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Did you know Trivia - The Southwest Research Institute says engineers have tested an algae-based biofuel that is capable of meeting U.S. Defense Department cold-weather requirements.
The U.S. Department of Defense requested SWRI to test California-based Solazyme Inc.'s biodiesel, called Soladiesel. Officials say the microalgae fuel demonstrated a strong performance capability in cold weather. Because the U.S. military has bases in many cold-weather climates, they have been previously unable to use biodiesel.
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Saturday 19 April, 2008 08:32 PM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Did you know Trivia - Engineer Neil Wallace peers into a huge vacuum chamber designed to replicate - as far as possible - the conditions of space.
Cryogenic pumps can be heard in the background, whistling away like tiny steam engines.
Using helium gas as a coolant, they can bring down the temperature in the vacuum chamber to an incredibly chilly 20 Kelvin (-253C). The pressure, meanwhile, can drop to a millionth of an atmosphere.
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Saturday 19 April, 2008 04:19 PM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Did you know Trivia - The ingredients: rubber bands, cotton balls, cottage cheese, ketchup, duct tape and a Ziploc bag.
The finished product: A contraption that would protect a raw egg from breaking when it was dropped from an eight-story tower.
That particular collection of household items worked for freshman Joey Rusch and his team of seven other University of Colorado engineering students at the school's annual egg drop Thursday. Their egg, contained in the protective device they named "Be Dazzled," was intact after its fall.
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Saturday 19 April, 2008 12:17 PM |
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Did you know Trivia - For the second consecutive year, damage to a concrete canoe in transit to the annual American Society of Civil Engineers regional conference in Colorado hurt the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology's chances at a No. 1 finish.
The school's ASCE chapter finished third in a field of 14 schools at the 2008 Rocky Mountain Regional Conference on April 4 and 5in Golden, Colo.
In addition to the overall third-place finish, there were several outstanding individual performances, according to a news release from the school.
The concrete canoe team took third in design paper and third in presentation.
However, for the second consecutive year,the canoe was badly damaged on the trip to Golden and the team was unable to compete in the canoe races.
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Saturday 19 April, 2008 08:15 AM |
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Did you know Trivia - WEST Berkshire Council has unveiled a five year programme of engineering works to shore up the district’s drains in a bid to prevent a repeat of July’s floods.
The council will spend more than £2 million on a programme of ditch clearance, drain cleaning and structural works to lessen the flood risk, as recommended by a new 210-page engineering report into last year’s disaster.
The work is set to include the construction of new balancing ponds in Thatcham, in an attempt to slow the furious run-off of water from Cold Ash Hill and Bucklebury Common which surged into the town’s drains.
The quick run-off, caused in part by modern agricultural methods and clogged water courses, left sewers unable to cope with extra water surging in off the tarmac.
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Saturday 19 April, 2008 04:14 AM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Did you know Trivia - Norway-based Aker Solutions has signed an exclusive alliance partner contract with Shell Deutschland Oil for the provision of engineering services for Shell's refineries in Germany.
The contract duration is five years, with the option to extend it by two additional two-year periods. The facilities covered by the agreement include the Heide, Hamburg-Harburg and Rheinland refineries.
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Saturday 19 April, 2008 12:12 AM |
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Did you know Trivia - Zimbabwe's soaring inflation hit an annual rate of almost 165,000% in February, official figures show.
Continuing shortages of food and fuel helped to push up inflation from January's rate of 100,000%.
Government officials say the shortages make it hard to work out inflation with any degree of accuracy.
About 80% of the country's population lives in poverty and it is estimated that three million people have left the country for a new life in South Africa.
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Friday 18 April, 2008 08:10 PM |
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Did you know Trivia -( MUMBAI) Novell Inc. said it plans to invest $100 million over the next three years to expand its existing research and development operations in India.
The company also inaugurated its largest engineering facility outside the United States in the southern city of Bangalore. The premises has the capacity to accommodate 700 employees.
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Friday 18 April, 2008 04:27 PM |
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Did you know Trivia - Two small Nova Scotia firms say they are on the verge of launching a "cloaking device" that will vastly improve computer security by making a user’s activities invisible to hackers.
"It is basically something to stop people from spying on what you are doing with your computer," says Stephen Hankinson, vice-president of Halifax’s Quark Engineering and Development Inc.
Soft Media Publishing, in Bear River, has contracted Quark Engineering to develop the new program it says will make a computer user’s activities undetectable to trojans, worms, viruses, bots and keyloggers.
Soft Media , a computer security firm, expects to get the new product to market in the next couple of months.
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Friday 18 April, 2008 12:26 PM |
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Did you know Trivia - Of com will today announce an investigation into whether the roll-out of next generation broadband can be accelerated by using existing utilities infrastructure, such as the trenches that play host to the water network.
The idea of reusing existing holes in the ground, to reduce the £15bn projected cost of building a national fibre network from scratch, has been mooted throughout the glacial next generation broadband debate.
Ofcom is now looking seriously at infrastructure sharing, however, after its French counterpart found it more plausible than first thought. New regulations across the Channel mean France Telecom is now set to lay fibre in the same ducts as its competitors.
The communications regulator's chief executive Ed Richards will tell the Institution of Engineering and Technology today: "We will also be asking whether there is scope to secure commercially viable access for fibre deployment through the primary infrastructure networks of other utilities such as water and energy.
"We must be sure we are not missing a big trick here. We know that a lot of the costs are in the civil engineering and this is civil engineering of a very similar kind."
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Friday 18 April, 2008 08:25 AM |
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Scomi Engineering Bhd president Hilmi Zaini said the group was currently studying proposals from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain to set up monorail systems for the growing cities in these countries.
Scomi Engineering is a unit of Scomi Group involved in constructing monorail systems.
“We expect one of these countries to be our base for expansion in the Middle East, just like India and Vietnam are our bases for expansion in South Asia and South-East Asia respectively,” Hilmi told Malaysian journalists during a briefing on the group’s expansion plans yesterday.
“We also plan to move into the African market for monorail systems within two years,” he said.
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Friday 18 April, 2008 04:23 AM |
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Did you know Trivia - Chrysler LLC has opened an engineering office in Shanghai, China, part of a much larger expansion by the Auburn Hills automaker to beef up its product design efforts outside the United States.
By the end of the year, Chrysler plans to hire about 1,000 new engineers outside the United States, Frank Klegon, Chrysler executive vice president for product development, told the Free Press in an interview.
"When you start being able to do your product development ... it shows our commitment. ... It's not just import and hope to sell," Klegon said. "We're going to localize and develop for those customers."
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Friday 18 April, 2008 12:22 AM |
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Did you know Trivia - Tartaric acid is a natural organic acid contained in grapes, especially wine dregs, which are transformed into calcium tartrate after extraction of residual alcohol. Tartaric acid finds application in food processing industry, chemical and pharmaceutical industry and engineering construction industry. Global demand for tartaric acid is expected to reach 58 thousand tons by 2012.
Wine production represents one of the major end-uses of tartaric acid. Among non-food applications, cosmeceuticals and nutraceuticals offer high growth opportunities for tartaric acid. Global tartaric acid market is expected to grow at a compounded annual rate of approximately 2.25% over the period 2001-2010, as stated in a recent report published by Global Industry Analysts, Inc. Worldwide demand for tartaric acid in food & beverage is expected to be around 28 thousand tons in 2010. Tartaric acid demand in Latin America is expected to cross the 10-thousand tons mark in 2010.
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Thursday 17 April, 2008 08:21 PM |
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Did you know Trivia - (DETROIT) Months before the first seat was built and installed in the new Ford Flex crossover, a team of engineers working with sophisticated computers had designed and virtually perfected the seat from the comfort of their desks.
A trio of Ford engineers – Qin Pan, Joanna Rakowska and Michael Medoro – used sophisticated computer simulation technology to ensure that drivers and passengers of new-generation vehicles like the upcoming 2009 Ford Flex feel a minimum of vibration and just the right amount of road input.
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Thursday 17 April, 2008 04:08 PM |
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Did you know Trivia - (Cal State Long Beach) Records show that the new site for the updated Outpost Grill and Café, now under construction, will partially cover an area known to contain ancient remnants of a Native American community.
Soon after human remains were found on the 22-acre lot near Beach Drive on the western end of campus, an area now known as Puvungna, archaeologist Keith A. Dixon conducted an archaeological survey in 1977 in the Vivian Engineering Quadrangle area, eventually finding evidence of an ancient community.
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Thursday 17 April, 2008 12:06 PM |
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Did you know Trivia - Thousands of high school students are jumping ahead of the curve at the 2008 FIRST Robotics Competition Championship this weekend, with the help of $17 million in professional software and mentoring resources provided by Autodesk, Inc.
Autodesk is sponsoring the competition for the 17th consecutive year, working with Dean Kamen's FIRST organization (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) to help inspire student interest in science, technology,
engineering and math and to train the next generation of professionals to
fill an impending global engineering talent shortage.
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Thursday 17 April, 2008 08:05 AM |
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Did you know Trivia - Engineering company E4 Group said Tuesday it would join the race for Unified Energy System's engineering assets at auction next month.
Six regional divisions of UES' Engineering Center, a major provider of engineering services to the country's electricity sector for 80 years, are to be auctioned off on May 20, and the remaining two divisions will be sold the next day.
The eight divisional centers will go on the block at starting prices totaling 8.7 billion rubles ($370 million) and ranging from 360 million rubles to 2.3 billion rubles.
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Thursday 17 April, 2008 04:03 AM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Did you know Trivia - China and Chile have signed an agreement to allow investment between their countries in services in such areas as the computing, mining and environmental industries.
The deal will open up 23 service industries in China's booming economy to investment by Chile, China's Ministry of Commerce said on its Web site late Sunday.
The agreement also gives Chinese companies access to the Chilean market in 37 industries including law, real estate and engineering.
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Thursday 17 April, 2008 12:00 AM |
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Did you know Trivia - Artist James Turrell, who experiments with lighting effects, has a studio in a "modest" volcanic crater in Arizona.
It serves as his lens to observe earth and sky, and he had exactly that in mind when he recently unveiled "Stone Sky, 2005" (one in a series of Skyspace enclosures with roof openings) at Norah and Norman Stone's Stonescape vineyard near Calistoga.
"We did not realize it was going to be an engineering or architectural challenge to have a floating roof without obvious structure," says Norman. The task was made more complicated - and expensive - with the introduction of a rectangular opening in the canopy through which to see the sky.
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Wednesday 16 April, 2008 08:00 PM |
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Did you know Trivia -Electric-car maker Tesla Motors has filed a lawsuit against a competitor, claiming the company stole trade secrets and copied design ideas.
The suit was filed Monday in San Mateo (Calif.) Superior Court. Tesla hired designer Henrik Fisker last year to design the body of its all-electric WhiteStar sedan. In the suit, the company alleges that Fisker and Chief Operating Officer Bernhard Koehler of Fisker Coachbuild accepted the contract "to gain access to confidential design information and trade secrets, then announced a competing vehicle,"
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Wednesday 16 April, 2008 04:10 PM |
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Did you know Trivia -Under direction of the National Marine Manufacturers Association’s (NMMA) Mutual Efficiency Forum (MEF) OEM Task Force, a new set of industry standards has been adopted to streamline supply chain communication efforts between accessories manufacturers and boatbuilders.
Task Force members agreed to use the Engineering Change/New Products Proposal Form (NPP) and Engineering Change Best Practices documentation to facilitate effective communication between vendor and OEM on any changes that may occur to products in upcoming production. Communication should also include dialogue regarding unavoidable changes to the final product and elective changes that may benefit the supplier, manufacturer or both.
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Wednesday 16 April, 2008 12:08 PM |
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