<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/grant-wilson-107659">Grant Wilson</a>, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-sheffield-1147">University of Sheffield</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/iain-staffell-328140">Iain Staffell</a>, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/imperial-college-london-1206">Imperial College London</a>
Just six years ago, more than 40% of Britain’s electricity was generated by burning coal. Today, that figure is <a href="http://energy-charts.org/">just 7%</a>. Yet if the story of 2016 was the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-year-coal-collapsed-2016-was-a-turning-point-for-britains-electricity-70877">dramatic demise of coal</a> and its replacement by natural gas, then 2017 was most definitely about the growth of wind power.
Wind provided 15% of electricity in Britain last year (Northern Ireland shares an electricity system with the Republic and is calculated separately), up from 10% in 2016. This increase, a result of both more wind farms coming online and a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-trends-section-7-weather">windier year</a>, helped further reduce coal use and also put a stop to the rise in natural gas generation.
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<figure style="width: 754px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200850/original/file-20180104-26163-gf9ra3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200850/original/file-20180104-26163-gf9ra3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" width="754" height="566" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Great Britain’s annual electrical energy mix 2017. Author calculations from data sources: National Grid and Elexon</figcaption></figure></figure>
In October 2017, the combination of wind, solar and hydro generated a quarter of Britain’s electricity over the entire month, a new record helped by ex-hurricane Ophelia and storm Brian.
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<figure style="width: 754px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200844/original/file-20180104-26139-2bscbv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200844/original/file-20180104-26139-2bscbv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" width="754" height="410" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Great Britain’s annual electrical energy mix 2017 per month (note: nuclear and gas not shown) Author calculations from data sources: National Grid and Elexon</figcaption></figure></figure>
Since that record month, large new offshore wind farms have started to come online. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudgeon_Offshore_Wind_Farm">Dudgeon</a> began generating off the Norfolk coast, as did <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampion_Wind_Farm">Rampion</a>, which can be seen from Brighton town centre.
In all, Britain’s wind output increased by 14 terawatt hours between 2016 and 2017 – enough to power 4.5m homes. To give a sense of scale, this increase alone is more than the expected annual output from one of the two new nuclear reactors being built at <a href="https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/nuclear-new-build-projects/hinkley-point-c">Hinkley Point C</a>.
Not only is offshore wind growing fast, it is also getting much cheaper. When the latest round of government <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/contracts-for-difference/contract-for-difference">auctions for low-carbon electricity</a> were awarded last year, two of the winning bids from offshore wind developers had a “strike price” of <a href="https://theconversation.com/wind-farms-britains-offshore-boom-is-concentrating-power-in-the-hands-of-a-few-very-large-developers-83836">£57.50 per megawatt hour (MWh)</a>. This is considerably cheaper than the equivalent contract for Hinkley Point of £92.50/MWh (in 2012 prices).
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<figure style="width: 754px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200966/original/file-20180105-159080-17ubc76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200966/original/file-20180105-159080-17ubc76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" width="754" height="318" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Rampion wind farm begins about 13km offshore from Brighton. Dominic Alves / flickr, CC BY-SA</figcaption></figure></figure>
Although these wind farms won’t be built for another five years, this puts competitive pressure on other forms of low-carbon electricity. If there is to be a nuclear renaissance, or if fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage are to become a reality, these industries will have to adjust to the new economic reality of renewable energy.
<h2>Britain is using less electricity</h2>
Overall demand for electricity also continued its 12-year downward trend. More of the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14693062.2013.788858">electricity “embedded” in the products and services</a> used in the UK is now imported rather than produced at home, and energy efficiency measures mean the country can do more with less. This meant Britain in 2017 used about as much electricity as it did way back in 1987 – despite the considerable population growth.
At some point this trend will reverse though, as electric vehicles and <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/heat-pump-research">heat pumps</a> become more common and electricity partly replaces <a href="http://www.ukerc.ac.uk/publications/modeling-the-uptake-of-plug-in-vehicles-in-a-heterogeneous-car-market-using-a-consumer-segmentation-approach.html">liquid fuels for transport</a> and natural gas for heating respectively. One major challenge this brings is how to accommodate <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2017.12.051">greater seasonal and daily variation</a> in the electricity system, without resorting to the benefits of fossil fuels, which can be pretty cheaply stored until required.
<figure class="align-center ">
<figure style="width: 754px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200677/original/file-20180103-26139-190ycvo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" width="754" height="503" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Electricity guzzlers. Jan Faukner / shutterstock</figcaption></figure></figure>
Electricity generated in Britain is now the cleanest it’s ever been. Coal and natural gas together produced <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/uk-low-carbon-generated-more-than-fossil-fuels-in-2017">less than half</a> of the total generated. Britain’s electricity was completely “coal free” for 613 hours last year, up from 200 hours in 2016. This position would be wholly unthinkable in many countries including Germany, India, China and the US, which still rely heavily on coal generation throughout the year.
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<figure style="width: 754px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200843/original/file-20180104-26139-15np2s0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200843/original/file-20180104-26139-15np2s0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" width="754" height="431" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Great Britain’s annual electrical energy mix &#8211; fossil fuels drop below 50% for first time. Author calculations from data sources: National Grid and Elexon</figcaption></figure></figure>
However, the low level of coal generation over 2017 masks its continued importance in providing capacity during hours of peak demand. During the top 10% hours of highest electrical demand, coal provided a sixth of Britain’s electricity. When it matters most, coal is relied on more than nuclear, and more than the combined output from wind + solar + hydro. Additional energy storage could help wind and solar meet more of this peak demand with greater certainty.
Looking forward to 2018, we would be surprised if wind generation dropped much from its current levels. Last year wasn’t even particularly windy compared to the longer-term average, and more capacity will be coming online. Equally, it would be surprising if solar and hydro combined produced significantly less than they did last year.
It is therefore inevitable that another significant milestone will be reached this year. At some point, for several hours, wind, solar and hydro will together, for the first time, provide more than half of Britain’s electricity generation. This goes to show just how much a major power system can be reworked within a decade.
<hr />
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89598/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />The data used in this article is based on the <a href="http://energy-charts.org/">Energy Charts</a> and <a href="http://electricinsights.co.uk/">Electric Insights</a> websites, which allow readers to visualise and explore data on generation and consumption from <a href="http://www.elexonportal.co.uk/">Elexon</a> and <a href="http://www2.nationalgrid.com/UK/Industry-information/Electricity-transmission-operational-data/Data-explorer/">National Grid</a>. Data from other analyses (such as <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/energy-trends">BEIS</a> or <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/digest-of-uk-energy-statistics-dukes">DUKES</a>) will differ due to their methodology, particularly by including combined heat and power, and other on-site generation which is not monitored by National Grid and Elexon. Our estimated carbon emissions are based on Iain Staffell’s research published in <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2016.12.037">Energy Policy</a>, and account for foreign emissions due to electricity imports and biomass fuel processing.
<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/grant-wilson-107659">Grant Wilson</a>, Teaching and Research Fellow, Chemical and Biological Engineering, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-sheffield-1147">University of Sheffield</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/iain-staffell-328140">Iain Staffell</a>, Lecturer in Sustainable Energy, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/imperial-college-london-1206">Imperial College London</a>
This article was originally published on <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a>. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/winds-of-change-britain-now-generates-twice-as-much-electricity-from-wind-as-coal-89598">original article</a>.

Electricity generated in Britain is now the cleanest it's ever been.

Britain now generates twice as much electricity from wind as coal

Earth & Energy

A windy year has put the United Kingdom over the edge in terms of wind-generated power. Just seven percent of Britain's electricity was generated from coal.

Britain Now Generates Twice as Much Electricity From Wind as Coal

Only seven percent of the country's energy was generated from coal in 2017.

<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/srikanth-saripalli-408075">Srikanth Saripalli</a>, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/texas-aandm-university-1672">Texas A&amp;M University </a>
In early November, a <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/8/16626224/las-vegas-self-driving-shuttle-crash-accident-first-day">self-driving shuttle and a delivery truck collided in Las Vegas</a>. The event, in which no one was injured and no property was seriously damaged, attracted media and public attention in part because one of the vehicles was driving itself – and because that shuttle had been operating for only less than an hour before the crash.
It’s not the first collision involving a self-driving vehicle. Other crashes have involved <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/tech/2017/03/29/tempe-releases-police-report-uber-crash/99797486/">Ubers</a> <a href="https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/tech/2017/09/08/self-driving-uber-involved-tempe-crash/647843001/">in Arizona</a>, a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/business/self-driving-tesla-fatal-crash-investigation.html">Tesla in “autopilot” mode</a> in Florida and <a href="https://cleantechnica.com/2017/10/05/gms-self-driving-test-vehicles-involved-6-crashes-september/">several</a> <a href="http://bigthink.com/natalie-shoemaker/why-google-self-driving-car-crash-is-a-learning-experience">others</a> in California. But in <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/29/11134344/google-self-driving-car-crash-report">nearly every case</a>, it was human error, not the self-driving car, that caused the problem.
In Las Vegas, the self-driving shuttle noticed a truck up ahead was backing up, and stopped and waited for it to get out of the shuttle’s way. But the human truck driver didn’t see the shuttle, and kept backing up. As the truck got closer, the shuttle didn’t move – forward or back – so the truck grazed the shuttle’s front bumper.
As a researcher working on autonomous systems for the past decade, I find that this event raises a number of questions: Why didn’t the shuttle honk, or back up to avoid the approaching truck? Was stopping and not moving the safest procedure? If self-driving cars are to make the roads safer, the bigger question is: What should these vehicles do to reduce mishaps? <a href="https://engineering.tamu.edu/mechanical/people/saripalli">In my lab</a>, we are developing self-driving cars and shuttles. We’d like to solve the underlying safety challenge: Even when autonomous vehicles are doing everything they’re supposed to, the drivers of nearby cars and trucks are still flawed, error-prone humans.
<h2>How crashes happen</h2>
There are two main causes for crashes involving autonomous vehicles. The first source of problems is when the sensors don’t detect what’s happening around the vehicle. Each sensor has its quirks: GPS works only with a clear view of the sky; cameras work with enough light; lidar can’t work in fog; and radar is not particularly accurate. There may not be another sensor with different capabilities to take over. It’s not clear what the ideal set of sensors is for an autonomous vehicle – and, with both cost and computing power as limiting factors, the solution can’t be just adding more and more.
The second major problem happens when the vehicle encounters a situation that the people who wrote its software didn’t plan for – like having a truck driver not see the shuttle and back up into it. Just like human drivers, self-driving systems have to make hundreds of decisions every second, adjusting for new information coming in from the environment. When a self-driving car experiences something it’s not programmed to handle, it typically stops or pulls over to the roadside and waits for the situation to change. The shuttle in Las Vegas was presumably waiting for the truck to get out of the way before proceeding – but the truck kept getting closer. The shuttle may not have been programmed to honk or back up in situations like that – or may not have had room to back up.
The challenge for designers and programmers is combining the information from all the sensors to create an accurate representation – a computerized model – of the space around the vehicle. Then the software can interpret the representation to help the vehicle navigate and interact with whatever might be happening nearby. If the system’s perception isn’t good enough, the vehicle can’t make a good decision. The main cause of the fatal Tesla crash was that <a href="http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-crash-20170620-story.html">the car’s sensors couldn’t tell the difference</a> between the bright sky and a large white truck crossing in front of the car.
If autonomous vehicles are to fulfill humans’ <a href="https://theconversation.com/some-of-the-best-parts-of-autonomous-vehicles-are-already-here-84029">expectations of reducing crashes</a>, it won’t be enough for them to drive safely. They must also be the ultimate defensive driver, ready to react when others nearby drive unsafely. An Uber crash in Tempe, Arizona, in March 2017 is an example of this.
According to media reports, in that incident, a <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/tech/2017/03/29/tempe-releases-police-report-uber-crash/99797486/">person in a Honda CRV</a> was driving on a major road near the center of Tempe. She wanted to turn left, across three lanes of oncoming traffic. She could see two of the three lanes were clogged with traffic and not moving. She could not see the farthest lane from her, in which an Uber was driving autonomously at 38 mph in a 40 mph zone. The Honda driver made the left turn and hit the Uber car as it entered the intersection.
A human driver in the Uber car approaching an intersection might have expected cars to be turning across its lane. A person might have noticed she couldn’t see if that was happening and slowed down, perhaps avoiding the crash entirely. An autonomous car that’s safer than humans would have done the same – but the Uber wasn’t programmed to.
<h2>Improving testing</h2>
That Tempe crash and the more recent Las Vegas one are both examples of a vehicle not understanding the situation enough to determine the correct action. The vehicles were following the rules they’d been given, but they were not making sure their decisions were the safest ones. This is primarily because of the way most autonomous vehicles are tested.
The basic standard, of course, is whether self-driving cars can follow the rules of the road, obeying traffic lights and signs, knowing local laws about signaling lane changes, and otherwise behaving like a law-abiding driver. But that’s only the beginning.
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<figure style="width: 754px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195283/original/file-20171118-11450-8kr9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195283/original/file-20171118-11450-8kr9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" width="754" height="422" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Sensor arrays atop and along the bumpers of a research vehicle at Texas A&amp;M. Swaroopa Saripalli, CC BY-ND</figcaption></figure></figure>
Before autonomous vehicles can really hit the road, they need to be programmed with instructions about how to behave when other vehicles do something out of the ordinary. Testers need to consider other vehicles as adversaries, and develop plans for extreme situations. For instance, what should a car do if a truck is driving in the wrong direction? At the moment, self-driving cars might try to change lanes, but could end up stopping dead and waiting for the situation to improve. Of course, no human driver would do this: A person would take evasive action, even if it meant breaking a rule of the road, like switching lanes without signaling, driving onto the shoulder or even speeding up to avoid a crash.
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87419/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />Self-driving cars must be taught to understand not only what the surroundings are but the context: A car approaching from the front is not a danger if it’s in the other lane, but if it’s in the car’s own lane circumstances are entirely different. Car designers should test vehicles based on how well they perform difficult tasks, like parking in a crowded lot or changing lanes in a work zone. This may sound a lot like giving a human a driving test – and that’s exactly what it should be, if self-driving cars and people are to coexist safely on the roads.
<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/srikanth-saripalli-408075">Srikanth Saripalli</a>, Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/texas-aandm-university-1672">Texas A&amp;M University </a>
This article was originally published on <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a>. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/redefining-safety-for-self-driving-cars-87419">original article</a>.

Autonomous cars must learn how to react to bad drivers.

To save lives, self-driving cars must become the ultimate defensive drivers

Autonomous driverless cars

Advanced Transport

Self-driving cars need to be able to react to human drivers behaving in ways that may be out of the ordinary to ensure road safety.

To Save Lives, Self-Driving Cars Must Become the Ultimate Defensive Drivers

It won't be enough for them to drive safely.

<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/jungwoo-ryoo-195949">Jungwoo Ryoo</a>, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/pennsylvania-state-university-1258">Pennsylvania State University</a>
Proving identity is a routine part of modern daily life. Many people must show a driver’s license to buy alcohol at a store, <a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/10/crypto-failure-cripples-millions-of-high-security-keys-750k-estonian-ids/">flash an ID card</a> to security guards at work, enter passwords and passcodes to retrieve email and other private information, and answer security validation questions when calling banks or credit card companies for customer service.
<a href="https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63b.html">Authentication</a> is also <a href="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/02/balancing_secur.html">getting easier</a> for people: Take the iPhone, for example. Unlocking the early versions required a multi-digit passcode. Then Apple introduced <a href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201371">Touch ID</a>, which would unlock the phone with a fingerprint reader. The latest version, just out, is the <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/qa-apples-face-id-facial-recognition-works-50130595">iPhone X</a>, which can use its camera to perform <a href="https://theconversation.com/facial-recognition-is-increasingly-common-but-how-does-it-work-61354">facial recognition</a> to <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/tried-to-beat-face-id-and-failed-so-far/">authenticate a user</a>.
As a software security researcher looking at <a href="https://doi.org/10.1109/MCOM.2017.1600595CM">authentication technologies for hand-held devices</a>, I am fully aware that the technologies change, but the challenge remains the same: How can a digital system authenticate an analog human’s identity?
<h2>Three factors of identity</h2>
There are <a href="http://fortune.com/2017/03/02/security-2-factor-authentication-hackers-stalkers/">three main ways</a> of proving an identity. One involves something you know – like a password or your mother’s maiden name. This method assumes the authorized user will have information no unauthorized user does. But that’s not always the case: For <a href="https://phys.org/news/2017-10-equifax-breach-victim-million.html">145.5 million Americans</a> affected by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/equifax-breach-is-a-reminder-of-societys-larger-cybersecurity-problems-84034">Equifax security breach</a> revealed in September 2017, reams of previously private information may now be known to criminals.
A second method of authentication is with something you have – such as a key to your home’s front door or a smart card to swipe at work. This assumes a limited number of people – possibly as few as one, but it could be a small group of users, like a family or co-workers – are allowed to enter a physical space or use a digital service.
A third way is by authenticating the individual human being – who you are – with some aspect of your biology. There are various type of these biometrics, such as fingerprints, <a href="https://theconversation.com/facial-recognition-is-increasingly-common-but-how-does-it-work-61354">facial recognition</a>, iris scanning and <a href="https://theconversation.com/protecting-your-smartphone-from-voice-impersonators-79070">voiceprints</a>. This strategy, of course, assumes that the bodily feature is unique to the particular individual – and, crucially, that the digital system involved can tell the difference between people.
Using two or more methods together can improve security and is called <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-age-of-hacking-brings-a-return-to-the-physical-key-73094">two-factor, or multi-factor, authentication</a>.
<figure id="attachment_111042" style="width: 926px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="size-full wp-image-111042" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2017/11/file-20171027-13298-1ytly27.jpg" alt="" width="926" height="617" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Image credit: Luke James Ritchie/Shutterstock.com</figcaption></figure>
<h2>The consequences of digital authentication</h2>
This increasing dependence on digital authentication may actually result in less security. While cameras, sensors and other devices can make authentication easier for people to accomplish, they carry their own weaknesses.
When a system seeks to authenticate an individual, it must compare the <a href="https://www.dol.gov/general/ppii">information the person is presenting</a> – what they know, what they have or who they are – against a previously stored database of authorized users. As the <a href="https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2017/09/equifax-data-breach-what-do">Equifax security breach</a> makes clear, those databases are themselves vulnerable to attack. Information stolen from there could be used somewhere else – for instance, to identify which bank a particular person uses and answer security questions when calling to transfer money. Or the database itself could be corrupted, altering information so an attacker would be able to fake his way into a physical space or system.
Another potential security threat inherent in biometrics in particular is that criminals don’t need to guess a password, or force someone to reveal it: The simple presence of the victim – even at gunpoint – can supply the fingerprint or face to authenticate and unlock a system.
<h2>Future complications</h2>
As authentication becomes more complicated, using multiple factors and secure communications between sensors and databases, <a href="https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2016/12/01/ask-the-chefs-where-is-the-balance-between-security-authentication-marketing-and-privacy/">users become less willing</a> to jump through all the hoops. So security managers try to make the process easier for them without weakening the protections. This commonly happens on websites that urge users to log in <a href="https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2484486,00.asp">using their Facebook or Google accounts</a>; those sites rely on the advanced security of the tech giants rather than creating their own authentication systems.
In one futuristic scenario, authentication could occur without a user even noticing: When you walk into a store, facial recognition could identify and authenticate you. Then, at checkout, you’d need only to scan your purchases and leave – the store will automatically charge the credit card of your choice. This isn’t science fiction: Amazon has <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/6/13856158/how-amazon-go-stores-work-patent">patented a system</a> for doing exactly this in its <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/5/13842592/amazon-go-new-cashier-less-convenience-store">Amazon Go cashier-less convenience stores</a>.
This is possible in part because of the increasingly common practice of <a href="https://blog.varonis.com/introduction-to-oauth/">computer systems authenticating each other</a> – so the store’s system would recognize you, connect to the credit card company and authorize your purchase all on its own.
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83918/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />It may be more convenient, and even more secure, than a magnetic strip on a plastic card in your wallet. But the potential dangers will require much higher security for private information, particularly <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/tech/biometrics-and-the-future-of-identification/">biometric data</a>. A real identity still comes down to flesh and blood.
<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/jungwoo-ryoo-195949">Jungwoo Ryoo</a>, Professor of Information Sciences and Technology at Altoona campus, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/pennsylvania-state-university-1258">Pennsylvania State University</a>
This article was originally published on <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a>. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-challenge-of-authenticating-real-humans-in-a-digital-world-83918">original article</a>.

Protecting your information is not an easy task.

It’s getting difficult, and increasingly controversial, to authenticate “real humans”

Blue digital fingerprint

Future Society

Experts have the difficulty in balancing ease of use with security with all authentication software. This has interesting implications for the future.

It’s Getting Difficult, and Increasingly Controversial, to Authenticate “Real Humans”

The digital age is having some unintended consequences. 

<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/william-hutchison-419495">William Hutchison</a>, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-st-andrews-1280">University of St Andrews</a>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/juliet-biggs-134165">Juliet Biggs</a>, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-bristol-1211">University of Bristol</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/tamsin-mather-385296">Tamsin Mather</a>, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-oxford-1260">University of Oxford</a>
Ethiopia tends to conjure images of sprawling dusty deserts, bustling streets in Addis Ababa or the precipitous cliffs of the <a href="https://simienpark.org">Simien Mountains</a> – possibly with a distance runner bounding along in the background. Yet the country is also one of the most volcanically active on Earth, thanks to Africa’s <a href="http://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/videos/geologic-journey/african-rift-the-great-rift-valley-1301.aspx">Great Rift Valley</a>, which runs right through its heart.
Rifting is the geological process that rips tectonic plates apart, roughly at the speed your fingernails grow. In Ethiopia this has enabled magma to force its way to the surface, and there are over 60 known volcanoes. Many have undergone colossal eruptions in the past, leaving behind immense craters that pepper the rift floor. Some volcanoes are still active today. Visit them and you find bubbling mud ponds, hot springs and scores of steaming vents.
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<figure style="width: 754px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192438/original/file-20171030-18725-yn0y3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192438/original/file-20171030-18725-yn0y3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" width="754" height="445" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Steam rising at Aluto volcano, Ethiopia. William Hutchison</figcaption></figure><figcaption></figcaption></figure>
This steam has been used by locals for washing and bathing, but underlying this is a much bigger opportunity. The surface activity suggests extremely hot fluids deep below, perhaps up to 300°C–400°C. Drill down and it should be possible access this high temperature steam, which could drive large turbines and produce huge amounts of power. This matters greatly in a <a href="https://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/WEO2014.pdf">country where</a> 77% of the population has no access to electricity, one of the lowest levels in Africa.
Geothermal power has recently become a serious proposition thanks to geophysical surveys <a href="http://www.rg.is/static/files/about-us/rg-corbettigeothermalpower.pdf">suggesting that</a> some volcanoes could yield a gigawatt of power. That’s the <a href="https://energy.gov/eere/articles/how-much-power-1-gigawatt">equivalent of</a> several million solar panels or 500 wind turbines from each. The total untapped resource is <a href="http://theargeo.org/fullpapers/COUNTRY%20UPDATE%20ON%20GEOTHERMAL%20EXPLORATION%20AND%20DEVELOPMENT%20IN%20ETHIOPIA.pdf">estimated to be</a> in the region of 10GW.
Converting this energy into power would build on the geothermal pilot project that began some 20 years ago at Aluto volcano in the lakes region 200km south of Addis Ababa. Its infrastructure is currently being upgraded to increase production tenfold, from 7MW to 70MW. In sum, geothermal looks like a fantastic low-carbon renewable solution for Ethiopia that could form the backbone of the power sector and help lift people out of poverty.
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<h2>Scratching the surface</h2>
The major problem is that, unlike more developed geothermal economies like Iceland, very little is known about Ethiopia’s volcanoes. In almost all cases, we don’t even know when the last eruption took place – a vital question since erupting volcanoes and large-scale power generation will not make happy bedfellows.
In recent years, the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) has been funding <a href="https://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/riftvolc/ProjectRiftVolc.html">RiftVolc</a>, a consortium of British and Ethiopian universities and geological surveys, to address some of these issues. This has focused on understanding the hazards and developing methods for exploring and monitoring the volcanoes so that they can be exploited safely and sustainably.
Teams of scientists have been out in the field for the past three years deploying monitoring equipment and making observations. Yet some of the most important breakthroughs have come through an entirely different route – through researchers analysing satellite images at their desks.
This has produced exciting findings at Aluto. Using a satellite radar technique, we <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GC006395/full">discovered that</a> the volcano’s surface is <a href="http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Highlights/Africa_s_ups_and_downs#">inflating and deflating</a>. The best analogy is breathing – we found sharp “inhalations” inflating the surface over a few months, followed by gradual “exhalations” which cause slow subsidence over many years. We’re not exactly sure what is causing these ups and downs, but it is good evidence that magma, geothermal waters or gases are moving around in the depths some five km below the surface.
<h2>Taking the temperature</h2>
In our <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037702731730118X">most recent paper</a>, we used satellite thermal images to probe the emissions of Aluto’s steam vents in more detail. We found that the locations where gases were escaping often coincided with known fault lines and fractures on the volcano.
When we monitored the temperature of these vents over several years, we were surprised to find that most were quite stable. Only a few vents on the eastern margin showed measurable temperature changes. And crucially, this was not happening in synchronicity with Aluto’s ups and downs – we might have expected that surface temperatures would increase following a period of inflation, as hot fluids rise up from the belly of the volcano.
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<figure style="width: 754px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192440/original/file-20171030-18700-1tm2a02.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192440/original/file-20171030-18700-1tm2a02.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" width="754" height="455" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">A productive geothermal well on Aluto. William Hutchison</figcaption></figure></figure>
It was only when we delved into the rainfall records that we came up with an explanation: the vents that show variations appear to be changing as a delayed response to rainfall on the higher ground of the rift margin. Our conclusion was that the vents nearer the centre of the volcano were not perturbed by rainfall and thus represent a better sample of the hottest waters in the geothermal reservoir. This obviously makes a difference when it comes to planning where to drill wells and build power stations on the volcano, but there’s a much wider significance.
This is one of the first times anyone has monitored a geothermal resource from space, and it demonstrates what can be achieved. Since the satellite data is freely available, it represents an inexpensive and risk-free way of assessing geothermal potential.
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86566/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />With similar volcanoes scattered across countries like Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, the technique could allow us to discover and monitor new untapped geothermal resources in the Rift Valley as well as around the world. When you zoom back and look at the big picture, it is amazing what starts to come into view.
<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/william-hutchison-419495">William Hutchison</a>, Research Fellow, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-st-andrews-1280">University of St Andrews</a>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/juliet-biggs-134165">Juliet Biggs</a>, Reader in Earth Sciences, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-bristol-1211">University of Bristol</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/tamsin-mather-385296">Tamsin Mather</a>, Professor of Earth Sciences, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-oxford-1260">University of Oxford</a>
This article was originally published on <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a>. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-turn-a-volcano-into-a-power-station-with-a-little-help-from-satellites-86566">original article</a>.

We could see an eruption of clean energy.

We could power the world with volcanoes

Harnessing the geothermal energy of volcanos could allow for reliable access to renewable energy in one of the least served nations in the world.

We Could Power the World With Volcanoes

The future of energy may be the heat that lives within our planet.

The past few decades have ushered in an amazing era in the science of cosmology. A diverse array of high-precision measurements has allowed us to reconstruct our universe’s history in remarkable detail.
And when we compare different measurements – of the <a href="http://earthsky.org/space/video-hubble-constant-rate-expansion-universe">expansion rate of the universe</a>, the patterns of light released in the <a href="http://planck.cf.ac.uk/science/cmb">formation of the first atoms</a>, the <a href="https://www.e-education.psu.edu/astro801/content/l10_p6.html">distributions in space of galaxies and galaxy clusters</a> and the <a href="http://w.astro.berkeley.edu/%7Emwhite/darkmatter/bbn.html">abundances of various chemical species</a> – we find that they all tell the same story, and all support the same series of events.
This line of research has, frankly, been more successful than I think we had any right to have hoped. We know more about the origin and history of our universe today than almost anyone a few decades ago would have guessed that we would learn in such a short time.
But despite these very considerable successes, there remains much more to be learned. And in some ways, the discoveries made in recent decades have raised as many new questions as they have answered.
One of the most vexing gets at the heart of what our universe is actually made of. Cosmological observations have determined the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201525830">average density of matter in our universe</a> to very high precision. But this density turns out to be much greater than can be accounted for with ordinary atoms.
After decades of measurements and debate, we are now confident that the overwhelming majority of our universe’s matter – about 84 percent – is not made up of atoms, or of any other known substance. Although we can feel the gravitational pull of this other matter, and clearly tell that it’s there, we simply do not know what it is. This mysterious stuff is invisible, or at least nearly so. For lack of a better name, we call it “dark matter.” But naming something is very different from understanding it.
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<figure style="width: 754px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191472/original/file-20171023-1722-1ei7aqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;rect=79%2C517%2C2119%2C1562&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191472/original/file-20171023-1722-1ei7aqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;rect=79%2C517%2C2119%2C1562&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" width="754" height="556" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Astronomers map dark matter indirectly, via its gravitational pull on other objects. <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/dark-matter-map.html">NASA, ESA, and D. Coe (NASA JPL/Caltech and STScI)</a>, <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></figcaption></figure></figure>
For almost as long as we’ve known that dark matter exists, physicists and astronomers have been devising ways to try to learn what it’s made of. They’ve built <a href="https://pandax.sjtu.edu.cn/">ultra-sensitive detectors</a>, <a href="http://lux.brown.edu/LUX_dark_matter/Home.html">deployed in</a> <a href="http://www.xenon1t.org/">deep underground mines</a>, in an effort to measure the gentle impacts of individual dark matter particles colliding with atoms.
They’ve built exotic telescopes – sensitive not to optical light but <a href="https://fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov/">to less familiar gamma rays</a>, <a href="http://www.ams02.org/">cosmic rays</a> and <a href="http://icecube.wisc.edu/">neutrinos</a> – to search for the high-energy radiation that is thought to be generated through the interactions of dark matter particles.
And we have searched for signs of dark matter using incredible machines which accelerate beams of particles – typically protons or electrons – up to the highest speeds possible, and then smash them into one another in an effort to <a href="http://www.tedxnaperville.com/talks/dan-hooper/">convert their energy into matter</a>. The idea is these collisions could create new and exotic substances, perhaps including the kinds of particles that make up the dark matter of our universe.
As recently as a decade ago, most cosmologists – including myself – were reasonably confident that we would soon begin to solve the puzzle of dark matter. After all, there was an ambitious experimental program on the horizon, which we anticipated would enable us to identify the nature of this substance and to begin to measure its properties. This program included the world’s most powerful particle accelerator – <a href="https://home.cern/topics/large-hadron-collider">the Large Hadron Collider</a> – as well as an array of other new experiments and powerful telescopes.
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<figure style="width: 754px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191469/original/file-20171023-1717-1lamup8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191469/original/file-20171023-1717-1lamup8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" width="754" height="503" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Experiments at CERN are trying to zero in on dark matter – but so far no dice. <a href="http://cds.cern.ch/record/2229237">CERN</a>, <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></figcaption></figure></figure>
But things did not play out the way that we expected them to. Although these experiments and observations have been carried out as well as or better than we could have hoped, the discoveries did not come.
Over the past 15 years, for example, experiments designed to detect individual particles of dark matter have become a million times more sensitive, and yet no signs of these elusive particles have appeared. And although the Large Hadron Collider has by all technical standards performed beautifully, with the exception of the <a href="https://home.cern/topics/higgs-boson">Higgs boson</a>, no new particles or other phenomena have been discovered.
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The stubborn elusiveness of dark matter has left many scientists both surprised and confused. We had what seemed like very good reasons to expect particles of dark matter to be discovered by now. And yet the hunt continues, and the mystery deepens.
In many ways, we have only more open questions now than we did a decade or two ago. And at times, it can seem that the more precisely we measure our universe, the less we understand it. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, theoretical particle physicists were often very successful at predicting the kinds of particles that would be discovered as accelerators became increasingly powerful. It was a truly impressive run.
But our prescience seems to have come to an end – the long-predicted particles associated with our favorite and most well-motivated theories have stubbornly refused to appear. Perhaps the discoveries of such particles are right around the corner, and our confidence will soon be restored. But right now, there seems to be little support for such optimism.
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85808/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />In response, droves of physicists are going back to their chalkboards, revisiting and revising their assumptions. With bruised egos and a bit more humility, we are desperately attempting to find a new way to make sense of our world.
<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/dan-hooper-415746">Dan Hooper</a>, Associate Scientist in Theoretical Astrophysics at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Associate Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-chicago-952">University of Chicago</a>
This article was originally published on <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a>. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/dark-matter-the-mystery-substance-physics-still-cant-identify-that-makes-up-the-majority-of-our-universe-85808">original article</a>.

Dark matter is key to understanding the composition of the universe.

We still can't identify the "mysterious substance" that's a vast majority of the cosmos

IC 1805

Hard Science

Scientists still do not know what dark matter is, only that it simply must exist. Decades of research have lead to more questions than answers.

We Still Can't Identify the "Mysterious Substance" That's a Vast Majority of the Cosmos

Years of research has given us more questions than answers.

We Still Can’t Identify the “Mysterious Substance” That’s a Vast Majority of the Cosmos

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When President Donald Trump announced on June 1 that he had decided to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord, he asserted that staying in the pact would prevent our nation from further developing its fossil fuel reserves. Critics understandably have called this a setback for global efforts to curb greenhouse gas pollution.
But there is another, equally important argument for transitioning to clean fuels. Tens of thousands of Americans die every year from old-fashioned air pollution, generated by electric power plants that burn fossil fuels. Estimates vary, but between <a href="http://www.catf.us/fossil/problems/power_plants/">7,500</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2013.05.081">52,000</a> people in the United States meet early deaths because of small particles resulting from power plant emissions. That’s huge. It is roughly comparable to <a href="http://www.nsc.org/NewsDocuments/2017/12-month-estimates.pdf">the 40,000 people that died in car crashes in 2016</a>.
In <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2016.03.078">a recent research study</a> with colleagues at Carnegie Mellon, I analyzed how human health and the environment would be affected if all coal-fired power plants in the United States switched to natural gas – an extension of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-may-dismantle-the-epa-clean-power-plan-but-its-targets-look-resilient-68460">trend that is already underway</a>. We found that such a shift would have tremendous positive effects on human health in America. We estimate that low natural gas prices and state policies that move utilities away from coal are savings tens of thousands of lives and tens of billions of dollars each year.
<h2>Fossil fuel pollution is deadly</h2>
We’ve known that air pollution is linked to human health since Lester Lave and Eugene Seskin published their <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.169.3947.723">pioneering quantitative work in Science in 1970</a>. They studied “the long-term effects of growing up in, and living in, a polluted atmosphere,” using economists’ favorite statistical technique – regression analysis – to look at a few locales where data were available.
In England they found that “cleaning the air to the level of cleanliness enjoyed by the area with the best air [in the U.K.] would mean a 40 percent drop in the bronchitis death rate among males.” Male and female results were about the same. Since few women worked in industry in those days, this finding indicated that the effect was independent of occupational exposure.
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<figure style="width: 754px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172519/original/file-20170606-3710-ot2w7x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" width="754" height="503" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Activists occupy the Crawford coal plant in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood on April 20, 2011. The plant shut down in 2012; the city is seeking to convert the site to other uses. Image Credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rainforestactionnetwork/5637615577/in/photolist-9AbfGz-9AecHW-9AbfKX-9Ahs3S-9AeBsd-6kAdNB-5QSre4-9AeuAg-eqSRXU-9AecVh-pnZLTo-bncHhQ-6kEFcN-6kEdMs-6kzGwH-Uo6NSQ-6kAs7F-oHyg2m-9AbfMv-SXpRc1-6kzS4H-a8h1SU-6kAshx-6kExbo-6kEbKw-bzYU1u-7zP6jw-6kAnkV-6kEjhE-dMCvvM-2jZteX-6kApxX-ahLj7n-pnXaHf-6kzXpi-6kEy1C-6kDRm3-6kDSsN-6kEck7-6kApoF-6kDUvY-6kzKii-6kAq66-6kEeK1-6kE2YA-6kzUbx-6kAgL4-6kDRHE-6kEsk1-6kzXhX">Rainforest Action Network/Flickr</a>, <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></figcaption></figure></figure>
In Buffalo, New York, they found that cleaning the air to the level of the cleanest area would lower the average bronchitis death rate by 50 percent. Stomach cancer was much higher in areas with more air pollution. Air pollution affects the heart too: They concluded that a substantial abatement of air pollution would lead to a 10 to 15 percent reduction in deaths and illnesses from cardiovascular disease.
The year 1993 saw the publication of an <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1056/NEJM199312093292401">enormous study that followed over 8,000 adults for 15 years in six U.S. cities</a>. The cities – Topeka; St. Louis; Watertown, Massachusetts; Steubenville, Ohio; Harriman, Tennessee; and Portage, Wisconsin – had differing levels of air pollution.
The researchers measured pollution in detail. After adjusting for factors like smoking, they found that the death rate was 26 percent higher in the most polluted cities than in the cleanest ones. They wrote, “Air pollution was positively associated with death from lung cancer and cardiopulmonary disease …. Mortality was most strongly associated with air pollution with fine particulates, including sulfates.” Fine particulate pollution is a mixture of solid particles and liquid droplets, many times smaller than a human hair.
<h2>Still clearing the air</h2>
Haven’t we reduced pollution so thoroughly in the United States since then that we no longer have a problem? Well, no. There are some toxins, such as alcohol, that your body can deal with at a low level and that will kill you only at high doses. But current air pollution levels are not that low.
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/EDE.0b013e3182770237">Another huge study, published in 2013, focused on small particulates</a> in the air of 545 U.S. counties and yearly county-specific life expectancy for the period 2000-2007. It found that cleaning up the air is still very beneficial. Life expectancy has increased in the United States in recent decades, due to things like a decrease in smoking and general attention to diet and exercise. But this research found that 18 percent of the recent increase in urban life expectancy was due to decreased air pollution.
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<figure style="width: 754px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172522/original/file-20170606-3681-1l82ltn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" width="754" height="384" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Reductions in sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from U.S. electric power plants, due largely to laws requiring pollution control technologies at coal-fired power plants, and more recently, a shift from coal to natural gas generation. Image Credit: <a href="https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=10151">USEIA</a></figcaption></figure></figure>
Much of this fine particle pollution comes from electric power plants, either directly or as pollutants such as sulfur dioxide that chemically evolve downwind of the plant. So we asked in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2016.03.078">our research</a>: What would happen if current low natural gas prices or pollution control policies caused all U.S. coal-burning power plants to be replaced by natural gas generators?
Somewhat surprisingly to us, such a shift would not lead to major progress on climate change. Although natural gas is less carbon-intensive than coal, some natural gas leaks into the air at drilling sites, processing plants and pipelines. Natural gas consists mainly of methane, a greenhouse gas that has much more powerful heat-trapping properties than carbon dioxide. If current estimates are correct that the leakage rate is <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/es501204c">around 3 percent</a>, then we calculated that switching all coal plants to average-efficiency natural gas plants would have little effect on the power sector’s contribution to climate change.
But that switch would greatly reduce pollution that is harming our country right now. Switching from coal to natural gas would reduce sulfur dioxide emissions by more than 90 percent and nitrogen oxide emissions by more than 60 percent. These compounds are major causes of fine particulate pollution. Reductions on this level would lower the total cost of national annual human health damages by US$20 billion to $50 billion annually. We found that the Southeast and the Ohio Valley, where most of the coal is burned, would capture the lion’s share of these benefits.
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<figure style="width: 754px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172497/original/file-20170606-3686-1mod536.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" width="754" height="583" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">2016 annual health and environmental damages due to emissions of criteria pollutants from coal plants, by North American Electric Reliability Corporation generating regions, using the APEEP model. Replacing coal plants with average gas plants reduces damages most significantly in the Midwest and Southeast. Image Credit: redrafted from our research by Gerad Freeman, Author provided</figcaption></figure></figure>
<h2>More coal use will not create more jobs</h2>
President Trump has called the Paris climate accord “very unfair” for the United States, especially the coal industry, and pledged to restore coal miners’ jobs. But bringing back coal isn’t the same thing as bringing back coal miners’ jobs.
<a href="https://www.eia.gov/coal/production/quarterly/">Almost all coal use</a> in the United States is for producing electricity. Coal mining jobs are declining partly because low natural gas prices have <a href="https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/update/archive/april2017/">cut coal’s market share</a> from 50 percent in 2000 to 30 percent in 2016.
The other key factor is automation. A great coal boom took place in the United States from 1978 to the 2008 recession. <a href="https://arlweb.msha.gov/OpenGovernmentData/OGIMSHA.asp">The number of tons of coal mined increased by 85 percent, but the number of miners fell by half</a>. Productivity (tons mined per miner) increased by 350 percent, due partially to a shift from underground to surface mines, but largely from the introduction of highly mechanized systems like <a href="http://www.coaleducation.org/technology/Underground/Longwall_Mining.htm">long wall mining</a> that require far fewer miners. The <a href="http://www.rff.org/research/publications/money-nothing-case-eliminating-us-fossil-fuel-subsidies">$340 million in annual federal tax subsidies</a> that U.S. coal companies receive is not putting more miners to work.
Some great companies understand these human health issues, and are taking big risks to push technology that may allow coal to be used without pollution. <a href="https://www.southerncompany.com/">Southern Company</a>, <a href="https://www.aep.com/">AEP</a>, <a href="https://netpower.com/">NETpower</a> and a few others are using American know-how to reduce coal’s emissions.
But without a national consensus that both conventional pollution and greenhouse gas pollution have to be reduced, their engineering will founder in the boardroom. If President Trump succeeds in bringing back coal while gutting environmental regulations, all he’ll bring back is more pollution and more early deaths.
<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/jay-apt-382191">Jay Apt</a>, Professor, Tepper School of Business, Engineering and Public Policy and Co-Director, Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/carnegie-mellon-university-970">Carnegie Mellon University</a>
This article was originally published on <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a>. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-other-reason-to-shift-away-from-coal-air-pollution-that-kills-thousands-every-year-78874">original article</a>.
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Air pollution literally kills thousands of people every year

Air pollution kills between 7,500 and 52,000 people in the United States alone per year. Shifting from coal to natural gas would make a huge difference.

Air Pollution Literally Kills Thousands of People Every Year

Fossil fuels harm far more than the environment.

As the old saying goes, the only things certain in life are death and taxes. While death is inevitable, the quality of life you experience until death is often within an individual’s control.
This is what our team at the Goldenson Center for Actuarial Research chose to focus on by developing <a href="http://goldensoncenter.uconn.edu/projects/">a rigorous measure of quality of life</a>. How many healthy years of life do you have ahead before you become unhealthy?
Everyone understands the benefits of living a long healthy life, but this also has implications for industry and society. Medical costs, financial planning and health support services are directly related to the state of health of an individual or community.
We call this measure of quality of life “healthy life expectancy” and its complement “unhealthy life expectancy.” We define entering an unhealthy state as a severe enough state of disablement that there is no recovery, so you remain unhealthy until death.
It follows that life expectancy – a measure of the total future years an individual is expected to live – is simply the two added together.
<h1>Calculating</h1>
Imagine a healthy 60-year-old male who exercises regularly, has a healthy diet and healthy body mass index and sleeps at least eight hours a night. By our estimate, he could have an additional 13 years of healthy living compared to his unhealthy counterpart. That’s 13 more years of quality living with family and loved ones.
This is quite a startling revelation, not only because of the significant difference in healthy life expectancy between these two individuals, but also because this difference is driven by lifestyle choices within the individual’s control.
So what factors contribute to a better healthy life expectancy? Two factors that are not lifestyle-related are age and gender. All other things being equal, healthy life expectancy decreases with age. Women have a <a href="http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20151001-why-women-live-longer-than-men">longer healthy life expectancy</a> compared to men.
We have already seen that diet, exercise and sufficient sleep positively impact healthy life expectancy. <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/statnt/statnt21.pdf">Other positive factors</a> that we have incorporated in our model include level of education, level of income, perception of one’s own state of health, moderate alcohol intake, not smoking and absence of Type 2 diabetes. The higher the level of education and income, the higher your healthy life expectancy. Having a positive perception of your state of health helps, too.
<h1>Try it yourself</h1>
Want to know your own estimate of healthy years ahead? We developed <a href="https://script.google.com/macros/s/AKfycbyuBYOmrAt4KEdpbu871fISJmOvgA2_72XY0gaFYkJVB4xNJawZ/exec">a free online tool</a> that lets you calculate healthy, unhealthy and total life expectancy. This is work in progress.
This is the first time such a measurement tool has been developed. While it’s too early to validate the accuracy of our calculations with actual data, we have been careful to ensure that the model assumptions are based on established actuarial sources and the modeling results are logical and consistent.
It should be noted that healthy life expectancy is simply an educated prediction. Unforeseen incidents – like being hit by a truck – could render this estimate invalid, no matter how well you manage lifestyle habits. Also, there could be other nonmeasurable factors impacting healthy life expectancy that we have not included in our model, like level of stress, a positive attitude to life or social connections.
<figure class="align-center "></figure>
<h1>Putting our model to work</h1>
Our team plans to explore some of these practical applications of healthy life expectancy in industry.
For example, the concept of healthy life expectancy can help with retirement financial planning. Annual retirement spending should not be level across your life expectancy. More discretionary retirement spending should happen during healthy years and less during unhealthy years, while spending on basic expenses increases during unhealthy years.
Insurance products can be also designed using healthy life expectancy measures in mind. This can protect an individual against additional basic living expenses during the unhealthy period. One such product could be a deferred long-term care or temporary deferred life annuity, where the deferral period is for healthy life expectancy and the temporary coverage is for the unhealthy period. This can be a significantly cheaper and a more needed product compared to what is available in the marketplace currently.
Since healthy life expectancy is also related to quality of life and level of health, a relative index could compare an individual’s results against a benchmark healthy life expectancy for someone with “average” characteristics. This can then be used as an underwriting tool and to predict future health care costs. Our model could also serve as a patient screening tool for medical providers by incorporating more detailed lifestyle and dietary details as well as prior medical history information.
We hope that other researchers and practitioners will continue to build on this. Then society could focus on not just prolonging life, but prolonging quality of life using our model. As the saying goes, “In the end, it is not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”
<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/jeyaraj-vadiveloo-410185">Jeyaraj Vadiveloo</a>, Director of the Janet and Mark L. Goldenson Center for Actuarial Research, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-connecticut-1342">University of Connecticut</a>
This article was originally published on <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a>. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/our-calculator-will-guess-how-many-healthy-years-of-life-you-have-left-84498">original article</a>.
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Many aspects of your quality of life are manageable by you.

A new calculator tries to tell you how many healthy years of life you have left

Health & Medicine

A team at the Goldenson Center has developed a calculator that provides an estimate of your quality of life and healthy life expectancy.

A New Calculator Tries to Tell You How Many Healthy Years of Life You Have Left

It all comes down to the numbers.

When <a href="https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/">LIGO</a>, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, first detected <a href="https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/what-are-gw">gravitational waves</a> from merging black holes, it opened up a new window in astrophysics and provided the most powerful confirmation yet of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Now LIGO has done it again, together with the <a href="https://www.ego-gw.it/public/about/whatIs.aspx">Virgo interferometer</a>, this time by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.161101">observing merging neutron stars</a> – something astrophysicists had known must happen but had never been able to detect definitively until now.
Observing two neutron stars smash together is important for much more than just the thrill of discovery. This news may confirm a longstanding theory: that some gamma-ray bursts (GRBs for short), which are among the most energetic, luminous events in the universe, are the result of merging neutron stars. And it is in the crucible of these mergers that most heavy elements may be forged. Researchers can’t produce anything like the temperatures or pressures of neutron stars in a laboratory, so observation of these exotic objects provides a way to test what happens to matter at such extremes.
Astronomers are excited because for the first time they have gravitational waves and light signals stemming from the same event. These truly independent measurements are separate avenues that together add to the physical understanding of the neutron star merger.
<h2>Gravitational waves just one part of this news</h2>
The LIGO project has thus far announced the detection of four mergers of binary black holes – observed via the gravitational waves they emitted. These are ripples in the fabric of spacetime propagating in all directions, like waves emanating out from a pebble dropped in a pond. Encoded in the gravitational wave signal is information about the pre- and post-merger masses of the objects. Black holes are much more massive than neutron stars, so the energy they release as gravitational waves is much higher. Because light cannot escape from a black hole, you expect (and see) no light from these mergers.
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<figure style="width: 754px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190240/original/file-20171014-3537-84dvk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190240/original/file-20171014-3537-84dvk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" width="754" height="424" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Artist’s rendering of a gamma-ray burst, the most energetic form of light. Image Credit: NASA/Swift/Cruz deWilde</figcaption></figure></figure>
The merger of neutron stars should produce both a gravitational wave and a short gamma-ray burst signal. These brief, incredibly intense flashes of gamma-ray light are seen from galaxies across the universe. They come in two types, classified by their duration. Short GRBs are thought to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physrep.2007.02.005">come from the mergers of neutron stars</a>, while long GRBs are known to be coincident with supernovas.
Key to unlocking the mystery of any astronomical object is knowing its distance. In recent years, astronomers have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/498107">identified the host galaxies</a> of a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/512664">handful of short GRBs</a>. Determining those galaxies’ distances allows astronomers to calculate the power emitted in gamma-rays during the burst, and to determine (or rule out) physical scenarios that could produce that power.
But for LIGO to detect two <a href="https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.93.112004">neutron stars spiraling in toward each other and merging</a>, it would need to happen relatively nearby – within around 250 million light-years. That such an event was not detected during the first year and a half of LIGO observations already lets astronomers place a constraint on how frequently they happen in the nearby universe.
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<figure style="width: 754px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190213/original/file-20171013-3537-t0lobc.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190213/original/file-20171013-3537-t0lobc.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" width="754" height="754" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Galaxy NGC 4993 seemed unassuming enough…. Image Credit: Palomar Observatory – Space Telescope Science Institute Digital Sky Survey</figcaption></figure></figure>
So the rumor of a merging neutron star detection by LIGO with a coincident short gamma-ray burst (<a href="https://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/other/170817A.gcn3">GRB170817A</a>) seen by NASA’s <a href="https://fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov/">Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope</a> spread through the astronomical community like wildfire this past summer. Astronomers watched from the sidelines as most of the major telescopes in (and above) the world slewed toward an otherwise unremarkable old, nearby (130 million light-years) elliptical galaxy named NGC 4993.
<h2>What we’ve known about neutron stars</h2>
Most stars end their lives relatively calmly; no longer supported by the fusion of hydrogen into helium, their outer layers glide slowly off into space while their cores collapse to the very limits allowed by normal matter – burning embers the size of the Earth called white dwarf stars.
For the rare stars whose masses are a bit higher, 10 to 20 times that of the sun, the picture is a bit different. These stars die the way they lived: quickly and violently, ejecting their outer layers as supernovas and leaving behind something far stranger – a neutron star.
The details of this story were worked out in 1930 by then 19-year-old Indian astrophysicist <a href="http://chandra.harvard.edu/about/chandra.html">Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar</a>. He determined precisely how far you can compress normal matter before the relentless pressure of gravity forces electrons into the nuclei of their atoms where they merge with protons to form neutrons. Instead of an Earth-sized remnant, a massive star’s core collapses further to become a highly compressed ball of exotic matter as small as a city but whose mass can be twice that of the sun.
Neutron stars rotate incredibly rapidly. The collapse from millions to tens of kilometers in extent increases their spin due to conservation of angular momentum, like an ice skater pulling in her arms. While the parent star may have rotated once a month, a newly born neutron star can spin hundreds of times per second.
This rapid spinning led to their initial discovery. 50 years ago, Antony Hewish and Jocelyn Bell Burnell <a href="https://www.atnf.csiro.au/outreach/education/everyone/pulsars/index.html">discovered the first radio pulsar</a>: a neutron star emitting radio waves which appear to observers as pulses as the star rotates, like a lighthouse. <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1974/">Hewish would win the 1974 Nobel Prize in physics</a> for this discovery, while Bell Burnell was controversially overlooked.
But what are neutron stars really made of? Are they neutrons all the way through or can they break down further again, into what physicists call “quark soup”? The answer lies in measuring their size. A larger neutron star is mostly neutrons, a smaller star has a more complicated interior made of quarks – the building blocks of protons and neutrons. Untangling how this works is important for our understanding of the fundamental properties of subatomic particles. <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/nicer">A new telescope on the International Space Station</a> aims to address this question by targeting neutron stars and measuring their sizes.
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<figure style="width: 754px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190239/original/file-20171014-3524-1hqa2i9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190239/original/file-20171014-3524-1hqa2i9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" width="754" height="494" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">The orbiting neutron stars rapidly lose energy by emitting gravitational waves and merge after about three orbits, or in less than 8 milliseconds. A black hole forms and the magnetic field becomes more organized, eventually producing structures capable of supporting the jets that power short gamma-ray bursts. Image Credit: <a href="https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10740">NASA/AEI/ZIB/M. Koppitz and L. Rezzolla</a>, <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></figcaption></figure></figure>
<h2>When neutron stars merge</h2>
Over half of all stars are part of binary pairs, and massive stars are more likely to occur in binaries. These pairs of massive stars will co-evolve, and when they die, a pair of neutron stars may remain, orbiting one another.
An orbiting pair of neutron stars loses energy by emitting gravitational waves, and over time this loss of energy will cause them to migrate closer and closer until they eventually collide. While the eventual merger is nearly instantaneous, the gradual inspiral takes tens to hundreds of millions of years, so we expect to see mergers in more evolved galaxies – like NGC 4993, for instance – rather than those that are still rapidly forming new stars.
For decades, it has been <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/181612">suggested that merging neutron stars</a> may <a href="https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8205/829/1/L13">provide a mechanism for producing most of the elements</a> on the periodic table heavier than iron. These so-called r-process elements must form in a neutron-rich environment, and have been formed by humans only during the explosion of nuclear bombs.
The signal from such an event is suspected to rapidly cascade through the electromagnetic spectrum, from gamma-rays to X-rays, visible light and infrared. Known as kilonovas, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12505">these afterglows have been seen</a> from past short GRBs.
Finally all the pieces fall into place with this gravitational wave detected by the LIGO and Virgo teams, and all the subsequent supporting observations made by astronomers around the world. We know the neutron star masses, the duration of the event, and the distance of the host galaxy. This not only confirms the hypothesis that <a href="https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/aa920c">merging neutron stars produce short GRBs</a>; it lays the foundation for astronomers to produce models of the merger backed both by fundamental physics and real world observations. It’s a rare event to see something new for the first time, and rarer still that it confirms a longstanding theory.
<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/roy-kilgard-412338">Roy Kilgard</a>, Research Associate Professor of Astronomy, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/wesleyan-university-1361">Wesleyan University</a>. This article was originally published on <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a>. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-astrophysicists-are-over-the-moon-about-observing-merging-neutron-stars-84957">original article</a>.<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84957/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-advanced" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />

Here's how the latest gravitational wave announcement is going to revolutionize physics

Artist’s impression of the pulsar PSR J0348+0432 and its white

Astrophysicists' latest gravitational wave and neutron stars discovery could act like "Rosetta's Stone" for the heavier elements on the Periodic Table.

The Latest Gravitational Wave Announcement Will Revolutionize Physics

This is the "Rosetta Stone" of physics.

Here’s How the Latest Gravitational Wave Announcement is Going to Revolutionize Physics

<h2>Smart City Solutions</h2>
The convergence of <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Technology-and-the-City-Systems-applications-and-implications/Yigitcanlar/p/book/9781138826700">technology and the city</a> is seen as a possible remedy for the challenging issues of urbanisation. Autonomous vehicles are among the most popular of many <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07293682.2015.1019752">smart city solutions</a>. Also known as driverless car technology, it could reshape our cities.
One recent <a href="https://www.vtpi.org/avip.pdf">prediction</a> is that by 2040 these vehicles will account for up to half of all road travel. A growing number of studies are exploring autonomous-<a class="textTag" href="https://phys.org/tags/vehicle/" rel="tag">vehicle</a>-induced transport disruptions – &#8220;<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11116-017-9802-2">trip generation impacts</a>.&#8221; It&#8217;s suggested these vehicles could:
<ul>
<li>decrease private motor vehicle ownership, congestion and air pollution;</li>
<li>increase ride sharing, road safety, access and mobility;</li>
<li>redesign or eliminate traffic signals; and</li>
<li>improve mobility for people who are &#8220;<a href="http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/7/696">transport-disadvantaged</a>.&#8221;</li>
</ul>
Less research has been done on the effects on <a href="http://fpdl.coss.fsu.edu/sites/g/files/imported/storage/original/application/abfcc477779d0bc0ea825c8011011939.pdf">urban landscapes and the development patterns</a> of our cities. Every change in transport technology – from horse cart to coal-powered train to street car to automobile – has great impacts on our cities.
So, what might autonomous-vehicle-induced changes look like? What are their likely rebound effects on mobility?
<h2>Freeing up Road Space for Other Uses</h2>
Road networks on average occupy about <a href="https://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch6en/conc6en/ch6c1en.html">30% of a city&#8217;s land area</a> in developed countries.
In theory, <a class="textTag" href="https://phys.org/tags/autonomous+vehicles/" rel="tag">autonomous vehicles</a> can use road networks more efficiently and thus free up some road <a class="textTag" href="https://phys.org/tags/space/" rel="tag">space</a> if trip generation rate and population growth are held constant. This space can be redesigned for a whole new spectrum of social functions, street trees, walkways or bike lanes.
However, it is likely these vehicles will enable previously suppressed trips to be taken. The resulting increase in traffic volume will reduce the potential to free up road space for other uses.
<h2>Turning Parking Lots Into Social Uses</h2>
Autonomous vehicles will reduce and potentially eliminate the need for the significant amount of space <a href="https://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch6en/conc6en/ch6c1en.html">set aside for parking</a> in high-demand urban areas.
In these areas of high-value property, mandatory parking supply requirements will have to change. A reduction in parking lots has the potential to transform urban cores, as these spaces can be used for other activities—such as parks, more high-value activities, or affordable housing.
Business uplift resulting from higher-density activities is then entirely feasible (akin to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration">agglomeration economies</a> in cities). This can create more mixed-use and transit-oriented development, accelerate a trend towards inner-<a class="textTag" href="https://phys.org/tags/city/" rel="tag">city</a> living and make these areas more efficient, productive and liveable.
<h2>Redesigning Building and Street Interfaces</h2>
With an autonomous-vehicle-dominated city, buildings and development will have to adapt to new patterns of traffic flow. They will need to be designed for door-to-door services – mainly accommodating the drop-offs and pick-ups at each and every site.
High-volume sites will need a bespoke interface for multiple autonomous vehicles, while lower-volume sites will no longer need kerbside parking for each development.
This scenario offers much potential to free up kerb space for other uses.
<h2>Transforming Fuel Stations Into New Land Uses</h2>
Autonomous vehicles are largely envisaged as electric vehicles charged at their overnight parking spaces. The implication is that eventually, once these vehicles dominate road transport, fuel stations will not be needed on the streets.
These locations will require remedial environmental treatment for conversion to other land uses. But once that&#8217;s done, this will open the way to alternative uses for the former fuel stations in all neighbourhoods—more convenience stores or online shopping click-and-collect locations?
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This raises the question of what would be an optimal productive use for such high-profile, highly accessible sites.
<h2>Converting Domestic Garage Spaces in Suburbia</h2>
Some visions of pooled/shared ownership of autonomous vehicles suggest we will have no need to own private motor vehicles. So we will no longer need to park and garage vehicles in residential dwellings.
This could transform a substantial share of housing stock, with garages converted to other uses such as studios, rented short-term lodging, or granny flats.
In theory, driveways will no longer be needed either. These could be turned into greened front yards, spaces for children to play and residents to walk and meet their neighbours.
Alternatively, however, if the space once used for garages and access ways becomes available for buildings, this could exacerbate the trend toward larger environmentally inefficient homes.
<h2>Increasing Urban Sprawl</h2>
Autonomous vehicles have the potential to induce more <a class="textTag" href="https://phys.org/tags/urban+sprawl/" rel="tag">urban sprawl</a>, as more effortless travel becomes available to more people. This may lead to a rethinking of the convenience of proximity to the city and major employment centres.
Low-cost housing on the urban fringes has been a major driver of sprawl in cities.
By making travel cheaper and more convenient, autonomous vehicles might make the economics and practicality of sprawl more attractive.
<h2>Changing Property Values, Planning Controls and Land Supply</h2>
While &#8220;location, location, location&#8221; will remain relevant, autonomous vehicles should act to inflate property values in some neighbourhoods and depress values in others.
Easier commutes in particular will have an impact on residential property prices, and might shift preferences from properties in urban centres to those in suburban areas.
While suburbanisation might speed up, densification of urban cores might also be enhanced. We might see people with very distinctive lifestyles preferring these different locations.
Planning controls and land supply will be key instruments to control the balance between greenfield and infill developments. We need to consider how these controls are applied in this new environment to maximise social and economic benefits.
<h2>How Planners Will Manage the Disruption of Land Use</h2>
Through the convergence of automation, electrification and ride-sharing technologies, autonomous vehicles could significantly reshape real estate, urban development and city planning—as the automobile did in the last century.
This transformation also creates an opportunity for planners to make our cities more citizen-centred by bringing back the <a href="http://blogs.worldbank.org/sustainablecities/human-scale-public-urban-areas">human-scale</a> and <a href="http://www.urbanecology.org.au/topics/walkablecities.html">walkable city</a> practices that motor vehicle domination removed.
How well prepared are urban planners, however, to mitigate the disruptive impacts on our cities? Do we yet even understand what these disruptions and their implications are?
Urban planning as a profession is largely unprepared for autonomous vehicles. Planners need to be aware, smart and proactive about the potential impacts, particularly in terms of the potential for renewed urban sprawl.
A future involving widespread use of autonomous vehicles presents both land-use opportunities and challenges. Progressive outcomes will require an objective assessment of their complex land-use, economic and community influences on our evolving cities.

Autonomous vehicles will ultimately allow cities to become more efficient.

Here's how driverless vehicles will utterly transform how our cities look

Autonomous cars are set to change the fundamentals of urban planning. These vehicles will ultimately allow cities to become more efficient.

Here's How Driverless Vehicles Will Utterly Transform How Our Cities Look

A number of studies are investigating the "trip generation impacts" autonomous vehicles will have.

Here’s How Driverless Vehicles Will Utterly Transform How Our Cities Look

By <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/james-wu-357668" rel="author">James Wu</a>, Ph.D. Student in Bioengineering, Researcher at the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering, University of Washington, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/rajesh-p-n-rao-353521" rel="author">Rajesh P. N. Rao</a>, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and Director of the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering, University of Washington.
Just as ancient Greeks fantasized about soaring flight, today’s imaginations dream of melding minds and machines as a remedy to the pesky problem of human mortality. Can the mind connect directly with artificial intelligence, robots and other minds through <a href="http://bci.cs.washington.edu/">brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies</a> to transcend our human limitations?
Over the last 50 years, researchers at university labs and companies around the world have made impressive progress toward achieving such a vision. Recently, successful entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk (<a href="https://www.neuralink.com/">Neuralink</a>) and Bryan Johnson (<a href="http://kernel.co/">Kernel</a>) have announced new startups that seek to enhance human capabilities through brain-computer interfacing.
How close are we really to successfully connecting our brains to our technologies? And what might the implications be when our minds are plugged in?
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How do brain-computer interfaces work and what can they do?
<h2>Origins: Rehabilitation and restoration</h2>
Eb Fetz, a researcher here at the <a href="http://www.csne-erc.org/">Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering (CSNE)</a>, is one of the earliest pioneers to connect machines to minds. In 1969, before there were even personal computers, he showed that monkeys can <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.163.3870.955">amplify their brain signals to control a needle</a> that moved on a dial.
Much of the recent work on BCIs aims to improve the quality of life of people who are paralyzed or have severe motor disabilities. You may have seen some recent accomplishments in the news: University of Pittsburgh researchers use signals recorded inside the brain to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76lIQtE8oDY">control a robotic arm</a>. Stanford researchers can extract the movement intentions of paralyzed patients from their brain signals, allowing them <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oka8hqsOzg">to use a tablet wirelessly</a>.
Similarly, some limited virtual sensations can be sent back to the brain, by delivering electrical current <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.aaf8083">inside the brain</a> or <a href="https://doi.org/10.1109/TOH.2016.2591952">to the brain surface</a>.
What about our main senses of sight and sound? <a href="http://www.secondsight.com/how-is-argus-r-ii-designed-to-produce-sight-en.html">Very early versions of bionic eyes</a> for people with severe vision impairment have been deployed commercially, and improved versions are undergoing <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uRuIr35C5Y">human trials right now</a>. Cochlear implants, on the other hand, have become one of the most successful and most prevalent bionic implants — over <a href="https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/cochlear-implants">300,000 users around the world</a> use the implants to hear.
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<figure style="width: 754px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164550/original/image-20170408-29365-148t6y1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164550/original/image-20170408-29365-148t6y1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="Graph showing how a bidirectional BCI interacts with an external controller." width="754" height="499" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">A bidirectional brain-computer interface (BBCI) can both record signals from the brain and send information back to the brain through stimulation. Image Credit: Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering (CSNE), <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></figcaption></figure></figure>
The most sophisticated BCIs are “bi-directional” BCIs (BBCIs), which can both record from and stimulate the nervous system. At our center, we’re exploring BBCIs as a radical new rehabilitation tool for stroke and spinal cord injury. We’ve shown that a BBCI can be used to strengthen connections <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05226">between two brain regions</a> or <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2013.08.028">between the brain and the spinal cord</a>, and reroute information around an area of injury to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nature07418">reanimate a paralyzed limb</a>.
With all these successes to date, you might think a brain-computer interface is poised to be the next must-have consumer gadget.
<h2>Still early days</h2>
Not all BCIs, however, are invasive. Noninvasive BCIs that don’t require surgery do exist; they are typically based on electrical (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography">EEG</a>) recordings from the scalp and have been used to demonstrate control of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0403504101">cursors</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyJj32MsAUo">wheelchairs</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6QEGeIKHw0">robotic arms</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baEYCberLUA">drones</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1088/1741-2560/5/2/012">humanoid robots</a> and even <a href="http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~rao/brain2brain/">brain-to-brain communication</a>.But a careful look at some of the current BCI demonstrations reveals we still have a way to go: When BCIs produce movements, they are much slower, less precise and less complex than what able-bodied people do easily every day with their limbs. Bionic eyes offer very low-resolution vision; cochlear implants can electronically carry limited speech information, but distort the experience of music. And to make all these technologies work, electrodes have to be surgically implanted — a prospect most people today wouldn’t consider.
<div class="fluidvids"><iframe class="fluidvids-item" frameborder="0" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6l2m-Yz2Y9U?wmode=transparent&amp;start=0" width="440" data-fluidvids="loaded" data-mce-fragment="1"></iframe></div>
The first demonstration of a noninvasive brain-controlled humanoid robot “avatar” named Morpheus in the Neural Systems Laboratory at the University of Washington in 2006. This noninvasive BCI infers what object the robot should pick and where to bring it based on the brain’s reflexive response when an image of the desired object or location is flashed.
But all these demos have been in the laboratory — where the rooms are quiet, the test subjects aren’t distracted, the technical setup is long and methodical, and experiments last only long enough to show that a concept is possible. It’s proved very difficult to make these systems fast and robust enough to be of practical use in the real world.
Even with implanted electrodes, another problem with trying to read minds arises from how our brains are structured. We know that each neuron and their thousands of connected neighbors form an <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1238411">unimaginably large and ever-changing network</a>. What might this mean for neuroengineers?
<figure style="width: 305px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164517/original/image-20170407-3845-46uqbb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img class="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164517/original/image-20170407-3845-46uqbb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" alt="An electrocorticography grid." width="305" height="458" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">An electrocorticography grid, used for detecting electrical changes on the surface of the brain, is being tested for electrical characteristics. Image Credit: Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering, <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></figcaption></figure>
Imagine you’re trying to understand a conversation between a big group of friends about a complicated subject, but you’re allowed to listen to only a single person. You might be able to figure out the very rough topic of what the conversation is about, but definitely not all the details and nuances of the entire discussion. Because even our best implants only allow us to listen to a few small patches of the brain at a time, we can do some impressive things, but we’re nowhere near understanding the full conversation.
There is also what we think of as a language barrier. Neurons communicate with each other through a complex interaction of electrical signals and chemical reactions. This native electro-chemical language can be interpreted with electrical circuits, but it’s not easy. Similarly, when we speak back to the brain using electrical stimulation, it is with a heavy electrical “accent.” This makes it <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2631">difficult for neurons to understand what the stimulation is trying to convey</a> in the midst of all the other ongoing neural activity.
Finally, there is the problem of damage. Brain tissue is soft and flexible, while most of our electrically conductive materials — the wires that connect to brain tissue — tend to be very rigid. This means that implanted electronics <a href="http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneumeth.2005.08.015">often cause scarring and immune reactions</a> that mean the implants lose effectiveness over time. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.3093">Flexible biocompatible fibers</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/srep40332">arrays</a> may eventually help in this regard.
<h2>Co-adapting, cohabiting</h2>
Despite all these challenges, we’re optimistic about our bionic future. BCIs don’t have to be perfect. The brain is amazingly adaptive and capable of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1221127110">learning to use BCIs in a manner similar to how we learn new skills</a> like driving a car or using a touchscreen interface. Similarly, the brain can learn to interpret new types of sensory information <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2016.00072">even when it’s delivered noninvasively</a> using, for example, magnetic pulses.
<div class="fluidvids"><iframe class="fluidvids-item" frameborder="0" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ru7HRkFNM7w?wmode=transparent&amp;start=0" width="440" data-fluidvids="loaded" data-mce-fragment="1"></iframe></div>
Learning to interpret and use artificial sensory information delivered via noninvasive brain stimulation.
Ultimately, we believe a “co-adaptive” bidirectional BCI, where the electronics learns with the brain and talks back to the brain constantly during the process of learning, may prove to be a necessary step to build the neural bridge. Building such co-adaptive bidirectional BCIs is the goal of our center.
We are similarly excited about recent successes in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/496159a">targeted treatment of diseases like diabetes using “electroceuticals”</a> — experimental small implants that treat a disease without drugs by communicating commands directly to internal organs.
And researchers have discovered new ways of overcoming the electrical-to-biochemical language barrier. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2015.115">Injectible “neural lace,”</a> for example, may prove to be a promising way to gradually allow neurons to grow alongside implanted electrodes rather than rejecting them. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1600955">Flexible nanowire-based probes</a>, <a href="http://doi.org/10.1016/j.biomaterials.2015.11.063">flexible neuron scaffolds</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/srep40332">glassy carbon interfaces</a> may also allow biological and technological computers to happily coexist in our bodies in the future.
<h2>From assistive to augmentative</h2>
Elon Musk’s new startup Neuralink has the stated <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/27/15077864/elon-musk-neuralink-brain-computer-interface-ai-cyborgs">ultimate goal of enhancing humans with BCIs</a> to give our brains a leg up in the ongoing arms race between human and artificial intelligence. He hopes that with the ability to connect to our technologies, the human brain could enhance its own capabilities — possibly allowing us to avoid a potential dystopian future where AI has far surpassed natural human capabilities. Such a vision certainly may seem far-off or fanciful, but we shouldn’t dismiss an idea on strangeness alone. After all, self-driving cars were relegated to the realm of science fiction even a decade and a half ago — and now share our roads.
<figure style="width: 306px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164516/original/image-20170407-29365-1pgv1nt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img class="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164516/original/image-20170407-29365-1pgv1nt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" alt="A graph showing how a BCI can interface." width="306" height="214" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">A BCI can vary along multiple dimensions: whether it interfaces with the peripheral nervous system (a nerve) or the central nervous system (the brain), whether it is invasive or noninvasive and whether it helps restore lost function or enhances capabilities. Image Credit: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:3D_coordinate_system.svg">James Wu; adapted from Sakurambo</a>, <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></figcaption></figure>
Connecting our brains directly to technology may ultimately be a natural progression of how humans have augmented themselves with technology over the ages, from using wheels to overcome our bipedal limitations to making notations on clay tablets and paper to augment our memories. Much like the computers, smartphones and virtual reality headsets of today, augmentative BCIs, when they finally arrive on the consumer market, will be exhilarating, frustrating, risky and, at the same time, full of promise.In a closer future, as brain-computer interfaces move beyond restoring function in disabled people to augmenting able-bodied individuals beyond their human capacity, we need to be acutely aware of a host of issues related to consent, privacy, identity, agency and inequality. At our center, <a href="http://www.csne-erc.org/research/neuroethics">a team of philosophers, clinicians and engineers</a> is working actively to address these ethical, moral and social justice issues and offer neuroethical guidelines before the field progresses too far ahead.
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