IEEE Consultants' Network of Long Island

CALIFORNIA'S COSTLY E-CAR PUSH--Carl Schwab

On June 17, 2010, in the WSJ appeared an article entitled "California's Costly Electric-Car Push" The thrust of the article is the question, "Will the customers buy E-cars and if so, under what conditions?"

California is funneling $200 million a year through 2015 into low-emission vehicles. As part of the plan it is subsidizing more than 5,000 charging stations that should be in operation by 2012, which is expected to be more than any other state.

California's goal is to have 7,500 all-electric and 25,000 plug-in hybrid cars on its roads by 2014, rising to 60,000 electrics and 85,000 plug-ins by 2017. The first models are expected to arrive this fall, 2010.

Two points are of significance to the writer. 1) They are concentrating on a so-called "Level II" station that offers 220 to 240 vac electricity, and which claims to charge cars in two to four hours. (see below). 2) Gasoline stations aren't considered good locations for charging point because charging takes a longer time than most people are willing to wait.

Hence their thrust is to locate charge station where people linger—restaurants, hotels, malls churches and entertainment venues. Another plan is to use "free-charging" as an inducement to hold the customer in the store while shopping for "high ticket" items

A number of companies are planning to offer charge station towers and one, Coulomb Technologies is promoting" card swipe" system for automatic billing on a monthly basis aka as your gas or electric bill is handled now. Also the charging control has an input of how many Kwh you wish to purchase.

NASA and SpaceX by Jerry Brown

Success of the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch is terrific news.Getting NASA out of the business of manned space flight is way overdue.

I'm a 71 year-old scientist/engineer who grew up dreaming of traveling to the moon. I can still recall the excitement I felt watching the 1950 movie "Destination Moon". So, no one was more thrilled when Neil Armstrong set foot on it. But even in the early stages of the space program, it was clear that the shuttle was a brute-force solution with no long-term future. This first became evident to me when I learned about the glued-on heat tiles that would have to be repaired in a labor-intensive process after each flight.

Listen to Dr. LaRosa in person

One of our regular contributors, Dr. Richard LaRosa, will be hosting a discussion of the question, “Can SSIT also include Societal Influence on Technology?” at a meeting of The Long Island Chapter of the IEEE Society on the Social Implications of Technology (SSIT).

Dr. LaRosa maintains a website, sealevelcontrol.com, devoted to the problems of drought, famine, coastal flooding, global warming, declining ocean productivity, and ocean toxicity. In his former career at Hazeltine Corporation, he was concerned with microwaves, surface acoustic waves, and low-noise devices.

Date: Thursday June 17, 2010
Time: Pizza 6:00 PM
Discussion 6:30 PM
Place: Polytechnic Institute of NYU
Long Island Graduate Center
105 Maxess Road, suite N201, Melville, NY 11747

Please enter from the rear entrance.

Charge: Free, and all are invited, especially people who are concerned with more effective employment of science and technology in the solution of world problems.

Loop Current - Dick LaRosa

TV, newspaper, and other commentators have discovered the Loop Current (LC) as a result of the BP gusher. If you google "sea surface height", click on the link to "Gulf of Mexico Near Real-Time Altimeter Viewer" and follow the directions you will be able to see the LC at almost its lowest sea level drive. It goes almost directly from the Yucatan Channel to the Straits of Florida. There is an almost-detached ring that was, until recently, an integral part of the driven loop. Now the water in the ring is circulating clockwise almost entirely due to inertia. The LC transports about 30 million cubic meters per second, so I don't think the BP gusher has any effect on the altimeter picture. There was some speculation that some of the oil might get entrained in the ring and be carried to the West if the ring completely detaches and drifts westward. My impression is that the oil is caught in near-shore currents and will wipe out coral reefs and other life along the shore.

A busy hurricane season has been predicted. If the sea level drive stays at its present level, the ring may detach completely and drift westward, leaving only a small LC intrusion that would not collect a large pool of deep warm water to energize a hurricane. If the ring drifts far enough, its pool may not be available to energize a hurricane. We should be so lucky.