Future of Engineering

British experts raise prospect of terrorist robots

It is only a matter of time before terrorists use deadly robots to launch attacks on heavily populated urban areas, experts say. The know-how and materials for manufacturing lethal, improvised robots are easily available, said experts gathered Wednesday at a British military think-tank.

"Sooner or later, we're going to see a Cessna programmed to fly into a building," said Rear Admiral Chris Parry, who formed the Ministry of Defence's Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre in 2005. He said small, remotely piloted planes or even converted model aircraft are "ideal weapons" for terrorists because they are easy to build and could evade radar.

Full story here

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Labels: Automation, Society

Top wireless industry trends for 2008

A delegate to the 2008 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona says that the key themes focused on by industry leaders are faster mobile broadband speeds and the environmental sustainability of the mobile industry.

"This year many keynote speakers at the Mobile World Congress are pointing to the need to green the industry and to maximise on the opportunities of increased mobile broadband speeds. Both trends are good for business and the consumer," says Richard Simpson, director at BulkSMS.com, a global mobile messaging company headquartered in Cape Town.

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Labels: Electronics-Communications-Engineering

12 ideas to help shape a healthier energy future

Every second of every day, the United States consumes 10,000 gallons of oil — enough to fill 60 backyard swimming pools every minute. It uses 20 railroad cars of coal a minute and enough cubic feet of natural gas each day to build a tower to the moon and back 25 times. It's balanced on a razor's edge of growing demand and tightening supply, and the harsh reality is that there is no single solution.

By the year 2100, USA's energy mix will be radically different. But getting there will require all the energy it can develop from all sources — conventional and alternative. To help get there, Shell advocates a 12-point plan...

Read more about the plan from here

'Green Mobility' Tops the Agenda for Siemens at Rail 2008

Siemens today underlined its commitment to creating greener railways, with the launch of a major initiative at today's RAIL 2008 conference.

Green Mobility is part of a global approach under the banner of Complete Mobility. Siemens is a leading international supplier to the railways industry and as a single source supplier and system integrator combines all the expertise necessary to cover all areas of rail transportation.

Full story here

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Labels: Energy-Environment-Engineering, Logistics-Transportation-Engineering

NASA's Newest Concept Vehicles Take Off-Roading Out Of This World

NASA's latest concept vehicle is meant to go way, way off-road -- as in 240,000 miles from the nearest pavement, driving on the moon. NASA is working to send astronauts to the moon by 2020 to set up a lunar outpost, where they will do scientific research and prepare for journeys to destinations like Mars.

NASA is testing many technologies needed for research on the moon. Two examples are a lunar truck for astronauts and a rover equipped with a drill designed to dig into the moon's soil.

Full story here

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UK Authorities Looking to Reduce Aircraft Noise Pollution

Labels: Aerospace-Engineering

No, this is not an aircraft on fire. This is just an aircraft firing up!

From its current contribution of less than 3%, aircraft pollution is set to grow so rapidly that all homeowners, car drivers and businesses will have to reduce their carbon dioxide output to zero for levels to remain safe, a recent UK study warned. The study says that even if the growth in air travel were halved, the rest of the economy would need to cut greenhouse gas emissions far beyond the UK government's target of 60% by 2050.

One of the biggest environmental issues with jet airliners is the nitrogen oxide emissions (NOx ) spewed into the atmosphere during takeoff and landing procedures. The emission of NOx at cruise altitudes may promote enhanced greenhouse effect, photochemical smog formation, and also depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer. But it is not just NOx. The emissions from air traffic can change the atmospheric composition – (a) Directly: by emitting CO2, water vapour, unburnt hydrocarbons, soot, sulfate particles and of course NOx, and (b) Indirectly: by chemical reactions that contribute to ozone formation.

The goal for most airlines is to reduce NOx emissions during landing and takeoff to 70 percent below the international standards created in 1996. While experts admit that we're not there yet, some feel that airlines are making good progress.

Aircraft also emit the notorious global warming villain CO2. Like most others in the transportation industry, the aircraft industry has been talking smooth about and making plans for reducing CO2 emissions. EasyJet for instance last year unveiled the prototype for an aircraft that could slash carbon dioxide emissions by half. But most of these have remained just at the planning and prototype stages.

In sum, their grand pronouncements and prototypes aside, not too many are convinced that airlines have done enough to reduce NOx and CO2 emissions.

Grade for Emission Control: B-

Alternative Fuel & Fuel Efficiency



Richard Branson of Virgin Atlantic has been talking big about biofuel powered Virgin flights, and his company actually flew one last week.

This first flight by a biofuel powered commercial airline took place on 24 Feb 2008, amindst much fanfare, when a Virgin Atlantic jumbo jet flew between London's Heathrow and Amsterdam using fuel derived from a mixture of Brazilian babassu nuts and coconuts. Earlier this month, Airbus tested a synthetic mix of gas-to-liquid.

If these news make you look forward to travelling on a biofuel powered airplane anytime soon, you will be disappointed. Most of these alt energy / fuel efforts have really been a lot of show. All research work being carried out are in their very initial stages. (by the way, here’s a nice Q&A on alt fuels in airplanes, from Airlines.org)

Grade for Alternative Energy Use: B-

Fuel Efficiency

Airlines' record in fuel efficiency is not exactly bad – a 103 percent improvement between 1978 and today. Fuel efficient aircraft designs and less-fuel-guzzling aircraft engines have been on the radars of the aircraft engineers for many years now, and some of their earlier research has started to bear fruit.

Boeing in 2007 launched what it says is the most environmentally-friendly aircraft ever built. The Boeing 787 achieves fuel efficiency by having a significant percentage of aircraft made from composites, making it lighter and more fuel efficient than traditional aircraft. While environmental groups say the aircraft is far from green, some do admit that its lighter weight will enable it to use 20 per cent less fuel than its aluminium predecessors.

In Nov 2007, Boeing said it was developing a new single-aisle aircraft made of composite materials to replace the 737, its most popular aircraft ever. According to the planemaker, the 737-RS would also incorporate new engine types that achieve greater fuel efficiency. The advanced materials, comprising ceramic matrix composites and such, also allow engines to burn at higher temperatures. When engines operate at these high temperatures, they are more efficient. Other lightweight materials like Titanium Aluminide and other superalloys are also being researched for potential engine material.

Relatively speaking, the airlines have done reasonably well in their efforts for fuel efficiency.

Grade for Fuel Efficiency: A-

Noise Pollution



Researchers found the sound of planes taking off and landing while people sleep increases blood pressure, and those living closest to airports were almost 50 per cent more likely to suffer from hypertension..

So what are airlines and aircraft companies doing about this?

Thanks to technology, today's aircraft are 50% quieter than those 10 years ago. Research initiatives target a further 50% reduction by 2020, according to IATA. Further, in January 2006, a more stringent noise certification standard was introduced by IATA for new aircraft designs. These aircraft should be at least one third quieter than those currently certified.

Specific efforts have been underway in reducing the noise from two main components – engines and the airframe, especially the engine.

Much of the noise from gas turbine engines comes from air flowing back through the rapidly spinning fan blades at the front of the engine. Behind each blade is a wake, or an area of lower-speed air. When these wakes move over stationary blades they produce strong, unsteady pressures, and consequently most of the sound.

Most noise-control measures, such as acoustic liners in the engines, had traditionally focused on reducing the amplitude of the sound after it is produced, and these have had only limited success. But scientists are now working on a method of cutting down on noise at the source. Their idea is to "fill in" the wake behind each rotor blade by pushing air through the trailing edges of the rotating blades, where it mixes with the air flowing around the blade and makes the flow into the stator more uniform.

Another recent approach to noise reduction is the active noise control effort. The primary principle of active noise control is to sense the noise disturbances in the engine and cancel them before they leave the engine. In effect, negative noise is made to cancel out the engine's sound waves so that no noise is heard.

On noise control, one wishes to give the airlines and aircraft industry a good grade for all their efforts, but until our friends and folks living near airports are able to have a good night's sleep in their houses near airports, we have no choice but to give it a rather mediocre grade.

Grade for Noise Control: B

Plane Deicing



De-icing is the process of removing ice from an airplane's surface.

The chemicals normally used to deice aircraft - ethylene glycol and propylene glycol – are both deadly substances even in small quantities. Ethylene glycol causes central nervous depression and kidney and liver damage and propylene glycol is just as toxic. While no studies have been done on its effects on humans, each winter large amounts of fish and wildlife are poisoned to death by aircraft deicing chemicals.

Additional pollutants, including fuels and other toxic substances, are also washed off the planes during deicing procedures.

Compared to the rest of components of aircraft pollution, this is a minor one, though it could have harmful effects on those few who perform this activity, and on some unfortunate fish and fowl. This aspect of aircraft pollution has not received much attention so far.

Grade for Deicing Pollution Control: B


Not There Yet, But Hopeful

Labels: Aerospace-Engineering, Energy-Environment-Engineering

A Lollipop that Prevents Tooth Decay

A lollipop sweet that actively prevents tooth decay has hit the shops in America. It is the brainchild of Wenyuan Shi, a microbiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The orange-flavoured, sugar-free lollipop that Shi and his team at the university’s school of dentistry have devised is infused with a natural ingredient found in liquorice. It kills Streptococcus mutans, which is the primary cavity-causing bacterium.

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Labels: Bio-engineering

Traditionally, water bills have been ridiculously low in Canada, representing a fraction of a family's monthly expenses. But as municipalities struggle to fix crumbling pipes and waste-water facilities, cheap water is becoming a thing of the past.

For consumers, that means another assault on the pocketbook. For engineering firms and investors, it's a brave new world of opportunities, from reconstructing old treatment systems to construction of new residential subdivisions & desalination plants.

The UN estimates that 1.1 billion people lack access to potable water and that by 2050 that figure will double to more than two billion. Add climate change to the mix and the predictions of water shortage become more dire.

Full story here

Labels: Energy-Environment-Engineering, Society

Shirley Ann Jackson, the 2004 president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute since 1999was quoted by Thomas Friedman in his book "The World is Flat", as follows: "The sky is not falling, nothing horrible is going to happen today" says Jackson. "The U.S. is still the leading engine for innovation in the world. It has the best graduate programs, the best scientific infrastructure, and the capital markets to exploit it. But there is a quiet crisis in U.S. science and technology that we have to wake up to. The U.S. today is in a truly global environment, and those competitor countries are not only wide awake, they are running a marathon while we are running sprints. If left unchecked, this could challenge our preeminence and capacity to innovate."

A roadmap project on the future of engineering in the U.S. is coming pretty much to the same conclusion.

Full analysis from here

Labels: Engineering-USA

Nano-alumina: Future metal for automobile, aerospace engineering

From nano-fabric to nano-drugs — the new technology has become a major field of research worldwide and its applications have tremendous impact on our day-to-day life.

But an Indian scientist has discovered a new method to solidify nano-alumina composites in laboratory- scale for the first time and claims to have created "nanoalumina with uniform strength" which could be three times stronger than steel.

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Labels: Material-Sciences, Metallurgical-Engineering

Shared work spaces a wave of the future

Working at home was too lonely for Summer Powell, a 35-year-old freelance graphic designer who had recently moved to San Francisco. She tried working in cafes but found it too distracting. So Powell called a friend and together they joined a communal drop-in office space called Sandbox Suites - an example of a new and growing work arrangement called co-working.

In co-working, a group of freelancers or other solo entrepreneurs share one big office space with perks that they might not get at home, such as conference rooms, espresso machines and opportunities for socializing. Co-working sites usually give members the option of renting a desk that becomes their own reserved space. But most also provide a drop-in option, where people can stop by and work in an unreserved common area for a lower fee...

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Labels: Design-Engineering, Industrial-Engineering

Is this the future of humanity?






Site credit: U of Arizona Animal Care & Use Committee

Labels: Bio-engineering, Society

Humans will learn to halt and reverse the effects of ageing, collect all the energy they need from the sun, and develop fully realistic virtual reality during the 21st century, a leading technologist has predicted.

American inventor and futurologist Ray Kurzweil said mankind is on the brink of radical advances in computer science and medicine that will see tiny robots or "nanobots" embedded in people's bodies, fending off disease and boosting our intelligence.

Mr Kurzweil's predictions are just a small part of a vision of the future set out by a committee of 18 leading technology thinkers at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, held in Feb 2008.

Full report on the conference here

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Labels: Sciences

Climate change research, genetics, material engineering – supercomputing power has become a core factor for success in both science and engineering as it enables researchers to test their theories and models by simulation. Supercomputers, however, are still largely funded and operated at national level, separately, and not as a much more powerful grid. The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) project is determined to change that by creating a permanent European supercomputing infrastructure

The European Commission will invest more than EUR 20 million in PRACE under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) over the next two years. And by mid-2009 or the end of that year at the latest, the project partners from Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK hope to be able to build a petaflop/s system: a machine that is capable of one quadrillion operations per second.

Full report here

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Labels: Computer-Science

Preparing groundwork for an exascale computer is the mission of the new Institute for Advanced Architectures, launched jointly at Sandia and Oak Ridge national laboratories.

An exaflop is a thousand times faster than a petaflop, itself a thousand times faster than a teraflop. Teraflop computers —the first was developed 10 years ago at Sandia — currently are the state of the art. They do trillions of calculations a second. Exaflop computers would perform a million trillion calculations per second.

The idea behind the institute is “to close critical gaps between theoretical peak performance and actual performance on current supercomputers.

Ultrafast supercomputers improve detection of real-world conditions by helping researchers more closely examine the interactions of larger numbers of particles over time periods divided into smaller segments.

Full report here

Labels: Computer-Science

In this article, the author takes a closer look at biological and chemical warfare from a global perspective as well as the use of pesticides and insecticides and how they helped pioneer these deadly toxins used in modern warfare and bio-terrorism as we know it today. He discusses the different types of diseases and viruses that are commonly used and researched today and of the past. The article also discusses what kind of chemical weapons are used in modern warfare., and takes a quick look at the science of genetic modification and engineering to create a virus from scratch using the most rudimentary tactics and the diseases that pose the largest threat to man-kind.

Some 40 years ago, Russian scientists Nikolai Kardashev, Leonid Matveyenko, and Gennady Sholomitsky came up with the idea of a space interferometer. It is based on the phenomenon of interferometry - a capacity of different waves (sound, light, or radio waves) that have the same phase to add to each other, or subtract if the phase is opposite. If we position two or more telescopes far away from each other and start watching the same celestial object, the combination of their signals causes interference that may sharply enhance the resolution capacity of the whole system. It becomes as high as if the observations were conducted by a telescope with an antenna diameter equal to the distance between the telescopes.

This idea was first tested on Earth with the participation of the world's major radio observatories. It was like using a radio telescope close to the Earth's diameter in size. A decision was made to launch a radio telescope into space. Radical changes in the Soviet Union delayed the project's implementation by two decades.

Under the project, a 10 meter-long radiotelescope will be put into a high-elliptical orbit with an apogee of about 350,000 km (220,000 miles). Together with ground-based instruments, it is supposed to form a giant interferometer with a diameter almost equal to the distance between the Earth and the moon. Its angular resolution will be 40 times greater than that of a ground-based radio interferometer, and 20 million times greater that that of the human eye.

The project is designed to study super-massive black holes in the nuclei of close and remote galaxies, black holes in the stellar masses in our galaxy, neutron and probably quark stars, star and planet formation areas, and clouds of inter-stellar plasma.

Regrettably, the launch testing did not start in January 2008 as announced. There is every indication that its launch will be rescheduled for 2009.

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Labels: Aerospace-Engineering

When second-grader Kyle Wendt goes to the board, he simply uses his finger to tap, pull and drag items. Or sometimes he uses an inkless pen to write. Or sometimes he just erases it all with a virtual eraser. Kyle is smart; the board he's using is too.

"These boards certainly have a wow factor, but beyond that, they allow learning to be interactive," said his dad, Jeremy Wendt, a TTU department of curriculum and instruction professor who is showing future teachers how the technology can change their classrooms.
SMART Board interactive whiteboards are scattered throughout area school systems, but are becoming more and more desirable as the number of teachers learning to effectively use them increases. The boards cost between $1,000 and $2,100, depending on size. The touch-sensitive board is connected to a computer and digital projector to show the computer image. Teachers and students can control computer applications directly from the board, write notes in digital ink and save their work.

Wendt points to a lesson plan created by an education student to help elementary students learn to count money. The virtual cash register displays the amount of money to collect and asks the student to make change. The register contains virtual paper money and coins that the students can put their fingers on and pull from the drawer.


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Labels: Design-Engineering

The following are some of the "visions" offered for the uses and applications of RFID.

• Microchips with antennas will be embedded in virtually everything people buy, wear, drive and read, enabling retailers and law enforcement agencies to track consumer items—and, by extension, consumers—wherever they go, from a distance.

• A seamless, global network of electronic "sniffers" will scan radio tags in myriad public settings, identifying people and their tastes instantly so that customized ads—"live spam"—will be able to be beamed at them.

• In "Smart Homes," sensors built into walls, floors and appliances will inventory possessions, record eating habits and monitor medicine cabinets—all the while, silently reporting data to marketers eager for a peek into the occupants' private lives.

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Labels: Electronics-Communications-Engineering, Society

Professor George Gruner and a group of scientists at the University of California in Los Angeles have recently fabricated a flexible Carbon Nanotube (CNT) based battery architecture from “nanotube ink”, using cheap and highly scalable materials. Possible applications include powering disposable electronic devices like long-range RFID tags or small displays. The scientists are hoping that the batteries will be able to generate more power in the future, so that they will be able to power a wider range of devices. Currently, industrial-scale printing processes can deposit electronics onto a variety of flexible substrates cheaply and speedily. The printed electronics require cheap printed power sources. For this reason, the new CNT batteries may potentially be an important advancement in battery technology.

The new batteries are deposited layer-by-layer in an all solution-phase approach amenable to large-scale production, similarly to roll-to-roll printing

Besides the clear benefits of the solution-phase room-temperature process, there are even better news for future devices

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Labels: Energy-Environment-Engineering, Material-Sciences

Adam Laurie, an RFID security expert, used the Black Hat DC 2008 conference to demonstrate a new Python script he's working on to read the contents of smart-chip-enabled credit cards.

As part of his presentation Wednesday, Laurie asked for someone from the audience to volunteer a smart card. Without taking the card out of the volunteer's wallet, Laurie both read and displayed its contents on the presentation screen--the person's name, account number, and expiration clearly visible.

Demonstrations like that show the potential misuse of RFID technology in the near future. Without touching someone, a thief could sniff the contents of an RFID-enabled credit card just in passing. The same is true for embedded RFID chips in the human body, work access badges, some public transit cards, and even the new passports in use in more than 45 countries.

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Labels: Computer-Science, Electronics-Communications-Engineering, Safety

As wireless technologies push semiconductors to integrate more features in smaller packages, government and satellite research is testing novel processes in extreme temperatures and performance scenarios.

At the roots of almost all of today’s electronic devices lie semiconductors. These integrated circuits (ICs) stem from a variety of semiconductor technologies, which have evolved to satisfy requirements like lower power, less noise, more broadband coverage, or simply the need to squeeze higher integration into smaller, cheaper packages. In reaction to these trends, high-frequency engineers have found new ways to leverage gallium arsenide (GaAs), gallium nitride (GaN), silicon germanium (SiGe), indium phosphide (InP), and other semiconductor process technologies. As these technologies have evolved, however, they have not eliminated the more standard technologies like complementary-metaloxide- semiconductor (CMOS) processes. Instead, process enhancements and advances in optolithography are enabling smaller feature sizes and making CMOS and other technologies capable of tackling new and more demanding applications. The result is a myriad of semiconductors that can serve all aspects of the high-frequency market ranging from the most demanding military and satellite applications to access points for IEEE 802.11x wireless local-area networks (WLANs).

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Labels: Electronics-Communications-Engineering

Cleanability is what Jürgen Hofmann is working towards. It is his watchword. He wants the design of machines involved in hygiene-critical operations to facilitate easy and efficient cleaning. Hoffman is about to take over a project run by the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging in Germany. It comprises an Internet portal called hygienicprocessing.com, which will be a complete information source with regard to hygienic design, with tips, links, a database of literature and a network of experts.

Hofmann is one of the experts involved in this. For the past nine years, he has been teaching as an academic assistant with the Department of Process Engineering at the Technical University of Munich’s Weihenstephan campus in Germany, which specializes in all food-related matters.
“Hygienic design is relevant in all areas where it is important to keep equipment clean. This includes pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, and even paint,” he says.

In a way, the aim is simple – cleaning is carried out with liquids. These must be able to flow smoothly through all the piping, valves, taps and pumps of a machine. Hofmann’s job is to ensure that there are no gaps, holes, grooves or “dead areas” that the liquid cannot reach. This requires smooth surfaces, curves that direct liquids in the right direction, and seals and gaskets that fit perfectly.

Trelleborg Sealing Solutions works closely with the University of Munich’s Department of Process Engineering and has focused research on sealing designs to meet Hofmann’s hygienic principles.

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Labels: Design-Engineering

An Indian scientist has discovered a new method to solidify nano-alumina composites in laboratory- scale for the first time and claims to have created "nanoalumina with uniform strength" which could be three times stronger than steel.

But what could be the use of this new finding? According to Prof. Payodhar Padhi, HoD, Mechanical Engineering of Orissa Engineering College, Bhubaneswar, the new material can have wide-ranging applications in automobile and aerospace designs to increase fuel efficiency.
The invention consists of an assembly for producing metal matrix nano-composite (metal having nano-sized particulate) through solidification route, which was earlier never possible, claims Padhi. The 'nano-alumina' with its peculiar properties can have applications in biomedical engineering like structural applications, abrasive polishing, optical polishing, rapid memory polishing, silicon wafer polishing, catalytic support for precious metals, electronic circuits, porous membranes for making gas filters, net shaped wear resistant parts and translucent ceramics for tube envelops.
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Labels: Material-Sciences

Lab-on-a-chip looks inside the brain

A lab on a chip method has been developed to mimic brain chemistry and so give a greater understanding of how neurons in the brain interact in the formation of a nervous system. The chip was developed by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering and the School of Medicine in Baltimore, US.

The device has a system of channels and wells that allows different chemical signals to be flowed around nerve cells and then allows an observation of their behaviour. The direction a nerve cell decides to grow in is very much influenced by its immediate chemical environment. Dr Andre Levchenko, associate professor of biomedical engineering at the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering and faculty affiliate of the Institute for NanoBioTechnology commented: "The chip we've developed will make experiments on nerve cells more simple to conduct and to control".

Full story here

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Labels: Bio-engineering, Computer-Science

Single molecule sensor could advance on lab-on-a-chip tech

For the first time, US scientists have found a way of simultaneously performing optical and electrical measurements on the same single molecule, known as multimodal sensing. The study by researchers at Rice University could pave the way for mass produced single molecule sensors and could have significant applications in pharmaceutical lab-on-a-chip technologies.

The experiment consisted of making measurements on a nanoelectronic device constructed from two small gold electrodes separated by a tiny gap. The researchers then used an electric current and measured conduction through the gap, which was built in such a way as to only allow one or two molecules to contribute to the conduction. When this occurs, an "optical fingerprint" is associated with the molecule and the type of molecule can be identified. Other properties such as changes in position and rotation can also be measured.

Full story here

Labels: Bio-engineering, Chemical-Engineering, Computer-Science

Materials are made 'smart' when they are engineered to have properties that change in a controlled manner under the influence of external stimuli such as mechanical stress, temperature, humidity, electric charge, magnetic fields etc. Emerging nanotechnologies are now about to give scientists the tools to take smart materials to the next performance level. Another small building block towards smart materials was recently reported by Italian researchers who demonstrated photo-switchable nanofibers based on the reversible transformation between two molecular photochemical states, exhibiting different chemico-physical characteristics.

Full report here

Labels: Material-Sciences, Textile-Engineering

Clever clothes in a smart world

Pretty soon your gym gear will be more high tech than the groaning treadmill beneath you. Smart textiles and wearable devices can monitor your vital signs as you go about daily life. These clever clothes already exist and look set to find a market niche especially in elite sport and healthcare, say European researchers.

Tiny sensors woven into the fabric collect information about the wearer’s vital signs (respiration, heart rate, surface and core temperature) and movement, which can be monitored remotely using embedded GPRS transmitters.

Full story here

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Labels: Design-Engineering, Electronics-Communications-Engineering, Textile-Engineering

AirPatrol sniffs out trouble on Wi-Fi, cellular networks

AirPatrol is a company that made its name in wireless intrusion detection. Now the company is introducing its own branded product line, called WiVision, openly competing with enterprise network rivals. AirPatrol's new wireless intrusion detection/prevention systems adds two features intended to mark it out. One is software algorithms for location tracking, to identify where a radio is. The other, new with this product release, is integration with Check Point Software's firewalls at the network's edge and core, to block traffic from that radio based on its IP address.

Full story here

Labels: Electronics-Communications-Engineering, Safety

New Tech May Lead to Mind-Control Game Play

"The use of [brain-computer interface] technology represents a potential breakthrough in human-machine interfaces, changing the realm of possibilities not only for games, but in the way that humans and computer interact," said Paul Ledak, vice president of IBM's Digital Convergence.

Full story here

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Labels: Computer-Science, Society

Intel Pours 8 Cores Into New Skulltrail Platform

Intel has packed eight processor cores into its latest platform, the Dual Socket Extreme Desktop, a.k.a. "Skulltrail." Skulltrail's powerful profile could see Intel lengthen its lead over arch rival AMD, which has a similar offering, called "Spider." Though Skulltrail may top Spider in terms of horsepower, it will be a while before consumer applications using the power found in either offering are common.

Full story here

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Labels: Computer-Science

Gaming on a Mac: Technically Speaking

20 Feb 2008

"The PC market is like the Wild West, and the console space is like living in the domed city in 'Logan's Run.' The Mac is sort of a hybrid. You can try new things on the Mac, but you get a more structured environment with hardware and software libraries. It's the best of both worlds," said Freeverse's Bruce Morrison.

What's the status of gaming on the Apple Mac? And what are the issues and challenges Apple engineers face in this regard? This article takes a look

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Labels: Computer-Science, Society

Australian-developed technology is at the heart of a bold water-supply project in California

Three tanks of water stand alongside and above a hive of quietly humming machinery. They could be labelled "before", "during" and "after", with a moderate dare factor attached to the "after".

One is an early stage of recycled water, as dark as Guinness but with an unmistakable whiff of its origins. The second is clear, but still with a certain aroma. The third is crystalline.

This is purified water, cleared of the "solids", strained and sifted, then cleansed by UV light. And it tastes like … water.

As well it should. It cost $US480 million ($530 million) to put it there, performing the latter-day technological miracle of transforming human waste back into water. It is a triumph of technology, ingenuity and salesmanship.

Full story here

Labels: Energy-Environment-Engineering, Society

World's refineries need flexibility, firm's report says

The world's refineries must adapt to a plethora of raw materials to avoid shortfalls in meeting global demand for diesel and jet fuel, a leading energy consulting firm is reporting today.

Cambridge Energy Research Associates says its analysis of global refining capacity shows that increased ability to process a greater variety of raw materials is key to the industry's future

Full story here

Labels: Energy-Environment-Engineering

Glowing appeal: In car design, energy use, LEDs add 'cool factor'

February 18, 2008

Bright little lights, known as Light Emitting Diodes, are changing the face of autos, inside and out, designers and engineers say.

Once a beacon for the plush interiors of Lexus, Mercedes and Cadillac, LEDs have made their way into daily drivers such as the Ford Focus and Chevy Malibu, and certainly will make their way into more. Interior and exterior designers love the little light bulbs and are finding new ways to use them.

Recent advances in LED technology and continued price drops mean LEDs will play a more important role in future designs. Consumers will reap the benefits, finding more extravagant light shows inside future vehicles and flashier exteriors as the luxury lighting source goes mainstream.

Full story here

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LED Car Sign

Labels: Design-Engineering, Electronics-Communications-Engineering

Most intense laser beam in the universe created

February 16th, 2008

Scientists at the University of Michigan say that they have devised a way to produce a laser beam about as intense as a concentrated ray of the entire sunlight shining towards Earth would be if it were focussed onto one grain of sand.

The pulsed laser beam lasts just 30 femtoseconds (a millionth of a billionth of a second). The Michigan team believes that such intense lasers may be helpful in developing better proton and electron beams for radiation treatment of cancer, among other applications

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Labels: Physics, Sciences

All New FG Falcon-Design that Reflects the Car

The all-new exterior and interior design of the FG Falcon embodies the vehicle's core attributes of performance, comfort and fun-to-drive characteristics.

With three distinct faces providing greater series differentiation, a new interior designed around the driver, and the first Australian application of European kinetic design influences, the FG Falcon represents the most design intensive Falcon program since the introduction of the AU Falcon in 1998.

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Labels: Design-Engineering, Logistics-Transportation-Engineering

Luxury + Sustainability. Entermodal

The Entermodal philosophy originates from the idea that design can be a force for positive and meaningful change.” — Entermodal

Entermodal makes modern handcrafted leather bags, wallets, and accessories carried at Fred Segal and All Purpose in LA, Japan’s luxury emporium, Takashimaya, and Odin in New York, among others and featured in magazines like Details and Good.

Its designs are way too cool

See here for more

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Entermodal

Labels: Design-Engineering, Textile-Engineering

New initiative gives green aircraft research a boost

Plans for a new generation of green aircraft took a step closer to becoming reality today with the launch of a €1.6bn (£1.19bn) Europe-wide research programme. The Clean Sky project, a joint technology initiative (JTI), is a public-private partnership involving universities and research centres, and small and large industry. The aim of the programme is to make air travel more environmentally sustainable by developing greener technologies.

Aircraft produce around 3% of all EU carbon emissions and experts forecast that they will account for 5% of global warming in 2050.

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Labels: Aerospace-Engineering, Energy-Environment-Engineering, Logistics-Transportation-Engineering

12 crackpot tech ideas that could transform the enterprise

Tinkering along the fringe of possibility, hoping to solve the impossible or apply another's discovery to a real-world problem, these free thinkers navigate a razor-thin edge between crackpot and visionary. They transform our suspicion into admiration when their ideas are authenticated with technical advances that reshape how we view and interact with the world.

IT is no stranger to this spirit of experimentation. An industry in constant flux, IT is pushed forward by innovative ideas that yield advantage when applied to real-world scenarios. Sure, not every revolutionary pose sets the IT world afire. But for every dozen paper-based storage clunkers, there's an ARPAnet to rewrite IT history -- itself a time line of what-were-they-thinkings and who-would-have-thoughts.

It's in that tenor that this article takes a look at 12 technologies that have a history of raising eyebrows and suspicions. We assess the potential each has for transforming the future of the enterprise.

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Labels: Computer-Science

Scientists Ponder the Successor to Moore's Law

The National Science Foundation will fund projects that push computing power beyond silicon.

In anticipation of Moore's Law becoming irrelevant in the next 10 to 20 years, the National Science Foundation (NSF) wants funding for research that could lead to a replacement for current silicon technology.

The NSF last week requested US$20 million from the U.S. government for fiscal 2009 to start the "Science and Engineering Beyond Moore's Law" effort, which would fund academic research on technologies, including carbon nanotubes, quantum computing and massively multicore computers, that could improve and replace current transistor technology.

Full story here

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Labels: Computer-Science, Electrical-Engineering

Utah scientist predicts coal gasification will become increasingly attractive

Coal gasification, an expensive but cleaner way to convert coal into energy, will likely become more widespread, potentially offering breakthroughs in curbing emissions that exacerbate global warming and weaning the U.S. from foreign energy, predicted a Utah chemical engineering professor at a major scientific conference in Boston today.

As regulatory frameworks evolve to address growing alarm over greenhouse emissions associated with coal combustion, gasification will become increasingly attractive on economic grounds, according to Brigham Young University's Larry Baxter, who spoke at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual gathering.

Full story here

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Labels: Chemical-Engineering, Energy-Environment-Engineering

Princeton researchers envision a more secure Internet

Like human society itself, the world's Internet is wondrously complex, both spectacularly fertile, deeply flawed & highly insecure.

Just how can such a complex a system be made more secure? Some of the most influential thinkers on this question sit just a few dozen steps away from each other in the engineering complex on the Princeton campus: Edward Felten, director of the Center for Information Technology Policy, focuses on software and policy; Ruby Lee heads the Princeton Architecture Lab for Multimedia and Security; and Larry Peterson and Jennifer Rexford are key players in the Global Environment for Network Innovation.

While these researchers may be physically proximate, their unique visions on how to best ensure cybersecurity can seem worlds apart. What follows in this article are portraits of these pathfinders at the frontiers of security research.

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Labels: Computer-Science, Electronics-Communications-Engineering, Society

Nokia turns people into traffic sensors

With media and VIPs from companies like Nokia, Navteq, General Motors, BMW, and CalTrans looking on, wave after wave of students left a parking lot to drive a 10-mile stretch of the nearby 880 freeway as part of a large-scale experiment to test how cell phones can monitor and predict traffic. The test, conducted recently, was put on by the California Center for Innovative Transportation (CCIT) as a joint project between Nokia, CalTrans, and Berkeley's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Each student car was issued a Nokia N95 phone with GPS and special traffic-monitoring software developed by Nokia's Palo Alto, Calif.-based research lab--plus a Bluetooth headset. As the students drove the freeway, the phone sent data about each car's speed and position back to the company's research facility. The data is compiled and used to predict traffic patterns and help drivers get where they need to be quickly. Nokia hopes that one day the system could be a significantly cheaper way to track traffic than the permanent sensors installed in roadways or next to them because it uses equipment most people already own: cell phones.

Full story here

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