The affordable Audi

The latest in a slew of what’s been an onslaught of new cars from the Bavarian premium car maker Audi is the A3. The A3 is more than just a new model. It takes on greater significance because it’s important not just for Audi’s traditionally strong markets like Germany, but also for China and the other emerging markets. The third-generation car is all set to expand the scope of this model by addressing the growing need for compact yet premium vehicles. The A3 already accounts for 20% of global Audi sales, and the new car will only increase that share, in my opinion.

I was on the Spanish island of Mallorca a few days ago to drive the latest A3. The car’s looks scream Audi with the trademark grille and headlights―complete with daytime running lights finished in signature LED style. The car has debuted in Europe as a three-door hatchback, but will also spawn other body styles. There will be a five-door hatch for starters, followed by a convertible and a four-door sedan. It’s that last one which naturally interests me from an Indian perspective.

In fact, Audi first indicated that a new generation of the A3 was coming at the Geneva Motor show in March 2011. At the time, the A3 concept shown was indeed a four-door sedan. The car’s proportions liken it to a VW Jetta- or Toyota Corolla-sized vehicle. It did, however, carry much more high-end equipment, more fitting for the premium space. So it’s essentially going to be the most affordable and compact sedan from Audi when it hits our shores. The Audi A3 will be positioned below the Q3, which will soon be the entry Audi model in India (Q3 debuts next month). This means Audi will eye a sub-Rs. 20 lakh price tag with the A3 sedan.

The other reason I was very keen to get a closer look at the A3 is because it’s the first car from the Volkswagen group using Modularer Querbaukasten or MQB, which loosely translates to Modular Transverse Matrix. This is essentially a range of transverse-front-engined, front-wheel-drive cars built using a similar set of components. Of course, all-wheel drive or Quattro, as Audi calls it, is also possible. This means that unlike before, when a platform could spawn many cars―but of similar size or segment― MQB allows the same platform to now house small, medium and big cars, and also crossovers or SUVs. That means more efficiency in manufacturing and cost-competitiveness in the long term.

There are several engine options available on the A3 in Europe, and this includes diesels and petrols. Audi will launch the 1.6 TDI diesel a few months later and that’s an all-new engine. There is also the familiar 2-litre TDI. The petrol options include the 1.8 TFSI―which is the car I drove―and the 1.4 TFSI. This smaller petrol engine will also feature cylinder deactivation. This means one of the engine’s cylinders will shut off when the car doesn’t need extra power―thereby lowering the engine’s displacement and increasing fuel efficiency. Audi also promises a plug-in hybrid variant of the A3 by 2014.

In my opinion, the 1.6 TDI and the 1.4 TFSI would be best suited to India. Having driven the 1.8 TFSI extensively around the Mallorcan countryside, I have to say that it too would be a sporty and fun addition to the line-up. But to really get the attention and volumes Audi would want, it would have to stay humble on the engine side―to keep costs in check. The car handles well at high speeds, my test car also had paddle gear shift, which added to the fun quotient. The six-speed S-Tronic automatic gearbox in fact was also as expected, with quick and smooth changes. Some of the A3 variants also sport the seven-speed S-Tronic transmission, while others offer a six-speed manual too.

Con Edison to 'Bug' Kids at World Science Festival

Youngsters who visit the Con Edison booth at the 2012 World Science Festival Street Fair in Washington Square Park June 3 will have the opportunity to learn energy efficiency tips from the company's Power Bug game.

The game, designed by Con Edison as an app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, features a bug flitting through urban streets. Each time the player guides the bug into an incandescent bulb, the bulb changes to an energy-saving compact fluorescent. Youngsters who try their hand at the game while at "The Ultimate Science Street Fair" will see the animation on a large color monitor.

Con Edison is a major sponsor of the Festival for a fifth straight year. The five-day Festival brings together top scientists, researchers, academics and business leaders from all over the world to discuss their ideas and teach the public about the importance of science. The Street Fair takes place on the Festival's last day.

"The Festival does a wonderful job of educating people about the role science plays in improving our lives," said Frances A. Resheske, senior vice president for Public Affairs at Con Edison. "We're proud to once again be a major sponsor of this great event and to spread our energy efficiency message."

The company's booth will also feature a model of a steam power plant. The working model is equipped with a boiler that turns water to steam. The model's moving parts show how steam pressure moves through the system. The generator powers a bulb.

Another attraction at the Con Edison booth will show how much energy it takes to power an energy-efficient bulb compared with a less-efficient bulb. The bulbs are hooked to a meter. Guests will see that the meter spins slower when the energy-efficient bulb is lit.

Con Edison will also bring its "Pedal-A-Watt" bicycle, which has been a hit at past festivals, to the 2012 event. The rear wheel powers a small generator that is connected to three bulbs. The rider can see that the rotation of the rear wheel creates electricity and lights the bulbs.

Details about Southern Pine's Comfort Advantage Program, which provides rebates for installing energy efficient equipment for new homes, will be offered. Employees will also be available to answer questions about hurricane readiness and energy efficiency.

The fairs will include a display that shows how much less energy a compact fluorescent light bulb uses when compared to a traditional incandescent light bulb.

Free hurricane tracker maps, window insulator kits and energy saving information will be given to fair participants while supplies last.

Con Edison encourages its customers to take advantage of its wide range of programs to save energy and cut their bills.

Con Edison supports hundreds of nonprofit organizations in New York City and Westchester County to strengthen neighborhoods, sustain communities and improve lives. These philanthropic efforts support the arts, environment, and important educational initiatives in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Many of Con Edison's 14,000 employees share a personal commitment to the region's vitality through their own volunteer efforts and also choose to support education by utilizing the company's matching gifts program.

European Emissions House of the Year: EDF Trading

The emissions market in Europe is under intense scrutiny at the moment and a number of participants have begun to scale down their carbon operations while some have pulled out completely. By contrast, EDF Trading has been able to successfully manage market conditions and undergo significant growth in the past 12 months.

“We are certainly not one of the players retreating from the market. On the contrary, we have increased our presence in the environmental market despite the challenges,” says Francois Joubert, global head of environmental products.

EDF Trading traded 317 million carbon dioxide certificates in 2011 – a 36% rise from the previous year. The company also increased headcount across environmental products businesses to 82 staff, up from 37 in 2010. But one of the biggest successes for EDF Trading has been the strides it has made on the project side of the carbon business.

“We are very active in the carbon market with probably one of the best years in terms of the number of emissions reduction purchase agreements we have signed,” says Joubert.

The company boasts a portfolio of over 350 Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects making it one of the biggest players in Europe. Of those projects, 130 were added in 2011.

One such project, its compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) initiative, was expanded into Lebanon in 2011, drawing from previous success in India in 2009. “The experience we gained from implementing the projects in India was instrumental in us being chosen by the Lebanese government,” says Joubert.

Under the scheme, EDF Trading will purchase around 450,000 Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs) allowances issued by the Lebanese government, which can be used to either offset emissions produced by its parent company, EDF Energy, or be traded on the secondary market. The reduction in emissions was derived from a million households in Lebanon swapping inefficient incandescent bulbs to CFLs. The same initiative also was also undertaken in Vietnam in 2011.

Through the CFL initiative, EDF Trading holds the title for working on the largest CDM scheme ever to be initiated in Lebanon and has shown its boldness in entering less established markets.

A large part of EDF Trading’s recent success in its CDM activities is derived from leveraging the expertise gained from the 2010 purchase of Chinese CDM project developer Energy Systems International (ESI). Joubert says about 70% of the 130 projects added in 2011 were accountable to ESI.

In February 2011, the company registered the first Chinese solar CDM project, a 100 megawatt photovoltaic power plant in the southern-Chinese province of Yunnan. The success of this has spurred another eight solar projects, which are currently in the pipeline awaiting validation.

“China for everyone in the market is of course the biggest market and ESI has reinforced our ability to access it and develop a strong expertise in the CDM cycle that we did not have in-house before.”

As well as making progress on the project side, EDF Trading has also established a footprint on the investor side by increasing its presence in Japan – viewed by some to be the next big carbon market.

Last July, EDF Trading signed a co-operation agreement with Japanese bank Mizuho, one of the largest lenders to Japanese utilities. Under the agreement, EDF Trading markets products such as CERs, assigned amounts units, and emissions reduction units in Japan. This venture puts EDF Trading in a favourable position to take advantage of the expected market growth next year as the Japanese energy sector recovers from the Fukushima disaster.

Brother MFC-9325CW

As a small-office color multifunction printer (MFP), the Brother MFC-9325CW ($450 street) adds a couple of extras over the Brother MFC-9125CN ($400 street, 3.5 stars): WiFi connectivity and a port for a USB thumb drive. In our testing, it showed good speed for a color laser-class MFP in its price range. However, it stumbled on quality for both graphics and photos, which are the main reasons one would buy a color printer.

The MFC-9325CW can print, copy, scan, and fax. It lets you fax either from your computer (PC Fax), or standalone faxing without needing a computer. A front-facing port you can print JPEG and PDF files from (and scan files to) a USB thumb drive.

It includes a 35-page automatic document feeder (ADF) for unattended copying, scanning, or faxing of multi-page documents of up to legal size.

The MFP is compatible with the Brother iPrint&Scan app, which allows you to print or scan from an Apple, Android, or Windows 7 Phone mobile device on the same wireless network.

As an LED printer, the MFC-9325CW uses LEDs in place of lasers as a light source; LED printers are still considered laser class. They are often smaller than lasers, and this model is no exception: It’s reasonably compact at 15.7 by 16.9 by 19.3 inches (HWD) and weighing 50.5 pounds.

Paper capacity is 250 sheets, plus a one-page manual feed slot. It lacks an automatic duplexer for printing on both sides of a sheet of paper; the driver provides on-screen guidance for manual duplexing.

The control panel includes a 2-line monochrome display; a 4-way controller; an alphanumeric keyboard; Print, Copy, and Fax mode buttons (with 3 additional controls for each of these modes), and several other function buttons.

The MFC-9325CW connects to a PC via a USB cable, or to a network via Ethernet or WiFi. I tested it over an Ethernet connection with the drivers installed on a computer running Windows Vista.

The MFC-9325CW’s text quality was right on par for a laser-class printer, which is to say very good. It’s fine for any business use short of ones that require very small fonts, such as demanding desktop publishing applications.

Graphics quality was sub-par for a color laser-class printer. Most graphics showed significant dithering, in the form of easily visible dot patterns. Some had mild banding, a pattern of faint bars of discoloration. Very thin, colored lines were all but lost in several illustrations. Some black backgrounds had a blotchy or faded look. The output was okay to show to immediate colleagues in an informal context, but I’d be hesitant to use it for reports or handouts.

Physicists Succeed in Making ‘Impossible’ Gamma-Ray Lens

Lenses are a part of everyday life―they help us focus words on a page, the light from stars, and the tiniest details of microorganisms. But making a lens for highly energetic light known as gamma rays had been thought impossible. Now, physicists have created such a lens, and they believe it will open up a new field of gamma-ray optics for medical imaging, detecting illicit nuclear material, and getting rid of nuclear waste.

Glass is the material of choice for conventional lenses, and like other materials, it contains atoms which are orbited by electrons. In an opaque material, these electrons would absorb or reflect light. But in glass, the electrons respond to incoming light by shaking about, pushing away the light in a different direction. Physicists describe the amount of bending as the glass’s “refractive index”: A refractive index equal to one results in no bending, while anything more or less results in bending one way or the other.

Refraction works well with visible light, a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum, because the light waves have a frequency that chimes well with the oscillations of orbiting electrons. But for higher energy electromagnetic radiation―ultraviolet and beyond―the frequencies are too high for the electrons to respond, and lenses become less and less effective. It was only toward the end of last century that physicists found they could create lenses for x-rays, the part of the electromagnetic spectrum just beyond the ultraviolet, by stacking together numerous layers of patterned material. Such lenses opened up the field of x-ray optics, which, with x-rays’ short wavelengths, allowed imaging at a nanoscale resolution.

There the story should have ended. Theory says that gamma rays, being even more energetic than x-rays, ought to bypass orbiting electrons altogether; materials should not bend them at all and the refractive index for gamma rays should be almost equal to one. Yet this is not what a team of physicists led by Dietrich Habs at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany and Michael Jentschel at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble, France, has discovered.

ILL is a research reactor that produces intense beams of neutrons. Habs, Jentschel, and colleagues used one of its beams to bombard samples of radioactive chlorine and gadolinium to produce gamma rays. They directed these down a 20-meter-long tube to a device known as a crystal spectrometer, which funneled the gamma rays into a specific direction. They then passed half of the gamma rays through a silicon prism and into another spectrometer to measure their final direction, while they directed the other half straight to the spectrometer unimpeded.

So what drives this new bending effect? Although he can’t be sure, Habs believes it resides in the nuclei at the heart of the silicon atoms. Although electrons don’t normally reside in nuclei because of the very strong electric fields there, quantum mechanics allows pairs of “virtual” electrons and antielectrons, or positrons, to blink briefly into existence and then recombine and disappear again. Habs thinks the sheer number of these virtual electron-positron pairs amplifies the gamma-ray scattering, which is normally negligible, to a detectable amount.