Technologyquarterly December 12Th 2009
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Nuclear power’s The rise of the Surgery using next generation agricultural robot sound and light TechnologyQuarterly December 12th 2009 Main title, choose size weight and colour Follow on subtitle, as above Read all about it Building better screens for e-readers TQCOVERDEC09.indd 1 1/12/09 15:59:34 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 12th 2009 Monitor 1 Contents On the cover Nearly all electronic•book readers (e•readers) use the same screen technology. It consumes very little power but cannot display colour images or video. But new types of screen are emerging that will combine long battery life with support for vibrant colour and the ability to G reenery on the march display video: page 9 Monitor 1 Armies go green, a new glue for broken bones, a battery inspired by electric eels, the technology of ink, paying for your own bre link, texting in Clean technology: Finding alternative sources of energy is becoming a Asian languages, better ways pressing military necessity for America’s armed forces to collaborate online, and who won our innovation awards HE air around Bagram aireld, the longer just the colour of army uniforms. Tmain American base in Afghanistan, is What has changed? During the in• Rational consumer thick with the smell of jet fuel, the roar of vasion of Iraq in 2003, America’s marines 8 Powering the drive aircraft taking o on bombing missions often found themselves outrunning their Buyers of electric cars grapple and the constant drone of electricity gen• fuel supplies. Unleash us from the tether with range anxiety erators. Outside the ramparts, a snakelike of fuel, their then commander in Iraq, convoy of brightly coloured lorries waits General James Mattis, later pleaded. As New displays for e•readers to unload fuel hauled from Pakistan and insurgency engulfed the Americans, Central Asia. These are the modern equiv• supply convoys became a favourite target. 9 Read all about it alents of the pack mules that once carried In July 2006 General Richard Zilmer, the Screen technologies that are military suppliesmuch of it fodder for marine general then in charge of Ameri• both low•power and full•colour the beasts themselves. The British army can forces in western Iraq, sent out an calculates that it takes seven gallons of urgent request for solar panels, wind Inside story fuel to deliver one gallon to Afghanistan. turbines and other devices to reduce the 11 Nuclear’s next generation Modern warfare would be impossible need for liquid fuels. His troops were Novel reactor designs to meet without vast quantities of fossil fuel. It is being placed in harm’s way each time we the needs of the 21st century needed to power everything from tanks to send out a convoy, he said; protecting jets to electricity generators that run the supply convoys was drawing forces away Agricultural robots communications networks on which from other tasks. And in 2008 the spike in 14 Fields of automation Western armies depend. In the punishing oil prices played havoc with military How robotic innovation down on climate of Iraq and Afghanistan, more• budgets: the Pentagon’s fuel bill rose from the farm is bearing fruit over, soldiers’ accommodation must be $13 billion in 2007 to about $20 billion. kept cool in hot weather, and warm in the So it is not a question of preventing Biomedicine cold. American forces consume more than climate change, reducing dependence on 16 Son et lumière in the hospital 1m gallons of fuel a day in Afghanistan, imported oil, or even complying with Non•invasive surgical techniques and a similar quantity in Iraq. President Barack Obama’s green agenda. based on sound and light Until recently military planners had The need for alternative sources of energy assumed that fuel would be plentiful and is a military necessity. Brain scan easily available. A Humvee with added In Iraq and Afghanistan about 40% of armour does just four miles per gallon; an fuel is used to run electricity generators. A 18 Beyond the ether Abrams tank burns four gallons to move a successful quick•x to reduce energy A prole of Bob Metcalfe, the mile, in some conditions. These days, consumption was to coat military tents inventor of Ethernet though, America’s armed forces want to with a thick layer of commercial insulat• reform their gas•guzzling ways; green is no ing foam, of the kind used for cavity walls 1 2 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly December 12th 2009 2 in homes, covered with a sealant to pro• In October the USS Makin Island, an time, new technologies, such as blended tect it from ultraviolet light. Joseph Sar• amphibious assault ship, was the rst of 12 wing aircraft and new composite materi• tiano, a Pentagon ocial, says this hybrid•powered ships to take to the water. als, may come out of military•funded treatment halves the energy needed for It saved nearly $2m in fuel costs on its laboratories. At the very least, the armed air•conditioning and pays for itself within maiden voyage alone. At slow speeds, it forces could act as crucial early adopters three to six months, depending on how runs only on an electric motor powered for costly new green technologies. the price of fuel is reckoned. by the ship’s auxiliary turbine. At higher They are also promoting one impor• If the various generators on a base are speeds, the main turbine takes over. This is tant conceptual change: the pricing of linked together in a smart grid system, a step on the way to the navy’s ambition fossil fuel. Liquid fuel ordinarily sells for which optimises their operation and to develop all•electric ships. When fully $2•3 a gallon, but by the time it reaches a distributes power to priority areas, such as dedicated to missile defence, some ships war zone the cost is much higher: about communications equipment, a further already devote 40% of their power to $15 for delivery to a big FOB in Afghanistan 20% saving is possible, he adds. Such a grid electrical systems, says Rear•Admiral and as much as $400 to an outpost that, is being tested at the army’s model for• Philip Cullom, in charge of the navy’s eet say, has to be resupplied by helicopter. ward operating base (FOB) in Fort Irwin, readiness. With an all•electric ship it will This fully burdened cost of fuel is seep• California, along with prototypes of a be a bit like ‘Star Trek’, in which the cap• ing into the calculations of military plan• mobile, hybrid power•station that com• tain can order power to be moved to the ners. It tries to capture the cost of military bines solar panels and wind turbines with weapons or to the engines, he says. logistics, rather than environmental im• a conventional generator. America’s ma• For the foreseeable future, clean tech• pact. But if military leaders are ready to rines are creating a smaller model FOB at nology will ow mainly from the com• put a more realistic price on fuel, perhaps their base in Quantico, near Washington, mercial to the military sector. But over other Americans will follow suit. 7 DC, to test systems for deployment in Afghanistan by mid•2010. Another idea, already being tried out at Camp Victory, the main American base in Baghdad, is to convert rubbish into elec• tricity. A battalion of about 500 men typically produces about a tonne of waste every day. A machine called the Tactical Garbage to Energy Renery (TGER), heats solid waste to produce syngas (synthetic gas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen), ferments food slops to produce alcohol, and chemically processes the two to make biodiesel that powers a generator. TGER produces as much as 64 kilowatts of powerenough to run the command post of a battalion. Such measures should reduce the amount of fuel needed to produce elec• tricity. Much of the Pentagon’s fuel goes to the air force, however, and reducing the consumption of jet fuel is much more dicult. The air force is working to certify all its aircraft to use synthetic fuels made from gas derived from coal or biomass, using the Fischer•Tropsch method used by Glue bones Germany during the second world war. By 2016 the air force seeks to use a 50:50 blend of synthetic and ordinary jet fuel for half of its aviation requirements within Ameri• ca. But the shift towards synthetic fuel has Biomedicine: An adhesive secreted by a marine worm inspires a promising provoked criticism, because when such new treatment for compound fractures of human bones fuel is made from coal and then burned in an aircraft engine, more greenhouse gases ORN esh is easy to put back together and now Russell Stewart of the University are emitted overall than would be pro• Twith stitches, but when bone breaks, of Utah may have found one in the secre• duced if the aircraft simply burned con• repairs are nowhere near as simple. Bones tions of a marine worm. ventional fuel derived from oil. Nor does it with fractures that run in a straight line The sandcastle worm, as the creature is help reduce demand in war zones. can often be placed back in their proper known, lives in a mineral shell. It does not, The American navy, for its part, is alignment and set in a cast to heal. Com• however, secrete this shell directly in the placing its faith in biofuels. It has tested a pound fractures, howeverthose that way that, for example, a mollusc does.