Hot Topics in Science and Technology

Unit 1: Efficiency, Durability, Sustainability

Fall 2019

University of California at Davis Extension

Professor: Kimberly Lengyel

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Hot Topics in Science and Technology: Week 1, Vocabulary List

Word + Part of Speech Definition Example Sentence

1. Efficient (adj.)Performing in the best way with least amount of time, money, and effort.

Our new air conditioner is very efficient. It is able to cool the room down very quickly in a short period of time.

2. Reduce (v.)

To bring down to a small extent, size, amount, degree, intensity. We need to reduce the amount of air pollution from

factories. It is hard to breathe outside.

3. Absorb (v.)To soak up; to swallow; to occupy or fill.

A sponge absorbs water.

4. Invention (n.)Something created, invented, or devised.

The light bulb was a great invention by Thomas Edison. Without the light bulb, we would not be able to study at night.

5. Legislation (n.) The act of making or creating laws.Governments need to create new legislation that protects the environment from pollution.

6. Induce (v.) To produce or cause. Medicine sometimes can induce sleep.

7. Standard (n.)

A rule or principle that is used for judgment. The EPA creates standards for companies to follow

environmental laws and rules.

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8. Detect (v.) To discover and find.The machine detected changes in temperature and pressure outside.

9. Convenient (adj.) Easy; easily accessible; simple.Being able to walk or bike to school is very convenient for students.

10. Consume (v.) To spend or use.We have to be careful not to consume too much energy or electricity.

11. Insulation (n.)Material used to prevent heating, electricity, or sound from escaping.

The house provides good insulation during winter; we won’t have to worry about heat escaping the house.

12. Reliant (adj.)Trustful; dependent; reliable; always does what is expected.

The new electrical cars are fairly reliant; we don’t have to worry about the car not working.

13. Prototype (n.)A model; something that represents the thing being built.

We need to build a prototype of the machine we hope to build one day.

14. Component (n.) A part of a system.The model has four components that help the model to work.

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What is the most efficient way to use a paper towel?

The paper towel is something that many people use every day. With a partner, discuss the ways you can use a paper towel. List the ways below.

1.2.3.

Below is a transcript of a TED talk that we will listen to in class. In this TED talk, someone will describe how to use a paper towel efficiently. According to this person, using a paper towel efficiently only requires two steps.

With a partner, fill-in-the blanks below with a missing verb. What are the two missing steps?

The fact is, you can do it all with one towel. The key, two words: 1)  __________ and ___________.

Let's listen and see what the missing steps are.

TED Talk #1: How to use a paper towel (Joe Smith, 2012) Source: (http://www.ted.com/talks/joe_smith_how_to_use_a_paper_towel?language=en)

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Transcript:

Five hundred seventy-one million two hundred thirty thousand pounds of paper towels are used by Americans every year. If we could -- correction, wrong figure -- 13 billion used every year. If we could reduce the usage of paper towels, one paper towel per person per day, 571,230,000 pounds of paper not used. We can do that.

Now there are all kinds of paper towel dispensers. There's the tri-fold. People typically take two or three. There's the one that cuts it, that you have to tear off. People go one, two, three, four, tear. This much, right? There's the one that cuts itself. People go, one, two, three, four. Or there's the same thing, but recycled paper, you have to get five of those because they're not as absorbant, of course.

The fact is, you can do it all with one towel. The key, two words: This half of the room, your word is "shake." Let's hear it. Shake. Louder.

Audience: Shake.

Joe Smith: Your word is "fold."

Audience: Fold.

JS: Again. Okay. Wet hands. Shake -- one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12. Why 12? Twelve apostles, twelve tribes, twelve zodiac signs, twelve months. The one I like the best: It's the biggest number with one syllable. Tri-fold. Fold ... Dry. Cuts itself. Fold. The fold is important because it allows interstitial suspension. You don't have to remember that part, but trust me. You know the funny thing is, I get my hands drier than people do with three or four, because they can' t get in between the cracks. If you think this isn't as good...

Audience: Shake. Fold.

JS: Now, there's now a real fancy invention, it's the one where you wave your hand and it kicks it out. It's way too big a towel. Let me tell you a secret. If you're really quick, if you're really quick -- and I can prove this -- this is half a towel from the dispenser in this building. How? As soon as it starts, you just tear it off. It's smart enough to stop. And you get half a towel.

Now, let's all say it together. Shake. Fold. You will for the rest of your life remember those words every time you pick up a paper towel. And remember, one towel per person for one year -- 571,230,000 pounds of paper. No small thing. And next year, toilet paper.

Questions for discussion

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In groups, practice the seminar expressions we have learned in class, and discuss the following questions:

1. What are the two words that Joe Smith says to fold a paper towel properly?

2. How many paper towels do Americans use every year?

3. How much paper could be saved if one person only used one paper towel per day?

4. Why is the fold important?

5. Were you surprised with the two words?

6. Do you agree with Joe Smith that this is an efficient way to save paper towels? Why or why not?

Your Turn

Each group will be given an everyday material. Your group will teach us the most efficient way to use that material. Discuss your ideas in your group and write your steps below.

1.

2.

3.

4.

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Source: http://assets.inhabitat.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2012/04/Light-bulb-comparison-1.jpg

Pre-reading Questions

Look at the figure above and answer the following questions:

1. Which light bulb is the most efficient? Why?

2. Which light bulb is the least efficient? Why?

3. Should governments force people to change light bulbs to those that are more efficient? Why or why not? Or is there an alternative way to save energy?

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Reading #1: The Rise of the Smartbulb (Source: Excerpted and adapted from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/garden/the-rise-of-the-smartbulb.html)

Programmable light bulbs are among the latest offerings of a technology industry that wants to fill homes with new Internet-connected appliances.

It’s a smartbulb, complete with a computer-chip and wireless technology.

Much of the change is a result of legislation passed during the George W. Bush administration (2000-2008), mandating the adoption of energy-efficient lighting. Instead of traditional incandescent bulbs, we have electricity-sipping halogens, fluorescents and, most recently, LEDs.

The great promise of LEDs is that they are designed to provide good, inexpensive light for decades. When the light bulb efficiency standards started taking effect and the first mass-market LEDs appeared a few years ago, however, the quality of light was cold and the prices enough to induce shock.

But in the last year or so, mainstream manufacturers like Philips and General Electric and upstarts like Cree, most notably, have started rolling out cheaper bulbs with the kind of warm light you’d actually want to put in a room. As of last week, you could buy Cree’s 60-watt equivalent LED for $8 at New York-area retailers and $5 at some retailers in the Northeast.

Philips has also caused a stir in the marketplace with its Hue lights: With a Wi-Fi connection and a smartphone app, they can change colors and perform tricks.

These same technologies allow you to adjust the warmth and brightness of white bulbs, and control them in a variety of ways. And judging from the number of similar bulbs that have emerged recently, manufacturers believe they have found a new market.

They all gave off good, warm light, and they offered the advantage of remote dimming using a smartphone or, in some cases, a dedicated remote control. You can also program them to switch on and off while you’re out of the house, to discourage break-ins.

All of these bulbs require the purchase of a dedicated gateway or hub to connect with your Wi-Fi network.

Networking hubs made by Iris, Staples Connect and others offer similar functionality. But not all hubs work with all Internet-enabled devices, because to do that they must speak the same technology language. And therein lies the one significant drawback of shopping for smartbulbs at the moment.

When appliances and other critical systems in the home are connected to the Web, they must use a wireless standard of some kind, be it Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or a radio frequency agreed upon by independent manufacturers, as with the so-called ZigBee standard.

But partly because the “smart home” industry is so new, businesses haven’t yet widely agreed upon a single communication standard. So if you buy a set of smartbulbs and you’d like them to

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flash if your smoke alarm is triggered at night or your webcam detects an intruder, for instance, you may be out of luck.

As a result, said Richard Gunther, a consultant with Universal Mind, a Denver technology firm, smartbulb buyers have no choice but to do some research before they buy. “You can’t just buy a bulb and screw it in and expect it to work with your connected system,” he said.

Nadarajah Narendran, a professor and director of research at the Lighting Research Center   at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., agreed. “If you want the additional convenience that can come with the new LEDs, you need to be ready not just with your money but with your time,” he said.

Both men expect things to get easier soon, perhaps as early as this year.

Post-reading Discussion and Comprehension Questions

In the chart below, write down three positive features of the new "smartbulb".

Positive Feature

Example and Explanation

#1

#2

#3

In the chart below, write down 2-3 problems/issues with the new "smartbulb".

Problem/Issue Example and Explanation#1

#2

#3

Would you buy the new "smartbulb"? Why or why not? Do you think there is a more efficient way to save energy?

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Incandescent Light Bulbs May Have a Bright Future After All, Smithsonian Magazine, 2016, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/incandescent-lightbulbs-may-have-bright-future-after-all-180957800/?utm_source=smithsoniantopic&no-ist

It was a dark end for a common household object: In 2007, the United States Congress passed a law requiring the U.S. to phase out most incandescent light bulbs by 2014. But the phaseout, which was in keeping with a worldwide movement to get rid of incandescent bulbs in favor of more energy-efficient lighting options, may not be here to stay. As the BBC’s Matt McGrath reports, new research indicates that it may be possible to make old-fashioned incandescent bulbs much more efficient.

Consider it a light bulb over the head moment. Researchers at MIT have figured out a way to recycle incandescent bulbs’ wasted energy through nanotechnology. In a paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, the team describes how they have turned the Achilles heel of the incandescent bulb—its waste of more than 95 percent of the energy it generates—into a benefit.

In a bid to recycle the wasted energy from the bulbs, the team created a secondary structure around the filament. The structure, which is made from a specially-developed photonic crystal, captures infrared energy and allows visible light to pass through.

In a release, the team describes how they used nanotechnology to create the crystal, which consists of “photonic structures” that are assembled in thin, one-dimensional layers on a substrate. The crystal allows the bulb to recapture its own heat, they write:

The desired visible wavelengths pass right through the material and on out of the bulb, but the infrared wavelengths get reflected as if from a mirror. They then travel back to the filament, adding more heat that then gets converted to more light. Since only the visible ever gets out, the heat just keeps bouncing back in toward the filament until it finally ends up as visible light.

McGrath writes that the new bulb has an efficiency of 6.6 percent—three times as efficient as a standard bulb. However, the team thinks they could boost the bulb’s efficiency to 40 percent of the maximum amount of efficiency (683 lumens per watt). If they pull that off, they could beat the efficiency of both LEDs, which achieve approximately 100 lumens per watt of energy, and CFLs, which achieve between 55 and 70 lumens per watt.

In contrast, the fully realized incandescent bulb would emit 272 lumens per watt—not too bad for something powered by crystals on a minuscule scale. Perhaps reports of incandescent bulbs’ demise were premature after all.

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Scientist in Action: Doris Kim Sung

Source: http://www.ted.com/speakers/doris_kim_sung

We will be watching Professor Doris Kim Sung’s TED talk on “metal that breathes”. Here are some facts about Doris Kim Sung:

Doris Kim Sung studied biology at Princeton University, but became an architect interested in thermo-bimetals, smart materials that respond dynamically to temperature change.

She is currently a Professor of Architecture at the University of Southern California. Her research questions: “Why can't building materials be more adaptable? Why can't

they function more like clothing, or even human skin?” She examines “architecture as an extension of the body and not “static and climate-

controlled”.

With a partner, pretend you are going to meet and talk to Professor Sung. What questions do you have for her? What questions would you like her to answer in her talk?

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

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In your group, examine these pictures of buildings. Rank these buildings from 1 (most efficient) to 3 (least efficient) in terms of heating, cooling, and insulation. While ranking, discuss why you think some buildings are not as efficient as others. (Practice the seminar expressions we learned in class.)

Source: Deanery Garden House

Rank:

Efficient or not Efficient? _____________ Why?___________________________

Source: http://cksthoughtsblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/chicago-architecture-series-farnsworth.html

Rank:

Efficient or not Efficient? _____________ Why?_________________________________

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Source: Henning Larsen Artifacts, 2012

Rank:

Efficient or not efficient? ____________ Why? ____________________________

What do you think buildings need in order to conserve/preserve energy? How would you construct a building with the most efficiency in heating/cooling? Draw your idea below.

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Ted Talk #2: Metal that breathes (Doris Kim Sung, 2012) Source: http://www.ted.com/talks/doris_kim_sung_metal_that_breathes?language=en#t-92365

Transcript:

I was one of those kids that, every time I got in the car, I basically had to roll down the window. It was usually too hot, too stuffy or just too smelly, and my father would not let us use the air conditioner. He said that it would overheat the engine. And you might remember, some of you, how the cars were back then, and it was a common problem of overheating. But it was also the signal that capped the use, or overuse, of energy-consuming devices.

Things have changed now. We have cars that we take across country. We blast the air conditioning the entire way, and we never experience overheating. So there's no more signal for us to tell us to stop.

Great, right? Well, we have similar problems in buildings. In the past, before air conditioning, we had thick walls. The thick walls are great for insulation. It keeps the interior very cool during the summertime, and warm during the wintertime, and the small windows were also very good because it limited the amount of temperature transfer between the interior and exterior. Then in about the 1930s, with the advent of plate glass, rolled steel and mass production, we were able to make floor-to-ceiling windows and unobstructed views, and with that came the irreversible reliance on mechanical air conditioning to cool our solar-heated spaces. Over time, the buildings got taller and bigger, our engineering even better, so that the mechanical systems were massive. They require a huge amount of energy. They give off a lot of heat into the atmosphere, and for some of you may understand the heat island effect in cities, where the urban areas are much more warm than the adjacent rural areas, but we also have problems that, when we lose power, we can't open a window here, and so the buildings are uninhabitable and have to be made vacant until that air conditioning system can start up again. Even worse, with our intention of trying to make buildings move towards a net-zero energy state, we can't do it just by making mechanical systems more and more efficient. We need to look for something else, and we've gotten ourselves a little bit into a rut.

So what do we do here? How do we pull ourselves and dig us out of this hole that we've dug? If we look at biology, and many of you probably don't know, I was a biology major before I went into architecture, the human skin is the organ that naturally regulates the temperature in the body, and it's a fantastic thing. That's the first line of defense for the body. It has pores, it has sweat glands, it has all these things that work together very dynamically and very efficiently, and so what I propose is that our building skins should be more similar to human skin, and by doing so can be much more dynamic, responsive and differentiated, depending on where it is.

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And this gets me back to my research. What I proposed first doing is looking at a different material palette to do that. I presently, or currently, work with smart materials, and a smart thermo-bimetal. First of all, I guess we call it smart because it requires no controls and it requires no energy, and that's a very big deal for architecture. What it is, it's a lamination of two different metals together. You can see that here by the different reflection on this side. And because it has two different coefficients of expansion, when heated, one side will expand faster than the other and result in a curling action. So in early prototypes I built these surfaces to try to see how the curl would react to temperature and possibly allow air to ventilate through the system, and in other prototypes did surfaces where the multiplicity of having these strips together can try to make bigger movement happen when also heated, and currently have this installation at the Materials & Applications gallery in Silver Lake, close by, and it's there until August, if you want to see it. It's called "Bloom," and the surface is made completely out of thermo-bimetal, and its intention is to make this canopy that does two things. One, it's a sun-shading device, so that when the sun hits the surface, it constricts the amount of sun passing through, and in other areas, it's a ventilating system, so that hot, trapped air underneath can actually move through and out when necessary.

You can see here in this time-lapse video that the sun, as it moves across the surface, as well as the shade, each of the tiles moves individually. Keep in mind, with the digital technology that we have today, this thing was made out of about 14,000 pieces and there's no two pieces alike at all. Every single one is different. And the great thing with that is the fact that we can calibrate each one to be very, very specific to its location, to the angle of the sun, and also how the thing actually curls.

So this kind of proof of concept project has a lot of implications to actual future application in architecture, and in this case, here you see a house, that's for a developer in China, and it's actually a four-story glass box. It's still with that glass box because we still want that visual access, but now it's sheathed with this thermo-bimetal layer, it's a screen that goes around it, and that layer can actually open and close as that sun moves around on that surface. In addition to that, it can also screen areas for privacy, so that it can differentiate from some of the public areas in the space during different times of day. And what it basically implies is that, in houses now, we don't need drapes or shutters or blinds anymore because we can sheath the building with these things, as well as control the amount of air conditioning you need inside that building.

I'm also looking at trying to develop some building components for the market, and so here you see a pretty typical double-glazed window panel, and in that panel, between those two pieces of glass, that double-glazing, I'm trying to work on making a thermo-bimetal pattern system so that when the sun hits that outside layer and heats that interior cavity, that thermo-bimetal will begin to curl, and what actually will happen then is it'll start to block out the sun in certain areas of the building, and totally, if necessary. And so you can imagine, even in this application, that in a

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high-rise building where the panel systems go from floor to floor up to 30, 40 floors, the entire surface could be differentiated at different times of day depending on how that sun moves across and hits that surface.

And these are some later studies that I'm working on right now that are on the boards, where you can see, in the bottom right-hand corner, with the red, it's actually smaller pieces of thermometal, and it's actually going to, we're trying to make it move like cilia or eyelashes.

This last project is also of components. The influence -- and if you have noticed, one of my spheres of influence is biology -- is from a grasshopper. And grasshoppers have a different kind of breathing system. They breathe through holes in their sides called spiracles, and they bring the air through and it moves through their system to cool them down, and so in this project, I'm trying to look at how we can consider that in architecture too, how we can bring air through holes in the sides of a building. And so you see here some early studies of blocks, where those holes are actually coming through, and this is before the thermo-bimetal is applied, and this is after the bimetal is applied. Sorry, it's a little hard to see, but on the surfaces, you can see these red arrows. On the left, it's when it's cold and the thermo-bimetal is flat so it will constrict air from passing through the blocks, and on the right, the thermo-bimetal curls and allows that air to pass through, so those are two different components that I'm working on, and again, it's a completely different thing, because you can imagine that air could potentially be coming through the walls instead of opening windows.

So I want to leave you with one last impression about the project, or this kind of work and using smart materials. When you're tired of opening and closing those blinds day after day, when you're on vacation and there's no one there on the weekends to be turning off and on the controls, or when there's a power outage, and you have no electricity to rely on, these thermo-bimetals will still be working tirelessly, efficiently and endlessly. Thank you.

Discussion/Vocabulary Question Review

1. Do you think Professor’s Sung’s buildings are efficient? Do they provide enough insulation?

2. What are other ways buildings can reduce costs?3. Should there be legislation promoting these kinds of buildings?4. Will these building designs become more mainstream?5. Can you think of other inventions and prototypes that will become standard?

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1. Let’s see an example of how autonomous cars work.

Video: “A look inside Google’s driverless car” and “Hoe does Tesla’s autonomous car work”

1) As scientific researchers, what questions do you have about autonomous cars. Write three below:

1.

2.

3.

2) As a group, discuss the questions all of the group members have listed: What are the three most important questions of autonomous cars?

2. Reading Exercise:

Google driverless car crash was 'not a surprise', US transport secretary Anthony Foxx says

Foxx said we shouldn't compare the self-driving car to 'perfection'The US transport secretary Anthony Foxx has said it was "not a surprise" that a Google self-driving car crashed into a bus.Speaking to the BBC, Foxx acknowledged the crash, which took place in February, but said he would challenge people to compare the incident to "the number of crashes that occurred on the same day that were the result of human behaviour.""I think question here isn't comparing the automated car to perfection, I think it's a relative comparison to what we have now on the roads, which is you and I, and our eyeballs and our brains," he said.

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US transport secretary Anthony Foxx (L) and Google chairman Eric Schmidt (C) are shown a Google self-driving car by engineer Chris UrmsonJustin Sullivan/Getty Images

The US transport secretary Anthony Foxx has said it was "not a surprise" that a Google self-driving car crashed into a bus.Speaking to the BBC, Foxx acknowledged the crash, which took place in February, but said he would challenge people to compare the incident to "the number of crashes that occurred on the same day that were the result of human behaviour.""I think question here isn't comparing the automated car to perfection, I think it's a relative comparison to what we have now on the roads, which is you and I, and our eyeballs and our brains," he said.

The Google car crash happened when a driverless Lexus SUV scraped the side of a public bus while pulling out into traffic at low speeds.

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Google admitted the car was at fault, saying the software predicted the bus would let the car out because it was ahead of it.

In a statement, Google said: "This type of misunderstanding happens between human drivers on the road every day."

The company said it had now reviewed the incident, and refined the car's software to make it understand that large vehicles are less likely to give way to other vehicles.

Foxx is a confirmed fan of driverless cars. In January, he announced an upcoming $4 billion scheme to support and advance the development of the technology, as well as a proposed change in regulations that would pave the way for autonomous vehicles to hit America's roads. 

In the interview, Foxx admitted there was "no question" that the technology has the potential to cause disruption, but said it could also reduce 80 per cent of the car crashes that occur.

Google's cars have already travelled over 1 million miles without anyone at the wheel. They hope the vehicles will be released to the public in 2020.

Reading Questions:

1) Before you read this article, what did you think about the title?

2) After reading the article, what does the Foxx mean by saying the accident is “not a surprise”? Do you agree or disagree with his attitude?

3) What is implied in this article about Google’s autonomous cars? Does this article hold a positive, negative or neutral opinion about the accident?

Discuss the questions below:

1) Will carmakers be to blame for driverless crashes?2) What is car insurance? Will car insurance change for autonomous cars?3) What is the difference between semi-autonomous cars and fully-autonomous cars?4) Will autonomous cars change our abilities to drive? How?

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5) Will autonomous cars change employment rate? How?

Homework:

Debate preparation: As a group, you will be debating with one other group tomorrow about the advantages and disadvantages of autonomous cars.

Find more information to add to this list by doing some more research on the advantages and disadvantages of autonomous cars to prepare for our debate tomorrow. Try to get as many specific facts and statistics as possible. Suggested sources:

1. Driverless Cars Are Further Away Than You Think. By Will Knight on October 22, 2013. Available at: http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520431/driverless-cars-are-further-away-than-you-think/

2. Driverless Cars: Are completely self-driving cars feasible in the foreseeable future? The Economist Debate: Available at: http://www.economist.com/debate/overview/252

3. Mass autonomous cars project lets 3000 vehicles talk. Available at: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/08/mass-autonomous-cars-project-l.html

4. Google’s Self-Driving Car Caused Its First Crash. Available at: https://www.wired.com/2016/02/googles-self-driving-car-may-caused-first-crash/

5. What Tesla's Fatal Crash Means for the Path to Driverless Cars. Available at: http://fortune.com/2016/07/03/teslas-fatal-crash-implications/

6. Things That Give Self-Driving Cars Headaches. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/06/automobiles/autonomous-cars-problems.html