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X Prizes for DNA, Nanotech, Autos, Education
An anonymous reader writes "Larry Page and Craig Venter are now on the X Prize Board of Trustees, and Peter Diamandis, the man behind the $10 million space prize, said new X prizes are in the works for innovations in automobiles, education, nanotech and DNA reseach. Diamandis, from the article: "Why do we still drive cars that use an internal combustion engine and only get 30 miles per gallon? I think that we'll see some amazing achievements in this area." This is in addition to the foundation's incentive to completely decode the DNA of 100 or more people covered earlier on Slashdot."
If there's one thing that confuses me, it's why anyone ever uses the verb "decode" when speaking about DNA.
Funny, because what's been confusing me is why anyone would use the word "decode" when they are speaking of a cipher. Wouldn't you say "decipher" instead?
A code is simply a map from one representation to another, such as:
-map from DNA to protein
-map from book attributes to a Library of Congress number
-map from a packed memory structure to a set of attributes
I'm just kidding about decode not applying to ciphers. Obviously it does. The difference here is that a cipher is a specific type of code where the map from one set to the other is meant to be one-way unless specific requirements are met, such as knowing the key sequence. A code is just a mapping, and doesn't need to be a cipher.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Why do we still drive cars that use an internal combustion engine and only get 30 miles per gallon?
Simple, with our current economy and infrastructure it is more profitable to very influential energy companies this way. And since our current President and Vice President are very close to these energy companies, you will see very little in the way of change.
Let's hope the X-prize will be a catalyst for widespread use of new types of renewable energy.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
When an X-prize is issued using this wording, it really makes me think twice if they really even know what they want done to win the prize.
For what it is worth... in the article, the X-prize folks did NOT use the word "decode" when referring to DNA; they said "sequence". Only the LiveScience.com article writer used the word "decode".
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
"Why do we still drive cars that use an internal combustion engine and only get 30 miles per gallon?"
The question should be: Why do we still drive cars?
Certainly in urban areas this is the most inefficient way of getting people from point a to b.
Check out http://www.carfree.com/ for a non mainstream look at this issue.
This would be a good chance to address real questions and not just come across as another "rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic" type endeavor.
I ride a "Solar Challenge" vehicle to work every day. It's called a bicycle.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
I R'd TFA and they linked to an article describing cars using around 250 miles/gallon.
That figure is kind of misleading since the car described is a plug-in hybrid. The car drove 250 miles using one gallon of gasoline plus an unspecified amount of coal burned to generate the electricity to charge its batteries...
I have a fluid mechanics book that plotted the drag coefficients of different car designs from the Model T to a modern car from 1998 or so (when the book was published, showing basically an inverse exponential curve that started sluffing off in the 70's. It then showed a car that had a much lower drag coefficient that was "the highest theoretical" that was "possible as soon as consumers showed an interest". Its drag coefficient was half the amount of the current generation car. Halving drag would lower fuel consumption by a good amount. But the consumers won't buy into it yet. Consumers drive the market and like the parent said except for a vocal minority the majority of consumers are content where they are at.
Second, you assume iron is the only metal. Titanium, although hard to extract right now, is not only lighter than steel, it is considerably stronger. This means that it should survive impacts very nicely. Vastly better than steel for the same weight.
Third, you assume that impact resistance requires the vehicle's survival. F1 and Indycar disprove this. You can certainly build vehicles using carbon composites that are designed to shatter, for the explicit purpose of getting energy away from the vehicle's occupant(s). Since a wrecked car is unlikely to be repaired (and even if it is, it'll often be substantially weaker), there is little actual advantage in having the car mostly intact but unusable anyway.
Fourth, you assume that car bodies are particularly efficient. Many have a lot of drag (which is why cyclists have topped 100 mph by staying close behind cars), the underbody is covered in pipes and gaps creating all kinds of nasty airflows, etc. You also only need significant grip when accelerating (that includes cornering, as it's a change in velocity, and emergency manoevers). If you're going in a straight line at uniform speed, you only have to overcome air resistance, and that's not going to require a whole lot.
This is not to say that you can build a car that can take advantage of all - or indeed any - of these characteristics. If it's not been done, there is no proof it can be done. However, a lack of proof is not proof of lack. All it proves is that nobody has (yet) established what the "ultimate" car would actually be - even in theory.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Yeah, it's not like car manufacturers haven't spent any money on research in that area (*cough*tens of billions*cough*).
Sheesh, it is astoundingly naive to believe that a mere 10 million dollar prize is going to bring about some "magic motor" that is far more fuel efficient than what we have. Some of the smartest engineers in the world have been working on the problem for at least four decades.
Space is different -- there isn't much of a direct economic incentive to get to space, so giving out a prize for a relatively useless stunt made a little bit of sense. But there is already an immense economic incentive to produce a fuel-efficient motor. The patent on something like that would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars (if not billions).
While they're at it, why don't they offer a prize for human-level AI. I hear no one has been working on that, either. ::rolls eyes::
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.