Tech Talk

Slowly and ploddingly, the United States and India are approaching the grim conclusion of a nuclear deal thatâ''s been two years in the making.

The two countries recently ironed out the grittier details of the agreement, which included allowing India to enrich uranium imported from the United Statesâ''terms that were once not so generous, in earlier drafts of the agreement.

Most problematically, India never became a signatory to the international nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Signatories are allowed to exchange nuclear technology and materials with each other, while those who pursued nuclear programs outside the treaty were shunned. So, as many critics of the deal have noted, giving India preferential status basically strips the treaty of its power.

And, of course, the terms of the deal make it easier for India to pursue nuclear weapons by supplying much-needed fuel for the reactors. Proponents have argued that the deal will provide a much-needed boost to its civilian nuclear energy program. But less closely examined is how this will all play out inside India. As nuclear expert M. V. Ramana wrote in a July Spectrum feature, India has consistently fallen short on its attempts to pursue nuclear energy as an answer to its chronic electricity problems. Despite several decades of government support, a mere 3% of the country's electricity is generated at nuclear plants.

There are still obstacles that could derail the treaty. The U.S. Congress still has to approve it, and the Nuclear Suppliers Group also has to sign off. It is sure to be a bumpy road.

The U.S. space agency said today that the countdown to the launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour on Wednesday evening is "progressing smoothly" -- while its crew asked the American public for their support of the work astronauts do in space.

Now scheduled for a 6:40 pm (EDT) lift-off, after a delay to adjust a leaky pressure valve pushed the mission back 24 hours, the flight known as STS-118 will set its sights on delivering a third starboard-side mechanical truss to the International Space Station (ISS). It will also carry a teacher into space, in the first attempt to successfully carry out the ill-fated quest of educator Christa McAuliffe, who perished in the failure of the Challenger orbiter in January 1986.

Earlier today, NASA Test Director Jeff Spaulding said, "Work continues to go well. At this point, we are on schedule and are tracking no significant issues."

STS-118 will be the first flight for Endeavour since 2002 and the 22nd shuttle flight to the ISS overall. It will also be the first mission for Mission Specialist Barbara Morgan, the teacher-turned-astronaut whose association with NASA began more than 20 years ago, according to the space agency. Morgan served as the crew backup to McAuliffe in the original Teacher in Space Project begun in 1985. She has been in training as an astronaut candidate off and on ever since (becoming a full-time NASA employee in 1998). Only now has NASA determined that conditions are favorable to resume the educational project.

The STS-118 mission of the Endeavour will be helmed by Commander Scott J. Kelly (USN). In addition to Kelly and Morgan (who taught elementary school earlier in her career) the crew consists of: Lt. Col. Charles O. Hobaugh (USMC); Richard A. Mastracchio (NASA); Dr. Dave Williams (Canadian Space Agency); Tracy E. Caldwell; and Benjamin Alvin Drew.

At a press conference on Saturday, Morgan said, "It's great to be here. We thank everybody, and we especially thank my colleagues in education all across the country."

Rookie mission specialist Caldwell added: "None of this would be possible without the support of the American people. Because of that we are truly grateful and forever indebted. Take pride in ownership, because this program belongs to you."

People have been worrying about what dangers nanoparticles may pose to humans as nanotechnology evolves.

Last week, an Australian research study was made public that implied that certain laser printers (including models popular in the US) release ultrafine particles hazardous to our health.

Lidia Morawska of the Queensland University of Technology, along with colleagues in Australia, reported in the August 1 issue of Environmental Science & Technology that some laser printers release ultrafine particles of toner-like material into the air. If people inhale these particles into their lungs, they may pose a health hazard. The researchers looked at 62 printers and classified 17 as "high particle emitters." They think the ultrafine particles come from the toner, which is an ultrafine powder used instead of liquid ink. One of the printers released particles into an experimental chamber at a rate similar to that of a cigarette smoker.

See the ZDNet posting by David Berlind on HP's response:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=5855

I'm going to be on Science Friday today (approximately 2:00 pm in New York City and at various times on NPR affiliates around the country) to talk about the upcoming auctions of spectrum in the 700 MHz band. In preparation of that, I've started an FAQ, which I'll be expanding from time to time. Here's the first cut. -- Steven Cherry

700 MHz FAQ

What is the spectrum?

A total of 84 MHz in and around the 700 MHz band are up for reassignment.

Why is it becoming available?

As part of the conversion to digital TV in 2009, UHF channels 60 to 67 are being freed up. Ultimately, as much as 290 MHz might be freed up by the conversion from analog TV.

What are the frequencies, Kenneth?

24 MHz will be devoted to emergency services, police, fire, ambulance, and so forth. From an FCC information page:

In 1998, the FCC adopted service rules for the 24 megahertz of spectrum in the 764-776/794-806 MHz frequency bands (collectively, the 700 MHz band). At the direction of Congress, this spectrum was reallocated from television broadcast services to public safety communications services. It will be available as soon as existing TV stations vacate the spectrum.

GigaOM has a nice explanation:

The 700 MHz band is divided into two categories â'' the lower 700 MHz band and the upper 700 MHz band. The lower band is 48 MHz while upper band is 60 MHz.

In 2002, FCC re-allocated the 698-746 MHz band (Lower 700 MHz band) that was originally used by TV Channels 52-59. The upper band was for TV Channels 60-69. The reallocations come as FCC pushes hard for the television business to transition to DTV.

How important is new spectrum?

Very. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has this to say:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce advocates for the allocation of additional spectrum for innovative wireless services. A conservative analysis reveals that just 200 MHz of additional spectrum would lower per-minute wireless charges by about 50% and would lead to a 95% increase in usage by wireless customers.

Why is this spectrum especially valuable?

Basically, the lower the band, the better the propagation. That means a signal that can punch through an outside building wall, and hopefully interior walls as well. You know how bad cellular service can become once youâ''re indoors. Thatâ''s because of their frequencies, generally 1.7 GHz (that is, 1700 MHz) or higher. Similarly, Wi-Fi has trouble punching through walls to get outside of a building. Wi-Fi operates at 2.4 GHz.

In a whitepaper, Aloha Partners, a telecommunications company, says this:

Each tower broadcasting at 700MHz can cover twice as large an area as a transmitter broadcasting at 1900MHz spectrum (and four times as large an area as a transmitter broadcasting at 2500MHz WiFi spectrum). Thus, it is far less expensive to construct new networks with 700 MHz spectrum than with 1900 or 2500 MHz spectrum. Moreover, the 700MHz auction will be for six large regional blocks that will make it easy for new entrants to create a national footprint.

How much will it go for?

The bidding will start at $6.4 billion. Most estimates of where it will end up are in the neighborhood of $15 billion. As far back as 1994, the U.S. Department of Commerce employs game theoreticians and auction specialists to maximize the return for the U.S. Treasury. Even so, there are charges that the 2006 auction was gamed by the winners.

Aloha Partners, which already owns 12 MHz in the 700 MHz band, and plans to be one of the bidders in this auction, says $20-$30 billion.

When?

Currently the auction is planned for January 2008 or sooner, but even if it starts then, auctions have sometimes been somewhat drawn-out affairs.

When was the last big auction? What happened?

The last big auction was in the summer of 2006. Ars Technica has a good summary:

The US government's big spectrum auction wrapped up yesterday with bids totalling $13.9 billion. Touted as one of the largest spectrum auctions in Federal Communications Commission history, the sale was for 1,122 licenses covering 90MHz of spectrum in the 1710-1755MHz and 2110-2155MHz bands.

Overall, the big winner was T-Mobile. The number four cellular provider snapped up 120 licenses with about $4.2 billion worth of bids. Snagging those licenses, which cover a handful of major metropolitan areas as well as larger regions, was seen as crucial for T-Mobile, which lacks the sheer volume of spectrum larger US providers like Verizon, Cingular, and Sprint Nextel own. The additional spectrum should enable the company to expand its next-generation wireless offerings.

Also doing well was SpectrumCo LLC, a joint venture between Sprint Nextel and cable providers Comcast, Cox, and Time Warner. That spectrum will likely be used to strengthen the position of the cable companies against the likes of Verizon and AT&T with their ability to offer phone service, cellular service, Internet, and television (in a few markets). Expect to see some advertising in the months ahead offering Sprint Nextel cellular service bundled with the usual triple play from the cable companies.

What was Googleâ''s concern for the commercial band?

Google wanted rules set for the use of the commercial bands that would require that any owner allow any device onto their network, and that any application be allowed to run on those devices. They also wanted the band itself to be open, that is to allow others to use it, so long as they did so in an non-interfering way. Thatâ''s how Wi-Fi works, by the way; there are licensed users of the 2.4 GHz band, mostly ham radio operations, but you never hear about them.

So whatâ''s going to happen with the commercial band?

Google got two of their three wishes, the first two.

PHOTO: Harry Goldstein, IEEE Spectrum

A report in todayâ''s Minneapolis Star-Tribune states that the Minnesota Department of Transportation â''last winter considered bolting steel platesâ'' to the trusses on the 35W bridge â''to prevent cracking in fatigued metal,â'' and even went so far as to ask contractors for advice on the best way to accomplish the task.

The move was prompted by the URS Corporation June 2006 report, which recommended â''three equally viableâ'' retrofit approaches:

(1) Steel plating of all 52 fracture critical truss members. This approach will provide member redundancy to each of the identified fracture critical members via additional plates bolted to the existing webs. The critical issue of this approach is to ensure that no new defects are introduced to the existing web plates through drilled holes. This approach is generally most conservative but its relatively high cost may not be justified by the actual levels of stresses the structure experiences [although itâ''s worth noting that the simulation data used to calculate these stress levels might, by URSâ''s own admission, have been inadequate; see Reports on Bridge Condition Raise Questions].

(2) Non-destructive examination (NDE) and removal of all measurable defects at suspected weld details of all 52 fracture critical truss members. The critical issue of this approach is to ensure that no measurable defects are missed by the NDE efforts. The fracture mechanics analysis has indicated that the dimensions of preexisting surface cracks need to be at least one quarter of the web plate thickness in order to grow and subsequently cause member fracture under traffic load. This approach is most cost efficient.

(3) A combination of the above two approaches: steel plating of the 24 more fatigue sensitive membersâ'¿and NDE of the 28 more fracture sensitive members.

As MnDOTâ''s Dan Dorgan said yesterday at a press conference, â''We chose the inspection route.â'' And although Dorgan denies there was dissension among MnDOTâ''s engineers, the Star-Tribune quotes an anonymous source identified only as an â''industry officialâ'' as saying, â''There were people over there [in MnDOT] that were deathly afraid that this kind of tragedy was going to be visited on usâ'¿.There were people in the department that were screaming to have these replaced.â''

from the desk of Senior Editor Jean Kumagai:

Since last month's deadly earthquake in Japan, I've been wondering how the country's automated earthquake early-warning network performed during the magnitude 6.8 event. The early-warning network consists of more than 1000 seismic stations scattered around Japan and is designed to detect the first tremors of an earthquake, calculate the likely source and magnitude, and then broadcast an alert, all within seconds. Depending on how far you are from the epicenter, the alert may give you a brief windowâ''at most tens of secondsâ''to take cover before the full force of the earthquake strikes. The further you are from the epicenter, the longer your lead time.

Yesterday Osamu Kamigaichi of the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) emailed me a brief report on how the EEW system performed. The alerts appeared to go to the appropriate recipients, who in most cases took appropriate action, Kamigaichi wrote. For example, at a construction site in Matsumoto-city, about 170 km from the quake's epicenter, workers responded to the alert by stopping a moving crane. And in Tachikawa-city, near Tokyo, the elevators at a hospital automatically went to the next floor, opened their doors, and informed passengers of the impending temblor.

So why didn't the alerts prevent more casualties and destruction? For one thing, Kamigaichi pointed out, the alerts are at present being distributed to only a limited set of users, including some schools, railroads, and communications companies. Starting this October, though, JMA plans to start broadcasting the alerts to the general public. In the mean time, the government has been trying to educate people so that they donâ''t panic when they hear an alert. The educational campaign still has a ways to go, judging by reactions in Ueda-city, in Nagano prefecture. There, Kamigaichi wrote, the earthquake warning was broadcast to the local community, and some people didn't know how to respond or ignored the alert altogether.

For those closest to the epicenter, the alerts donâ''t provide enough time to react. That was the case at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant, which suffered extensive damage and remains closed. All nuclear power plants in Japan are equipped with their own seismometers, however, and in this case the reactors did shut down automatically.

Early-warning alerts also wonâ''t prevent buildings from collapsing, which accounted for many of the casualties in the 16 July earthquake. You still need stringent building codes and zoning rules. And you probably shouldnâ''t construct nuclear reactors on top of active faults.

Here are some early gleanings from the hundreds of pages of inspection documentation MnDOT have released.

A draft report prepared by the engineering firm URS Corporation in June 2006 emphasizes that Bridge No. 9340 was designed in accordance with the 1961 American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Standard Specifications for Highway Bridges , "which was based on a completely different fatigue design method that was revamped in the 1974 interim edition. The poor fatigue details on the truss spans, particularly those inside the main truss tension chords are difficult to inspect, have raised concerns on the consequence of a possible main truss member failure triggered by a fatigue crack." This concern prompted the Minnesota Department of Transportation to commission the study, which included detailed 3-D finite element analysis models of each of the structural members.

Using the 3-D finite analysis model and another model specified by AASHTO called a fatigue truck (which represents a typical truck in terms of dimension and load to simulate weight-in-motion over a surface) for live load stress analysis, URS engineers determined that the probability for fatigue crack development in crucial parts of the superstructure was very remote.

However...

[T]he fatigue concern should not be completely discounted for the following reasons: (1) the access to the fatigue susceptible details inside the truss sections is very limited for crack inspection at the weld toes and therefore a timely discovery is unlikely to happen should a crack occur for some unusual causes; (2) the length of the welded tabs at the box section diaphrams was specified at 3.5" in length in the original contract plans, which is very close to the lower limit of 4" for the Category E detail. Should a fabrication error or the workmanship modify the detail to the extent that it has the fatigue resistance of a Category E detail, the infinite fatigue life requirement would not be satisfied per the AASHTO Fatigue Guide Specifications; (3) the traffic on the bridge is heavy compared with the average highway bridge and therefore the use of a single fatigue truck may be underestimating the repetitive load effects on the structure.

Just these two paragraphs (found on page 6 of a 299 page report--yep, no sleep for yours truly tonight) raise several crucial questions: Were the areas most likely to fail the hardest to inspect? Were certain structural details--the welds--vulnerable to potential fabrication errors or errors of workmanship that might ultimately contribute to a failure? And finally, was the data being fed into the model used to analyze truck loads on the bridge, which MNDOT's Dorgan pointed out at a press conference today as the biggest single contributor to structural fatigue, have been, well, off?

By the way, the Wikipedia entry on the collapse is pretty good just 30 hours after the event.

"The security mechanisms provided for all systems analyzed were inadequate to ensure accuracy and integrity of the election results and of the systems that provide those results."

-- Principal investigator Matt Bishop, a computer science professor at the University of California, Davis

California and Ohio are back in the news with election problems, California with evoting machines, Ohio with, well, everything.

CNet reported yesterday that a five-week study in California of electronic voting machines made by the three major manufacturers showed what we already knew:

testers were able to overwrite at least some of the firmware used on the machines and replace it with malicious programs--which, at times, could alter the recording, reporting and tallying of votes.

There were other flaws as well. With the Diebold AccuVote-TSX system, they found that a "well-known static security key" was used by default on the machine.

That might as well have said, "was still used by default." This was a known problem years ago. Back in July 2003, Avi Rubin and other researchers had pointed up enormous problems with Diebold's machines, as Spectrum and many other outlets reported.

And not just software keys, but physical ones as well. Recall this report from Ed Felten and his intrepid colleagues at Princeton, with the delightfully sobering title â''Hotel Minibarâ'' Keys Open Diebold Voting Machines.

One big problem in California, though, the Diebold machines have already been certified ,as InterGovWorld and others reported on 10 July, despite a bevy of already-known security holes. In fact, the five-week testing was mainly to find best-practices that would mitigate the problems.

California's uncomfortable situation is nothing new. It has been going back and forth on certifying evoting machines since 2003. The sad fact is, the state was making rushed decisions then just as it is now.

Some other states, New York, in particular, have been much more deliberate in their adoption of evoting equipment. Even so, there have been hiccups along the way, such as the firing of a testing company back in February because its own certifications to do the testing were not in good order.

However, New York has some very good processes in place for evoting. For example, it requires that vendors

â''â'¿shall place into escrow with the state board of elections a complete copy of all programming, source coding and software employed by the voting machineâ'¿â''

... a requirement that the vendors are trying to do an end-run around. (See for example the blog of Bo Lipari, head of New Yorkers for Verified Voting, "Voting Machine Vendors: We Wonâ''t Comply With NY Law.")

Which brings us to Ohio. Three days ago, AlterNet broke the story that

Two-thirds of Ohio counties have destroyed or lost their 2004 presidential ballots and related election records, according to letters from county election officials to the Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner.

The lost records violate Ohio law, which states federal election records must be kept for 22 months after Election Day, and a U.S. District Court order issued last September that the 2004 ballots be preserved while the court hears a civil rights lawsuit alleging voter suppression of African-American voters in Columbus.

The destruction of the election records also frustrates efforts by the media and historians to determine the accuracy of Ohio's 2004 vote count, because in county after county the key evidence needed to understand vote count anomalies apparently no longer exists.

Besides Ohio law, the destruction of the records violates a court order. Pending lawsuits charge two things, voter suppression that reduced Democratic party registration and voting, and ballot miscounting. It's in the latter context that Ohio's 88 counties were required to conduct audits. 56 of them reported that "ballots and election records from 2004 have been "accidentally" destroyed."

The 2006 elections, the first in which electronic voting machines were in widespread use, were rife with evoting problems in Virginia, Florida, and elsewhere, as Spectrum reported at the time.

The problem with e-voting machines, as they are, in the main, currently made by the major manufacturers and bought by state and local jurisdictions, is that they have no ballots, nothing to recount in the case of a disputed election. Needless to say, paper backups are no panacea if they're going to be damaged and thrown out.

from press conference in Minneapolis at 2 pm CDT, August 2, 2007:

Gov. Pawlenty stated that MnDOT has hired Wiss, Janney and Elstner, forensic engineers who will conduct a parallel investigation to the one being conducted by the NTSB; this same firm investigated Boston's Big Dig. MnDOT will conduct emergency inspections on three other bridges in Minnesota with a similar steel truss arch design. MnDOT will also investigate all "structurally deficient" bridges: As of 2007, Minnesota has 13,026 bridges, and 1000 bridges in total that fall into the category of structurally deficient; 77,000 bridges are so designated across the United States. Inspections in 2005 and 2006 stated concerns about stress and fatigue, but did not indicate an immediate need for weight restrictions or immediate retrofit. "There was a view that the bridge was ultimately going to have to be replaced...in the future," Pawlenty said.

Dan Dorgan, MnDOT's chief bridge inspector, covered the 35W bridge's maintenance history. Construction on the Interstate 35 W Bridge began in 1964 and was completed in 1967. On average, 141,000 cars traveled over the bridge daily, making it the busiest in the state. In 1990 this steel truss arch bridge was classified as structurally deficient, initially due to corrosion of the bearings "so that they were not able to move as freely as designed. As the years have passed, there has been some corrosion around the joints of the bridge and in the approach spans there were fatigue cracks that were repaired. There were cracks in the tab welds of the bridge "since the day it was built, but those were not growing and they were stable. And for those reasons we thought the bridge was stable and fit for service," Dorgan stated. Two subsequent studies, one by a University of Minnesota associate professor of civil engineering Robert Dexter (an expert in steel fatigue who died in 2004) and one by the engineering firm URS Corporation, showed that the bridge would be serviceable until 2020, at which point either the deck or the entire bridge would have to be replaced.

"In light of what happened, I'd say we thought we had done all we could. Obviously something went terribly wrong," said Dorgan.

When asked if the freeze-thaw cycles of Minnesota contributed to the collapse, Dorgan noted, "Up until the late 1960s, engineers did not believe that fatigue was something you'd see in bridges.... Unfortunately that was a wrong assumption. Some of the construction practices used in that era, the way they welded members together, those engineers did the best they could, but they were not aware of the [fatigue] issue. It started to manifest itself in the middle 1970s, when we started to see problems across the country, which is why we went to fracture critical inspections where you get within an arm's length of what you need to inspect." He also pointed out that while temperature variance can add to fatigue, the main culprit is truck loads over 40 years.

As for the construction going on at the time of the collapse, Dorgan noted that while there was work being done on the deck joints, the collapse would almost certainly have been triggered beneath the bridge in the steel truss superstructure.

No word yet whether there were any strain gauges or other sensors embedded in the bridge that could have warned of potentially catastrophic fatigue.

A video taken from a bridge surveillance camera located on near the north side of the bridge shows the moment the structure gave way, falling from south to north. The video clearly shows the bridge's design. This is a box truss bridge--the steel girders supporting the road deck are not anchored into supporting concrete caissons in the water, but rather arc over the river and connect to concrete piers standing on the shore on either side of the river.

Also: White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said this morning at a news conference that the 2005 inspection report gave the bridge a rating of 50 out of a possible 120, and noted some structural deficiencies, though he wasn't specific. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty noted this morning that earlier inspections did find deficiencies in the bridge, but did not indicate that it was in immediate need of replacement.

National Transportation Safety Board chairman Mark V. Rosenker said that the NTSB has already started its investigation. "This will be a complex investigation, these are engineering issues that will have to be determined, materials issues that we will be studying, and they don't come quickly."