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First America’s Consumer Reports showed the world that the Lexus GX 460’s stability control system was, well, lacking control. Now, A British consumer magazine, Which?, decided to one-up CR and do some testing of their own on a few small-yet-tall MPVs.

With the recent recall of the Lexus GX 460, there was significant talk and even criticism regarding the relevance of the test and whether or not Toyota was simply being targeted due to their string of recent recalls. The folks from Which? magazine and the German Automobile Association decided to team up and test just how relevant and important stability control systems really are – regardless of manufacturer.

The fodder
Which? decided to test the Citroën Nemo Multispace, Fiat Qubo and Peugeot Bipper Teepee. All three vehicles are almost identical in their general shape and design, but only the Fiat Qubo even had electronic stability as an option – the others had none, with no ability to even add it (in the United Kingdom), as Which? points out.

The test (More after video)

The results
As the video clearly demonstrates, electronic stability control can play a huge role aiding drivers during evasive maneuvers and avoidance situations. Which? says that in the United Kingdom the vehicles that come equipped with ESC are 25 percent less likely to be involved in fatal accidents due to the high fatality risk associated with total loss of control and/or rolling a vehicle.

“This test highlights the importance of stability control. Which? wants all cars to be fitted with stability control as standard, as research by the Department for Transport has shown ESC-equipped vehicles are involved in 25% fewer fatal road accidents. Such a vital safety feature shouldn’t be optional – it should be built in from the start,” said George Marshall, senior researcher at Think? magazine.

Manufacturers take notice – respond quickly
Just as Lexus responded by quickly choosing to test and address the issue with the stability control system on its GX 460, European auto manufacturers also responded to Think?’s evaluation. PSA, which is the parent company of both Peugeot and Citroën, announced that as a result of the testing they will begin to make ESC a standard feature no later than the fall of 2011.

References
1. ‘Cintroen Nemo MPV rolls over…’ view

   

Source: Leftlane

Hey guys, if your sweetheart is Twi-Hard, it’s time to start saving those pennies. Twilight author Stephenie Meyer has teamed up with Infinite Jewelry Co. to design a diamond engagement ring patterned after the rock Edward gives to Bella in the best-selling novel The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.

In the book, Meyer describes the ring as “a long oval, set with slanting rows of glittering round stones. The band was gold — delicate and narrow. The gold made a fragile web around the diamonds.”

The beauty can be all yours…for a cool $2,000. Of course for those young lovers on a budget Infinite’s also designed two lower-priced versions of Bella’s ring, which retail for $479 and $35.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse hits theaters June 30.

Spotted@

Change is quite in the air today, whether it be climate change or human induced habitat shifts. What’s a species in the wild to do? Biologists naturally worry about loss of biodiversity a great deal, and many non-biologist humans rather high up on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs also care. And yet species loss, or the threat of extinction, seems too often to impinge upon public consciousness in a coarse categorical sense. For example the EPA classifications such as “threatened” or “endangered.” There are also vague general warnings or forebodings; warmer temperatures leading to mass extinctions as species can not track their optimal ecology and the like. And these warnings seem to err on the side of caution, as if populations of organisms are incapable of adapting, and all species are as particular as the panda.

That’s why I pointed to a recent paper in PLoS Biology, Adaptation, Plasticity, and Extinction in a Changing Environment: Towards a Predictive Theory below. I am somewhat familiar with one of the authors, Russell Lande, and his work in quantitative and ecological genetics, as well as population biology. I was also happy to note that the formal model here is rather spare, perhaps a nod to the lack of current abstraction in this particular area. Why start complex when you can start simple? Here’s their abstract:

Many species are experiencing sustained environmental change mainly due to human activities. The unusual rate and extent of anthropogenic alterations of the environment may exceed the capacity of developmental, genetic, and demographic mechanisms that populations have evolved to deal with environmental change. To begin to understand the limits to population persistence, we present a simple evolutionary model for the critical rate of environmental change beyond which a population must decline and go extinct. We use this model to highlight the major determinants of extinction risk in a changing environment, and identify research needs for improved predictions based on projected changes in environmental variables. Two key parameters relating the environment to population biology have not yet received sufficient attention. Phenotypic plasticity, the direct influence of environment on the development of individual phenotypes, is increasingly considered an important component of phenotypic change in the wild and should be incorporated in models of population persistence. Environmental sensitivity of selection, the change in the optimum phenotype with the environment, still crucially needs empirical assessment. We use environmental tolerance curves and other examples of ecological and evolutionary responses to climate change to illustrate how these mechanistic approaches can be developed for predictive purposes.

Their model here seems to be at counterpoint to something called “niche modelling” (yes, I am not on “home territory” here!), which operates under the assumption of species being optimized for a particular set of abiotic parameters, and focusing on the shifts of those parameters over space and time. So extinction risk may be predicted from a shift in climate and decrease or disappearance of potential habitat. The authors of this paper observe naturally that biological organisms are not quite so static, they exhibit both plasticity and adaptiveness within their own particular life history, as well as ability to evolve on a population wide level over time. If genetic evolution is thought of as a hill climbing algorithm I suppose a niche model presumes that the hill moves while the principal sits pat. This static vision of the tree of life seems at odds with development, behavior and evolution. The authors of this paper believe that a different formulation may be fruitful, and I am inclined to agree with them.

As I observed above the formalism undergirding this paper is exceedingly simple. On the left-hand side you have the variable which determines the risk, or lack of risk, of extinction more or less, because it defines the maximum rate of environmental change where the population can be expected to persist. This makes intuitive sense, as extremely volatile environments would be difficult for species and individual organisms to track.Too much variation over a short period of time, and no species can bend with the winds of change rapidly enough. Here are the list of parameters in the formalism (taken from box 1 of the paper):

η_c – critical rate of environmental change: maximum rate of change which allows persistence of a population

B – environmental sensitivity of selection: change in the optimum phenotype with the environment. It’s a slope, so 0 means that the change in environment doesn’t change optimum phenotype, while a very high slope indicates a rapid shift of optimum. One presumes this is proportional to the power of natural selection

T – generation time: average age of parents of a cohort of newborn individuals. Big T means long generation times, small T means short ones

σ² – phenotypic variance

h² – heritability: the proportion of phenotypic variance in a trait due to additive genetic effects

r_max intrinsic rate of increase: population growth rate in the absence of constraints

b – phenotypic plasticity: influence of the environment on individual phenotypes through development. Height is plastic; compare North Koreans vs. South Koreans

γ – stabilizing selection: this is basically selection pushing in from both directions away from the phenotypic optimum. The stronger the selection, the sharper the fitness gradient. Height exhibits some shallow stabilizing dynamics; the very tall and very short seem to be less fit

Examining the equation, and knowing the parameters, some relations which we comprehend intuitively become clear. The larger the denominator, the lower the rate of maximum environmental change which would allow for population persistence, so the higher the probability of extinction. Species with large T, long generation times, are at greater risk. Scenarios where the the environmental sensitivity to selection, B, is much greater than the ability of an organism to track its environment through phenotypic plasticity, b, increase the probability of extinction. Obviously selection takes some time to operate, assuming you have extant genetic variation, so if a sharp shift in environment with radical fitness implications occurs, and the species is unable to track this in any way, population size is going to crash and extinction may become imminent.

On the numerator you see that the more heritable variation you have, the higher η_c. The rate of adaptation is proportional to the amount of heritable phenotypic variation extant within the population, because selection needs variance away from the old optimum toward the new one to shift the population central tendency. In other words if selection doesn’t result in a change in the next generation because the trait isn’t passed on through genes, then that precludes the population being able to shift its median phenotype (though presumably if there is stochastic phenotypic variation from generation to generation it would be able to persist if enough individuals fell within the optimum range). The strength of stabilizing selection and rate of natural increase also weight in favor of population persistence. I presume in the former case it has to do with the efficacy of selection in shifting the phenotypic mean (i.e., it’s like heritability), while in the latter it seems that the ability to bounce back from population crashes would redound to a species’ benefit in scenarios of environmental volatility (selection may cause a great number of deaths per generation until a new equilibrium is attained).

Of course a model like the one above has many approximations so as to approach a level of analytical tractability. They do address some of the interdependencies of the parameters, in particular the trade-offs of phenotypic plasticity. In this equation 1/ω²_b quantifies the cost of plasticity, r₀ represents increase without any cost of plasticity. We’re basically talking about the “Jack-of-all-trades is a master of none” issue here. In a way this crops up when we’re talking of clonal vs. sexual lineages on an evolutionary genetic scale. The general line of thinking is that sexual lineages are at a short-term disadvantage because they’re less optimized for the environment, but when there’s a shift in the environment (or pathogen character) the clonal lineages are at much more risk because they don’t have much variation with which natural selection can work. What was once a sharper phenotypic optimum turns into a narrow and unscalable gully.

Figure 2 illustrates some of the implications of particular parameters in relation to trade-offs:

There’s a lot of explanatory text, as they cite various literature which may, or may not, support their model. Clearly the presentation here is aimed toward goading people into testing their formalism, and to see if it has any utility. I know that those who cherish biodiversity would prefer that we preserve everything (assuming we can actually record all the species), but reality will likely impose upon us particular constraints, and trade-offs. In a cost vs. benefit calculus this sort model may be useful. Which species are likely to be able to track the environmental changes to some extent? Which species are unlikely to be able to track the changes? What are the probabilities? And so forth.

I’ll let the authors conclude:

Our aim was to describe an approach based on evolutionary and demographic mechanisms that can be used to make predictions on population persistence in a changing environment and to highlight the most important variables to measure. While this approach is obviously more costly and time-consuming than niche modelling, its results are also likely to be more useful for specific purposes because it explicitly incorporates the factors that limit population response to environmental change.

The feasibility of such a mechanistic approach has been demonstrated by a few recent studies. Deutsch et al…used thermal tolerance curves to predict the fitness consequence of climate change for many species of terrestrial insects across latitudes, but without explicitly considering phenotypic plasticity or genetic evolution. Kearney et al…combined biophysical models of energy transfers with measures of heritability of egg desiccation to predict how climate change would affect the distribution of the mosquito Aedes aegiptii in Australia. Egg desiccation was treated as a threshold trait, but the possibility of phenotypic plasticity or evolution of the threshold was not considered. These encouraging efforts call for more empirical studies where genetic evolution and phenotypic plasticity are combined with demography to make predictions about population persistence in a changing environment. The simple approach we have outlined is a necessary step towards a more specific and comprehensive understanding of the influence of environmental change on population extinction.

Citation: Chevin L-M, Lande R, & Mace GM (2010). Adaptation, Plasticity, and Extinction in a Changing Environment: Towards a Predictive Theory PLoS Biol : 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000357

The PSA group will produce a Citroen Peugeot SUV based on the Mitsubishi ASX. The announcement comes after an agreement between the two companies which confirms rumours of recent months. The move will allow Citroen and Peugeot to offer a mid-size SUV in addition to the current C-Crossover and 4007 models, which are based on the Mitsubishi Outlander. Peugeot could call its model the 2008.

The new PSA SUV will be presented in Europe in 2012 and sales of about 50,000 models a year are expected. According to the group, the compact SUV market could grow about 60 percent by 2015. Plans are that the model will have either front wheel or all-wheel drive and will use the 1.6-litre HDI engine. In a two-wheel drive version, fuel consumption would be about 4.7 l/100 km with CO2 emissions of 123 g/km.

Michael Milken is wondering why companies aren’t selling more stocks and junk bonds to investors right now.

After all, stocks and junk bonds have rallied hard since the financial crisis, and at these levels he sees them as a great deal… to sell:

Bloomberg:

Near-zero interest rates in the U.S. and Europe have fueled demand for high-risk securities, providing companies with an opportunity to cut debt incurred during the excesses of the credit boom, Milken told an audience at the Milken Global Institute conference yesterday in Beverly Hills, California.

“It’s the individual’s fault, the individual leadership of that organization, if they are not taking advantage of today’s markets to sell equity and debt, de-leverage and push out maturities,” he said during a panel moderated by Matt Winkler, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News.

He continued:

“Defaults were exaggerated, the risks were exaggerated,” Milken said of the recovery in high-yield bonds. “Those risks existed in mortgage-backed securities, but they didn’t exist in industrial companies, and that’s what the market is saying.”

When a company sells stock or bonds at a certain price, it’s always going to be either a good deal for the investors buying or a good deal for the company selling.

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Technology Review has an article on concentrating solar PV company Amonix – Concentrated Solar Set to Shine.

Amonix recently launched its newest solar concentrator, which converts one fourth of the sunlight that falls on it into AC electricity. That’s compared with the approximately 18 percent system efficiency–including inverters that convert solar’s DC power to useable AC power–of the most efficient photovoltaic systems that don’t use special optics or track the sun.

To collect sunlight as efficiently as possible, Amonix starts with a massive 23.5-meter-by-15-meter array. The array is covered with thin, plastic Fresnel lenses, each measuring 350 square centimeters, that focus sunlight to an area that’s .7 square centimeters. The sunlight, concentrated to 500 times its normal intensity, hits an ultra-efficient multi-junction solar cell that converts 39 percent of the light into electricity. The cell, made by Spectrolab, is the most efficient in the world, demonstrating more than 41 percent efficiency in lab tests. To further enhance performance, Amonix uses a tracking system that keeps the lenses pointed within .8 degrees of the angle of the sun throughout the day.

Utility companies, however, have been reluctant to invest in any concentrated photovoltaic systems due in part to the device’s high level of complexity. Proper functioning of each component is crucial because the lenses require very precise alignment with the sun in order to focus light on the solar cells. “The difference between being in alignment and being one degree off is the entire system works or it doesn’t,” says Johanna Schmidtke, an analyst with Lux Research.

Amonix’s technology already accounts for some 13 megawatts of installed capacity, which represents more than half of all installed concentrated photovoltaic capacity in the world. And so long as Amonix can prove its reliability, its technology offers several distinct environmental advantages over other types of utility-scale solar.

Good news: Rocker Bret Michaels is on the slow and painful road to recovery after suffering a nearly fatal brain hemorrhage one week ago — and the former Poison frontman could be well enough to return to the stage just in time for Memorial Day Weekend.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed!

Although the ex-hair bander resumes in critical condition in an Arizona hospital, he’s responding well to tests and treatment, and is doing much better.

“While Bret is recovering, we obviously have some shows that are being rescheduled,” read a statement from Michaels’ rep on Wednesday. “We are working to reschedule dates from now until May 21st. At this time, we are planning to resume the tour May 26th in Ft. Smith Arkansas, provided there are no further complications or setbacks.”

“We will then continue with all scheduled dates throughout the summer and fall, including the June and July tour with Lynyrd Skynyrd,” the statement continued. “Look for additional information in the days and weeks to come. For those of you with tickets for shows that are being rescheduled, your tickets will be honored on the new dates. Tickets remain on sale for the shows which are being rescheduled although the new dates have yet to be announced.”

by Peter Spiro

Arizona’s already notorious anti-immigrant measure, enacted last week and making unauthorized presence in the U.S. a crime under state law, isn’t likely to last long.  But the courts may have nothing to do with its demise.  It’s the economic hit that Arizona is clearly going to take that will bring the state around, I suspect sooner rather than later.  Lost tourism and convention dollars will enlist powerful allies in-state for scaling back or repealing the law.  Opponents seem pretty well mobilized (Linda Greenhouse and San Francisco among them).

The more interesting — and constitutionally salient — source of this economic pressure will come from across the border.  Mexicans are incensed about S.B. 1070, and they seem willing to put their money where their mouths are.  The Mexican government has issued a travel advisory of the sort that will surely scare away casual vacation planners.  About a third of Arizona’s exports are to Mexico, to the tune of almost $5 billion.  One recent study counted almost 25 million annual tourist/shopping visits by Mexicans, generating $3.6 billion in income. That translates into jobs, jobs, jobs (30,000 of them) that will now be hearing a kind of giant sucking sound.  Human-rights sensitive travelers from other countries may well follow suit in boycotting the state.  Not exactly a blueprint for economic recovery.

This could prove the best example yet of targeted retaliation by a foreign country against a U.S. state, which in turn supplies a pretty good reason not to find the measure preempted by federal authority.  The exceptional preemption regime for immigration has been justified by its inherent foreign relations component, back to the Supreme Court’s eloquent 1875 decision in Chy Lung v. Freeman.  As with other activities posing a potential threat to foreign relations, the huge systemic downside risks — to the nation as a whole — of allowing individual states to muck up immigration policymaking justified their near-complete constitutional ouster.

But targeted retaliation cuts that exceptional preemption doctrine off at the knees.  In the old world, Mexico’s response would have been against the United States as a whole.  Today, it can be aimed at the offending jurisdiction, in such a way as to largely eliminate externalities that would otherwise distort state-level decisionmaking.  Arizona will shoulder the consequences of its (very bad) decisionmaking, not the rest of us.  My bet is that it will cave, even if the measure is sustained in the courts, in a way that sticks.

Per Finviz’s map of the futures market, it’s obvious that folks are feeling more optimistic today — not surprising since the Athens Stock Exchange is shooting up 4%.

But note there are a couple of bright red spots (not including the Nikkei, which had the day off for holiday), which are copper and lumber, both highly cyclical, and arguably leading. Keep a particularly close eye on copper.

Meanwhile, Palladium is blowin up.

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In one of the more bizarre media announcements of recent times, News International’s LCD (Lowest Common Denominator) British Tabloid The Sun is to publish a 3D edition on June 5 complete with 3D glasses, 3D editorial images, 3D adverts and a 3D Soccer World Cup schedule Wall Chart. It’s yet another newspaper first for the Murdoch empire (along with recalibrating public morals by widely distributing images of bare-breasted women), though we suspect the motivation is more related to Murdoch’s Sky Sports broadcasting the World Cup in 3D than by any forlorn hope of innovating a reversal of the Sun’s circulation which has been in decline for 15 years…
Continue Reading The world’s first 3D newspaper

Tags: 3D,
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Dealing with juvenile diabetes can’t be easy, so anything that adds a little fun to the tedious process of monitoring blood glucose levels might help put a smile on a child’s face. Bayer Diabetes Care has just introduced Didget – a unique blood glucose monitoring system that is designed to encourage regular testing with reward points to use online or through Nintendo gaming systems. ..
Continue Reading Bayer’s Didget makes childsplay of blood glucose monitoring

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(This guest post comes courtesy of the author’s blog)

    “There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency involved.”

    – Mises

Nouriel Roubini calls Greece “the tip of the iceberg”.  PIMCO’s El-Erian says Greece is likely to default.  Greece is the news story that keeps on giving.  Unfortunately, the problems in Greece are persistent because the Euro has been a persistently flawed currency system.  Much like the gold standard, the single-currency-under-multiple-governments simply does not work in the best interest of all involved.  I have been racking my brain for several weeks now attempting to think of a good outcome in the Greek debt crisis.  As John Mauldin recently wrote, there really are no good solutions here.  I keep coming back to the same conclusion – Greece should leave the EMU and default on their debt.  It sounds quite extreme and could cause some very serious near-term panic, but in the long-run I believe the Greeks must do what is in THEIR best interest and that involves bringing back the drachma and taking control of their currency.   No country should ever relinquish the power to control their own currency and be their own banker.

Martin Feldstein believes the default in Greece is inevitable and like myself believes this has been essentially self imposed by the handcuffs that come along with being a member of the EMU.  Feldstein writes:

“Greece will default on its national debt. That default will be due in large part to its membership in the European Monetary Union. If it were not part of the euro system, Greece might not have gotten into its current predicament and, even if it had gotten into its current predicament, it could have avoided the need to default.

There simply is no way around the arithmetic implied by the scale of deficit reduction and the accompanying economic decline: Greece’s default on its debt is inevitable.”

By joining the EMU Greece essentially handcuffed themselves.  They are not their own banker and have no control over the issuance of the local currency. As I mentioned above the problems imposed on Greece by being a member of the EMU are similar to what nations have gone thru under the gold standard in the past.  A single global currency under differing governments simply does not work equally for each nation because each of those nations has different economies, different trade needs and differing monetary and fiscal policy needs.  Feldstein elaborates on the current errors in the EMU:

“Greece might have been able to avoid that outcome if it were not in the eurozone. If Greece still had its own currency, the authorities could devalue it while tightening fiscal policy. A devalued currency would increase exports and would cause Greek households and firms to substitute domestic products for imported goods. The increased demand for Greek goods and services would raise Greece’s GDP, increasing tax revenue and reducing transfer payments. In short, fiscal consolidation would be both easier and less painful if Greece had its own monetary policy.

Greece’s membership in the eurozone was also a principal cause of its current large budget deficit. Because Greece has not had its own currency for more than a decade, there has been no market signal to warn Greece that its debt was growing unacceptably large.

If Greece had remained outside the eurozone and retained the drachma, the large increased supply of Greek bonds would cause the drachma to decline and the interest rate on the bonds to rise. But, because Greek euro bonds were regarded as a close substitute for other countries’ euro bonds, the interest rate on Greek bonds did not rise as Greece increased its borrowing – until the market began to fear a possible default.”

While I believe default would be the most beneficial situation for Greece I am not so certain that they will be allowed to default.  The BIS shows that European banks have almost $190B in Greek exposure and would be unlikely to get more than about 30-40 cents on the dollar – that is an intolerable hit to already fragile European banks.  But I am certain that there is no pretty solution to the current problems.  After all, these are fundamental problems in the structure of the EMU.  It’s simply impossible to coordinate mutually beneficial monetary and fiscal policy under one currency when you have such differing governments and economies.  As a highly indebted trade deficit nation, Greece has substantially different needs than a country such as Germany.  By not controlling their own currencies these nations are unable to properly target the needs of their own economies and best service their citizenry.

Greece might agree to a bailout package, but this would likely result in years of painful austerity.  In addition it would do nothing to solve the structural problems of their monetary system – the fact that they cannot control their own currency.  This greatly increases the likelihood of future problems.  The next recession is likely to result in one or more nations confronting similar issues.   In that case, we haven’t solved anything.  We’ve simply kicked the can down the road.  Lastly, a Greek bailout assumes that these same problems won’t be confronted in the near future with Ireland, Spain, Italy or Portugal.  If Greece gets the rumored bailout it’s only a matter of time before other countries demand assistance.  JP Morgan estimates that a bailout of Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland would cost €600B or 8% of Eurozone GDP.

There really is no good solution here.  It was a mistake for so many nations with such vastly different economies to enter the EMU and this crisis is a glaring example. If I were the Greeks I would be looking into the cleanest and least damaging way to defect from the EMU, bring back the drachma and ensure that a foreign central bank never controls my people’s money again.  These are problems that Greece will confront again if they do not confront them now.  But let’s be honest here.  We live in a bailout world.  It’s highly unlikely that Greece will be allowed to default and that is perhaps the scariest scenario in all of this.  While it would alleviate near-term fears it does nothing but kick the can down the road.  In addition to years of a very weak and painful Greek economy it will also set the table for future bailouts and inevitable future problems within the EMU.

Get more market commentary at PragCap.com >

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Found under: Vodafone, Android, 845, Huawei, Release, Video,

Vodafone has a new Android phone on the horizon and it is Vodafone 845. It will be powered by Android 2.1 Eclair and measures in at a very slim 100 x 55 x 13 mm. Manufactured by Huawei the 845 includes a 2.8-inch touchscreen display QVGA resolution a 3.2 mega-pixel camera Bluetooth 2.1 and WiFi bg connectivity and support for triband GSMGPRSEDGE at 90018001900 MHz as well as dualband UMTSHSDPA at 9002100 MHz.The low cost Android phone is expected to launch across the UK on t

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Google today announced on its blog that they have upgraded the mobile Image Search on Android 2.1 and iPhone OS 3.0+ devices.

It’s a typically Google update, in that the revamp will provide more speed and less clutter — two things that are always welcome.

There will now be more thumbnails per screen, and a quick swipe to the left or right will have you move between pages of results.

After clicking on a thumbnail, the images will be presented fullscreen on a plain black background (try saying that 6 times quickly), with the text disappearing after a few moments.

All in all, it’s a nice, clean, fast upgrade: a win in my books.

To access it, simply go to www.google.com on your Android 2.1 or iPhone 3.0+ handset, and click on images.

Neither of those handsets in reach right now? No worries: check out the video demo, below.

[via Mashable]

Toyota has resumed sales of the 2010 Lexus GX 460 SUV, two weeks after it announced a recall of the 9,400 models already sold.

The Japanese automaker stopped sales of the vehicle after Consumer Reports magazine declared the SUV a safety risk, warning readers that it was prone to oversteer in turns.

Lexus tested the car in response to the warning and made changes to the vehicle’s electronic stability control software. New vehicles are being built with the new software and dealers will install software upgrades on the recalled vehicles.

The Lexus GX 460 is built on the same platform as the Toyota 4Runner, which — along with the larger Toyota Sequoia and Land Cruiser SUVs — is currently being tested by Toyota to detect any similar concerns.

For more

Source: Car news, reviews and auto show stories

Catherine Rampell at the NY Times Economix asks: How Long Is an ‘Extended Period’?

Short answer: Longer than many analysts expect.

First we can compare to the “considerable period” language in 2003:

June 25, 2003: Lowered Rate to 1%, Unemployment Rate peaked at 6.3%

August 12, 2003: “the Committee believes that policy accommodation can be maintained for a considerable period.” Unemployment rate at 6.1%

December 9, 2003: Last statement using the phrase “considerable period”. Unemployment rate at 5.7%

January 28, 2004: the Committee believes that it can be patient in removing its policy accommodation. Unemployment Rate 5.7%

May 4, 2004: “the Committee believes that policy accommodation can be removed at a pace that is likely to be measured.” Unemployment Rate 5.6%

June 30, 2004: FOMC raised the Fed Funds rate 25 bps. Unemployment Rate 5.6%

So “extended period” is probably 6+ months after the language changes – the next meeting is June 23rd and 24th, so the earliest rate hike would probably be in December (barring a significant pickup in inflation or rapid decline in unemployment).

Click on graph for larger image in new window.

This graph shows the effective Fed Funds rate (Source: Federal Reserve) and the unemployment rate (source: BLS)

In the early ’90s, the Fed waited more than a 1 1/2 years after the unemployment rate peaked before raising rates. The unemployment rate had fallen from 7.8% to 6.6% before the Fed raised rates.

Following the peak unemployment rate in 2003 of 6.3%, the Fed waited a year to raise rates. The unemployment rate had fallen to 5.6% in June 2004 before the Fed raised rates.

Although there are other considerations, if we assume the unemployment rate peaked in October 2009 – and add 18 months – then the Fed would probably wait until early 2011 to raise rates (at the earliest). My guess is the Fed will probably wait until the unemployment rate is closer to 9% before removing the “extended period” language, and it is unlikely they will raise rates until the unemployment rate is below 8%. Last September I wrote: Fed Funds and Unemployment Rate. Here is an excerpt with an updated graph:

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The Audi vs BMW challenge is getting serious with this funny picture of the Hong Kong Audi dealership adorned with an enormous BMW billboard above it. It seems that when the going gets tough…. After BMW’s not very exciting EfficientDynamics video with the prococious child genius, Audi has produced a “friendly competition” video and one called “the spell”. So far we have to give Audi and BMW 1-0 for creativity in advertising. Although having nabbed that space above the Audi dealership, BMW could be a step ahead in guerilla tactics. See the videos after the jump.

Eva Regårdh wrote:

On March 29 MIT arranged a round table seminar entitled “The Future of Manufacturing Innovation—Advanced Technologies.” The seminar focused on technological advances that could spur manufacturing in the U.S.

MIT president Susan Hockfield opened the afternoon by reflecting on the status of the U.S. as a manufacturing nation. “Many Americans tend to believe that hardly anything is made in the U.S. anymore, and that all manufacturing has moved to China or other countries with low wages,” she said. ”But by reinventing manufacturing capabilities and processes, the U.S. could create 17 to 20 million new jobs.”

Is this realistic? Can Western countries with high-paid jobs really compete with countries like China and India where the cost of labor is lower?

“Yes. Just look at Germany and Japan,” Hockfield said.

Coming from Sweden with a background in engineering, and having covered European industry for many years for publications such as VerkstadsForum, Verkstäderna, and Automation, I believe that Hockfield may be right, but that the United States has much to do in order stay competitive. Just look at the figures: in 2009 the U.S had a trade deficit of almost $227 billion with China alone, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s foreign trade statistics. Over the last three years, 10 percent of the U.S. manufacturing workforce was laid off, MIT political scientist Suzanne Berger pointed out at the seminar.

While I don’t mean to sound like a preachy outsider, a number of practices that I’ve observed from my time covering European manufacturers, particularly in my native Scandinavia, could be useful as the United States seeks to rebuild or reinforce its own manufacturing infrastructure.

Consistent information handling during a product’s entire lifecycle is an often underestimated but vital component if we want to keep manufacturing profitable. Being able to master small batch production, even of complex and high-tech goods, in order to meet individual customers needs, is another key to staying competitive.  This is easier said than done. America is adapted to economies of scale, a tradition dating back to the days of Henry Ford. Certainly the U.S. has a huge home market, but this has probably delayed the adoption of small, efficient batch manufacturing essential in smaller countries and markets, such as the Nordic ones.

Once that is mastered, customization becomes, if not easy, at least more achievable. Customization, in turn, demands consistent information, with software solutions holding and updating product data correctly, through the product’s entire life cycle. Systems that can do this must …Next Page »

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Drive the Nissan 370z at the Top Gear Track

Drive the Nissan 370z at the Top Gear Track. The Stig will be there to show you how.

The Nissan 370Z (known as the Fairlady Z in Japan) is a sports car manufactured by Nissan Motors.

It was announced on October 29, 2008 and was first shown at an event in Los Angeles ahead of the 2008 Greater LA Auto Show, before being officially unveiled at the show itself.

The 370Z is the sixth-generation of the Nissan Z-car line, succeeding the 350Z.

Ford designers set their sights on creating an endearingly simple vehicle for their latest project, and we’d have to say they’ve succeeded. Unveiled at the Beijing Motor Show, there’s definitely a certain stripped-back elegance about the Start Concept, which along with its sculpted lines and some clever interior customization options, features a new 1.0-liter, three-cylinder addition to the company’s EcoBoost petrol engine family that promises a CO2 rating of under 100 g/km…
Continue Reading Ford Start Concept features 1.0-litre, three-cylinder EcoBoost engine

Tags: Beijing-Motor-Show,
Concept Cars,
Ford

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