer, via iTWire

Upside Down Dogs

Sometimes all the world needs is an upside down dog.
See website here:

Blind Belgian Sets Speed Record in Lamborghini

L'ISLE SUR LA SORGUE, France — GTDrive is a French race-training and rental company that lets amateurs get behind the wheel of such fantasy cars as the Lamborghini Gallardo, the Ferrari F430, the Audi R8 and the Porsche Carrera. "Go from dream to reality" is the company slogan. That's just what Belgian Luc Costermans has done in a Gallardo, setting the world record for blind driving when he reached 192 mph on an airstrip.

With co-driver Guillaume Roman by his side, Costermans made the turn around the closed Istres air strip with media and gendarmes observing. The speed run can be viewed on the Web.

Costermans, interviewed by French television, explained that his co-driver gave him explicit directions and information about surface conditions during the drive. He praised Roman's "total confidence in what I am able to do." He also said his feat — coupled with his recent exploit of making a tour of France piloting a light airplane — carries a message of encouragement to other non-sighted people to get out of the house and try new things. The record attempt lined up with the annual World Sight Day, an initiative of the World Health Organization.

In the TV interview, Costermans also exulted in grabbing the blind-driving record away from the British. The previous record holder was Mike Newman of the U.K., who reached 166 mph in a BMW M5 three years ago — although, it should be noted, Newman was alone in that car.

Inside Line says: Bravo to the intrepid Messrs. Costermans and Romans for going for the gusto.

Sounds of Science- 8 Future Musical Instruments

In the future, cars will fly, cloned dinosaurs will live happily confined to zoos, and live concerts will feature musical instruments that use touchscreens, lasers and solar power.

Bad news: We're not quite there yet. Your Chevy is more likely to undergo a biodiesel conversion than a hover mod. And the tech needed to clone and cage dinosaurs still only exists in Michael Crichton's crackpot cranium. Good news: Musical instruments that use touch-sensitive controls, contain lasers and use the power of the friggin' sun are already here. Here's a look at a few of these high-tech instruments that are creating music for our geeky ears.

Above: The Tenori-on looks like a '60s-era Lite-Brite — only it's $600 and one of the most unusual musical instruments in existence. The board is composed of a 256-button LED landscape with a unique instrument programmed into each bulb. To play notes, you plot points on the dot-matrix as if you're drawing a picture. Bonus: The Tenori-on is so dead-simple, even those with no musical talent can master making music in mere minutes.

More here

Quantum Cryptography- as awesome as it is pointless

Quantum cryptography is back in the news, and the basic idea is still unbelievably cool, in theory, and nearly useless in real life.

The idea behind quantum crypto is that two people communicating using a quantum channel can be absolutely sure no one is eavesdropping. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle requires anyone measuring a quantum system to disturb it, and that disturbance alerts legitimate users as to the eavesdropper's presence. No disturbance, no eavesdropper — period.

This month we've seen reports on a new working quantum-key distribution network in Vienna, and a new quantum-key distribution technique out of Britain. Great stuff, but headlines like the BBC's "'Unbreakable' encryption unveiled" are a bit much.

The basic science behind quantum crypto was developed, and prototypes built, in the early 1980s by Charles Bennett and Giles Brassard, and there have been steady advances in engineering since then. I describe basically how it all works in Applied Cryptography, 2nd Edition (pages 554-557). At least one company already sells quantum-key distribution products.

Note that this is totally separate from quantum computing, which also has implications for cryptography. Several groups are working on designing and building a quantum computer, which is fundamentally different from a classical computer. If one were built — and we're talking science fiction here — then it could factor numbers and solve discrete-logarithm problems very quickly. In other words, it could break all of our commonly used public-key algorithms. For symmetric cryptography it's not that dire: A quantum computer would effectively halve the key length, so that a 256-bit key would be only as secure as a 128-bit key today. Pretty serious stuff, but years away from being practical. I think the best quantum computer today can factor the number 15.

While I like the science of quantum cryptography — my undergraduate degree was in physics — I don't see any commercial value in it. I don't believe it solves any security problem that needs solving. I don't believe that it's worth paying for, and I can't imagine anyone but a few technophiles buying and deploying it. Systems that use it don't magically become unbreakable, because the quantum part doesn't address the weak points of the system.

Security is a chain; it's as strong as the weakest link. Mathematical cryptography, as bad as it sometimes is, is the strongest link in most security chains. Our symmetric and public-key algorithms are pretty good, even though they're not based on much rigorous mathematical theory. The real problems are elsewhere: computer security, network security, user interface and so on.

Cryptography is the one area of security that we can get right. We already have good encryption algorithms, good authentication algorithms and good key-agreement protocols. Maybe quantum cryptography can make that link stronger, but why would anyone bother? There are far more serious security problems to worry about, and it makes much more sense to spend effort securing those.

As I've often said, it's like defending yourself against an approaching attacker by putting a huge stake in the ground. It's useless to argue about whether the stake should be 50 feet tall or 100 feet tall, because either way, the attacker is going to go around it. Even quantum cryptography doesn't "solve" all of cryptography: The keys are exchanged with photons, but a conventional mathematical algorithm takes over for the actual encryption.

I'm always in favor of security research, and I have enjoyed following the developments in quantum cryptography. But as a product, it has no future. It's not that quantum cryptography might be insecure; it's that cryptography is already sufficiently secure.

Investment Outlook Sours- But...

Some financial experts believe that the current economic crisis could create as many opportunities for investment as it destroys.

Credit: Technology Review

No one knows what's coming next in the great financial crisis of 2008. Deep and lasting recession? Or temporary economic chaos followed by miraculous recovery? The financial upheaval has already soured the atmosphere for venture capital and innovation, as total investment this year looks set to fall for the first time since 2003. But some economists and financial experts believe that there is no need for gloom in the longer term. They even suggest that if the fallout leads to better-regulated capital markets, it could establish a healthier environment for innovation in the future.

Even so, in the near term, things could get worse for venture firms. "The current crisis doesn't directly involve venture-capital funds, but it affects them indirectly," says economist Andrew Lo, a professor at MIT's Laboratory for Financial Engineering. "As credit is withdrawn from the global economy, we're going to see less capital available for all purposes, including venture capital."

Indeed, the latest quarterly survey of Silicon Valley venture capitalists, published by Mark Cannice, a professor at the University of San Francisco (USF) and founder of the USF Entrepreneurship Program, highlights the bleak mood among VCs. Asked to rate their confidence regarding the next 18 months on a scale of one to five (five being the most confident), the average score was 2.89, the lowest since Cannice began his surveys in 2004.

This dour outlook will put strains on fund activities, experts say, probably wiping out some firms, while forcing others to be more cautious and focused on investments likely to bring short-term paybacks. So the most immediate consequences of the crisis, experts think, will be on venture-capital firms' abilities to raise money, and on their decisions on how to invest it. New venture groups thinking about raising money for entirely new funds may indeed find it very difficult until the financial environment settles down, says Joe Hadzima, a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Furthermore, the general economic uncertainty and the shortage of free capital may discourage some investors from putting money into existing VC funds, as they will likely tie up investments for several years.

But this will impact different funds in different ways, as each fund tries to meet the capital calls of their portfolio companies. The "big name" funds, Hadzima points out, tend to have large and stable limited partners such as educational endowments, foundations, or pension funds, which have already allocated money to meet capital calls. Smaller firms may not be so well situated. "Some smaller venture firms may have problems if some of their limited partners are individuals who have seen the value of their investments go down and don't have much liquidity," he says.

But while most VC firms will take a more conservative approach to investing, that does not mean funding will dry up completely. "Companies with good plans will still be able to raise money," says Howard Anderson, also of the Sloan School and himself an experienced venture capitalist. "But funds will take longer to raise money. And you'll see fewer 'big bang' introductions of new companies that cost a fortune."

Others say that venture-capital funds will feel pressure to ask entrepreneurs to cut costs and work with less capital, and that investors will have less patience with underperforming companies. This pressure was evident in a recent presentation by Sequoia Capital, a prominent venture-capital company with a successful investment record. Last week, in an "emergency meeting" with the CEOs of its portfolio companies (details of which were leaked online), Sequoia representatives warned companies to cut costs, reduce staff, and focus on profitability in preparation for a dramatic downturn.

Certainly, Anderson says, there's likely to be a noticeable shift from investment in long-term and more speculative projects to shorter-term research and technology that promises a rapid financial payoff.

Nevertheless, most experts think that both investment and innovation will persist as they have through previous economic downturns. Some observers even suggest that the current economic crisis could create as many opportunities as it destroys. For one thing, Lo points out, a tremendous number of opportunities have been created in the banking and financial-services sectors. "I would expect an unusually large number of startups to be focused on new technologies for addressing the issues that led to our current crisis," he says. In particular, Lo mentions the development of new electronic-trading and risk-management tools.

The austerity and pain of an economic recession could also have positive consequences in the long term, Lo believes. He suggests that the financial crisis will lead to not only a clearing out of the financial-services sector, but also to much stronger regulation, which will have beneficial results. "No doubt the recession, which I suspect will last at least two years, will be painful," Lo says, "but during that time, markets and regulators will develop a series of innovations that will lay the groundwork for the future growth of the global economy, which will be spectacular."

Antoinette Schoar, a professor of entrepreneurial finance at MIT, agrees that looming changes on Wall Street will create new opportunities. "I think the best VC funds won't have trouble raising funds," she says. "Greater regulation of the banks, and the disappearance of investment banks, will [also] provide a lot of interesting investment opportunities for private investors."

Telescopes see farther using Adaptive Optics

Mirror, mirror: Inside the Keck II telescope, a 10-meter-wide mirror (bottom) collects starlight and reflects it to a smaller secondary mirror (top), which in turn directs it to other instruments, including the adaptive-optics system. Credit: Keck Observatory

Multimedia See an animation of the Thirty Meter Observatory and telescope design.

Astronomers have spotted the most distant, oldest galaxy they've ever seen, using optical tricks both celestial and man-made. While the observation of the galaxy as it existed just two billion years after the Big Bang is scientifically significant in its own right, it also serves as an early peek at what's to come as astronomers adopt a sophisticated technique called adaptive optics to peer much deeper into the night sky.

The team of astronomers, from Caltech and Durham University, in England, announced their findings in the journal Nature last week. Using the Keck telescope in Hawaii, they examined a galaxy 11 billion light-years from Earth. Previously, astronomers had been able to see no farther than seven or eight billion light-years. Because looking across astronomical distances is the equivalent of looking back in time, the observation brings astronomers much closer to the birth of the universe, approximately 13 billion years ago.

To spot a galaxy at such a great distance, the astronomers used two optical tricks. One is a naturally occurring phenomenon called a cosmic lens, which exploits gravity's ability to bend light. A galaxy that's precisely aligned between the astronomers and the object they want to look at will bend the light from the object around itself, refocusing it toward the astronomers. That gives them an image about eight times sharper than if they'd tried to look at the distant object alone.

But when the object is a galaxy that's only a few thousand light-years across (as opposed to the 100,000-light-year diameter of the Milky Way) and 11 billion light-years away, eight times the sharpness still yields little more than a point of light. Astronomers use adaptive optics to make the image clear enough to get some useful information.

Light can be thought of as a wave, with a series of wave fronts moving through space, much like the fronts of ocean waves rolling ashore. Ordinarily, the front of a light wave is flat. But as it passes through Earth's turbulent atmosphere, it becomes distorted--more like unevenly corrugated cardboard. This turbulence is what makes stars twinkle, and it reduces a telescope's resolution. So the Keck uses an adaptive-optics system that measures that turbulence and corrects for it.

To make the measurement, a ground-based laser fires a beam of light into the air, where it strikes a thin layer of sodium deposited by meteors burning up in the atmosphere, about 90 kilometers up. The sodium reflects the laser light toward the telescope's main mirror, which directs it to a series of wave-front sensors that measure how much the atmosphere has distorted the light wave. Based on these measurements, a computer causes a series of actuator arms to push and pull on a set of small, deformable mirrors. The actuators bend the mirrors roughly a micrometer (about one-hundredth the thickness of a human hair) many times each second, canceling out the atmosphere's turbulence. The corrected wave front is then registered by a camera. Caltech astronomer Richard Ellis says that the result is an image of higher quality than astronomers get with the Hubble Space Telescope, which has no atmospheric distortion to contend with.

Wide-eyed: An artist's rendering shows the proposed Thirty-Meter Telescope mirror inside the observatory dome. Credit: TMT Observatory Corporation

The scientists discovered that the distant galaxy was spinning, just as galaxies spin today, but that it had not yet formed the spiral arms that our own Milky Way galaxy displays. For Ellis, who's trying to understand how the universe evolved and is one of the paper's authors, the observation is significant. "It's telling us the universe was really fairly organized when it was only 10 to 15 percent of its current age," he says.

Although the concept of adaptive optics has been around for decades, it's only in the past few years that it's become sophisticated enough and easy enough to use to become a routine part of astronomy. The system was installed on the Keck II telescope in 2004, and it was the first for a telescope that big. It has since been used to provide clearer views of astronomical objects, but nothing as distant as the galaxy seen last week. The Keck II's adaptive-optics system, however, pales in comparison to what's planned for the new Thirty-Meter Telescope (TMT), which a U.S.-Canadian team that includes Caltech, the University of California, and the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy will build over the next decade. A decision on whether to place it on Mauna Kea, in Hawaii, where the Keck is, or in Chile is expected next year.

The TMT will have nine times the light-collecting area of the Keck II, whose primary mirror is 10 meters across. And according to Brent Ellerbroek, the adaptive-optics group leader for the TMT, the new telescope's optics system will be far more sophisticated. It will use about six lasers to measure atmospheric turbulence. While a single laser measures turbulence at only one small spot in the telescope's line of sight, an array of lasers can provide a three-dimensional picture of distortions over a wider area and at different heights in the atmosphere. The wave-front sensors will also have smaller apertures, to make more-precise measurements, and there will be thousands of actuators, up from hundreds in the Keck, to control the larger number of mirrors. All that measuring and moving presents a computing challenge. "We have to use more-complex algorithms," Ellerbroek says.

"It's a great engineering challenge," says Scott Uebelhart, a postdoctoral associate studying space policy in MIT's Program in Science, Technology, and Society. But he thinks that the effort is worthwhile. "TMT pretty much puts everything else to shame," Uebelhart says.

With the advanced system in the TMT, Ellis says, astronomers won't have to get lucky and find a cosmic lens in order to see far away. Exactly how close to the birth of the universe they'll get is a question that's yet to be answered, he says. "We're almost at the very beginning."

Rewiring the Brain

Rerouting electrical signals around damaged nerves may one day help treat paralysis.

Move a muscle: Paralyzed monkeys regained the ability to move their wrists when their nervous systems were rewired. By wiring brain cells directly to muscle cells via a computer that translates brain activity into an electrical jolt, researchers circumvented the faulty connection so that the monkeys could move their previously paralyzed wrists to manipulate a cursor into an onscreen box. Credit: Chet Moritz et al, Nature

A pair of partially paralyzed monkeys regained the ability to move their wrists when researchers wired individual neurons directly to the monkey's arm muscles, according to a study published online in Nature on Wednesday.

"This approach would be very relevant to spinal-cord injury patients," says Northwestern University neuroscientist Lee Miller, who was not involved in the work.

The researchers, led by Eberhard Fetz, a professor of physiology and biophysics at the University of Washington, temporarily paralyzed each monkey's arm. Then they rerouted brain signals around the blocked nerve pathway by running wires from a single neuron in the motor cortex--the brain area responsible for movement--through a computer and into a muscle in the arm. Whenever the neuron fired above a certain rate, the computer translated the signal into a jolt of electricity to the arm muscle, causing it to contract.

As a test of the rewiring, the researchers had each monkey play a simple video game. By moving its wrist, the monkey could manipulate a cursor on a computer screen. Moving the cursor into a box at the side of the screen earned the monkey a reward. Even though the rewired brain cell was chosen at random, the monkeys quickly learned to move their paralyzed wrists.

"We found, remarkably, that nearly every neuron that we tested in the brain could be used to control this type of stimulation," says Chet Moritz, a senior research fellow at the University of Washingtonand coauthor of the paper. "Even neurons which were unrelated to the movement of the wrist before the nerve block could be brought under control and co-opted."

Normally, arm movement--even the contraction of a single arm muscle--would not result from the firing of a single neuron but from the coordinated action of many neurons in the motor cortex. Those neurons would initiate an electrical signal that propagated down the spinal cord and through peripheral nerves to trigger arm movements tailored to the monkey's intention.

Other groups have recorded those complex neuron-firing patterns and used computer algorithms to translate them into action--for instance, moving a computer cursor. Instead, the University of Washington group linked a single neuron to a single muscle. "Our approach is to create the raw connectivity between single neurons in the brain and muscles, or groups of muscles, and let the monkey learn how to use that connectivity."

Using a single neuron has its advantages, says Moritz. Translating one cell's firing rate into an electrical shock is a straightforward computation, easily accomplished with a device the size of a cell phone. Translating simultaneous measurements into a suite of coordinated muscle movements takes far more computing power.

But for the single-neuron approach to be useful to a paralyzed patient, it will need to successfully scale up. Contracting one arm muscle offers little practical reward; movements like reaching and grasping require many muscles to work in concert. The researchers have already taken steps in this direction. First, they showed that a single cell could work two different muscles: a high firing rate triggered the wrist to flex, while a low firing rate caused it to extend. Next, they hooked up two rerouted connections at the same time, with one neuron wired to the wrist-extending muscle and another to the wrist-flexing muscle.

But Andrew Schwartz, a professor of neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh, is skeptical. A moving arm, says Schwartz, is "a very complicated mechanical system." Any given sophisticated arm movement requires not only a large number of precisely coordinated muscles acting across several complex joints, but also the propagation of forces along the limb. "If your intention is to generate a movement, you have to somehow calculate the effect of all these forces across the arm," says Schwartz. "It's not just, 'Activate a muscle and the arm goes where you want.' There's a lot of math involved."

According to the University of Washington group, it may be possible to circumvent the question of how to generate intricate movements by wiring a single brain cell directly to a specific region of the spinal cord. "Stimulating a single location in the spinal cord will often activate 10 to 15 different muscles in a precise balance," says Moritz.

Beyond any theoretical shortcomings of the single-neuron strategy, there are a number of technological hurdles to overcome before it could be used in patients. Electrode readings from an individual brain cell can degrade over time, potentially destroying the rerouted connection. As a result, says Moritz, any long-term setup would need some degree of redundancy.

Also, he adds, the system would ideally be fully implantable. Whenever wires protrude through the skin, as they did in the monkey experiments, they introduce risks of infection and disruption. The group plans to tackle this problem with miniaturized components and wireless technology.

Because their approach requires relatively little computing power, says Moritz, "we think we may be one step closer to low-power, fully implantable systems."

Can Microsoft conquer the Cloud?

Credit: Technology Review

No big technology company thrives on competition the way that Microsoft does. Whether the bogeyman is Apple's graphical user interface, Novell's Netware network operating system, or the Netscape Navigator Internet browser, Microsoft seems to enjoy meeting each challenge with a huge technical change of direction. And according to sources inside Microsoft, the next such about-face will come later this month, in the form of what is being called, for now, Windows Cloud.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer mentioned Windows Cloud for the first time last week in two European speeches but said little about exactly how the new operating system will work. All that has been said in public by Microsoft's head of cloud computing, Amitabh Srivastava, is that the project is "risky," which is quite something from a guy whose last project was the late and troubled Windows Vista operating system.

Cloud computing is an extremely hot area right now. A cloud is made by linking together any number of generic Intel-class computers so that they act like a single large, distributed computing platform. An application running on a cloud can more easily scale up for larger audiences and is more resistant to failure. A computing cloud may contain tens of thousands of computers distributed around the Internet running applications on the nearest, least-loaded server or across a fleet of machines. Such applications can be anything from a website server to a virtual desktop computer accessed by a thin client or a Web browser.

Google's many Web applications run on a cloud of machines that may well contain more than 100,000 nodes (the company won't say). Dozens more companies, both large and small, are working on computing clouds because they could save money and energy, and enable more-powerful applications. Some researchers see clouds as the successor for everything from the PC to the mainframe.

But among the many questions not answered until now about Windows Cloud is how seriously the OS is being taken by the company itself. The same people within Microsoft suggest that the company is taking it very seriously indeed.

"The cloud stuff isn't just another enterprise product," explains a source who asks not to be named. "It is going to impact everything we do, all of the product groups. Consumer and enterprise are going to have to figure out where they fit into the cloud paradigm."

Precisely how the cloud-computing paradigm will fit with Microsoft's operating systems and applications remains a mystery for now. But one thing is clear: if Microsoft is to develop the technology needed to dominate the market, it will need to catch up quickly. "The shift to cloud-based computing is analogous to our shift to the Internet in the late '90s," the source adds. "[That] changed the direction of the company and impacted everything we did."

The best-known cloud operating today with public access is Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), which will soon also support Windows Server applications.

"Amazon's EC2 made a big splash because it is true pay-as-you-go and really cheap," says Armando Fox, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. Another key reason for Amazon's success, according to Fox, is the availability of free virtualization technology, namely the Linux operating system and a virtualization platform called Xen. This lets Amazon sell a virtual instance of a computer to a customer and distribute it across as many computers as necessary.

Until now, all computing clouds have involved some variant of Linux or UNIX. "Windows virtualization technology is a lot less mature, especially as far as consolidating multiple copies of Windows efficiently onto a single server," Fox adds. "And the Windows 'ecology' is far less diverse [than Linux]."

An alternative approach is used by another cloud operating system (of sorts). 3tera's Applogic runs in some data centers operated by hosting companies, and it, too, has announced that support for Windows applications is in beta testing. 3tera's Applogic creates what the company calls an "application appliance" from a target application--a bit of code that is a virtualized instance of the application, which can be replicated over and over as needed, scaling up or down to meet demand, along with having some failover protection.

Whatever approach Microsoft decides to take, virtualization would help Windows Cloud avoid the problems faced by a similar concept: on-demand computing. On-demand computing (also known as utility computing) looked as popular three years ago as cloud computing looks today, and it was embraced heartily by Sun Microsystems and IBM (the latter to the tune of $10 billion). The idea also involves offering computer power "on tap," but the only way to add more processing power is to add more processors.

However, to accommodate general-purpose applications, companies were forced to build a very complex and very expensive utility computing infrastructure. This is because most applications are not written to operate on parallel processors: they can't scale to run on more processors--only faster ones.

Since Microsoft will hope to avoid this issue, Windows Cloud may come with a slew of new application programming interfaces (APIs) to allow the applications to run seamlessly across simpler, lower-cost infrastructure.

But the most exciting part of cloud computing--and a fundamental issue for Microsoft--is the way that it could impact the very PC desktop it so dominates. Why get a new PC to edit your home videos if you can just grab extra computing cycles as needed from Windows Cloud? As Microsoft's Srivastava says, it's a risky move.

Welcome to the Pterodome

Pterodrone: Image by Brian Roberts

Two disparate concepts can sometimes join together to create a perfectly harmonious third. Few people would have thought that peanut butter and jelly would taste good together, but they do. No one would have guessed that combining two gases -- hydrogen and oxygen -- would produce the liquid called water. But they do.

The verdict is still out on what exactly will be the outcome of a paleontologist, Sankar Chatterjee, putting his scientific head together with that of an aeronautical engineer named Rick Lind. But so far the results have been intriguing. The object of their collaboration is a project called the pterodrone, an unmanned aerial vehicle modeled on the flying prowess of an early Cretaceous pterosaur, Tapejara wellnhoferi.

Aeronautical engineers indulging in cross-disciplinary collaboration is not without precedent. Nature's designs are the most efficient and innovative ones man has ever witnessed, and engineers are always looking for ways to apply more efficient and innovative designs. Taking inspiration from nature to enhance engineering design and application even has a name: biomimicry. Lind just happens to have reached so far back in time for his inspiration that he needed a paleontologist to explain how the creature worked.

"It will look like an airplane. But with a very weird tail on its nose," says Lind, an assistant professor of aeronautics and mechanical engineering at the University of Florida.

The pterosaur had a cranial sail as part of its nose that served as both a front rudder, and as a mechanoreceptor to sense temperature, pressure, and wind direction. The pterodrone will have the same. In traditional aircraft, the tail is placed on the back of the aircraft, for a stabilizing effect, says Lind. Having the tail on the front will minimize the pterodrone's turning radius, but also destabilize the craft, which will have to compensate with wing motion.

"We'll change the aerodynamics of the wings to provide more of a stability contribution, and thus compensate for the vertical tail destabilizing," he explains. "[The wings] will have two joints, similar to a shoulder and elbow joint. They'll be able to rotate vertically and front-back horizontally."

To create the concept for the pterodrone, Lind exchanged emails and phone calls for about a year with Chatterjee, a professor of geosciences and museum science at Texas Tech University. "It wasn't as bad as we thought it was going to be at first. Sankar has worked with aerodynamics people," says Lind. "I've worked with bird and bat people for a couple years, so there was some commonality."

Inspired by the pterosaur, which flew above the Brazilian landscape 115 million years ago, the conversations grew into a concept for a unique aerial vehicle, one that could fly into hard-to-reach areas and gather information. According to Lind, future plans call for the pterodrone to have a video camera, acoustic microphone, and chemical sensors. But the hard part hasn't yet begun. "The biggest challenge is really the building part," he says.

The initial design for the pterodrone calls for a wingspan of roughly 30 inches and weight between about one and two pounds, according to Lind. Initially, it will not be designed to go any faster than 30 or 40 miles per hour. To keep the aircraft light but durable, the team plans to use carbon fiber for the skeleton and nylon for the skin. To power the aircraft, Lind says they'll look at something simple, like the kind of off-the-shelf servomotor that powers radio-controlled flyers.

In addition to its enviable flying abilities, Tapejara was able to walk and run on two or four legs, and navigate on the water as well, using its wings as sails.

For Lind's team, aquatic capabilities are last on the to-do list. "Right now, that's the lowest priority. Flying is first, walking is second, sailing is third," says Lind.

Tesla Motors hits the Brakes amidst Credit Crisis

Email Picture

Paul Sakuma / Associated Press

For now, Tesla will concentrate on cutting costs and making its $109,000, battery-powered Roadster profitable. Above, a potential buyer eyes a Roadster in Menlo Park, Calif.

The country's leading electric car maker delays its next model, replaces its CEO and will lay off workers.

By Ken Bensinger, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 16, 2008

The credit crisis has hit the country's leading electric car maker.

Citing "extraordinary times," Tesla Motors, maker of the battery-powered, $109,000 Roadster, said Wednesday that difficult market conditions were forcing it to delay production of its next-generation vehicle, close two offices, lay off an unspecified number of employees and replace its chief executive.

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  Up to Speed blog: Tesla feels credit...

For now, the San Carlos, Calif.-based company will focus on cutting costs and making its current vehicle profitable, said Darryl Siri, Tesla's head of sales and marketing. "Because of the fundraising environment and capital markets, we're going to focus on making the Roadster a positive cash flow, core product," he said.

Effective immediately, the company's chairman, Elon Musk, is taking on the chief executive's post, while the outgoing chief executive, Ze'ev Drori, will stay on as vice chairman.

Tesla has been held up as a leading light in the clean technology start-up world, with its product (the Roadster) appearing on dozens of magazine covers and its chairman, Musk, appearing on "60 Minutes" less than two weeks ago. As a start-up, however, Tesla is particularly vulnerable to the vicissitudes of increasingly tight credit markets.

"Tesla and about a million other companies are in the same place," said Alexander Cappello, chairman and chief executive of Cappello Capital Corp., an investment bank specializing in high-growth companies. "There's virtually no money available from banks. There's no money for buyouts. There's no money for issuing debt. There's just no money."

Before delivering its first production Roadster in February, Tesla raised about $140 million, mostly from venture capital firms such as VantagePoint Venture Partners. To help finance its next project -- a $60,000, four-door electric car called the Model S that it plans to build in San Jose -- Tesla once again looked to capital firms for an additional $100 million or so.

Wednesday's announcement seems to indicate Tesla is having difficulty reaching those goals. "It's not an understatement to say that nearly every business will be impacted by what has unfolded in the past weeks," Musk said in a statement on Tesla's website Wednesday. "This is true for Silicon Valley as well."

Venture capitalists need access to credit to finance the companies they invest in. They also depend on credit markets to lubricate the mergers and acquisitions that allow them to profit from their investments. Those options are practically nonexistent now.

And with the stock market in disarray, the favorite start-up option to raise capital -- going public -- is nearly dead. According to a study released this month by the National Venture Capital Assn., only six start-ups had initial public stock offerings through the third quarter of this year. In the first nine months of 2007, 55 start-ups went public.

"When a firm can't go public or get acquired, the venture capital firm has to decide whether to continue investing in that firm," said Mark Cannice, a business professor at the University of San Francisco who compiles a quarterly measure of confidence among venture capitalists. His latest poll, released Wednesday, pegged that confidence at an all-time low, down 30% from a year ago. "It's a tremendous fall-off in willingness to invest in this market."

Alan Salzman, chief executive and managing partner at VantagePoint, said Wednesday that he and his firm "fully support the mission Tesla is on."

"The electric vehicle is clearly the future of transportation," he said. "We at VantagePoint are committed to the sector."

Tesla maintains that it will be able to fund its Model S project by relying on up to $250 million in loans guaranteed by the Department of Energy, as well as on tax exemptions offered by California worth up to $9 million.

Nevertheless, Tesla said it would delay that project, slated to begin production in 2010, until 2011. It is also closing its office in Rochester Hills, Mich., which employs about 30 people working on the Model S.

San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed said Tesla contacted his office Wednesday with the news and that the carmaker "is committed to continuing to make their factory for the S model sedan in San Jose." A spokesman for the California treasurer said Tesla would still be eligible for the tax exclusions in the event of a delayed production start.

Tesla has not determined how many of its roughly 250 employees will be laid off, Siri said, but he added that it would be fewer than 100. In addition to the Michigan office, the company's office in London will be closed, he said.

According to Musk's statement, the company's goal is to "be cash-flow positive within six to nine months," a target he said it would reach by ramping up annual production of the two-seat Roadsters to 1,800 units, and by increasing profit margins on each vehicle by reducing overhead. To date, Tesla has delivered about 50 Roadsters.

Musk, a co-founder of PayPal Inc. who is also CEO of rocket ship company SpaceX, will serve as Tesla's fourth chief executive in 14 months. In August 2007, founder Martin Eberhard left the post and was replaced by an interim CEO, Michael Marks. In December, Drori was hired to run the company's day-to-day operations.

Neither Drori nor Musk could be reached for comment.

Tesla is the largest and best-funded electric car start-up, but is hardly alone. There are at least a dozen other firms working on such vehicles.

Last month, Irvine-based Fisker Automotive, which is developing a plug-in hybrid sedan, successfully completed a $65-million round of funding. And in July, Carlsbad's Aptera Motors, maker of a $30,000 three-wheel electric car, said it had raised $24 million from investors including Google Inc.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who played a key role in recruiting the Model S project to the state -- it had been planned for New Mexico -- was unsure of Tesla's future.

"We can't predict the fate of any one company," said Camille Anderson. "But clean technology in California is here to stay."

Tree Huggers and Lesbians Aside, Subaru Forrester wins Sport Utility of the Year

It would be easy to say that this year's winner is a knee-jerk reaction, that the editors of Motor Trend responded to the skyrocketing cost of gasoline like the rest of the driving public by abruptly abandoning the traditional SUV formula for something smaller, more fuel-efficient, greener, more, well, forest-y. It would be easy to categorize our selection of the Subaru Forester as Motor Trend's 2009 Sport/Utility of the Year as a choice made solely at the pump, but it wouldn't be true.

Sure, our Subaru Forester 2.5XT contender posted the best observed fuel-economy numbers (16.0 mpg) for an all-wheel-drive SUV in this year's competition, but that's not the whole story.

SPORT/UTILITY OF THE YEAR VIDEOS:

The Contenders

Instrument Testing

The Road Course

The Judging

The Winner

So how does a small, quirky, former airplane manufacturer from the Gunma prefecture of Japan finish first among surprise offerings from established players and bold moves by newcomers? How does it beat a chest-thumping, head-turning macho mobile known as the BMW X6? How, when Ford wraps stylish sheetmetal around a Gulfstream V interior and calls it Flex? How can it win, when Kia serves notice to the entire category with its own body-on-frame, V-8-powered Borrego, and Infiniti conjures up seven-speed transmissions and jaw-dropping bird's-eye-view monitoring systems?

Just how does the Subaru Forester do it?

Let's start with the humble powertrain. On paper, it's nothing new or particularly special; all Forester models receive a version of the 2.5-liter horizontally opposed four-cylinder found in the Impreza sedan. Transmission options are even less stunning: a carried-over five-speed manual or four-speed automatic for entry-level 2.5X models; auto only if you opt for the turbocharged 2.5XT variant.

At the track, that four-speed, 224-horsepower Forester 2.5XT zips to 60 mph in 7.2 seconds and to the quarter mile in just 15.5. Not as impressive as the 6.6 and 15.1-second runs a similarly equipped Forester 2.5XT managed in our previous comparison ("Turbo Chargers," September 2008), but still as fast or faster than all but the BMW X6, Lexus LX 570, Toyota Sequioa, and Infiniti FX and EX. It's not just fast, but fuel friendly, too. In that comparison, the Forester 2.5XT logged the best observed and EPA-certified city/highway fuel economy (19.6 mpg, 19/24 mpg) against the turbo fours and six-speeds of Mazda CX-7 and VW Tiguan.

Says St. Antoine, "I'm amazed at how well the powertrain works with only a four-speed. The turbo four is torquey enough not to feel like it needs more ratios, and at cruising speed it's not revving overly hard."

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The naturally aspirated Forester is no slouch, either. Rated at 170 for power and torque, the 2.5X takes regular unleaded, returns even better EPA fuel economy (20/26 mpg), and is classified as a partial-zero-emissions vehicle. Not only is the Forester class dominant, it's as green as a you-know-what.

More feats of engineering competence were revealed when we broke out the tape measure. While classmates like the VW Tiguan manage only 56.1/23.8 cubic feet of cargo space behind the front/rear seats, the Forester yields a whopping 63.0/30.8. Similar spatial advantages are seen in the commodious driver and passenger compartments; in our other small-CUV comparison test ("The Frugal Five," June 2008), the Forester provided the most front/rear headroom and front legroom in a field that included the Honda CR-V, Nissan Rogue, Saturn Vue, and Toyota RAV4.

Still not impressed? Then factor in the one metric that puts the S in SUV: ground clearance. With an undercarriage 8.9 inches (8.7 for Forester 2.5X) above ground, the Forester 2.5XT not only beats every one of the CUVs in the two aforementioned comparisons, it equals or betters fellow SUV of the Year contenders Honda Pilot (8.0), Kia Borrego (8.5), and Lexus LX 570 (8.9). Consider those mere soft-roaders? Both Foresters beat or equal the Land Rover LR2 (8.3), Toyota FJ Cruiser 4x2 (8.7), and Ford Expedition 4x4 (8.7). Inside and out, off-road and on, this little Subaru is truly an impressive feat of packaging.

Despite high clearances, the Forester doesn't drive particularly tall. In fact, in a field that includes two bona-fide hot-rods (BMW X6, Infiniti FX) and, let's face it, a car (Infiniti EX35), the Subaru produced more than its fair share of grins on our real-world/off-road loop.

Says Lassa, "It's as much fun as the EX35 with better mileage. The Infiniti seems more planted, but the Subie is light on its feet."

"Ride quality is remarkably nice on Alisos Canyon Road, and it's way big dirty fun on the rally stage," notes Markus.

Truck Trend editor Mark Williams adds, "A few rough shakes when the tarmac is broken, but overall it handles more like a solid crossover. When it gets on dirt, it seems to encourage you to go faster, almost saying, 'It's all right, I've got your back. Let's go.'"

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Analysis of these fine driving characteristics reveals more of the Forester's comprehensive and complementary competence. It's not enough to simply credit its feathery 3447-pound curb weight (lowest of all contenders) or new control-arm rear suspension. We must mention the engine again and highlight its compact, horizontal cylinder arrangement, which allows it to sit low in this high-riding chassis, reducing the center of gravity. Plus that new rear suspension not only smooths out the ride, but its layout also means less cabin intrusion and all that extra room in the cargo area.

Contrast these harmonious revelations with the comments about runner-up Ford Flex-so many positive attributes often scuttled by negatives. While the Forester manages to be big on the inside, small on the outside, the Flex feels only big and bigger. As for the powertrain, Flex's Duratec V-6 and six-speed transmission perform respectably at the track and pump, but often feel grainy, harsh, and unrewarding.

Then there's the value proposition. With a starting price of $20,660, our Subaru is the most affordable AWD SUV in this group. Perhaps not saying much in a field that includes $65,000 Infiniti and $80,000 Lexus behemoths, until you look at what's included. Naturally, Subaru's hallmark symmetrical AWD system is found on all models, but so are such features as four-wheel disc brakes with ABS, VDC traction control, three 12-volt power points, including one in the rear-cargo area, HVAC filtration, and gas-filled hood struts (Toyota and Honda still use cheaper prop rods). Fully spec'd models have luxuries including liquid-filled engine mounts, heated seats, front windshield-wiper de-icers, a touch-screen GPS navigation system, and a massive, all-glass moonroof. Yet, with all that kit and more, our 2.5XT Limited topped out at only $31,523.

Of course, it isn't perfect. No SUV is, not even the one that wins Sport/Utility of the Year. For starters, if you're interested in moving more than five people or 2400 pounds of towable gear, the Forester must be chopped from your list.

ome judges also dinged the Subaru for its "parts-bin interior" and lack of style. Others pegged this simplicity as back-to-basics goodness. "After some of the other complex, flight-deck instrument panels (like the aptly named Pilot's), the Subaru's simple and easy-to-use controls are a welcome break. VW easily trumps the Subaru for visual pizzazz, though the Forester works better," comments St. Antoine. In other words, quiet, comprehensive competence.

No, our selection of the Subaru Forester as Motor Trend's 2009 Sport/Utility of the Year is not a reaction to prices at the pump, but a renewed appreciation for the value of the dollar and a thoughtfully designed, well-executed vehicle. At a time when our nation is paying the piper for poor investments and past excesses, the Forester brings to mind many of the humble values that made this country great: thrift, resourcefulness, doing more with less.

St. Antoine sums it up best, "It takes only a few miles to begin to appreciate the Forester's many virtues. It does everything most SUV buyers need-with more off-road capability than they'll likely use-yet remains friendly and carlike in its character. In many ways, the Forester represents the new SUV paradigm; it's the right vehicle for the times."

Stump Puller: A New Boxer Diesel

In addition to the Forester's two gasoline-fueled powerplants, by 2010, U.S. models may also sport a new boxer diesel recently released in the European market. The world's first production boxer diesel, the turbocharged, DOHC, 2.0-liter four makes 145 horses at 3600 rpm but a mighty 258 pound-feet of torque at 1800 rpm. Standard and only transmission is a six-speed manual newly developed for the diesel (Subaru doesn't have an auto able to handle the diesel's torque and says developing a new tranny is unlikely). The Forester 2.0D's estimated EPA city/highway fuel efficiency checks in at an amazing 34/41 mpg. Towing capacity climbs to a lofty 4400 pounds. Price: about $2800 more than the turbo gas four. Want to see the Forester 2.0D stateside? Send Subaru your thumbs-up now.
- Arthur St. Antoine