Finding parking in a big city usually involves lots of circling, wasted time and a whole lot of luck.

With that in mind, officials in San Francisco are launching an ambitious, $23 million project to install sensors on 6,000 of the city’s 24,000 parking spots that will alert drivers to open spaces.

The sensors, which were developed by researchers at the University of California–Berkeley and adapted by the company Streetline, will use a city-wide wi-fi network to keep track of how many spaces are open by displaying them on street signs or on smart phones.

And if you’re too lazy to even cruise for the new signs in San Francisco, a separate Web site, www.gottapark.com, will let you reserve a parking spot in advance. The spots come from a database of private spaces put up for rent by their owners. People looking for extra gas money can rent out their driveways and businesses can rent out their spots by registering on the site. Users can search for a specific date, time and area and the availability is displayed. The rental fee is set by the spot’s owner.

The sensors and spot reservations could help curtail traffic woes and environmental concerns across the country. A recent study by a University of California urban planner found that nearly 30 percent of traffic congestion in major business cities was a result of hunting for parking. The study also found the time spent searching for spots would be equal to 38 trips around the world, burning 47,000 gallons of gasoline and producing 730 tons of carbon dioxide.

Mallory Simon, CNN.com Writer

Mark Bauerlein, author of The Dumbest Generation, sent this response to my review of his (and others’) book, and he offers some good points about the purpose of the book.

“You’re right, Peter, the benefits of the Internet are extraordinary. It’s a miraculous advent. But the most beneficial uses aren’t the ones that appeal most to the kids. When Nielsen ranked most popular sites for teens, nine out of the top ten were for social networking. That’s what the Web means to them: nonstop contact with one another. It’s not a window into history, art, civics, literature, foreign affairs. It’s another medium of peer pressure, this one running 24/7.

The big question for educators is: How do we transfer all that generational interactivity toward knowledge- and taste-inducing exercises?”

Mark Bauerlein — Emory University    Author, “The Dumbest Generation”

Are you less than satisfied with your latest encounter with a customer service call center? You are far from alone.

Getty Images

A survey released today says one in five call center customers come away with the problem unresolved. And, no surprise here, they are twice as likely to stop doing business with that company than customers who had their problem solved.

The survey, by the CFI Group, broke down satisfaction ratings across several industries, on a 100-point scale. And the PC industry is no longer at the bottom of the heap. The industry is up 8% compared to CFI’s survey last year, to a 69. OK, the rating is still not great. But they’ve beat out the cable and satellite TV industry, which rated a 66. Here’s the whole list:

HOTEL = 78
RETAIL = 76
INSURANCE = 75
CELL PHONE SERVICE = 72
GOVERNMENT = 70
BANKING = 71
PERSONAL COMPUTER = 69
CABLE AND SATELLITE TV = 66

That’s right, the top performer is a “C” student. Maybe they’re grading on a curve.

The survey also found that (again, no surprise) customer service representatives who are difficult to understand didn’t solve problems as well. Eight-five percent of issues were resolved when the rep was easy to understand, compared to 64% when rep wasn’t. Still, the survey said offshore call centers improved their customer satisfaction scores by ten points over last year’s survey. Even so, more than half of the people surveyed (52%) said the location of the call center would influence their likelihood of using the company in the future, compared to 48% last year. Guess companies might want to reconsider outsourcing tech support to “Bob” from Bangalore.
Diane Hawkins-Cox, senior producer, CNN Sci-Tech Unit

It may sound backwards, but that is how two Duke professors suggest we gauge fuel economy.

MPG to GPM Conversion Chart

Richard Larrick and Jack Soll of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business say the phrase ‘miles per gallon‘ misleads consumers.

The premise of their study, published recently in the journal Science, is that you save more gas by switching from a 10 to a 15 MPG car than by trading in your 25 MPG ride for, say, a 50 MPG Prius.

If you’re scratching your head, consider the following equation:

Driving a 10 MPG SUV for 100 miles requires 10 gallons of gas, while one that gets 15 MPG will burn 6.7 gallons of gas on the same trip. So the jump from 10 to 15 MPG is a savings of 3.3 gallons of gas.

On the other hand, the 25 and 50 MPG cars burn 4 and 2 gallons, respectively, on a 100-mile drive. That is a savings of only 2 gallons compared with the SUV driver’s 3.3 gallons. You see?

So when it comes to saving money, Larrick and Soll say it’s less about buying the most fuel-efficient car, and more about removing the most inefficient vehicles from the road. They recommend fuel efficiency be displayed as ‘gallons per 100 miles’ (GPM) instead of the traditional MPG.

That way, instead of aiming for a car with the highest MPG, consumers would be striving for the lowest GPM rating.

The point is to help consumers easily understand the amount of gasoline they will save when they trade in a car.

It’s simple math. To calculate gallons per 100 miles, simply divide 100 miles by the vehicle’s MPG rating. However, this calculation is not one consumers seem to do when considering a new car.

For example, Larrick and Soll asked participants in their study to decide whether replacing 15 MPG vehicles with 19 MPG ones was better or worse than exchanging 34 MPG vehicles for those with 44 MPG ratings.

Groups given the vehicles fuel efficiencies in MPG chose the wrong answer of 34 to 44 MPG 75% of the time. On the other hand, people given fuel efficiency choices in GPM made the wrong decision only 36% of the time.

So yes, it’s still true that driving vehicles with the highest fuel efficiency possible is still best for the environment, but as gas prices rise will consumers be making their trade decisions for Mother Nature or their wallets? If it’s the latter, they may need GPM instead of MPG to make the best choice.

Test your MPG understanding at: http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/news/mpg/mpg.html

– Julia Griffin, CNN Science & Technology

He was one of the funniest humans ever.  I rode in on the bus today listening to a compilation of his monologues, and several times, I busted out laughing in a way that’s generally considered unseemly on public transportation.

So my flimsy excuse for paying tribute to George Carlin on a Science blog is to assemble a few of his observations.   He was full of wisdom, and at his best while pointing out that most of us are full of something else entirely.  Since his death was reported on Monday, CNN has played a clip of Carlin taking an unnamed CNN weatherman to task for using a phrase like “rain event.”  It got me to thinking about some of his other observations on science and tech stuff.  Feel free to add your own, but as is often the challenge with George Carlin, keep it clean!

On Energy:

“Electricity is really just organized lightning.”

On Human Intelligence:

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

On Intelligent life in the universe:

“If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little. “

On Meteorology:

“Weather forecast for tonight: dark.”

On Invention:

“When Thomas Edison worked late into the night on the electric light, he had to do it by gas lamp or candle. I’m sure it made the work seem that much more urgent. “

On Aviation:

“If the “black box” flight recorder is never damaged during a plane crash, why isn’t the whole airplane made out of that stuff?”

On Nature:

“I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete. It’s so f***in’ heroic.”

“It isn’t fair: the caterpillar does all the work, and the butterfly gets all the glory. “

and

“If a turtle doesn’t have a shell, is he homeless or naked?”

On Electronics:

“Why do you press harder on a remote-control when you know the battery is dead?”

On Military Technology:

Peter Dykstra, Executive Producer, CNN Science, Tech, and Weather

From CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers:

Tornadoes touched down tonight in 4 states MN, IA, NE and KS.  So far, 35 separates reports of tornado damage have been reported.  The most serious touched down north of Little Sioux, Iowa.  A boy scout camp was hit as 93 boy scouts and 25 leaders took cover from the storm.  Officials say 30-40 were injured and 4 were killed.  This was a large tornado hidden in the rain.  Warnings were issued for the storm in time, but the camp is in a very rural area. Storms will continue throughout the night.

Mike Griffin may have set a record this week for appearances on CNN by the NASA Administrator (or “Code A” as they call him inside the agency). We met on Sunday at the jet Propulsion Lab for the Phoenix landing on Mars. On Tuesday, he appeared on American Morning and he just sat down for an interview with us here at the Cape. But for those of us who keep track of such things, he gets “credit” for six interviews. There werre a ton of people around us as we taped the JPL interview, and they created a visual and aural distraction. We had to abort the interview twice before finally getting it right. Then today, just as he sat down to speak with me, a pair of NASA Huey choppers made an appearance near the Press Site (we call it “the Mound”) and started re-enacting scenes from “Apocalypse Now” or something. I didn’t hear any Wagner - but then again I couldn’t hear myself think. When it became evident they were loitering in the vicinity, I released Code A to do other media calls (little did the chopper pilots know they were messing up the Boss’s schedule). Anyway, he came back a short time later and we finally put something on tape. So for those of you keeping score at home, Code A, in a sense, logged six interviews with CNN this week.

Miles O’Brien/Space Correspodent

As a meteorologist I’ve been fascinated by the French skydiver trying to jump from a balloon at 130,000 feet.  Flying thru the stratosphere at the speed of sound with nothing but a skimpy space suit is just crazy to me.  Michel Vournier dreams of breaking the freefall record were postponed again this week when his balloon flew off without him.  Regardless, the whole story got me wanting to jump.   So up I went with a plane full of other more experienced skydivers at Freefall Adventures in south Jersey.  Going “tandem” with a pro attached to me for safety, we jumped at 15,300 feet (solidly in the troposphere).  That’s about 600 mb of atmospheric pressure (surface is around 1000mb).  So the breathing isn’t easy and I got a little light headed and cold (temperature is less than 40 degrees at that height).  Doesn’t matter cause you’re not there for long, and once you jump the adrenaline erases any chill in the air.  A quick acceleration to a peak speed of 138 mph and you realize Newton was right about this whole gravity thing!  Wow what a ride!!!!  At that altitude the air is thin but oxygen isn’t required… no helmet or space suit either.  Tee shirt, jeans, and instructor Range Luda strapped to my back is all that was needed.  Freefalling for 70 seconds was incredible… spiritual in fact.  I’ve been on top of high mountains, but being that high with NOTHING beneath you is mind blowing.  The view, of course, is phenomenal.  All you hear and feel is the air rushing around you.  You want it to last forever but the ground approaches quickly.  At 5000 feet I pull the chute and Range guides us to a smooth landing.  It’s a rush to say the least.  Admittedly this was my second jump, but the butterflies were swirling just as much as during my first leap 6 years ago.  You say you like roller coasters, a nice view, and being buffeted by the wind?   Well jumping out of a perfectly good airplane may be just the thing for you… just don’t forget to pull the rip cord!!! 

Rob Marciano    CNN Meteorologist

What an amazing feeling… Phoenix is on Mars! I don’t want to jinx anything, of course, but I can’t help but marvel at how perfectly it has gone so far. The spacecraft navigation during the final hours was right down the pipe. Every single event in the whole intricate process of entry, descent and landing went perfectly. And those pictures!! This is an alien-looking view of Mars. We’ve grown so accustomed to what Mars looks like at the five landing sites we know: The two Viking sites, the Pathfinder sites, and the sites for Spirit and Opportunity. But this is completely different. Flat terrain all the way to the horizon, but with an intricate pattern of fractures that may have formed from the expansion and contraction of the ice that we all hope lies just below the surface.

There’s still a long way to go. That crucial robotic arm has to come out of its cradle and dig down into the soil. All of the scientific instruments have to go to work on the samples that the arm will deliver. This mission is going to be a nail-biter for weeks to come. But so far, Phoenix is a triumph. It’s a good day on Mars.

From Steve Squyres

Principal Investigator

Mars Exploration Rovers

Okay, I’m going to try and channel Jack Cafferty to ask this question:

We’re spending $420 million US tax dollars on the Phoenix Mars Lander mission. (and another $37 million or so from Canada).

Is it worth it?  Where does Mars and space exploration fit in on your priority list?

Is learning more about space a key to our future?

Or do you think we’re better off spending the money here?

Blog away, just be polite to each other.

Peter Dykstra   Executive Producer   CNN Science & Tech