Future City with atmost technology.

An eco-city in Portugal that its makers are aiming to build by 2015 takes its cues from the nervous system

IF TODAY'S cities were living things, they would be monsters, guilty of guzzling 75 per cent of the world's natural resources consumed each year.

Now a more benign urban creature is set to emerge. The planned city of PlanIT Valley, on the outskirts of Paredes in northern Portugal (see map), is aiming to be an environmentally sustainable city. And, just like an organism, it will have a brain: a central computer that regulates everything from its water use to energy consumption.

The central computer of the city will act like a brain, regulating water use and energy consumption

Various eco-cities are in the pipeline, but this could be the first to be fully built - by 2015 - and could open its doors as early as next year. While Masdar City in Abu Dhabi welcomed its first inhabitants this month, it will not be completed until at least 2020. And the development of Dongtan near Shanghaiin China has not even got off the ground yet, following financial and political difficulties.

Like other sustainable cities, PlanIT Valley will treat its own water and tap renewable energy. Buildings will also have plant-covered roofs, which will reduce local temperature through evapotranspiration, as well as absorbing rainwater and pollutants.

Yet that is where the similarities with other eco-cities end, according to its makers Living PlanIT based in Paredes. For a start, PlanIT Valley will be built closer to existing transport links than the likes of Masdar. More significantly, its "brain" will use data collected from a network of sensors akin to a nervous system to control the city's power generation, water and waste treatment (see "Brains and nervous system"). It's a kind of "urban metabolism", says Steven Lewis, chief executive of Living PlanIT.

While this network of sensors sounds expensive, the cost of installing it will be offset by using more efficient building techniques. "Because we have reduced the cost of the building, we can spend a bit more on the technology," says Lewis. For example, software used to design cars and aircraft was used to create the architectural plans.

What's more, the buildings are being prefabricated so that when construction begins at the end of 2010 it should be cheaper and quicker. The hexagonal shape of the buildings was chosen to make efficient use of space.

The city's technologies could be retrofitted to existing towns. This would be a good idea, says Simon Joss of the University of Westminster in London. Still, he adds that the 2015 completion date may be optimistic, and that the project's success cannot be determined until people move in. "It's about developing a community," he says.

Brain and nervous system

PlanIT Valley will have its own artificial nervous system to control its water and energy consumption.

Sensors in every building will measure occupancy, temperature, humidity and energy use. This information will be fed to a central "brain", along with information on energy production from photovoltaic devices and wind turbines, as well as water used and waste produced.

The brain can then use this information to control each aspect of the city. For example, if sensors show that the water level in one building's storage tank is low, the system will move water from another building where there is an excess.

It will also use weather forecasts to predict when days will be cloudy, which will reduce the amount of energy generated by the city's photovoltaic devices. It would then switch to using stored energy, in the form of ice produced by excess electricity on sunnier days, to provide chilled water for the building's air conditioning systems, for example.

An urban data centre will process all the information gathered by the system's sensors - around 5 petabytes each day. To prevent a problem hitting the data centre and knocking out the control of the entire city, each building will also have sufficient computing power to function on its own.

To save on heating bills, the hot air produced by the data centre will be used to heat other buildings.

Kidneys

Only 3 per cent of the water consumed in a city is used for drinking and cooking, so buildings in PlanIT Valley will re-use as much water as possible.

Cooking water can be collected and reused for flushing toilets. Similarly, rainwater will be collected by tanks on the "green roofs" of buildings and then filtered by the plants to remove pollutants. A series of lagoons in the city's central park will use reeds, bamboo and other plants to filter waste water, making it suitable for reuse as "grey" water in toilets and irrigation.

Once these plants have grown, consuming carbon dioxide as they do so, they will be cut down and used to produce biofuel, with a new batch planted to replace them.

Eyes and ears

If a child goes missing, its parents could turn to the city's eyes: a network of cameras connected to software.

An application called "Find my Kid" will allow parents to locate children who wander off at the shopping centre, for example. Software first checks if the person asking for the information has a right to know the answer - a father, say - and then automatically searches footage from security cameras to identify the child based on a description of their clothing and appearance.

Find my Kid is one example of the "Place Apps", which Living PlanIT hopes to develop by collaborating with software firms. They could be available at computer terminals dotted around the city or in smartphones. Other possible apps could help inhabitants find a parking space, for example.

The apps could also use microphones to listen for sounds. A Place App designed to run in the meeting room of an office building could identify the topic of the meeting from the use of certain spoken keywords. Then it could suggest potential collaborators within or outside the company, Lewis proposes.

Stomach

This city will thrive by eating its trash.

On average, cities divert only 5 per cent of trash for recycling or energy production. That figure will be 80 per cent for PlanIT Valley.

Human and organic waste will be used to generate electricity. An anaerobic digester will use enzymes to stimulate microbes to digest such waste, producing chemicals that can be fermented and distilled into biofuels to run the city's cars or to generate electricity. The process also generates by-products such as amino acids and vitamin B₁₂, which can be sold to the pharmaceutical industry.

Dishwasher-sized digesters are also being developed for homes. Fed by a tablet containing enzymes, these would process food and human waste to generate biofuel, which can then be burned to generate electricity.

Of the remaining landfill waste, any aluminium will be extracted and used in industrial chemical reactions to generate hydrogen, which could be used as a fuel to power vehicles.

Finally, a biomass reactor will heat whatever waste cannot be recycled to 400 °C without oxygen, a process known as pyrolysis, to generate energy and biochar, which can be used as a fertiliser.

Residents will not be asked to separate plastic and glass in their trash. All waste is fed through the central digester, which cleanses materials of organic contamination, before they are separated. That means more can be recycled.

The real-world technology of Halo

Games

Richard Fisher, technology editor

Cool technology and video games are bedfellows. That's the thinking behind the marketing for the newest incarnation of the Halo video games this week.

Halo: Reach is the latest in a series of first-person shooter games set in a future where humanity is at war with aliens. So far, so predictable. But to say the series is a phenomenon is an understatement. It has spawned fervent fan sites, comics and even books: in 2001 a sci-fi novel called The Fall of Reach foretold much of the storyline of this latest game.

It's easy to see why: the Halo games have consistently offered some of the most innovative and exhilarating gaming out there. But what particularly caught our eye at New Scientist about the latest Halo launch is the real-world technology that's being used to promote it.

On Monday, the Xbox team staged an impressive stunt in Trafalgar Square, London. StuntmanDan Schlund, who calls himself the Rocketman, dressed up as a Halo soldier and donned a jetpack. He then noisily flew above the surrounding tourists and commuters. You can watch a video of the stunt here.

New Scientist wrote about this kind of jetpack back in 2005. The packs are fuelled by the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide, which provides thrust but also cool exhaust gases. In total, you get about 30 seconds of flight.

Another intriguing Halo publicity stunt that's been running for the past few weeks is helped by some real-world robotics.

At a website called Remember Reach, fans of the game have been asked to contribute to an art installation, which is supposedly in honour of the game's characters. Though bizarre, the idea behind it is quite interesting: a combination of crowdsourcing and robotics.

When fans visit Remember Reach, they are offered a one-time opportunity to control the movement of a real robotic arm inside a warehouse in San Francisco.

The arm is similar to the industrial robots that build cars, and is made by KUKA of Germany. As it happens, New Scientist covered the growing commercial availability of these robots this week.

Attached to the end of the robot arm is a point of light. A camera watches the robot arm shift around a darkened warehouse as it lingers at certain points to "plot" visitors' chosen points on a long exposure film. Over time, the individual dots build up to create a fuzzy artwork of theHalo soldiers. Wired filmed the arm in action last month.

But how good is the game? The Halo franchise has traditionally offered straightforward, old-school gaming. Hordes of aliens run at you. Stuff explodes. You mow them down.

The cannon-fodder of Halo is a coalition of extremist religious races called the Covenant, which are motivated to destroy humanity because they believe it is an affront to their gods. In the past, you played the Master Chief, who is the ultimate warrior, with the most advanced military might that Earth has to offer. It's an alien War on Terror.

Despite the unfortunate allegory, Halo: Reach is attempting to be a bit more complex, grown-up and darker than its predecessors.

It's part of a trend seen in many of today's video games, from Bioshock to Modern Warfare 2, which aim to connect with us on a more emotional level via complex storylines and difficult player choices - at least where possible amid the intensity of a first-person shooter game.

Halo: Reach doesn't quite achieve the emotional tug and moral ambiguities of some of the other recent blockbusters in this ilk, but the makers did try.

Gone is the Master Chief, a lot of the 80s action movie dialogue, and the likelihood that your super-warrior will save humanity. You play a more vulnerable soldier sent to a distant planet far from home in 2552, and now you're part of a team. Civilians have more of a role in the game than in the past, and you get to know more about the personalities of your fellow soldiers. People die, and they don't get extra lives.

Crucially, it looks like your team won't come out as winners. We know from the outset that the planet Reach is doomed.

All the best bits of the gameplay from the prior incarnations have been preserved, and largely improved upon. The game feels bigger, sharper and more frenetic than its predecessors. The improved AI of the enemies is impressive. (For deeper gameplay reviews, see The Guardian ,The New York Times and Destructoid.)

The tone of Halo: Reach may still be a touch melodramatic, and at times the earnestness of the characters gets silly, but the attempt to add more subtlety to the story Halo is refreshing. And it's more fun to play than ever.

(Images: Microsoft)

Intel, McAfee Envision Integrated Security Beyond PCs

Intel's agreement to purchase McAfee stems from a relationship that began 18 months ago between both companies looking to extend security solutions far beyond the PC world, according to executives.

Intel and McAfee had been collaborating to enhance and integrate security offerings into Intel's hardware and at a certain point, it just made more sense to bring McAfee in house to continue that fusion of security and processors, said Intel executives on a call with analysts Thursday.

Intel agreed to buy McAfee for $7.68 billion in cash, or $48 per share, on Thursday. McAfee was founded in 1987 and had about $2 billion in revenue in 2009. "Having McAfee in the Intel family allows us deeper integration and the best capability it's possible to offer," said Paul Otellini, President and CEO, Intel, on the call with analysts.

Otellini also indicated that Intel may look to integrate McAfee into a wider variety of non-PC technology, including the company's Smart TV initiative. "We haven't gone through pricing models for Smart TV security yet, but given that it is software—and increasingly necessary software—and these [solutions] can have an annuity stream with it, it looks like a pretty positive deal relative to our low-end offerings," Otellini said.

Because Intel and McAfee have been working jointly, if separately, for 18 months, the first products to feature integrated technology between the two companies should come in early 2011, said Renee James, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Software and Services Group, Intel.

"We don't comment on future products, but we will see lots of opportunities to take advantage of security features in our core products today. I look forward to updating you in the first part of next year," she said. "Yes, the products did grow out of the relationship that is pre-established. [Buying McAfee] gives us the insight of additional enhanced solutions that we could create. The products we're contemplating are based on already existing technology for existing PC products."

Buying McAfee allows Intel to accelerate its plan to create hardware-enhanced security, according to Intel.

"The way I think of it is we have enhanced and new opportunities to [integrate] that we can't do alone in software. It's an enhanced category of products only created by unique hardware innovation in combination with the software products we sell today," James said.

David DeWalt, CEO of McAfee, wrote in a blog post that the Intel deal emphasizes that security is becoming a more-important subject in an increasingly-connected world.

"The number of connected devices is expected to grow from 1 billion to 50 billion by 2020, according to industry estimates. This explosive growth of Internet and IP-enabled devices is reshaping communication, collaboration and commerce opportunities for individuals and organizations around the world," DeWalt wrote.

"The current cybersecurity model isn't extensible across the proliferating spectrum of devices—providing protection to a heterogeneous world of connected devices requires a fundamentally new approach to security. The industry needed a paradigm shift, incremental improvements can't bridge the opportunity gap."

The Intel-McAfee merger will help bring those solutions to market, DeWalt wrote. "We are joining forces to tackle this next generation cybersecurity issue, which impacts everyone and anything connecting to the Internet," he wrote. "Security will be a third pillar in Intel's strategy, next to power efficient performance and Internet connectivity. By bringing McAfee's security DNA to Intel, we can offer better solutions and products to the market. By next year, we will introduce new security offerings as a result of our collaboration."

Otellini doesn't think Intel and McAfee will look at bundling per se and noted that Intel intends to continue to work with other security vendors. "We're not a McAfee only strategy," Otellini said. He didn't say whether he thought other security vendors might not want to work with Intel now that McAfee is part of Intel.

While Intel will look to integrate more security into its hardware, it will continue to offer software-only security solutions by McAfee too, Otellini said. "That's a growing and robust market and great business that McAfee in today," he said.

Interactive inanimate objects

The zoetrope, a technology for creating the illusion of moving images with origins in second-century China, has been reinvented with an interactive twist.

At the heart of a traditional zoetrope is a spinning drum whose interior wall carries a series of images. Opposite each image is a vertical slit in the drum, which allows users to view each image as the slit passes in front of them. This provides a sequence of crisp snapshots of each of the images in turn, which the brain interprets as a moving image.

The new zoetrope, designed by Lanny Smoot and colleagues at Disney Research in Glendale, California, is a touch more high-tech. The drum has been replaced by a carousel to which a series of table-tennis balls are attached, each painted with a face with its mouth either closed, or open in a variety of shapes. As the carousel spins, an LED strobe light illuminates individual balls, performing the same role as the slits in a traditional zoetrope.

The LED strobe is also wired into a circuit that contains an input from a microphone. Speech picked up by the microphone affects which ball is illuminated.

When the microphone detects speech sounds, faces with open mouths are illuminated. Talk quietly and the system illuminates the ping pong balls painted with partially opened mouths, but shout and the system detects the difference, and illuminates the balls painted with mouths wide open. When no sound is detected a face with a closed mouth is illuminated. So someone speaking into the microphone sees an animated face that appears to mouth their words and adjusts to their speech volume.

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Artificial gut frees sewage-eating robot from humans

HOT on the heels of the first synthetic cell comes a slightly lower-brow advance: a synthetic gut. The basic function that it provides could be the key to freedom for self-sustaining robots.

In the bid to create such autonomous robots, researchers turned to biomass as an energy source. By being able to feed themselves, robots could be set to work for long periods without human intervention.

Such food-munching robots have been demonstrated in the past, often generating power with the help of microbial fuel cells (MFCs) - bio-electrochemical devices that enlist cultures of bacteria to break down food to generate power. Until now, though, no one had tackled the messy but inevitable issue of finding a way to evacuate the waste these bugs produce.

What was needed was an artificial gut, says Chris Melhuish, director of the Bristol Robotics Lab in the UK. He has spent three years with Ioannis Ieropoulos and colleagues working up the concept. The result: Ecobot III.

"Diarrhoea-bot would be more appropriate," Melhuish admits. "It's not exactly knocking out rabbit pellets." Even so, he says, it marks the first demonstration of a biomass-powered robot that can operate unaided for some time.

Diarrhoea-bot would be more appropriate... It's not exactly knocking out rabbit pellets

Previous incarnations of Ecobot showed that it is possible to generate enough power for the robot to exhibit certain basic, yet intelligent behaviours, such as moving towards a light source. Human intervention was needed to clean up after meals, though.

Now, by redesigning the robot to include a digestive tract, Ecobot III has shown that it can survive for up to seven days, feeding and "watering" itself unaided. It obediently expels its waste into a litter tray once every 24 hours.

The key to getting this gut to work, says Ieropoulos, is a recycling system that relies on a gravity-fed peristaltic pump which, like the human colon, applies waves of pressure to squeeze unwanted matter out of a tube.

At the start of the digestive process the robot feeds itself by moving into contact with a dispenser. This pumps a nutrient-rich solution of partially processed sewage into its "mouth" where it is distributed into 48 separate MFCs within the robot. This fluid is a concoction of minerals, salts, yeast extracts and other nutrients. As unappetising as this mixture sounds, for the culture of microbes in the robot's stomach it is ambrosia itself.

At the heart of the process is a reduction-oxidation reaction that takes place in the anode chambers of each of the robot's MFCs. As the bacteria metabolise the organic matter, hydrogen atoms are given off. The hydrogen's electrons migrate to the electrode, generating a current, while hydrogen ions pass through a proton-exchange membrane into the cathode chamber of the cell, which contains water. Here, oxygen dissolved in that water combines with the protons to produce additional water. Because this supply of water gradually evaporates, the robot also needs regular drinks, which it gets from a separate spout.

The cells are arranged in a stack of two tiers of 24 (see picture), designed to allow gravity to direct any heavy undigested matter to accumulate in a central trough. The contents are repeatedly re-circulated from the trough into the robot's feeder tanks to extract as much energy as possible, before being excreted.

Getting rid of this waste not only prevents fuel cells from filling up and becoming clogged, but also removes any acidic waste products from the digester that might poison the bacteria, says Ieropoulos.

As things stand, the fuel cells are capable of extracting a mere 1 per cent of the chemical energy available in its food, despite the recycling process. The system uses off-the-shelf components, so modifying the anodes to have a larger surface area upon which bacteria can attach themselves, should help extract far more energy, says Ieropoulos.

Robert Finkelstein who is heading the Energetically Autonomous Tactile Robot (EATR) project at the US's military research agency DARPA, thinks MFC technology is the wrong choice. It is inefficient and too slow to convert energy, he says.

EATR will derive its energy from burning biomass rather than eating it. Using a novel combustion engine, developed by Cyclone Power Technology of Pompano Beach, Florida, the hope is that when EATR is assembled and tested later this month it will generate enough energy to roll 160 kilometres on 60 kilograms of biomass. In terms of the calorific value of the fuel, that's better than the average car, says Finkelstein.

One of the advantages of MFCs, though, is that they can consume almost anything, including waste water, a substance that isn't easily burned, says Ieropoulos. The bacteria in Ecobot III's gut are made up of hundreds of different species, allowing it to adapt to different foodstuffs. One of the ideas the group is playing with, and the reason they are using waste water as food, is to see if these fuel cells could be used as part of a filtration system to clean up sewage water.

The work will be presented at the Artificial Life conference in Odense, Denmark, next month. The next step is to explore how the robot will cope with a heartier meal, namely flies.

The carnivorous-robot fearing public need not worry, says Melhuish. Much of the energy generated from flies will go into powering the robot's digestive system. With an average speed of about 21 centimetres a day, it is unlikely to catch you, he says.