Ancient boat just won't float

After first failure, Penn Museum curator to set out again on Bronze Age boat
By Zoe Tillman
Daily Pennsylvanian
http://www.dailypennsylvanian.com.
September 27, 2005

Anthropology professor Gregory Possehl's boat currently rests 6,000 feet beneath the Arabian Sea.
After only hours on the water, the Magan III, a 40-foot boat made of reeds and bitumen -- a tar-like substance -- began sinking as heavy winds rocked the craft and water spilled over the sides.

"At 8:30, I heard the boat was in trouble, and at about 10 to nine I heard the boat had sunk," said Possehl, curator of the University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology's Asian section.

Possehl was quick to add that no one on board was harmed, since the Magan III, although meant to be a replica of an ancient vessel, was equipped with a life boat and life jackets.

The Magan III's journey began earlier that day -- Sept. 7 -- at a harbor in Sur, Oman.

After boarding a ship belonging to the sultan of Oman, Possehl and his colleagues -- Maurizio Tosi, Serge Cleuziou and Tom Vosmer -- watched as "the boat was towed out of Sur harbor into the open sea with eight people on board."

For the first few hours, Possehl recalled, the sea was calm. By 5 p.m., though, the wind picked up and the boat began to quickly take on water.

Sensing the boat's imminent fate, the crew abandoned the ship and its contents -- which included a traditional complement of dates, dried fish, honey and water.

The abrupt end of the Magan III's journey brought Possehl back to Penn.

In retrospect, Possehl blamed the boat's demise on "a design flaw that further sea trials may have discovered."

The idea of building a boat to replicate the journey of ancient mariners from Oman to India first began in 1995. An excavation in Oman that was part of the Joint Hadd Project -- an archaeological project which studies the easternmost tip of Saudi Arabia-- found 200 pieces of bitumen covered with sea barnacles.

Indus civilization pottery carbon-dated to 2400 B.C. was found with the bitumen, suggesting that sea trade been conducted throughout the Arabian Sea at that date.

To prove this theory, Possehl, Vosmer and Joint Hadd Project co-directors Tosi and Cleuziou -- curator of maritime history at Australia's Perth Museum -- took a hands-on approach and began building boat models based on existing archaeological data.

Possehl stressed the authenticity of the boats.

"We made our own rope, gathered our own reed, made our own sail from woven wool, and we imported the bitumen from Iraq."

After they successfully built and and tested two earlier versions of the craft, the Magans I and II, the government of Oman approached Possehl and his colleagues in February 2005 with an offer to fund the construction of a full-sized model, the since-lost Magan III.

Despite the Magan III's unsuccessful voyage, Possehl was confident that this was not the last time such a project would be attempted. Plans are already under way, he said, for the construction of the Magan IV and V.

Shoe Leather as a Renewable Resource: Penn Biologists Invent Power-Generating Backpack

From the Penn Office of University Communications
September 08, 2005

PHILADELPHIA -- If you already have a little spring in your
step, a team of biologists at the University of Pennsylvania
would like to put it to good use by adding a few more
springs in the form of a power-generating backpack. Details
of their prototype "Suspended-load Backpack" were announced
today in the journal Science. The device converts mechanical
energy from walking into electricity up to 7.4 Watts more
than enough energy to power a number of portable electronic
devices at once.

"As efficient as batteries have gotten, they still tend to
be heavy. Field researchers, for example, have to carry many
replacement batteries to power their equipment, which take
up a lot of weight and space in the pack," said Larry Rome,
a professor in Penn's Department of Biology. "The
Suspended-load Backpack could help anyone with a need for
power on the go, including researchers, soldiers, disaster
relief-workers or someone just looking to keep a mobile
phone charged during a long trek."

Although "biologist" might seem like an unlikely job title
for a mechanical inventor, Rome has found his study of
muscular systems of locomotion to be directly applicable to
the work. During the war in Afghanistan, the Office of Naval
Research approached Rome to develop a means to assist
over-burdened soldiers who must carry as much as 20 pounds
of spare batteries required to power high-tech equipment
such as global positioning systems, communications and night
vision devices. A typical soldier already marches into the
battlefield carrying 80 pounds of gear, so Rome sought a way
to capture the mechanical energy of marching in order to
charge a lightweight rechargeable battery that could replace
all the spares.

The Suspended-load Backpack is based on a rigid frame pack,
much like the type familiar to hikers everywhere; however,
rather than being rigidly attached to the frame, the sack
carrying the load is suspended from the frame by vertically
oriented springs. It is the vertical movement of the
backpack contents that provides the mechanical energy to
drive a small generator mounted on the frame.

Previous efforts to solve dilemma of the over-burdened
soldier incorporated devices placed in the heels of boots.
According to Rome, however, little mechanical work is
actually done at the point where the boots hit the ground.

"As humans walk, they vault over their extended leg, causing
the hip to rise 5-7 centimeters on each step. Since the
backpack is connected to the hip, it to must be lifted 5-7
centimeters," Rome said. "It is this vertical movement of
the backpack that ultimately powers electricity
generation."

The amount of power generated depends on how much weight is
in the pack and how fast the wearer walks. The Penn
researchers tested packs with loads of 40 to 80 pounds and
found that the wearer could constantly generate as much as
7.4 Watts while moving at a steady clip. Typically, cell
phones or even night vision goggles require less than one
Watt to power.

Contrary to what might be expected, wearing the
Suspended-load Backpack does not use up much more metabolic
energy than walking while wearing a conventional backpack of
the same weight. According to Rome and his colleagues, it is
likely that wearers can change their stride to compensate
for movement of the load, which makes walking more
efficient.

"Metabolically speaking, we've found this to be much cheaper
than we anticipated. The energy you exert could be offset by
carrying an extra snack, which is nothing compared to weight
of extra batteries," Rome said. "Pound for pound, food
contains about 100-fold more energy than batteries."

Penn researchers involved in development and testing of the
Suspended-load Backpack at the Rome laboratory at Penn
include Louis Flynn, an engineer, and postdoctoral fellows
Evan M. Goldman and Taeseung D. Yoo. Funding for this
research comes from the Office of Naval Research and the
National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin
Diseases of the National Institutes of Health.

Robotic Vehicles Race, but Innovation Wins

The New York Times
September 14, 2005
By JOHN MARKOFF

FLORENCE, Ariz. - Cresting a hill on a gravel road at a brisk 20 miles an hour, a driverless, computer-controlled Volkswagen Touareg plunges smartly into a swale. When its laser guidance system spots an overhanging limb, it lurches violently left and right before abruptly swerving off the road.

With their robotic Touareg, known as Stanley, impaled in the brush, the two passengers - Sebastian Thrun and Michael Montemerlo, both Stanford computer scientists - pull off their crash helmets and scramble out to untangle the machine.

A quick survey reveals that the sport utility vehicle is covered with debris, but the bug-eyed laser, radar and optical vision system on top of the vehicle is undamaged. So Stanley and its passengers continue on their way, over 50 miles of dirt road through a cactus-covered landscape, in the final weeks of preparation for the second round of the Pentagon's great race.

It has been almost 18 months since the Pentagon's research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, first attracted a motley array of autonomous vehicles with a prize of $1 million for the first to complete a 142-mile desert course from Barstow, Calif., to Las Vegas. The most successful robot, developed by a Carnegie Mellon University team, managed all of seven miles.

With the next running scheduled for Oct. 8 - and this time a $2 million purse for the winner among 43 entries - it is clear that many of the participants have made vast progress. For some researchers, it is an indication of a significant transformation in what has been largely a science fiction fantasy.

"Computers are starting to sprout legs and move around in the environment," said Andy Rubin, a Silicon Valley technologist and a financial backer of this year's Stanford Racing Team, which produced Stanley. Mr. Rubin, who tinkers with robots himself, was the co-founder of Danger Inc., which created the Sidekick hand-held.

The Pentagon agency, known as Darpa, struck upon the idea of a race - calling it the Grand Challenge - as a way to stimulate innovations useful in battlefield applications like unmanned logistics vehicles.

For the two Stanford scientists, however, the Grand Challenge is about something larger. "The military are interested in more potent weapons, and by itself that's a bad answer," said Mr. Thrun, a roboticist and director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. His broader goal is to advance robotics as a science and explore applications ranging from aids for the elderly to basic advances in intelligent computerized systems.

Several years ago, when Mr. Thrun was a professor at Carnegie Mellon and Mr. Montemerlo was a graduate student, they helped develop a prototype of a mobile robotic companion for the home that used natural-language voice commands and was able to provide useful information taken from the Internet like weather and television schedules.

There are a myriad of other possible applications for their software, which can reason about the immediate environment; distinguish sky from ground, road and trees; and make lightning-quick decisions.

Already in the automotive industry, intelligent cruise control has become more adept at automatically maintaining the spacing between cars, and intelligent lane-change and collision-avoidance software is close to being a reality. Robots are routinely used in manufacturing, and in Japan a three-foot-tall "house sitter" robot that can recognize 10,000 words and 10 different faces will go on sale in September, offered by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

In the Darpa contest, though, the proving ground is not the home but the desert. And several of the contestants, who range from garage hackers to teams from giant automotive and aerospace corporations, say this year's course is expected to be even more difficult than last year's.

The exact course will be secret until just hours before the event begins, but Darpa officials are said to believe that the original test was too much an exercise in automatically following global positioning satellite "bread crumbs" - the data points outlining the route that are given to the contestants shortly before the race begins.

So this year the course is likely to include unexpected man-made obstacles and other hurdles that would be trivial for a human driver, but vexing for the computer-controlled navigational systems that are at the heart of the technical challenge the Pentagon has laid out.

Despite the added complexity, there is a widespread expectation among robotics researchers that this time the course will be completed.

The machines, many of which wandered seemingly randomly in the desert last year, have benefited from more than a year's experience as well as a significant rush in improvement in every aspect of robotic vehicle technology. And on a hot August day in the desert here, it was clear that the field of artificial intelligence has made significant strides.

The increasing power of the technology was evident during the testing of the Stanford Racing Team's robotic Touareg, which looks unexceptional from the outside except for a festoon of sensors and the slogan "Drivers Not Required" on its side, a play on Volkswagen's "Drivers Needed" slogan.

Stanley was able to complete a 47-mile dirt-road course here - strewn with potholes, tight turns, puddles and lined with boulders, foot-high berms and cactuses - with only two "incidents," which in Mr. Thrun's scientific vernacular is when his robot does something unplanned, like leaving the road.

When their Touareg swerved abruptly in a roadside thicket, the team was quite certain why.

The previous evening Mr. Thrun had persuaded Mr. Montemerlo to remove an irritating software module, which forced the car to brake rapidly after swerving to avoid an obstacle. Without the module, at speed the Touareg fishtailed on the desert road and plunged into the brush before Mr. Thrun, sitting in the driver's seat with his hand on a large red "E-Stop" button, could react.

Back inside the Touareg, Mr. Montemerlo, seated in the rear seat with a laptop computer that is networked to the seven mobile Intel Pentium processors that comprise Stanley's control logic, fiddles with the software and reinserts the problematic code. Now the vehicle will behave more cautiously, although the hard braking will be a little uncomfortable for its human passengers.

[After fixing two software bugs, the Stanford team managed to put Stanley through the entire test course on Sept. 7 without crashing.]

In the actual race, of course, there will be no passengers along for the ride. The teams will be able to follow a short distance behind, but will have no communication with their vehicles.

For the two researchers, who have been leading a team of 60 developers from Stanford and Volkswagen, the hiccup is all part of the process of trying to create machines that can mimic what human drivers do effortlessly.

The challenge is heightened by the obvious rivalry that the two scientists feel with their alma mater, Carnegie Mellon. This year, the Carnegie Mellon Red Team - led by the roboticist William L. Whittaker, known to all as Red - is testing two robotic vehicles, Sandstorm and H1ghlander, in the Nevada desert.

With an array of sponsors including Caterpillar, Intel, Boeing, Harris, Google, and Hummer's manufacturer, AM General, Mr. Whittaker's team is once again the favorite.

For decades Mr. Whittaker has been one of the most passionate advocates of robotic vehicles. Despite being bitterly disappointed last year, when Sandstorm edged off the course after almost completing the most difficult section of the route, he is confident that more than one team will succeed this year.

"I would love it if the high school kids won this year," he said, in a reference to a team from Palos Verdes High School in California, which is backed by Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Analog Devices, Goodyear and others.

Whether or not one of the vehicles arrives at the finish line this year, Mr. Whittaker says the credibility problems that have dogged the field are largely in the past.

Of the event, which will begin this year near a rough-and-tumble bar south of Barstow, he said, "I don't know whether it's going to be more like Lindbergh landing in Paris or more like Woodstock."

Watching what you surf

from the Daily Pennsylvanian op-ed page
September 12, 2005

If your Internet comes from Penn, be aware that the University may have the capability of tracking what you look at online. Last week's formal introduction of NetReg, a system linking unique computer addresses to user accounts, marked a step toward increased surveillance of Penn's Internet traffic.
Every Web site request, each e-mail, could theoretically be traced, along with data on network usage habits and other information about users' computers.

While there is no immediate cause for concern -- Penn has not stated any intent to track each student's Net use -- the current technology would certainly allow for that should the University choose.

And Penn has not explicitly said it won't be keeping track of this data, creating serious concerns over online privacy.

The NetReg system is billed as a security measure to combat viruses and the like from spreading. While that seems perfectly valid, it ought to be set as a matter of policy that Penn will only use the system for security.

In the Internet age, many companies have adopted systems which monitor and restrict Web access for their employees. Most of these policies have been upheld by courts chiefly because the online activity occurs while employees are at work on company time.

This situation is different in that these Internet connections are residential, hence the name ResNet. Sure Penn owns the network, and has a vested interest in protecting it. But that must not come at the expense of the privacy of thousands of tenants who reside in the University's residences.

One key mandate that has come from the court system has been that firms who keep tabs on their employees' network usage must clearly spell out their policies.

Penn should follow this example. Whatever action the University takes, it needs to be absolutely clear with its users about what information is collected and how it will be used.

As an institution of free thought and higher learning, Penn should not at any point assume the role of Internet nanny.

In Europe, High-Tech Flood Control, With Nature's Help

September 6, 2005
In Europe, High-Tech Flood Control, With Nature's Help
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
On a cold winter night in 1953, the Netherlands suffered a terrifying blow as old dikes and seawalls gave way during a violent storm.

Flooding killed nearly 2,000 people and forced the evacuation of 70,000 others. Icy waters turned villages and farm districts into lakes dotted with dead cows.

Ultimately, the waters destroyed more than 4,000 buildings.

Afterward, the Dutch - realizing that the disaster could have been much worse, since half the country, including Amsterdam and Rotterdam, lies below sea level - vowed never again.

After all, as Tjalle de Haan, a Dutch public works official, put it in an interview last week, "Here, if something goes wrong, 10 million people can be threatened."

So at a cost of some $8 billion over a quarter century, the nation erected a futuristic system of coastal defenses that is admired around the world today as one of the best barriers against the sea's fury - one that could withstand the kind of storm that happens only once in 10,000 years.

The Dutch case is one of many in which low-lying cities and countries with long histories of flooding have turned science, technology and raw determination into ways of forestalling disaster.

London has built floodgates on the Thames River. Venice is doing the same on the Adriatic.

Japan is erecting superlevees. Even Bangladesh has built concrete shelters on stilts as emergency havens for flood victims.

Experts in the United States say the foreign projects are worth studying for inspiration about how to rebuild New Orleans once the deadly waters of Hurricane Katrina recede into history.

"They have something to teach us," said George Z. Voyiadjis, head of civil and environmental engineering at Louisiana State University. "We should capitalize on them for building the future here."

Innovations are happening in the United States as well. California is experimenting with "smart" levees wired with nervous systems of electronic sensors that sound alarms if a weakening levee threatens to open a breach, giving crews time to make emergency repairs.

"It's catching on," said William F. Kane, president of Kane GeoTech Inc., a company in Stockton, Calif., that wires levees and other large structures with failure sensors. "There's a lot of potential for this kind of thing."

While scientists hail the power of technology to thwart destructive forces, they note that flood control is a job for nature at least as much as for engineers. Long before anyone built levees and floodgates, barrier islands were serving to block dangerous storm surges. Of course, those islands often fall victim to coastal development.

"You'll never be able to control nature," said Rafael L. Bras, an environmental engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who consults on the Venetian project. "The best way is to understand how nature works and make it work in our favor."

In humanity's long struggle against the sea, the Dutch experience in 1953 was a grim milestone. The North Sea flood produced the kind of havoc that became all too familiar on the Gulf Coast last week. When a crippled dike threatened to give way and let floodwaters spill into Rotterdam, a boat captain - like the brave little Dutch boy with the quick finger - steered his vessel into the breach, sinking his ship and saving the city.

"We were all called upon to collect clothes and food for the disaster victims," recalled Jelle de Boer, a Dutch high school student at the time who is now an emeritus professor of geology at Wesleyan University. "Cows were swimming around. They'd stand when they could, shivering and dying. It was a terrible mess."

The reaction was intense and manifold. Linking offshore islands with dams, seawalls and other structures, the Dutch erected a kind of forward defensive shield, drastically reducing the amount of vulnerable coastline. Mr. de Haan, director of the water branch of the Road and Hydraulic Engineering Institute of the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, said the project had the effect of shortening the coast by more than 400 miles.

For New Orleans, experts say, a similar forward defense would seal off Lake Pontchartrain from the Gulf of Mexico. That step would eliminate a major conduit by which hurricanes drive storm surges to the city's edge - or, as in the case of Katrina, through the barriers.

The Dutch also increased the height of their dikes, which now loom as much as 40 feet above the churning sea. (In New Orleans, the tallest flood walls are about half that size.) The government also erected vast complexes of floodgates that close when the weather turns violent but remain open at other times, so saltwater can flow into estuaries, preserving their ecosystems and the livelihoods that depend on them.

The Netherlands maintains large teams of inspectors and maintenance crews that safeguard the sprawling complex, which is known as Delta Works. The annual maintenance bill is about $500 million. "It's not cheap," Mr. de Haan said. "But it's not so much in relation to the gross national product. So it's a kind of insurance."

The 1953 storm also pounded Britain. Along the Thames, flooding killed more than 300 people, ruined farmland and frightened Londoners, whose central city narrowly escaped disaster.

The British responded with a plan to better regulate tidal surges sweeping up the Thames from the North Sea. Engineers designed an attractive barrier meant to minimize interference with the river's natural flow. It went into service in 1982 at Woolwich, about 10 miles east of central London.

Normally, its semicircular gates lie flush to the riverbed in concrete supporting sills, creating no obstacle to river traffic. When the need arises, the gates pivot up, rising as high as a five-story building to block rising waters. The authorities have raised the Thames barrier more than 80 times.

In Venice, the precipitating event was a 1966 flood that caused wide damage and economic loss. The upshot was an ambitious plan known as the Moses Project, named after the biblical parting of the Red Sea. Its 78 gargantuan gates would rest on the floor of the Adriatic Sea and rise when needed to block dangerous tidal surges.

Long debate over the project's merits repeatedly delayed the start of construction until May 2003. Opponents claim that the $4.5 billion effort will prove ineffective while threatening to kill the fragile lagoon in which Venice sits. In theory, the gates are to be completed by 2010.

"People fight doing things like this," said Dr. Bras, of M.I.T. "But when disaster strikes you realize how important it is to think ahead."

Planners did just that in Bangladesh after a 1991 hurricane created huge storm surges that killed more than 130,000 people. World charities helped build hundreds of concrete shelters on stilts, which in recent storms have saved thousands of lives.

In Japan, a continuous battle against flooding in dense urban areas has produced an effort to develop superlevees. Unlike the customary mounds of earth, sand and rock that hold back threatening waters, they are broad expanses of raised land meant to resist breaks and withstand overflows.

The approach being tried in California relies on a technology known as time-domain reflectometry. It works on the same principle as radar: a pulse of energy fired down a coaxial cable bounces back when it reaches the end or a distortion, like a bend or crimp.

Careful measurement of the echoes traveling back along the cable can disclose serious distortions and danger. Dr. Kane, of Kane GeoTech, has installed such a system in the Sacramento River delta, along a levee that is threatening to fail.

Could such a system have saved New Orleans? "It would have given them more information," said Charles H. Dowding, a top expert on the technology at Northwestern University. "The failure of a levee would have been detected." But experts say it is still unclear whether such a warning would have been enough to prevent the catastrophic breaches.

Dr. Bras says sensor technologies for detecting levee failure hold much promise. But he adds that less glamorous approaches, like regular maintenance, may be even more valuable, since prevention is always the best cure.

"We have to learn that things have to be reviewed, revised, maintained and repaired as needed," he said. "To see a city like New Orleans suffer such devastation - some of that was preventable."

He added that no matter how ambitious the coastal engineering, no matter how innovative and well maintained, the systems of levees, seawalls and floodgates were likely to suffer sporadic failures.

"Nature will throw big things at us once in a while," he said. "There's always the possibility that nature will trump us."