…more World Cup Science, a Questionable New Telecom Bill, Emotionally Aware Computer, an Asteroid that’s Too Close for Comfort, and more!

An Eco-Friendly Racecar?
If there were such a thing as an eco-friendly racecar, the new Audi R10 TDI would be it, says Popular Science.

The racecar made history in March when it won at Florida’s 12 Hours of Sebring endurance race, becoming the first diesel-powered car to win any major auto-racing event. Not only is the R10 more fuel-efficient than its gas-slurping counterparts — and therefore able to go two laps longer between pit stops — its low-revving engine generates roughly half the noise.

Indeed, modern diesel engines are no longer the “smoky, technologically stunted dinosaurs of yore,” especially not the 5.5-liter 12-cylinder in the R10 or its newest road-going cousin, the 3.0-liter V6.

In fact, the racecar uses a finely tuned version of the technology in Audi’s production cars: common-rail fuel injection. The system employs piezo-crystal injectors that open and close faster to more precisely control fuel flow and generate a more thorough burn, which helps fuel-efficiency and engine power while reducing emissions. Further, it allows the racecar to reach 650 horsepower at only 5,000 rpm, while its competitors must hit 12,000 rpm to achieve that power. Audi’s diesel Q7 SUV will get 23 miles per gallon.

Audi aims to debut its diesel Q7 SUV for public sale by 2008.

More and More Adults Are Kids at Heart
New research shows that grownups are more immature than ever. Specifically, it seems a growing number of people are retaining the behaviors and attitudes associated with youth.

As a consequence, many older people simply never achieve mental adulthood, according to a theory of Bruce Charlton, a leading expert on evolutionary psychiatry.

Among scientists, the phenomenon is called psychological neoteny.

Charlton explained to Discovery News that humans have an inherent attraction to physical youth, since it can be a sign of fertility, health and vitality. In the mid-20th century, however, another force kicked in, due to increasing need for individuals to change jobs, learn new skills, move to new places and make new friends.

A “child-like flexibility of attitudes, behaviors and knowledge” is probably adaptive to the increased instability of the modern world, Charlton believes. Formal education now extends well past physical maturity, leaving students with minds that are, he said, “unfinished.”

Psshh. Whatever. I’m taking my toys and going home.

Festo’s Bionic Fish
Eighty-one companies at the annual Hanover Fair in Germany competed for the prestigious Hermes Award for pioneering technology, which comes with a purse of 100,000 euros. The Hermes finalists were selected by a jury, but the people’s choice appears to have been the Airacuda, a pneumatically powered fish that dove, turned and swam like its biological antecedents. It drew a steady stream of engineers who came to watch it swim in its 60,000-liter aquarium.

Designed by Festo’s Bionic Learning Network, the Airacuda’s key technology is Festo’s pneumatic muscle — a flexible hose made of rubber reinforced with aramid fiber. When pressurized, the muscle diameter expands and its length contracts about 20 percent. The contraction generates power. Festo runs two muscles along the fish’s flanks to its tail. Pressurizing one while depressurizing the other swishes the tail and drives the fish.

“The inventiveness behind [Festo's] bionic products seems to remind engineers why they went into the profession in the first place,” says an article in June’s Mechanical Engineering.

Oracle CEO Who Promised $115bl Gift…Had Fingers Crossed Behind His Back
Earlier this week came confirmation that Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison rescinded a gift of $115 million he planned to give to Harvard University.

Ellison’s promise to Harvard last year raised eyebrows in the philanthropic community because it would have been the school’s largest single contribution, reports Forbes. The donation would have created a global health foundation named after the software company’s founder.

Ellison, whose estimated net worth is $16 billion, purportedly canceled the gift because Lawrence H. Summers stepped down as Harvard’s president this month after a stormy tenure at the university.

Breaking! Breaking!
Beer is healthier for you than wine!

A beer specialist has told food scientists that a swift ale is a better choice than fermented grape juice for health-conscious booze hounds, reports The Register.

At the Institute of Food Technologists annual meeting this week, Professor Charles Bamforth said:

Beer, if you looked at it holistically, is healthier than wine. But it is not perceived that way.

He cited the soluble fiber, vitamin B12, folic acid, niacin and antioxidants present in “The Drink That Built An Empire,” and that the hard liquor component of beer has the same magic artery-unblocking prowess as in wine, too.

HAL 9000 Close to Reality
An “emotionally aware” computer system designed to read people’s minds by analyzing expressions will be featured at a major London exhibition, reports BBC News.

The computer’s designers say there are potential commercial uses, such as “picking the right time to sell someone something,” as well as helping to improve driver safety and help people with autism.

The computer, which is connected to a camera, locates and tracks 24 facial “feature points” such as the edge of the nose, the eyebrows and the corners of the mouth. A total of 20 key facial movements — including a nod or shake of the head, a raise of the eyebrow or a pull on the corner of the mouth — have been identified.

Combinations of these movements, which are thought to represent underlying emotions, are then fed into software and used to detect the same facial combinations in real-life situations.

I’ll Tell You What This Parking Ticket REALLY is!
A Detroit-area computer programmer who wrote three curse words on a personal check to pay a parking ticket was given a choice: apologize for scrawling profanity on the check he sent to the court to cover the parking ticket, or have a district judge pursue contempt of court charges, reports The Detroit News.

Rob Militzer, who received a ticket for parking illegally on a street in May, said he didn’t want to be subject to court costs and fines and maybe even jail time — he could have faced 30 days in jail or $250. So, while not really saying “I’m sorry,” he said he regretted that the court took offense at the words “bullsh** money grab” on the memo portion of the $10 check and agreed to write a fresh check.

In exchange, Berkley District Judge William Sauer on Wednesday said he would dismiss the order.

Militzer maintained that there weren’t signs prohibiting overnight parking.

We’ll Only Almost Die.
An asteroid possibly as large as a half-mile or more in diameter is rapidly approaching the Earth. While no collision is in the offing, the space rock will make an exceptionally close approach to our planet early on Monday, July 3, passing just beyond the Moon’s average distance from Earth.

The discomfortingly close asteroid, designated 2004 XP14, was discovered on Dec. 10, 2004 by the Lincoln Laboratory Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR). Based on its brightness, the diameter is believed to be somewhere in the range of 1,345 to 3,018 feet — that’s between a quarter mile and just over a half-mile wide.

At its closest, the asteroid should be less than 300,000 miles away.

Due to the proximity of its orbit to Earth and its estimated size, this object has been classified as a “Potentially Hazardous Asteroid” (PNA) by the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Apparently — and this news doesn’t sit well with us — there are currently 783 PNAs.

A Cornucopia of World Cup Science
Like John Mahoney over at the Popular Science blog, this blogger simply cannot get enough of the World Cup (if you have not already noticed). As such, and via the PopSciBlog, we echo Mahoney’s sentiment when we direct you toward a “trove of Cup-related goodness from our friends at NewScientist.com.” New Scientist has assembled a number of football- soccer-related studies and papers that we at IMT somehow missed.

At New Scientist, you’ll find the following: a mathematical study that confirms why the game is the world’s most exciting sport; mathematical formulas that promise to predict the overall winner ahead of time; a sound system that confuses a crowd so much that they become unable to carry on shouting/chanting in unison; why teams that wear red have the best chance of winning; why we humans may never be able to accurately make offsides calls and so much more.

A Backyard Zamboni / Snow Blower / Lawnmower / Lawn Fertilizer
Here’s the ultimate outdoor backyard dream machine for ice lovers — the backyard Zamboni.

According to The Associated Press, Damian Renzello, who invented the Porta-Rinx, a backyard portable ice skating rink kit, and the Bambini, a pull-behind ice resurfacing unit, now offers the Bambini Revolution, an all-purpose machine that can serve as a snow blower, lawnmower AND liquid fertilizer for the yard.

AP reports the man has mounted a snow blower on the front of a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle, added an ice scraper blade underneath and mounted a water tank connected to pipes and hoses that lays down a film of water to create a glass-like finish to outdoor ice. It will clear snow, scrape ice smooth and leave a layer of water on the ice to bring it to a glassy finish. The scraper blade smooths the bumps from ice and pipes release heated water that bonds to the existing ice, leaving a smooth skating surface as it hardens.

The machine will sell for about $30,000 — well worth it, we say… if you have a yard (which excludes pretty everyone else here in the NYC area).

New Telecom Bill a ‘Rewrite’ of World’s Oldest Existing Telecom Law
The new telecommunications bill before Sen. Ted Stevens’ Senate Commerce Committee this week has been touted as reform of the cable-franchise laws. But it is much, much more, says a special guest editorial in The Seattle Times this week. “The bill is really a wholesale rewrite of the Telecommunications Act of 1934, the world’s oldest existing telecom law,” the writer puts forth. “It is probably the most important piece of legislation the Congress will take up this session.”

Under Stevens’ bill, the telecoms will be able to split Internet access into premium lanes, “segregating access to customers based on the content, origin and purpose of the data or bits.”

Amazon will have to pay the network operator for access to customers, finally legitimating the dream of telecom executives to tax the eyeblinks of every user. Apple will have to pay the networks to allow its customers to download iTunes music and video. If it chooses, the network can simply block iTunes music or Amazon book purchases, redirecting customers to another service the network operator prefers.

The telecom and cable duopoly argues that it is necessary to impose a monopoly business model on the Internet in order to generate enough profits to upgrade the existing infrastructure and roll out new advanced services to the public. To date, the U.S. government has provided more than $200 billion to these companies as an incentive to upgrade their networks to the international norm. Meanwhile, the duopoly enjoys below-market rates for tunneling under the sidewalks and streets, or hanging its wires in front of views. Yet the public has seen no competition worth writing home about, and the network operators shut out the many thousands of companies that tried to provide competition in the past 10 years.

Says the special editorial:

The purpose of Stevens’ bill is not to bring competition in cable TV or the Internet. There has never been any barrier to local competition, except the desire to compete. The purpose of the bill is to roll back the middling efforts at competition that Congress has enacted over the past two decades. The purpose of the bill is to roll back the middling efforts at competition that Congress has enacted over the past two decades.

In the end, the telecom bill “would leave U.S. lagging behind rest of world.”

If your Fourth of July celebrating begins today, enjoy your holiday weekend. If, however, you’re like us at the IMT blog, we’ll catch you on Monday (But nonetheless, enjoy your weekend!). Cheers.