When the Apollo astronauts explored the lunar surface, getting around wasn't as easy as it looked. Even though the astronauts limited their roving to a few acres close to the lander, they often had trouble navigating. Visual clues to one’s location that we on Earth take for granted, such as the apparent size of a car in the distance or the texture of grass on a lawn, were entirely absent. What looked like a good-size rock in the middle distance could turn out to be a giant boulder much farther away. Without some sort of positioning system, an astronaut on missions NASA hopes to begin sometime in the next decade could become disoriented, or even lost.

To combat this, NASA has awarded more than a million dollars to researchers at Ohio State University in Columbus to develop a spatial orientation system for use on the moon. Scheduled to be completed by 2011, the new system will be designed to seem quite similar to the familiar Global Positioning System to the astronauts who use it.

Of course, the heart of GPS is the dozens of satellites in Earth orbit beaming down coded signals. It would be ungainly and expensive to replicate such a constellation of satellites for the moon, so engineering professor Ron Li and his colleagues will have to use other sorts of data to find the astronauts’ position.

The system will combine signals from beacons mounted on the lunar home base as well as on free-standing pylons with data garnered from inertial navigation sensors mounted on astronauts’ space suits and vehicles. All this will be integrated with three-dimensional maps of the lunar terrain derived from satellite images to pinpoint an astronaut’s position at any given moment. The researchers have dubbed the sensor network the Lunar Astronaut Spatial Orientation and Information System.

The plan is to build a prototype system in the next year or two and perform operational tests in a remote location such as the Mojave Desert. If successful, the system would begin astronaut trials by 2010.

This won’t be the first space navigation job Li has done. He helped develop the software that helped the rovers Spirit and Opportunity navigate across the surface of Mars.

With gasoline prices remaining markedly above levels seen only a few years ago, motorists may be keen to find ways to reduce their gas consumption. But one recommended measure—driving at slower, steadier speeds with more gradual acceleration—is hard for many people who learned to drive when aggressive driving was the norm. In August, Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. unveiled a technology intended to gently nudge drivers toward more economical habits.

Called the ECO Pedal, the system is to be incorporated in a car’s accelerator. When activated, the system will provide a push back on the pedal if excess force is being applied—for instance, while accelerating away from a stoplight. The system is integrated with a measurement of fuel consumption rates and transmission efficiency during acceleration and cruising.

In addition, an indicator on the dashboard will signal when the motorist is driving in a less-than-fuel-efficient manner. A green light on the dash will begin to blink if the instantaneous fuel consumption begins to rise and turn amber if the problem remains chronic.

The company says that internal research shows that use of the ECO Pedal system could reduce fuel consumption by as much as 10 percent. Nissan hopes to commercialize the system in time for the 2010 model year.

When researchers say that the tongue has a direct nerve connection to the brain, it makes perfect sense. Think of all the times that we unthinkingly blurt out secrets. But what they really mean is that, unlike the use of arms and legs, people who have suffered severe spinal cord injuries can still have perfect control of their tongues. Now, engineers are using that ability to create a new technology that could help profoundly disabled people live more independent lives.

Maysam Ghovanloo, a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, described the Tongue Drive system at a conference in June. A magnet the size of a grain of rice would be implanted or attached to the tongue. As the tongue moves, the motion of the magnet would be picked up by sensors mounted on a helmet or in a dental attachment. This signal would then be sent via wireless transmission to a computer that decodes the data.

Because of the tongue’s flexibility and the precision with which most people can move it (which are skills critical for the ability to speak), the engineers believe that the Tongue Drive could enable users to make complicated “gestures” quickly. A double tap on the front teeth, say, might be the equivalent of a mouse click, while dragging the tongue across the roof of the mouth could be interpreted by the system as scrolling.

In trials of the system, able-bodied research subjects were able to signal six different commands with almost 100 percent accuracy after just five minutes of training. Able-bodied individuals have also been able to control a wheelchair using only the Tongue Drive.

Large petroleum refiners can pretty much guarantee that one gallon of gasoline will be the same mixture of hydrocarbons as the next. But makers of biodiesel tend to be small companies making up relatively tiny batches of fuel. That makes it expensive to test the quality of biodiesel.

Small production runs of biodiesel can vary widely in quality.

A Wisconsin-based technology company recently launched an analyzer that may change that. Paradigm Sensor’s hand-held biodiesel analyzer is designed to supplement cumbersome laboratory testing by providing cheap, fast, and easy measurements of critical substances in the fuel.

Because of the way in which biodiesel is usually made, glycerin, a co-product, must be removed before the fuel can be used. Excess glycerin can damage a conventional diesel engine. Unfortunately, not all biodiesel manufacturers are as diligent as they need to be in purifying the fuel before shipping; one government-sponsored study found that more than half of biodiesel samples were not within the specified quality standard.

Paradigm’s Q-100 sensor measures the glycerin levels in a small fuel sample using an impedance spectroscopy technology. In addition, the analyzer can also test for methanol, blend percent, and acid number.

The device is intended to be marketed not only to producers, who might want to use it for quality control purposes, but for large-scale purchasers, such as fleet owners, and regulatory agencies.

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