Dot

Beginning in August, the Department of Transportation will be running clinics to test driver acceptance of new vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) technologies. The first clinic will be held in Brooklyn, Mich.,  with 100 drivers and 24 cars.

The following five clinics will be held in Minneapolis, Orlando, Fla., Blacksburg, Va., Dallas, and San Francisco. The DOT chose areas with a variety of conditions, from dense urban traffic to rural roads.

The cars in the trial will be equipped with Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) devices and GPS, with which they can communicate their status to the other cars in the trial. … Read more

When Kozmo customers ordered snacks or movies from the Internet delivery service via their PCs, the goods weren't teleported, ala "Star Trek." But it almost felt as if they were.

In the late 1990s, an orange-clad Kozmo delivery person would appear at a customer's door typically within an hour after an order was keyed in. The Kozmo man or woman might have cradled a pint of rocky road ice cream, an Al Green CD, a box of Junior Mints, or some other convenience item. The Internet was still new then, and Kozmo's service helped to … Read more

Despite all the warnings about using a cell phone behind the wheel, many drivers, especially younger ones, still seem to be clueless about the danger, or willing to risk it anyway.

A majority of 63 percent of people under 30 admitted to using a cell phone while driving in the past 30 days, according to the results of a poll released yesterday by Consumer Reports as part of a story for its April issue. Further, 30 percent of those also said they texted behind the wheel during the same period.

Those numbers compare with 41 percent of those over 30 … Read more

In the search for cheap and efficient solar cells, Stanford University researchers are mixing in new ingredients.

Chemical engineering professor Stacey Bent on Sunday presented the results of a paper at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that showed how a new combination of materials boosted the performance of solar cells made with quantum dots.

The research is in very early stages, but it could provide clues on how to make solar cells with relatively inexpensive materials that have higher efficiency than is currently possible.

Many researchers are trying to use materials with quantum dots … Read more

A study by the Department of Transportation (DOT) concluded that electronic throttle systems were not at fault in reported cases of unintended acceleration by Toyota vehicles. The DOT used engineers from NASA to examine systems and software in nine Toyota vehicles where the owners of which experienced unintended acceleration.

Toyota's own investigations assigned blame to loose floormats and poorly manufactured gas pedal mechanisms, and issued recalls to fix these issues. Toyota also implemented systems in its vehicles that cut off acceleration when the brake is applied.

Congress asked the government to look into the reported incidents, and the DOT … Read more

Five melanoma patients at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York are about to become subjects in the first human clinical trial approved by the Food and Drug Administration that uses inorganic material in the same way as a drug.

Dubbed Cornell dots (or "C dots" for short), the brightly glowing nanoparticles are silica spheres less than 8 nanometers (one-billionth of a meter) in diameter that hold dye molecules. Those spheres are basically glass, chemically inert and small enough to pass through the body and out in a urine stream, and for clinical use are coated with polyethylene glycol … Read more

This spring Ford will be testing a fleet of cars around the country that communicate with each other. At what Ford calls "major technology hubs," it will use the vehicles to demonstrate vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communication technology designed to prevent accidents.

The concept of V2V communication is not new. Prototypes have been shown by various companies, such as Motorola, in which cars send out signals based on certain incidents, such as a breakdown or sudden, hard braking.

Ford's technology uses Wi-Fi, on a special channel designated by the FCC, that communicates specific conditions to any other … Read more

Have you ever seen photos in which the bottom half of the frame shows the sea while the top portion displays the sky? Well, if you have an underwater camera, you could do that fairly easily by submerging the shooter midway underwater and shooting. Or, you could wait for Han In Kyung's Underabove, a concept dual-lens snapper that does the same thing.

Han's idea is to float the device. The submerged end would have a camera that snaps photos under the sea, while the top half of the shooter would capture the scene above water. It's not stated, but we're guessing the rig will combine the two shots into one. … Read more

Early findings by the U.S. Department of Transportation indicate that drivers were to blame in some sudden-acceleration accidents, according to a Wall Street Journal report citing people familiar with the results.

Preliminary results show some cases of driver error, the Journal reported Wednesday. "The early results suggest that some drivers who said their Toyotas and Lexuses surged out of control were mistakenly flooring the accelerator when they intended to jam on the brakes," the Journal said.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has yet to release the findings and it declined to comment about them, the Journal … Read more