Archived Newsletters

Gasoline Taxes

Since one person (James Felton, January and July 1993) has responded twice to the content of my last letter ("Global Warming," October 1992), it is my turn.

There is now enormous pressure to keep our gasoline taxes at unreasonably low levels. The Ohio Motorists' Association made the silly claim that a 4.3-cent increase in the gas tax (about $2 per thousand miles) would cause tourism to "suffer -- especially;" Forum letters have implied that any revenue from taxes on gasoline should only be used to benefit motorists. These writers can be refuted by plain facts:

  1. Many costs associated with auto travel are not covered by these taxes. For example, billions of dollars are spent annually to protect shipping lanes for oil tankers, and there are pollution costs. We are motorists part of the time, but we breathe all of the time. The free market works best when prices reflect costs; when this does not happen, we suffer for it, because the advantages of superior products (such as more fuel efficient autos) are negated.
  2. In most states, sales of almost every item except gasoline are taxed for general revenue. Ohio's sales tax would amount to between 7 and 10 cents per gallon if it were levied on gasoline (as it is on every other item you can buy except food).
  3. Gasoline costs are so low that very few people take fuel efficiency into consideration when buying a car. Federal gasoline taxes, adjusted for inflation, are far lower than they were in 1960.
  4. Gasoline taxes are among the few that can be easily offset without pain. You can save the entire costs of a ten-cent-per gallon tax by simply driving five miles per hour slower (which would still put most drivers over the speed limit, and cost them very little time), or by buying a car that has 8% better fuel efficiency. Why make dangerous driving cheap?

The argument has been made that federal gas taxes should not be raised because the "highway trust fund" has a surplus. Why does it have a surplus? Simply because it can only be used for a very limited type of expenditure, such as 90% of interstate highway construction, or 50% of some other highways. It is clear that people on these interstates are being subsidized by people who do mostly local driving. As a consequence of that subsidy, freeway drivers pay about 1 cent per mile, less than a quarter of the cost of using a toll road.

If my gas-tax money can subsidize an interstate that I don't use, why can't that money be used to subsidize additional trains, which I do use (whenever they are available)? Trains are safer, more efficient, more comfortable, and faster than autos, and everybody who takes the train (especially a commuter train) is helping to ease highway congestion for motorists.

John D. McGervey
1819 Wilton Road
Cleveland Heights, OH 44118

Story Lines for a Physics Course

You asked for comments on your article about your physics course (Comment, July 1993). I found the section called "Comparing Newtonian and post-Newtonian physics" very confused and very misleading:

  1. Newtonian physics is not "outdated." For most situations, other than at the atomic level, it is an excellent approximation to relativistic quantum mechanics. The idea that new theories eliminate old theories encourages crackpots. I teach my freshman students about the correspondence principle.
  2. The most basic elements of modern physics are particles. The last 25 years have witnessed the revival of the elementary particle concept with the discovery of the W and the Z and the quark model. It is true that these particles are created and destroyed and need to be described by quantum mechanics.
  3. The statement "the universe emerges as an --unpredictable network of energy" sounds more like mysticism than science. With the discovery of the microwave background 25 years ago, the evolution of the universe (physical cosmology) has become an important area of science research.
  4. The opposition to evolution comes from those who refuse to accept scientific evidence. Relativity and quantum mechanics are irrelevant.

I hope your students are not too badly misled by your course.

Lincoln Wolfenstein
Department of Physics
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890

An Experiment in Teaching Environmental Science

During a Fulbright lecturing award this year, I taught an environmental science course, "The Terrestrial Biosphere: Physical and Societal Issues" at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay. The faculty's generous support and encouragement enabled me to offer this course in a unique format. I based the course on the 10 one-hour video programs, "Race to Save the Planet," produced for the US Public Broadcasting System by the WGBH (Boston, MA) Science Unit. I also used the accompanying study guides and textbook by G.T. Miller Jr, Living in the Environment (Wadsworth, Belmont CA, 1990).

It was an honor to use this material as a teaching tool, apparently for the first time in India since the material's initial airing in the Fall of 1990. Although I had purchased the US off-air taping rights, I obtained from the Indian distributor (EDUTECH, Center for Environment Education, Ahmedabad, Gujarat) copies of the video programs in PAL format, as well as copies of transcripts of the programs for each student.

The academic backgrounds of the 22 enthusiastic undergraduates represented a cross-section of science and engineering disciplines at IIT. There were 3 contact hours per week. During the first two weekly hours, we critically viewed each of the videos and discussed the contents using suggestions in the Faculty and Study Guides. I used the third hour to give basic lectures in ecology, based on the textbook, to prepare students for the video programs. At the outset, I distributed a list of two dozen topics from which students chose subjects for oral term reports. Near the end of the semester, the students presented their reports during three successive half-day "workshops" which were videotaped in the studio of IIT's Education Technology cell. Educational video technology is new at IIT Bombay, and my students were among the first to use this facility. I was pleasantly surprised to find that students chose topics with little or no duplication, and that some chose to work in teams. Topics included: global warming models, ozone depletion analysis, population study of Bombay, effects of industrial development on a village, the ozone layer and melanoma, environmental impact of a refinery, natural systems for waste management, migration from villages to cities, aquacultural water purification, survey of IIT faculty on environmental concerns.

Weekly homework assignments were taken from the self-tests in the study guide, and an in-class "open-scripts" final exam was compiled from the accompanying faculty guide. Grades were based on oral presentations, homework assignments, the final exam score, and attendance.

We barely touched on the physics, let alone societal issues, raised in this series. My primary objective was to empower students to take initiative to apply their own science and engineering backgrounds to environmental issues. The success was beyond my wildest expectation. I regret that I did not take the trouble to become better acquainted with individual students, through informal meetings at least occasionally throughout the semester.

I plan to repeat this course back home, and I would be interested to learn of personal experiences of your readers in teaching environmental science.

Bernard Hoop
Pulmonary and Critical Care Unit
Massachusetts General Hospital
Harvard Medical School
Boston, MA 02114

Concerning Letters to the Editor

Let's consider two types of scientific publications, journal articles dealing with specific scientific discoveries, and letters to the editor and similar communications concerned with issues of general interest to scientists. Peer review is used to judge the first type, while editorial discretionary procedures are used to judge the second.

The intent of letters to the editor is to focus our attention on such items as the role of science in society, criteria of choice for scientific values, scientific controversies, matters of personal interest to scientists, and historical recollections. A particularly important item deals with controversies in science. Letters to the editor should allow and encourage discussions and debates on controversial issues. "Controversy is one of the spices of life and an important path to knowledge" (editorial in Physics and Society, October 1992).

There is clear evidence that these objectives of letters to the editor are not fulfilled. The evidence shows that discussions on important controversial issues are discouraged and suppressed. Acceptance or rejection of a scientific communication is left entirely to the editor's discretion. Reasons for rejection, if rejection occurs, are not disclosed. In one case I was clearly and unambiguously advised by the editor [of another publication] that it is not the policy of that journal to disclose to the author any reasons for rejection. Whatever motivations the editor had is a secret matter and there is no appeal.

A very curious situation has developed. Editors are allowed to exercise tremendous and probably unprecedented personal power to control scientific communication. Even an error in judgment on the part of the editor is not considered to be a possibility.

Peer review is not a perfect system. However, it would serve the best interests of our scientific community if the discretionary procedure were abandoned and peer review be used instead. Peer review is an open process. The author and reviewer actively participate in open discussions on the issues involved. The possibility of appeal is an important part of the system. If a reviewer has a negative appraisal, opportunity is provided to have the case reexamined by another reviewer.

It could be a considerable advantage to the scientific community to have an open scientific forum or a clearing ground to discuss a variety of problems in physics. The forum could be in the form of letters to the editor. However, rules consistent with the traditions in science should be strictly observed. In no event should secret decisions be used to silence those who express unpopular ideas that are outside mainstream scientific research. In the proposed forum an editor may reject a scientific communication, but reasons for rejection should be disclosed and an opportunity for appeal should be provided. Such an opportunity should be provided upon the request of the author.

Jacob Neufeld
113 Cedar Lane
Oak Ridge, TN 37830

Improving Courtroom Presentations of Scientific Evidence

Edward Gerjuoy

[This article is a condensation of the originally delivered paper which, including citations omitted here, is obtainable from the author.]

Scientists and lawyers have long expressed increasing concern about courtroom presentations of scientific and technological testimony, which characteristically involve experts hired by the adversaries and offering diametrically opposed opinions. It is widely believed that judges and juries are often quite unable to soundly evaluate the reliability of such testimony, even after each testifying expert has been cross examined by opposing legal counsel. Nonetheless, according to a 1992 story in US News & World Reports, scientific evidence is now used in nearly 30 % of all court cases and the demand for scientific expert testimony has tripled in the past decade, so that scientists now make some 400,000 trips every year to depositions, briefings, and courtrooms. This paper addresses some of the issues connected with this courtroom use of scientific evidence, especially those of interest to physicists and the APS.

Is scientific evidence is being misused: anecdotes.
These issues raise a preliminary question: Is it true that scientific evidence is being misused in the courtroom? Unfortunately I know of no studies of this question. On the other hand, there is considerable anecdotal evidence to support the proposition that scientifically unsophisticated judges and juries generally are unable to cope with the outrageously bad scientific testimony that incompetent or even corrupt scientific experts all-too-frequently offer.

Here is one anecdote, from my own experience. The very first case in which I cross-examined an opposing expert witness involved the Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Company's 1975 appeal of the state government's refusal to relax the Pennsylvania limits on smoke fume emissions from the company's coke plant. Coke plant technology was then, and remains now, antediluvian; for my present purposes it suffices to state that coke plants have ovens, that these ovens have doors which almost always leak polluting fumes into the atmosphere, and that the amount of objectionable particulate matter in these fumes customarily is measured by the attenuation of light passing through the fumes. The company wanted the witness, who shall be nameless, to testify as a scientific expert on optical propagation through particulate-containing fumes. I was representing Pennsylvania.

The witness had been allowed to present expert testimony in his chosen subject area many times previously, even though his predominant work experience and education had been not as a physicist or even as an atmospheric scientist, but rather as merely a conventional meteorologist predicting the weather. His resume, though long on his past work experience and his many previous court appearances as an expert, was notably sparse on his past scientific accomplishments, especially his accomplishments in fields related to optical propagation through anything. Even more noteworthy was the resume's proud statement, under the heading "Professional Recognition," that the witness was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. I decided, therefore, to question the witness about his qualifications. When I got him to admit shamefacedly that purchasing a subscription to Science was all it took to become a member of the AAAS, the courtroom was engulfed by an almost palpable stir, to which the hearing examiner and all the other lawyers in the room contributed. Obviously, except for myself not one of the attorneys present, on the bench or on either party's side, had ever heard of the AAAS or its journal Science.

Despite this down-grading of the witness's professional recognition, the hearing examiner, who was a law professor, permitted him to testify as an expert. After his direct testimony, wherein all his offered opinions were totally favorable to the company's position, I began my cross examination by trying to find out what calculations he had performed in arriving at those opinions. In response to my questions he said that he was acquainted with the theory of light scattering by small particles, and in fact had worked through the theory. He didn't know that this theory, for spherical particles anyway, is known as Mie theory or Mie scattering, but this deficiency was hardly significant.

However his answer to my next question did display a serious deficiency. When I asked him what equations he had used in working through the theory, he said "the Schrodinger equation." I emphasize that this answer, unlike his previously-discussed answer to my question about how he had achieved AAAS membership, drew no reaction whatsoever from the audience. In other words, excepting myself once again, no one in the courtroom realized that answering "the Schrodinger equation" instead of "Maxwell's equations" was a howler which immediately revealed that the witness could not possibly have worked through the theory, and that consequently his testimony completely lacked credibility. The worst fact of all, from my point of view at the time, was that this just-described indifference extended to the expert witnesses who had been assembled to testify for the state. They were not much more knowledgeable about the theory of light scattering by small particles than the company's witness. In other words, although the proper interpretation of optical attenuation by particulate-containing fumes was one of the crucial issues in the appeal, I did not have available a single expert witness whose evidence, under oath, would have had a good chance of convincing the hearing examiner that the testimony by the company's expert witness was the pure garbage it was.

I don't want this anecdote to be my sole support for the thesis that courts generally are unable to cope with bad scientific testimony, but because of space limitations I must confine myself to just a few additional anecdotes, presented in much less detail. While preparing this paper I thought I would look at some court decisions concerning x-ray radiation hazards. Almost the first judicial opinion I found on this subject, written in 1979, contained this statement: "The defendant conceded at oral argument before this court that an x-ray, or x-radiation, is derived from and composed of -- electricity."

Arthur Damask, a physicist who frequently testifies in automobile accident cases, tells the following sad story in a 1987 paper about accident reconstruction published in Physics Today. In one of his cases, after having testified convincingly and dispositively, as he thought, he went home, only to find out later that his side actually had lost. Apparently the other side's lawyer was allowed to tell the jury that "the laws of physics are obeyed in the laboratory, but not in rural New Jersey."

Because this paper's main audience is physicists, the foregoing anecdotes have been confined to cases illustrating courtroom misunderstanding of physical science. Similarly illustrative anecdotes involving other scientific fields readily could have been given. Many such anecdotes can be found in Peter Huber's 1991 book titled "Galileo's Revenge: Junk Science in the Courtroom." Huber is a Ph.D. engineer as well as a lawyer. It is distinctly less easy, although by no means rare, to find or hear about cases where use of scientific evidence has been exemplary. In sum, despite the absence of reliable studies it is reasonable to conclude that to a significant extent scientific evidence is being misused in the courtroom.

Does this issue deserve attention from physicists?
There remains a second preliminary question: Aside from the fact that physicists, as good citizens, typically have a general interest in societal issues, does the courtroom use of scientific evidence deserve any special attention from physicists? I also answer this question affirmatively, although once again I can't cite conclusive facts. Admittedly most of the scientific testimony that is offered in US courts involves matters that are only indirectly related to physics, for example medical diagnoses, blood typing, chemical testing, and epidemiology.

On the other hand perusal of legal literature discloses many classes of disputes, occasionally having important public policy implications, wherein physics testimony is likely to be decisive. Examples include the environmental, x-ray, and automobile accident classes represented in the anecdotes discussed earlier. Other examples, which may be between individuals or between individuals and a governmental agency, include:

  1. the health hazards of nuclear radiation, for instance a claim that exposure to Nevada Test Site emissions caused multiple myeloma;
  2. highly publicized recent claims that low-frequency power lines induce cancer, a subject that has been addressed in the Physical Review by Yale Professor Robert Adair;
  3. nuclear reactor licensing disputes;
  4. patent infringement cases of various sorts, often involving quite subtle physics;
  5. and the forensic laboratories that are the backbone of modern criminal prosecutions are employing ever more sophisticated laboratory procedures, including physical science techniques such as voice print identification, neutron activation, infrared spectrophotometry, nuclear magnetic resonance, mass spectrometry and scanning electron microscopy.

Proposals for improving courtroom use of scientific evidence

I turn therefore to proposals for dealing with the problem posed by the courtroom misuse of scientific evidence. One suggested solution, urged in the past by many American legal scholars, is abolition of jury trials. After all, only a few countries outside the orbit of Anglo-Saxon law have retained the jury, defined as an assembly of lay persons who reach a verdict without the direct participation of judges learned in the law.

Another even more radical proposal is to replace both judges and juries by scientists. This recommendation is the principal feature of the so-called "science court," as proposed about 20 years ago by Arthur Kantrowitz, a physicist and former chief executive of the AVCO-Everett Laboratory. Whenever the parties to a legal dispute could not agree on the correct scientific facts, the dispute was to be referred to a science court for determination of those "correct" facts via open adversarial hearings, conducted by scientists in front of a scientific jury. With this referral procedure, according to Kantrowitz, the laymen jurors in the original dispute assuredly would get the correct scientific facts, and they then (after taking into account the judge's instructions on the law) would be able to decide the dispute the way a lay jury is competent to do, namely on the basis of the jurors' social values applied to those facts.

Although in the past both jury abolition and the science court have had their adherents, these proposals have little support at present.

During the last decade, however, there has been increasing support for the belief that the problems of the American justice system are rooted in its strong reliance on adversarial trials. It has been proposed, therefore, that the justice system should incorporate procedures that will encourage parties to negotiate resolutions of their disputes, with an adversarial trial only the very last resort. The term "Alternative Dispute Resolution" (ADR) is used to describe all such settlement-encouraging procedures, which come in a variety of forms that I do not have the space to describe. The proponents of ADR argue that especially in disputes involving complicated scientific issues, such as environmental disputes, the parties themselves are more able to arrive at a fair resolution than can any judge or jury. I however do not see why ADR--wherein the parties still furnish their own experts who may or may not be first class--generally should enable the parties to reach a more correct resolution of their scientific controversy than a conventional jury trial would.

In my view, the proposals I have described above have a fundamental flaw which, irrespective of their merits, makes their wide adoption unlikely. Such proposals simply represent too radical a departure from traditional trial procedures. Consequently I will close this paper with descriptions of a few proposals that are not radical and that have attracted considerable support from legal scholars and practitioners. I judge that many or all of these proposals have a good chance of being adopted in the near future, and of actually improving the courtroom use of scientific evidence.

A non-radical proposal: peer review
One set of such proposals seeks to tighten the rules governing the admissibility of scientific evidence, to make it easier for judges to exclude so-called "junk science". This notion of improving the courtroom use of scientific evidence via changes in the admissibility rules has received wide publicity during the past year, because the Supreme Court, in the case of Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, has agreed to consider what restrictions (if any) should be placed on a judge's powers to exclude scientific testimony that a party seeks to present. In this case, the plaintiff is a child born with a birth defect allegedly caused by the child's mother's use, during pregnancy, of an anti-nausea drug called Bendectin. The plaintiff sought to prove this allegation via the testimony of several experts who relied on their unpublished studies, even though the published scientific literature overwhelmingly supported the thesis that Bendectin does not cause birth defects. The federal district court judge refused to allow the plaintiff's evidence because it had not been subjected to any sort of peer review. It is this ruling, which was upheld by the Court of Appeals, that now is before the Supreme Court (1).

The Daubert ruling that the scientific evidence was inadmissible because it had not been subjected to peer review goes far beyond present admissibility restrictions. In effect, the Daubert ruling is asserting that without peer review the reliability of scientific evidence cannot be assured. For the most part, but by no means universally, scientists have lined up behind the Daubert ruling. The AAAS and the National Academy have even presented the Supreme Court with an amicus brief in support of the lower court's opinion. On the other hand a number of prominent epidemiologists and other scientists, including Stephen Jay Gould, have criticized the lower court's "blind deference" to peer review, and have urged the Supreme Court to uphold the present principle that the jury should be allowed to weigh essentially all relevant evidence.

My own view is that if the choice has to be between the present liberality and the Daubert rule, I would favor upholding Daubert, but I am not at all sure that the Daubert rule's seemingly inflexible reliance on peer review is well thought out. In the first place, there may be many circumstances wherein a competent expert will find it convenient to analyse data in an unorthodox but nevertheless quite valid fashion. The Daubert ruling would not allow such an expert to testify concerning his or her analysis unless the analysis was worth publishing in a reputable scientific journal, which probably rarely would be the case.

In the second place, uncritical reliance on peer review implies an uncritical faith in the scientific quality of the peer reviewers. During my tenure as an administrative law judge, I once actually had to rule on the admissibility of expert testimony offered by a dowser. I refused to admit the testimony, but I might have been hard-pressed to do so if my decision had to be based on the Daubert rule. Dowsers have a professional organization, the American Society of Dowsers, which has 68 local chapters and holds an annual conference that, in 1989, lasted five days. If my would-be dowser witness had been asked to produce peer dowser support, I am sure he could have done so.

Another non-radical proposal: court-appointed experts
The last proposal I want to discuss is designed to improve the quality of the testifying experts. Various legal commentators have pointed out that under the federal rules and the rules of most states, the judge is empowered to call court-appointed expert witnesses to the stand, to testify on disputed scientific issues without the onus or bias of having been hired by one of the contesting sides. Each side still could call its own experts, and would be free to fully cross-examine the court-appointed witnesses. It is believed that this proposal should greatly increase the willingness of competent scientists to give courtroom testimony, since a court-appointed witness does not risk being regarded as a hired gun." Nevertheless, court-appointed witnesses have been used only sparingly in the past, primarily because a judge handling a case normally has neither the competence nor the time to ferret out a reliable expert in any specialized scientific field that might be relevant to the case.

It has been suggested, therefore, that the Federal Judicial Center, which Congress has established to improve the operation of the federal courts, should hire scientists who could assist judges to find experts willing to serve as court-appointed witnesses. Presumably these Judicial Center scientists, after receiving a cry for help from a judge who expected to be confronted with conflicting scientific testimony, would be knowledgeable enough to know what sort of specialists were required and in what professional societies they might be found. Thus suitable inquiries by the Judicial Center scientists to the appropriate scientific societies might provide a practical means of locating needed court-appointed witnesses. For this scheme to work, however, the scientific societies would have to cooperate with the Federal Judicial Center, for instance by maintaining lists of member scientists who were competent and were willing to accept court-appointment in various specialized fields.

There is reason to believe that the Federal Judicial Center will accept this responsibility of finding needed expert witnesses, on an experimental basis at least. It is my hope that the APS and its members will be willing to cooperate with such efforts to locate reliable physicist experts, whether by the Federal Judicial Center or by some other designated agency. The APS also should consider promulgating a code of ethics for APS members who testify as expert witnesses, whether for a party or for the court. The National Academy of Forensic Engineers already has promulgated such a code, as have other professional societies. For instance, the Forensic Engineers code states, "The expert should refuse or terminate involvement in an engagement when fee is used in an attempt to compromise the expert's judgment."

  1. After this paper was sent to Physics and Society the Supreme Court issued its ruling on the Daubert case. See Science , 2 July 1993, page 22.

The author holds both a physic PhD and a Doctor of Laws degree. He is presently Professor of Physics Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, and "of counsel" to a Pittsburgh law firm.

The Interface Between Physics and Patents: Theories, Facts and Frictions

Francis H. Lewis

[This essay is a drastically abridged version of a longer paper. The reader is invited to contact the author for the longer, and hopefully more coherent and readable, version. This article is copyrighted, 1993.]

When one mixes one or more lawyers with a roomful of scientists, a spontaneous exothermic oratorical reaction nearly always occurs (especially when catalyzed with alcohol), producing much rhetoric beyond the usual lawyer jokes. What makes these discussions so fascinating is that both species use the same words, words like proof, evidence, laws, and experts, but with entirely different meanings. For example, "truth" might seem to be a simple notion to a person of ecclesiastical outlook: Truth is revealed by the Almighty through divine inspiration, sometimes with the aid of God's Church. To a scientist, however, truth is discovered by observation and analysis, reinforced by corroboration by other scientists, and abstracted from emotion and other non-observational forces. Lawyers think of "truth" as something hammered out in the crucible of zealous advocacy before an impartial adjudicator. Clearly these are three different concepts riding on the same term.

These differences in language are not merely semantic, but are born of differences in attitude and philosophy. For example, lawyers often define themselves as people who "think like lawyers." To a lawyer, this is perfectly understandable. To a scientist it is an illogical tautology.

This difference in attitude toward logic is one factor that instills confusion and mistrust in scientists who encounter the legal system. Scientists use logic as a tool to arrive at new findings. Logic in the legal system is rather a means for organizing and systematizing already-found results. To quote one commentator: "The law, of course, never succeeds in becoming a completely deductive system. It does not even succeed in becoming completely consistent. But the effort to assume the form of a deductive system underlies all constructive legal scholarship" (1).

Another example of philosophical differences is attitudes toward problem-solving. Scientists (2) seek to answer questions about the world. While the questions asked are ever-changing and occasionally ambiguous, the answers are enduring and specific. Through rigorous use of logic, the answers can be organized to yield "laws of nature."

Lawyers solve problems too, but from a completely different point of view. Lawyers think of "laws" as ever-changing and ambiguous creations conjured up by legislatures and courts. The focus is rather on the questions, which endure over the years, immune to politics and social change. Basic terms such as "due process of law," or "jurisdiction," really denote questions that always arise in addressing legal problems: What is fair? What are the limits of a tribunal's power?

Keeping in mind these differences, we turn to the topic of this essay--the interface between physics and patents. Why would physicists want to know anything about patents? Answer: because the patent system is the mechanism provided in our legal structure, and those of most other developed nations, for rewarding researchers for their labors. Physicists may well wish to know what these rewards are and how to reap them.

New developments in patent laws
In years past, patents have been held in low esteem by many researchers. The commonly held view, supported by statistics, was that most litigated patents (about 80%) were held invalid by the courts. The usual perception has been that patents are expensive to obtain (since it often means hiring a lawyer), difficult and even more expensive to enforce (since it means hiring another lawyer to go to court), and therefore simply not worth the time, effort, and expense.

The situation has changed drastically over the past decade. Patents are now perceived to be more valuable to their owners. Ten years ago the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit was created and given exclusive authority to decide all patent appeals. Furthermore, there continue to be major improvements in the patent laws themselves. We are seeing a definite trend toward vigorous enforcement of patent rights, and far fewer holdings of invalidity on microscopic technicalities. The result is that inventors, academic institutions and research organizations are much more aggressive about obtaining patents on new technologies.

This pro-inventor philosophy is partly the product of the American ethos. The lone inventor slaving away in the laboratory, who shouts "Eureka!" after years of selfless labor and sacrifice, is a kind of American folk hero. The Inventor's Hall of Fame in the US Patent and Trademark Office is lined with the icons of Edison, Marconi, de Forest, etc.

Recently the media have published several stories of inventors who have filed patent applications which have meandered through the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) for a number of years, while large corporations have invested in similar technologies and developed and marketed products based on these innovations. When such a patent is finally issued, the inventor is then in a position to threaten the company with a patent infringement suit, and to be handsomely rewarded either in the form of royalties or in damages awarded by the court. This phenomenon has become so common that these patents are known as "submarine patents."

So to the physicist who is accustomed to a life of peonage, toiling like an indentured servant while his or her masters profit from the fruits of his or her labors, we bring good tidings. We have a patent system that works! In other words, scientists and engineers can receive major money for quality research.

There is a second piece of good news. Patent lawyers are not like "real lawyers." The suits and brief cases are part of a disguise. You can talk to patent lawyers about calibrating a detector or diagonalizing a matrix without getting the glazed look that such topics create at Sierra Club cell meetings. You can communicate with them as if they were normal people.

This means that patent lawyers are much easier to deal with than those other lawyers. Even though they have wing-tip shoes, blow-dried hair, and offices in bank buildings, they secretly yearn for acceptance. Treat them kindly. When you are introduced to them, don't just throw your preprints at them and abandon them to fend for themselves. Take them to your lab and show them the raw data, let them twiddle some knobs, invite them to your in-group coffee sessions. Let them get excited over your scoop. In fact, some patent attorneys get so enthusiastic that they become co-inventors.

Problem areas in PTO practice
Patent examiners are modern day heroes of a unique sort. The patent examining corps is a linchpin of the whole system. Every working day the patent examiner is called upon to make evaluations and decisions at the interface between law and technology, and to cope with the conflicts in philosophy that we have considered above. Patent examiners regularly perform literature searches on a mind-boggling database.

When new technologies are created, the patent searches for the first applications are difficult because the classification of the prior art does not yet have the guidelines that facilitate searches on more mature technologies. Often the only relevant literature is whatever has been published in the research journals, and these are not noted for their readability and searchability from the patent application standpoint.

Recent advances in technology have highlighted this issue. Some of the earlier patents on high temperature superconductors included citation of references considered by the examiner that some researchers might regard as unusual. Computer software was generally thought to be unpatentable until a few years ago after some significant court decisions. As a result, it is often difficult to perform a patent search for software patent applications because there is a very large amount of prior art that is not not patented, and thus not organized to facilitate these searches.

The PTO is constantly striving to keep examiners abreast of new technologies, and actively solicits the assistance of outside institutions and individuals. The Software Patent Institute has been formed to organize computer software literature to facilitate patent searches. The PTO provides educational programs for examiners in new technologies as they develop.

The 16 March 1993 issue of the Official Gazette of the PTO announced an invitation to individuals and organizations to present technical seminars at the offices of the PTO in Arlington, Virginia, as part of the Examiner Education Program. The announcement states that the PTO is particularly interested in having seminars presented in the following areas: advanced computer architecture, heat resistant materials, artificial intelligence, neural networks, fuzzy logic biotechnology, imaging technologies and computer graphics, medical devices and diagnostics, semiconductors, superconductors, high-density data storage, high-performance computing optoelectronics, sensor technology, computer communications networks, massively parallel processing systems (mpp), reduced instruction set (risc) computers, database management systems, audio processing systems, object oriented programming, trends in software development compilers, integrated dissimilar computer systems, recent developments in computer emulation and simulation, agrochemicals, polymer technologies, pharmaceuticals, liquid crystals, nanostructured matter, membrane technology, high definition TV, telecommunications, conductive compositions.

These categories abound in basic physical phenomena. The PTO is asking for the assistance of the scientific research community, including physicists, in maintaining technical integrity.

Cold fusion: a case study
A few years ago the media were filled with reports about cold fusion. Because the commentary also included a substantial amount of patent lawyer-bashing, this story provides a good illustration of the clash in values between the scientific and legal communities.

In his book Too Hot to Handle: The Race for Cold Fusion , Dr. Frank Close describes the decision of the University of Utah to delay the submission of research results to scientific journals: "Getting in first with the patent application was what the university authorities regarded as the top priority" (p. 100). Describing the entire episode, Dr. Close comments: "The scientists at the center of the action became entrapped; patent attorneys and eventually legal issues seemed to play a central role" (324). Quoting Professor Martin Fleischmann: "The key is that we had written a number of patents by that stage and the view of the university was that we should announce this by a press conference. It was really the patents that were driving this" (329).

These criticisms of the role of the patent attorneys do not take into account the priorities that our legal system imposes on the exploitation of technological development. In the scientific community, peer review and independent verification of research results play an important part in maintaining the integrity of scientific discoveries. Scientific attitudes place a high value on a free exchange of ideas to foster research quality.

However, if research results are to be commercially exploited, the inventor or developer must call upon the patent system, with its different values. The patent laws of most countries, including the US, impose strict deadlines within which a patent application must be filed. If an invention is disclosed to others before the application is filed, certain patent rights may be lost. The loss of such rights can mean that the fruits of some discoveries may never be harnessed for useful purposes. If nobody can acquire patent rights in a new technology, it may be simply economically unfeasible to invest in this technology. In other words, there are strong pressures to encourage early filing of applications, before the research results have been independently verified.

Does this mean that the patent system totally disregards scientific integrity? In fact, the patent statutes provide that in order to obtain a patent, the invention must be "useful;" it must actually work as described in the patent. Furthermore, the patent statutes were amended in 1980 to provide for a reexamination procedure in the PTO, which is a kind of peer review of issued patents. Under this procedure, an issued patent can be attacked by anybody on grounds that it describes an invention that does not satisfy the usefulness criterion, and reexamined in the PTO.

But the real answer to this question goes back to the contrast in attitudes between the legal and scientific communities. Twenty years ago, who would have guessed that a certain type of material composed of yttrium, barium, copper and oxygen atoms arranged in a specific layered structure would have superconducting properties at high temperatures? In the scientific world, the rewards for such a discovery go to the researcher whose results are first verified by the independent investigations and confirmations of others. The legal system, however, gives priority to the researcher who carries out his investigations without telling anyone else, to the point where the discovery is "reduced to practice," and then files his patent application before disclosing his results to others. These rules are very strict, and they are absolutely necessary to allow the equitable allocation of legal rights in new technology.

Therefore, when a physicist comes rushing into my office, flushed with excitement, and announces that when he puts two electrodes into a beaker of heavy water and connects them to a battery he measures more energy emitted than absorbed, that at the same time his neutron counters and gamma detectors start clicking, and that his lab assistant noticed stray tritium atoms, my reaction will depend on whether I am thinking like a scientist or an attorney. If I am wearing my scientist's hat, I will first have to regain my self-control and stop rolling on the floor with laughter. Then I will tell my colleague to go back to the lab, recalibrate the detectors, add more shielding, and get the lab assistant's eyes examined. Next I will remind him of at least five textbooks that explain in impeccably logical detail why this phenomenon can't occur. Finally I will call his family and put the psychiatric paramedics on red alert.

On the other hand, if I am his patent attorney (3), I will first advise my wild-eyed physicist to tell this to absolutely no one until I instruct otherwise. Next I will cross-examine him as to what exactly he has measured, and force him to write down a complete account of what happened in the lab. Then we will draft a patent application, which he will read and sign after I have warned him that any falsehoods can lead to federal felony charges against him. Only after the application has been filed will I let him talk to the press and anybody else about his results. The point is that when a person swears under oath that he has observed this phenomenon of energy generation, that in itself is "proof" in the legal sense. The person is entitled to file a patent application based on his own experiences, and does not need the corroboration of his peers (although it can certainly help in some cases).

My thesis is that some of the criticisms that have been leveled at the patent profession in the accounts of the cold fusion saga are misplaced. These gentlemen are not trying to compromise the integrity of the research community. They are just doing their jobs. The confusion arises from the conflicts in philosophy between the legal and scientific communities.

Conclusions
For over twenty-five years the physics research community has suffered through an employment crisis. Almost every issue of Physics Today contains some comment about the tight job market. Responsible academic institutions now routinely warn entering graduate students in physics that upon graduation their reward will be membership in one of society's hard-core unemployable classes, unless they choose to learn some kind of viable trade like computer programming. This stigma used to be reserved for students in English, art history, and chemistry. We live in an egalitarian society in which there are no sacred professional cows.

One purpose of this essay is to call the reader's attention to a fresh wind that seems to be blowing stronger, called technology transfer: the process by which technological research is transformed into money, including money for researchers. The patent system is an intimate part of this process. Many academic institutions have come to realize that the process offers a way to realize financial rewards from the results of scientific research, and have established technology transfer offices. Some institutions are also giving financial awards to scientists as an incentive to participate in technology transfer programs. These programs did not exist twenty-five years ago.

The American Physical Society appears to be going through a transition phase, a period of self-examination and a search for new missions. It is believed that the technology transfer trend and patent developments offer new opportunities for the APS to revitalize the calling of its members. It will be interesting to see to what extent these opportunities are exploited.

  1. Morris Cohen, Harvard Law Review vol. 29, p. 622-625 (1916).
  2. "Scientist" is used here in its modern sense. For centuries, "science" was treated as co-extensive with its Latin root, which encompassed all knowledge. It was only in the middle of the 1800's that the term "scientist" began to be used to differentiate, from philosophers and intellectuals in general, those who used scientific methodology to find and explain regularities in nature. See Ross, Ann. of Sci. vol. 18, p. 65 (1962).
  3. The "inventor's patent attorney" is not the same person as the patent attorney for the institution that employs him or her. Question: How can you tell when an attorney is representing your interests, rather than your employer's interests? Answer: When you have paid him or her.

The author has been an attorney for the past 18 years. He is in private law practice in San Mateo, California, specializing in technological cases and intellectual property law (patents, trademarks, and copyrights). Formerly he as a research physicist for 18 years. His address is 155 Bovet Road, Suite 400, San Mateo, CA 94402.

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Conference Report: Using Energy in an Intelligent Way

A Europhysics Study Conference, Using Energy in an Intelligent Way, was held at Trassenheide, Germany, during 6-10 May 1993. The conference was organized in collaboration with the WE-Heraeus Foundation.

The conference identified the gap between scientists on the one hand and economists and politicians on the other as the main problem in defining energy research goals. This has led to energy being considered as a resource and not a production factor, so only 4% of a developed country's GNP is accounted for by energy, while a massive 75% covers labor. An overall energy policy within which research objectives can be structured will not emerge from short-term political expediency based on advice from specialists who only talk to colleagues.

Physicists must therefore teach, and learn from, others. The task may not be so difficult. Economists, for instance, understand mathematical optimization, and behavioral scientists and psychologists can show us how to convince people of the need for rational energy policies. B. Gonsior (Ruhr University, Bochum, and Chairman of the meeting) argued in his introduction that one will have to tackle energy issues by "pulling together the pieces within their social context." So the European Physical Society's (EPS) Action Committee for Physics and Society (ACPS), which helped organize the event, is an appropriate forum. K. Rebane (Institute of Physics, Tartu), in his summary, felt that developing strategies will not be easy as evolution and man's history indicate that the "winners have been those species and societies who act quickly, consume high-quality energy and materials, and pay little or no attention to long-term consequences."

Knowing what to say will not be enough as reasoning must also be communicated to the public at large. One conclusion of a discussion session convened by the 40 participants was that one should exploit the fact that decision makers who define boundaries and rules for intelligent action are sensitive to the media. The fundamental message -- that we must address the unavoidable production of entropy and not energy conservation (which is automatically guaranteed by the laws of physics) and that economic calculations should be based more on entropy than on energy -- have not yet taken root. One strategy may be to formulate positions that can be defended by the physics community. However, there were no specific decisions on priorities for future action; these should emerge following an analysis by the ACPS and a discussion of the report (1) of the meeting during the symposium Physics in a Changing World at the EPS-9 General Conference in Florence, 14-17 September 1993.

Clear Objectives
One of the meeting's aims was to review progress following the American Physical Society's (APS) landmark study in 1975 to identify areas of research which held promise of improved technology by bringing a physics approach to bear on energy issues. The conclusion was that fundamental understanding had not advanced greatly. Physicists, however, have made useful contributions to the formulation of an intelligent research agenda. It was unfortunate that owing to last-minute difficulties, R.H. Socolow, who led the 1975 APS study and is planning a new one, could not attend. R. Dekeyser, the ACPS Secretary, reviewed instead three recent papers by Socolow, who is optimistic that growth and full development in the third world are compatible with environmental objectives (see below). Energy issues will become deeply embedded in human attitudes, implying an abundance of new technology, especially for developing countries where there must be "technological leap-frogging" and not simply transplantation.

The argument that well-designed government policies will be good for the economy was taken up by several participants. G. De Lepeleire, an engineer from the University of Leuven who advises the Belgian government on energy issues, proposed transferring taxes from employment to energy to give a dramatic decrease in the ratio of labor to energy costs. This would stimulate both energy saving and employment -- an appropriate strategy in Europe where social charges are high. R. Kmmel from the University of Wrzburg and an advisor to GermanyUs energy minister, felt that measures must be taken to decrease energy consumption for "unreasonable" purposes by taxing fossil fuels to make non-fossil energy sources economically competitive, the extra revenue being used to inform the public and to boost the development of non-fossil options. The justification is the high real cost of fossil fuels owing to entropy production involving both thermal and chemical emissions.

The emission situation was reviewed by B. Gonsior. "Business as usual" models estimate worldwide energy consumption in 2020 of 11.2 to 17.2 TWy/y, with industrial countries consuming 3.2-8.5 kW per capita (kW/c) and the third world only 1.1-1.4 kW/c. Consumption in 1990 was 10 TWy/y or 2 kW/c, so the production of greenhouses gases would double. For 4 kW/c (the lower limit) and a doubling of population in 50 years, we have a fourfold increase in energy demand that will be difficult to meet. He advocated 2 kW/c as a target, close to the 1.5 kW/c "greatest acceptable amount" proposed in 1981. It is compatible with projections that consumption in industrialised countries can be halved by 2020, and that a western standard of living could be achieved in the third world with a 30% increase in their consumption. Conscious that some countries consumed close to 10 kW/c in 1983, he invited participants to envisage "what a sustainable world would look like" by drawing up their own menus of energy consumption, remembering that a trip of 20 km by car needs 24 kWh. Research, meanwhile, should focus second-law thermodynamics on specific energy-using tasks to define minimum energy paths and standards of efficiency for energy conversion.

Fundamentals Examined
Before addressing systems and technology designed in the physics perspective of second-law efficiencies, A.S. Silbergleit (A.F. Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute, St. Petersburg) gave a detailed analysis of the laws of thermodynamics. The second law assumes an integrating factor (the temperature) which is the same for all thermodynamic systems. This universality can be checked by seeking a single-parameter system whose integrating divisor (temperature) is not the absolute gas temperature. He claimed a rotating wheel with spokes made from a shape-memory metal may be such a system. More significantly, ideal processes in energy conversion systems based on cyclic changes of the thermodynamic properties of a working body have zero power, while actual devices involve irreversible energy losses due to heat flow. One may be able to escape these constraints on energy conversion by exploiting a strongly non-equilibrium open system that has a device using a working fluid with a high degree of self-organization (giving negative entropy production). One possibility is a so-called vortex turbine based on the condensation of a vapour vortex on the inside of a rotating cone. While the concept remains to be verified experimentally (and this will be difficult), it at least highlights the importance of analysing the efficiencies of irreversible processes.

Designing specific energy conversion systems and processes will, in general, require numerical simulation in addition to exact analysis owing to their complexity. S. Wirz (Ruhr University, Bochum) described, for example, a sophisticated, computer-based modeling tool for combustors. Industrial interest in this type of approach has waned considerably in the present era of cheap energy so it is perhaps not surprising that his was the only presentation in this important area. This may also account for comments by other German groups that development and engineering skills have been "wasted" owing to the absence of a long-term commitment to energy conservation.

Sophisticated Systems Analysis
J. Gretz (JRC, Ispra) who manages the European Community's (EC) hydrogen-in-transport program on behalf of the EC Parliament (hydrolytically-produced H2 is shipped from Canada for a fleet of buses which are already operating and for an H2-powered passenger aircraft due to fly next year) analyzed the limiting performance of specific systems. Solar energy conversion is limited to about 70% efficiency, while the global efficiency of photosynthesis, in spite of a 33% quantum efficiency, is below 1%; the influence on the climate of a solar power plant is proportional to the difference between its conversion efficiency and that of the terrain it replaces (currently about the same, but likely to increase); electrolysis is more efficient overall than thermochemical cycles for producing H2 (belief in the opposite misdirected research for many years--a potent reminder of the importance of careful analysis). Atmospheric CO2 can be managed using forestry (foresting 6% of Earth's surface will absorb all of the CO2 produced today) so it was fitting that J.T. McMullan, who heads the University of Ulster's Centre for Energy Research, described a detailed analysis of power generation from wood combustion. A 1000 tonne/day plant is optimum, and the UK has enough productive woodland to support 60 plants generating 3000 MW in a neutral way with respect to greenhouse gas emissions.

According to W. Eichhammer and E. Jochem (Fraunhofer Institute, Karlsruhe) the potential for energy (and entropy) savings in large-scale, regional energy supply systems will be more important in the domestic sector than in industry. Experience with gas-driven heat pumps for air-conditioning in Japan and with co-generation units in Denmark has shown the value of consistent, long-term planning in the domestic sector. Potential savings in transport are also large, and R.D. Kuhne (Steierwald Schonharting GmbH, Stuttgart) described how government policies are being used to reverse the trend toward modes involving high energy consumption.

C.D. Andriesse (University of Utrecht) took the case of co-generation to demonstrate the utility of fairly simple analyses for "braking entropy production." A device producing slightly more kinetic energy than heat is optimum and given the relative cost of transporting electricity and heat, it should be rated at about 10 MW. A more sophisticated stochastic optimization model described by R. Kummel predicted roughly 20% reductions in CO2 production and energy consumption for a German city using local co-generation. But the 40-50% increase in costs are only economic in the entrepreneurial sense if energy prices at least double. Extending models requires much more detailed information on energy demand along the lines being addressed by a new 50 million DM German project called IKARUS, probably the largest study of its type in Europe.

Technology will be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for energy conservation. Contributions concerning energy conversion and technology/materials conservation will not be summarised because it is too difficult to do justice to the many physics concepts involved in the topics presented (convective thermal rectification, thermionics, photovoltaics, combustion diagnosis, light concentration, spectrally selective materials). Readers are referred instead to the meeting report (1). Little was said about monitoring and datataking, two aspects of entropy braking in the widest sense to which physics will increasingly contribute.

  1. Using Energy in an Intelligent Way, Proc.111th WE-Heraeus Semnar, 6-10 May 1993, Trassenheide, Germany; Ed.: E.W.A. Lingemean (to published; price: SFR 70.-).

P.G. Boswell
Editor, Europhysics News
European Physical Society
P.O. Box 69
Ch-1213 Petit-Lancy 2
Geneva, Switzerland

A Tale of Six Cities

Few technologies have as powerful an effect on US culture as the automobile. Direct effects include unnatural deaths, injuries, pollution, global warming, petroleum consumption, land consumption, and materials consumption. Indirect effects such as suburbanization and downtown decay may be even more important.

During an unforgettable vacation last summer, I noted several features of European transportation that might hold useful lessons for America.

Vienna
Vienna is an unpolluted city with a high quality of life, partly thanks to intelligent transportation policies. It is compact, like most European cities. Suburbanization has helped kill America's cities. The lack of extended suburbs makes public transit more viable, and brings middle-class people downtown to live.

Cars are prohibited or restricted in central Vienna. Most travel is by foot and public transit. The entire center of this big city is accessible by foot. There are none of the parking lots that create sprawl and desolation in US downtowns. Around the perimeter of the center is a broad boulevard with twelve separate lanes: two sidewalks and one bicycle lane on each side of the street, two lanes exclusively for trolleys, and the remaining four lanes for cars, taxis, and buses. So one-third of the boulevard is for cars, and two-thirds is exclusively for alternative transportation. In America, a typical ratio is two to six car lanes, zero to two sidewalks, and nothing for bikes or transit.

Europe's healthy $4 per gallon gasoline tax discourages driving. Many Europeans recognize that it is smarter to save the thousands of dollars that Americans throw away annually on their cars and invest a portion of it instead in good public transit. Meanwhile, America argues over whether the gasoline tax should be 14 or 18 cents per gallon.

Vienna was the nicest city I visited, thanks largely to its wise transportation policy.

Budapest
Cars overrun Budapest, but it remains beautiful. Buda and Pest are two cities, separated by the Danube. Automobiles are restricted in the older city, Buda, but not in Pest. Visitors cannot enter Buda with an automobile, but Pest is wide open to cars that park all over the sidewalks and fill every street to the point that one can hardly walk or breathe. A bus tour guide told me that the lifespan is seven years longer in Buda than in Pest, and that mothers in Pest are advised to move their young children out of the city, because of automobile pollution. So citizens value their cars more than their lives or their children.

Florence
Florence, a once-picturesque city, is lost to the car. Hordes of automobiles and mopeds buzz like pollution-spewing hornets around the cathedrals, bridges, and art galleries. There is no respect for pedestrians, or for painted pedestrian crosswalks. The internal combustion engine is everywhere. One crosses every street with fear and trembling, breathes air filled with exhaust fumes, and views buildings made dingy with soot. Only a one-block region in the center is off-limits to the great god of car. I had planned to stay for four nights, but left this scene from Dante's Inferno after one.

Euro-rail
I traveled everywhere by train, one of Europe's great pleasures. They are 30 times safer per passenger-mile than cars, with room to sleep, read, work on a large table-top, eat or drink elegantly, and stroll the aisles, instead of gripping a steering wheel for hours or being confined to a small expensive airplane seat. Trains link every city and town. These beautiful machines cut a thin line through undisturbed cow pastures at up to 200 miles per hour. The French TGV got me across all of France from Marsielle to Paris in five hours. America could have trains like this, but instead with every highway and airport decision we opt for slow, expensive, dangerous, polluting, sprawling, boring, cramped modes of travel. Will we ever learn?

Aix-en-Provence
Aix-en-Provence is a small town that keeps cars mostly out of its large central area. The center is livable, breathable, and still beautiful. Its population is over 100,000, but its area is smaller than most US towns (such as mine) of less than half that population, because of our preference for suburbs and parking lots. Because of its high density, there are many more sights and activities within a short walking distance in Aix than in US towns, and the central area is alive with shops, cafes, and people.

Paris
The tension between cars and civilization pervades Paris. Horns cannot be used here or in most cities, which helps. But cars and exhaust make it impossible to sit comfortably in sidewalk cafes along the Champs Elysees, so that many cafes are now replaced by boring mall-like air conditioned stores. However, newspapers report that Paris will soon restrict driving and parking along this boulevard, so there might be hope for the formerly most beautiful street in the world.

London
There seem to be no pollution controls in London. Outside my hotel, three lanes were always filled with vehicles. Taxis and especially buses spewed great volumes of nauseating exhaust right into the lobby. I often had to cover my mouth and nose, and brush soot from my eyes. A few daring bicycle riders dart through the dense traffic, wearing masks against the fumes. London needs pollution controls and removal of cars from dense regions such as the West End theater district.

On the other hand, London drivers stop for pedestrians at cross-walks, drive at reasonable speeds, and obey traffic laws. Mass transit is the strong backbone of transportation in London, Paris, and Vienna. Buses and taxis are prevalent in London, with private cars in the minority. On most streets, one lane is reserved for buses only.

Unlike US cities, European cities don't have parking lots. This is one reason that US cities are typically 60% paved for cars, while European cities devote far more area to people. It is this stretching-out of US cities that, in turn, makes our downtowns inhospitable to pedestrians, a major factor in urban blight.

Because of crowding, the automobile is an even more difficult problem for European cities than for US cities. Except for Florence and Budapest, the European cities I visited are striving to cope with this challenge.