2012-03-07 – David Levinson, Transportist

Tim de Chant on Strano et al.Seeing historical processes in road networks’ patterns:

“By themselves, these discoveries are clever and insightful. But the interesting stuff will happen when urban planning completes the transition from an observation-based science to a mathematical one, much as ecology did in the recent past. Then we’ll have a real sense of how these models will change our understanding of cities.
Strano, E., Nicosia, V., Latora, V., Porta, S., & Barthélemy, M. (2012). Elementary processes governing the evolution of road networks Scientific Reports, 2 DOI: 10.1038/srep00296“

YouTube has Videos mentioned by The Transportationist.org all conveniently in one place (of course, not all of them, just YouTube ones).

PCWorld says Robotic Cheetah Sets a New Robot Land Speed Record, Leaves Humans in its Dust:

“The new Cheetah Robot is the latest animatronic creation to come out of DARPA’s Maximum Mobility and Manipulation program. It is the fastest four-legged robot in the world, and it can reach speeds of 18 miles-per-hour; the previous land-speed record for a four-legged robot was 13.1mph set by MIT in 1989.”

Ars Technica: Maxis announces new SimCity for 2013:

“During a Game Developers Conference presentation to gathered press, Bradshaw noted its been roughly ten years since Maxis last released a core SimCity title, and that the phones in many people’s pockets now have the same power as the machines that ran SimCity 4 back then. The new SimCity will take advantage of advances in computer power to be the first truly 3D entry in the series. “This is like an entirely new playground for us, and we’re going to take advantage of it,” she said.”

[It would be nice if they opened up the algorithm.]

Jamais Cascio: Open the Future: Record Battery Energy Density in Context:

“A tech company called Envia Systems has announced that it is able to produce rechargeable lithium-ion batteries (Li-ion, i.e., the standard kind of rechargeable batteries that go in everything from phones to electric cars) with a world-record energy density of 400 Watt-hours per kilogram! (Gigaom has lots of info, and useful background material.) Cool, right?”

Reihan Salam on Ed Glaeser on Infrastructure Spending:

“To that end, Glaeser calls for more user fees, congestion pricing, the decentralization of transportation spending, and, perhaps most interestingly, devoting the Highway Trust Fund to maintenance, leaving state governments to fund new projects themselves. (Here Glaeser is drawing on the excellent work of Matthew Kahn and David Levinson.) It’s a very sensible agenda, and it avoids the twin pitfalls of infrastructure alarmism and misplaced China envy. “