• Help design the future of robotic cars

    Ford.com

    A screenshot from a Ford video shows how Active Park Assist works in the Flex model. Drivers just need to target a spot, and the car uses ultrasonic range finders to park itself.

    By John Roach, Contributing Writer, NBC News

    Do you want a future where C-3P0 and his robotic pals do the driving as you text your friends the 411 on the next stop in a crosstown pub crawl? Minds capable of making this dream come true want your opinion.

    Students with Stanford University's Center for Automotive Research have prepared on online survey to find out your robotic car desires. After providing a few generic personal details, you can weigh in on questions such as:

    • How much control you're willing to give up to an automated self-driving technology? All? Some, like an airplane pilot? None at all?
    • Would you take a cab driven by a robot? Choices range from "Definitely not" to "Definitely would. There is no way a computer can drive worse than current human cab drivers :)".
    • What are your feelings about a car that could drive you without any input? Choices include: "Excitement – where can I get one," "Party time – I can go out partying without having to worry about drinking and driving," and "Fear – That's it. Run for the hills. The robots are taking over."

    To take the survey, click here. When the results are out this spring, we'll share the details.

    More on robotic cars:

    John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. To learn more about him, check out his website. You can also follow him on Twitter.

    For more of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below.

    Ten years of war have given robot developers a chance to refine and improve their bots. Now the robots are finding all sorts of new jobs on the homefront.

  • Support for climate hacking up

    John Mcconnico / AP

    An iceberg melts in Kulusuk Bay, eastern Greenland, in this July 17, 2007, file photo. A new survey finds growing support for schemes to hack the climate to reduce global warming.

    By John Roach, Contributing Writer, NBC News

    The public is surprisingly aware of the fact that humans could deliberately hack the planet's climate to reduce or offset changes due to greenhouse gas emissions, according to a first-of-its kind survey.

    What's more, 72 percent of the 3,105 respondents think scientists should be allowed to study ways to do this that involve managing the amount of solar energy that reaches the Earth's surface, such as injecting tiny particles into the stratosphere to reflect some of the sun's energy back into space.

    This field of science is technically known as geoengineering, though the survey found that more people have a better idea of what it's all about when the tem "climate engineering" is used, according to the results, which were presented Monday in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

    Growing recognition
    Scientists have batted around the concept since the 1960s, though it remained on the periphery of the climate debate until the last few years largely due to fears that public discussion would lessen incentives for political action to curb emissions, note the researchers.

    But in recent years the concept has gained traction due in part to the fact that the prominent scientist Paul Crutzen, who won a Nobel for his work on the ozone hole, has urged systematic study of solar radiation management. 

    As well, news media coverage of geoengineering has spiked and bookshelves have begun to creak under the weight of tomes dedicated to the idea, such as Eli Kintisch's "Hack the Planet" and Jeff Goodell's "How to Cool the Planet".

    Given the growing recognition, the researchers felt the time is ripe to collect data on public opinions and awareness on the subject. 

    Survey results
    According to the results, 8 percent of the respondents correctly described geoengineering and 45 percent correctly described the interchangeable term "climate engineering," adding weight to the argument that the term geoengineering is misleading and difficult to understand. 

    While 72 percent of the respondents support studying solar radiation management, uncertainty about using the technique to stop a climate emergency now or deploying it immediately was considerable.

    "Overall the support for [solar radiation management] is surprisingly high," the team writes. "Our own view, and our impression of the dominant opinion within the research and policy community, is that near term use of SRM would be reckless."

    The research team, which includes David Keith, an expert on scientific study of geoengineering at Harvard University and the University of Calgary, was pleased to also find broad public trust in university researchers to dispense honest information about the field.

    In fact, 75 percent or respondents ranked university researchers as trustworthy. 

    "As future policy and governance debates concerning SRM continue, scientists are likely in a unique and trusted position of influence … ensuring that the science remains disentangled from the politics will help to preserve the public's trust in scientists on the topic of SRM," they conclude.

    Less than trustworthy
    Less than a third, however, trust information about geoengineering from the government. The media is an even less trustworthy source of information (26 percent).

    There's also a subset of people out there who believe governments or scientists are already distributing chemicals in the atmosphere for purposes ranging from culling the population to mind control.

    "We found that 2.6 percent of the subjects believe that it is completely true that the government has a secret program that uses airplanes to put harmful chemicals into the air and 14 percent of the sample believe that this is partly true," the team notes.

    More on geoengineering:

     

    John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. To learn more about him, check out his website. For more information of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below.

     

    Disposable computers for hurling into infernos, underwater robots that team up for search and rescue, and other new tools are coming to the aid of emergency responders during calamities.

     

  • How is science seen? Answers vary

    Philippe Lopez / AFP - Getty Images

    A visitor walks past rockets displayed at the Science and Technology Museum in Shanghai.

    A survey of 21,000 people around the world, presented today by the journal Nature and Scientific American, suggests that Americans overwhelmingly trust what scientists have to say about the origins of the universe. The results also suggest that survey respondents from Japan and China are significantly less trusting of scientists, and far more doubtful about the idea that evolution explains the forms and variety of life.

    So does that mean America is more in step with science than Japan and China are? Mmm, not really. The reason for that has largely to do with scientific vs. unscientific sampling.

    This particular survey is based on responses to an online questionnaire by the readers of Scientific American and its translated editions in 18 countries. That's a tip-off that the sampling is not truly representative of the countries' populations, but merely of folks who are predisposed enough toward science to buy the magazine and answer the questions. (Scientific American and Nature are both owned by Macmillan Publishers.)

    It may sound impressive to say that 21,000 people participated in the survey, but the participation varied dramatically from country to country. As noted in this Nature News article, thousands upon thousands from the United States and Europe, while just 269 people from China did so.

    These same factors — self-selection and unevenly distributed sampling — are why we don't put too much stock in the surveys offered on our own website. Sure, it's entertaining to find out what more than 11,000 people think about the new judges on "American Idol," but when it comes to scientific sampling, the results are about as shaky as Sanjaya's singing.

    The question about evolution shows how far off self-selected surveys can get: The Nature/Scientific American survey indicates that only 12.9 percent of the 4,779 American respondents had any doubt about the power of evolutionary theory, including natural selection, to explain the forms and variety of life. In contrast, 34.9 percent of the 1,195 respondents in Japan and 48.7 percent of the 269 respondents in China indicated that they had doubts.

    More rigorous surveys tell a dramatically different story: Last year, for example, the Gallup Poll conducted telephone interviews with 1,018 American adults nationwide and found that 39 percent believed in the theory of evolution, 25 percent did not, and 36 percent voiced no opinion either way.

    An analysis of surveys from 34 countries, published in 2006 by the journal Science (Nature's competition), shows even more starkly where America stands: The U.S. numbers revealed that 40 percent of respondents thought evolutionary theory was probably or definitely false, compared with 36 percent who thought it was probably or definitely true. Japan's acceptance of evolution, in contrast, was put at 78 percent. The only country that fared worse than the United States in the Science paper's 34-country comparison was Turkey. (China was not on the list.)

    Perhaps the most that could be concluded from the Scientific American survey is that the folks buying the magazine (or a foreign-language edition) have a mind-set that's different from the population at large. That's of interest to the editors and advertisers, but maybe not so much to policymakers or policy analysts. As for the differences between countries, cultural and political factors may play a role in how particular questions were answered. (For example, Chinese readers might be more inclined to say that scientists should stay out of politics, whether they truly think so or not.)

    The reports published online today by Nature as well as Scientific American go into more depth about attitudes toward science-related issues including stem cell research and climate change as well as evolution education. To my mind, last year's survey conducted by the Pew Research for the People and the Press added much more to the debate over America's science gap than this latest one will. But what do I know? The Scientific American survey, like last year's Pew report, shows conclusively that journalists are far less trusted than scientists.

    More on public attitudes toward science:

    You can trust me to let you have your say in the comment box below — as long as you keep it classy. Check out my other postings on Cosmic Log, and connect with me via Twitter (@b0yle) or Facebook.