Volkswagen - The People's Polluter

In the USA alone a potential $18 billion dollar fine: based on the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) saying that the fine for each vehicle that did not comply with federal clean air rules would be up to $37,500 (£24,000). With 482,000 cars sold since 2008 involved in the allegations, it means the fines could reach $18bn.

Now the EU and no doubt virtually every country on earth are looking into it too. In addition in the USA they are likely to prosecute some bosses. Plus I can imagine dozens of class action cases firing up. Its stock market valuation was around $75 billion. If the whole world goes for it, it could be curtains.

Even the best scenario, like no other country being affected will cost them a fortune, tarnish their name, finish them in the USA etc etc.

Their VW in USA boss has his contract up for renewal on Friday. Good luck to him.

Apart from the sheer scale and audacity of it the thing that gets strikes me is that it could help finish diesel and finally push the EU into better car tests.

 

Top Emerging Tech 2/10: Next-generation robotics

Rolling away from the production line

The popular imagination has long foreseen a world where robots take over all manner of everyday tasks. This robotic future has stubbornly refused to materialize, however, with robots still limited to factory assembly lines and other controlled tasks. Although heavily used (in the automotive industry, for instance), these robots are large and dangerous to human co-workers; they have to be separated by safety cages.

Advances in robotics technology are making human–machine collaboration an everyday reality. Better and cheaper sensors make a robot more able to "understand" and respond to its environment. Robot bodies are becoming more adaptive and flexible, with designers taking inspiration from the extraordinary flexibility and dexterity of complex biological structures, such as the human hand. And robots are becoming more connected, benefiting from the cloud-computing revolution by being able to access instructions and information remotely, rather than having to be programmed as a fully autonomous unit.

The new age of robotics takes these machines away from the big manufacturing assembly lines and into a wide variety of tasks. Using GPS technology, just like smartphones, robots are beginning to be used in precision agriculture for weed control and harvesting. In Japan robots are being tried in nursing roles. They help patients out of bed, for instance, and support stroke victims in regaining control of their limbs. Smaller and more dextrous robots, such as Dexter Bot, Baxter and LBR iiwa, are designed to be easily programmable and to handle manufacturing tasks that are laborious or uncomfortable for human workers.

Indeed, robots are ideal for tasks that are too repetitive or dangerous for humans to undertake, and can work 24 hours a day at a lower cost than human workers. In reality, new-generation robotic machines are likely to collaborate with humans rather than replace them. Even considering advances in design and artificial intelligence, human involvement and oversight will remain essential.

There remains the risk that robots may displace humans from jobs, although previous waves of automation have tended to lead to higher productivity and growth, with benefits throughout the economy. Decades-old fears of networked robots running out of control may become more salient as next-generation robots are linked to the Web, but at the same time they will become more familiar as people employ domestic robots to do household chores. Undoubtedly, however, the next generation of robotics poses new questions about the human relationship with machines.

Notes - Scary!

Source: Scientific American

 

Is time travel possible?

The answer laid out by Professor John D Norton of Pittsburgh University (more here):

Is time travel possible?

YES

The "yes" is intriguing, but there is a catch. The question did not ask if there really is time travel; it asked only if it is possible. Something can be possible without actually happening. It is possible for our earth to have two moons. In fact it has only one.

While we have no evidence that time travel actually occurs, all our latest work in theories of space and time tell us that it is entirely possible. Broadly speaking, there are two senses of time travel, both possible.

1. The first sense is the the H. G. Wells sense. This one is named after the author of the most famous story about time travel in which a voyager hops into a machine and travels about in time. Special relativity has room for something close. If we had things that traveled faster than light, then, for some observers, they would travel backwards in time. These faster than light objects are "tachyons." For some observers, they would leave today and arrive yesterday.

The effects that bring this about are closely related to those that lead to the slower aging of rapidly moving astronauts. That effect depended on rapidly moving clocks not behaving as we expected. The time travel effect arises from anomalies in how observers in rapid motion set their clocks at different places in space

Of course how we could get ourselves to travel faster than light is an unsolved problem! We cannot accelerate through the speed of light. But is there some way to recreate ourselves traveling faster than light? If so, some observers would judge us to be traveling backwards in time.

"There was a young lady named Bright,Whose speed was far faster than light.She set out one dayIn a relative way,And returned home the previous night."--Arthur Henry Reginald Buller.

2. The second sense is more topological and has been called "Goedelian" (by John Earman) in honor of the great logician Kurt, Goedel, who was a friend of Einstein's and did pioneering work on spacetimes that admit time travel.

We can imagine space and time as forming a huge sheet of paper. the vertical line is the complete history through time of a person, experiencing the years ..., 1980, 1981, ... etc.

What Einstein did in 1917 was to get us to wrap up the sheet of paper in the spatial direction so travel in the direction "left" is wrapped around to meet travel in the direction "right". That way we always end up where we started.

What Einstein's theory also allows is that travel into the future of time can be wrapped around to connect with the past, so that if we persist long enough in time we end up back at the present.

 

This is not a type of time travel that we create with a machine. There's no device we can build that could somehow turn our spacetime into one that has this global structure. The best adviceto someone who wants to travel in time this way is that they should be sure to be born into the right universe! However there are special circumstances that might bring about the wrapping around of future into the past at least locally. It might happen near black holes generated by gravitational collapse. It also may happen if we get very dense, very rapidly rotating matter.

 

Another day another Greek election

There they go again. Voting. Not sure how many will bother this time. The EU has told them their future and yet they continue to insist on "democracy"! The Greek economy was run disgracefully and the downfall has come. But the EU has messed up massively in trying to help and thereby save the Euro:-

"Voting has begun in Greece's general election, with opinion polls indicating a tight race between the left-wing incumbent Syriza party and the conservative New Democracy.

The snap election, Greece's fifth in six years, was called after Syriza lost its parliamentary majority in August.

Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras's popularity plummeted after he agreed a new bailout deal with European leaders.

The bailout involved austerity measures which Syriza had vowed to oppose.

Greece is mired in a deep financial crisis and whoever wins Sunday's election will have to oversee further tough economic reforms.

The BBC's Richard Galpin in Athens says whichever party wins is unlikely to get enough seats to form a government alone.

That could mean a period of political instability just as deadlines loom for the implementation of a series of key financial reforms, he adds."

For the rest of the article see here.

 

Rugby World Cup 2015 starts tomorrow

The 2015 Rugby World Cup is scheduled to be the eighth Rugby World Cup, the quadrennial rugby union world championship. The tournament will be hosted by England from 18 September to 31 October. Twickenham Stadium in London will host the final.

The official website is here.

England v Fiji is the first match tomorrow evening at Twickenham. It should be a cracker.

Previous World Cup winners are New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and England.

The matches are spread over the country as shown below.

London	London	Cardiff	Manchester	London
Twickenham	Wembley Stadium	Millennium Stadium	Manchester City Stadium	Olympic Stadium
51°27′22″N0°20′30″W	51°33′21″N 0°16′47″W	51°28′40″N3°11′00″W	53°28′59″N 2°12′1″W	51°32′19″N0°00′59″W
Capacity: 81,605	Capacity: 90,000	Capacity: 74,154	Capacity: 55,097 (est.)[27]	Capacity: 54,000
Newcastle	Wembley Olympic Stadium Twickenham Villa Park Brighton Community Stadium Manchester City Stadium Sandy Park Millennium Stadium Kingsholm Stadium Elland Road Leicester City Stadium Stadium mk St James' Park Location of the 13 stadia to host rugby matches at the 2015 IRB World Cup announced on 2 May 2013			Birmingham
St. James' Park				Villa Park
Capacity: 52,409				Capacity: 42,785
54°58′32″N1°37′18″W				52°30′33″N 1°53′5″W
Leeds				Leicester
Elland Road				Leicester City Stadium
53°46′40″N1°34′20″W				52°37′13″N 1°8′32″W
Capacity: 37,914				Capacity: 32,312
Gloucester	Exeter	Milton Keynes	Brighton
Kingsholm Stadium	Sandy Park	Stadium mk	Brighton Community Stadium
51°52′18″N2°14′34″W	50°42′33.51″N3°28′3.26″W	52°00′34″N00°44′00″W	50°51′42″N 0°4′59.80″W
Capacity: 16,500	Capacity: 12,300[28]	Capacity: 30,717	Capacity: 30,750

Source: The Telegraph^[29]