bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Within a Nanometer of your Life
Authors: Menezes Allen J. , Kapoor Vik J. , Goel Vijay K. , Cameron Brent D. , Lu Jian-Yu
Published: July 2018

This article reviews advances in semiconductor manufacturing techniques that are bringing medicine closer to cures and treatments that have eluded researchers working on the macro scale. An orthopaedic implant company, Implex Corp. of Allendale, New Jersey, has developed spinal fusion devices for the cervical, thoracic, and lumbar spine using a novel biomaterial called Hedrocel Trabecular Metal. According to Implex, Hedrocel, which has a porous structure and mechanical properties like bone, can be formed or machined into complex shapes. Implex has developed hip and knee reconstruction devices made wholly or in part of Hedrocel. The spinal implants are in commercial use in Europe and are undergoing clinical trials in the United States. By studying fluid samples at the cellular level, the system can diagnose the physical and chemical status of cells to detect disease at an early stage. Nanopore fabrication technology is used to make microcapsules for implanting neurons in the brain. Once the capsules are implanted, the neurons are electrically stimulated to release neurotransmitters. Disorders where basic neurosecretory cells are missing or damaged can be treated using nanopore technology.
The Engineered Course of Treatment
Authors: Ferrari Mauro , Liu Jun
Published: July 2018

Use of nanoscale devices is helping to revolutionize medical treatment and research. The Ohio State University recently became the first place in the country where coronary bypass and mitral valve repair operations are performed by a computer controlled robot, operated by a remotely located surgeon handling joysticks and considering a three-dimensional, enlarged view of the surgical field. With the invaluable help of many associates and students, researchers have focused on two classes of objects: devices that feature nanopore membranes, and multifunctional particulates for the delivery of medical therapeutic agents. Nanomembranes may also be used as flux regulators for the long-term release of biopharmaceuticals from implanted depots. This application embodies a purely passive mass transport mode of molecules in channels that are just a few nanometers larger than the effective radii of the molecules themselves.
Stealth on the Water
Authors: Valenti Michael
Published: July 2018

The Swedish Navy’s Visby corvette is designed to be virtually invisible in pursuit of hostile submarines and underwater mines. The Visby is designed to be difficult to detect by an enemy using radar, infrared, hydro-acoustic monitoring or any other sensor system. The craft’s success could change naval warfare as profoundly as did the ironclad ships in the 19th century. Sweden’s YS2000 class corvette, the first known production naval stealth vessel, takes shape at Kockums’ shipyard on Karlskrona Island. The Kockums shipwrights designed the Visby to be electronically undetectable at a range greater than 13 km in rough seas, and at more than 22 km in calm seas, without electronic jamming. With the assistance of jamming, the Visby is invisible at more than 8 km in rough waters and 11 km in a calm sea. Computing Devices Canada also designed a monitoring system so that the Visby can perform a background check on its own vibration levels to ensure that the ship’s sound is within acceptable levels.
Cell Culture
Authors: DeGaspari John
Published: July 2018

This article focuses on Tribon Bearing Co. plant in Brook Park, OH, a manufacturer of discrete carbon composite parts and shapes that had been plagued by problems that threatened its existence. The old Tribon plant was a traditional manufacturing setup, in which operations were highly compartmentalized. Equipment was arranged according to purpose and job functions were narrowly defined. The plant’s production control manager, there was plenty of distrust and bad feelings between front-line management and the plant floor workforce. Workcell leaders work with manufacturing engineers to develop a process for a new product or to improve on an established process. Each manufacturing engineer is assigned two or three product lines. If a cell leader determines that a process change saves time or money, she/he will make it a permanent change. The manufacturing engineer makes the quality department aware of what the workcell is doing, and the quality department signs off the change.
Light for the Future
Authors: Hutchinson Harry
Published: July 2018

Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), a nonprofit organization for energy and environmental research, has predicted that worldwide power demand will see a fourfold increase by 2050. Meeting the demand will require an effort equivalent to opening a 1-gigawatt power plant every two days for the next 50 years. The study projects the future of known technologies, including many in development. It takes into account variables, including the estimated learning curve for adoption and how far an idea is from commercialization. APERC and other energy research groups recommend the use of renewables instead. Systems bankrolled by grants, often from governments, can run on local resources. Engineering is working toward an unprecedented era in which the very poor—the quarter, or perhaps third, of the world without the juice to run a pump—within a generation or so may be able to offer their children a bedtime drink of clear water and light to drink it by.
SCADA vs. the Hackers
Authors: Brown Alan S.
Published: July 2018

This article focuses on United States’ power grid vulnerability to cyber attack. None of the industrial control systems used to monitor and operate the nation's utilities and factories were designed with security in mind. Moreover, their very nature makes them difficult to secure. Linking them to networks and the public Internet only makes them harder to protect. The Internet made it easy. Instead of installing expensive private telecommunications links, companies let the Internet carry SCADA messages. Encryption may prevent a remote attack on data, but also may leave utilities vulnerable to attacks over corporate networks that are often linked to facilities. Someone on the inside may be able to unscramble encrypted data. Similarly, drive-by hackers will still be able to take advantage of security flaws in a wireless system to sneak into a plant network behind any encryption device. Stronger IT policies and encryption are good first steps. But the US power grid—and the entire nation’s utility and industrial infrastructure—remain vulnerable to cyberattack from terrorists and angry employees.
Helping Hands
Authors: Falcioni John
Published: July 2018

This article discusses how in the field of medical rehabilitation, robots can act as external aids to assist people in such tasks as lifting a fork or spoon. Many brain-injured patients might one day relearn to perform coordinated tasks on their own. Working toward this goal in the Sensory Motor Performance Program at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago is James Patton, a neuroscientist who combines his medical training with a background in mechanical engineering. Patton and a team that includes therapists, doctors, and others at the institute are working with robots in the hope of training people to regain control over their movements. Patton has used adaptive training techniques in healthy people to determine the robot’s ability to modify the subjects’ hand movements to a specified trajectory, such as a curved path of some predetermined shape. Although at this time there is no evidence proving that patients can preserve their after-effects, some patients do appear to preserve limited features for the duration of the experiment. Patton believes that prolonging the training over many days could lead to the desired outcome.
Fill'er Up-with Hydrogen
Authors: Valenti Michael
Published: July 2018

This article highlights that researchers are developing new technologies to carry H2 in gas, liquid, or solid state. The advantages of hydrogen fuel for cars and trucks keep driving efforts to develop ways of handling it. Hydrogen has the highest energy content by weight of any fuel—52,000 Btu per pound. As the simplest and most common element in the universe, though never found naturally in pure form, hydrogen can be produced from a host of available sources, including water, natural gas, coal, biomass, municipal solid waste, or scrap tires. Compressed gas tanks store hydrogen as a gas, and their cryogenic counterparts store it as a liquid. A less familiar method of storing hydrogen is a solid in metal hydrides, alloys of rare earth, transition metal, and magnesium. These granulated materials absorb hydrogen. Researchers feed hydrogen directly into the tanks, where it is absorbed by the powdered alloy. As the hydrogen gas is absorbed during charging, the metal hydrides generate heat that is removed by water.
A Bid to Take The Lead
Authors: Pak Y. Eugene
Published: July 2018

This article reviews the Korean government initiative to support a pillar of its economic strength, electronics. Analysts see demand is increasing for faster and smaller devices, which are already bordering the nanometer scale. As a result, Korea has put forth an ambitious plan that will prepare itself to achieve world-class competitiveness in nanotechnology within the next 10 years. Many nanotechnology-related research projects are conducted by various groups in the government, university, and industrial laboratories covering nanomagnetic and ferroelectric thin-film processing, carbon nanotubes for molecular electronic devices, quantum dots, quantum computing, nanolithography, single-electron transistors, scanning probe microscope-based surface physics, and nanoelectromechanical systems. The center’s mission is to help build up national infrastructure so Korea may join the ranks of the five leading countries in the world in the relevant micro and nanosystems technology by 2010. The two main areas of research in this project are a swallowable endoscopic microcapsule for examining digestive tracts and a wearable personal digital assistant for information technology applications.
Conservative Powers
Authors: Valenti Michael
Published: July 2018

This article focuses on the fact that by matching the use to demand the heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC), the controls are now able to cut electric bills and ease strain on the local grid, often leading to earn credits from the utilities. Similarly, advanced lighting systems are providing needed illumination using less electricity than conventional overhead lighting. The Lighting Systems Research Group of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory developed a table lamp that provides the same illumination as a 300-watt halogen lamp or an ISO-watt incandescent table lamp, but uses less energy than either one. The Berkeley lamp’s designers placed an optical septum—an aluminum reflector dish painted white—between the two lamps to permit three different modes of lighting—down, up, or a combination of the two. The downward, directly focused light is intended for reading or writing, and the indirect, upward light for low glare, suitable for working on a computer.
Plenty of Room in the Air
Authors: Venneri Samuel L. , Noor Ahmed K.
Published: July 2018

This article highlights a research on a spectrum of revolutionary concepts and technologies, for civilian and military air vehicles and the airspace system that will enable a bold new era of aviation and mobility. The long-range vision includes major changes in personal transportation and significant increases in air travel capacity and safety. The vision is included in the NASA Aeronautics Blueprint, published earlier this year. It includes advanced concepts for the airspace system as a complex, highly integrated system of systems. It also outlines a new model for aviation safety and security, revolutionary aerospace vehicles with significantly greater performance, and assured development of a competent aerospace workforce. NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are investigating the feasibility of creating personal air vehicles that could replace or, at the very least, augment personal ground and air transportation schemes. The integration of intelligence and multifunctionality into the varied airframe and propulsion components of aerospace vehicles requires the development of revolutionary materials, structures, and subsystems. They can be achieved through the fusion of nanotechnology, biotechnology, and information technology into a new discipline—nanobiologics—that is the foundation for biologically inspired materials and structures.
Ticket to Ride
Authors: Sharke Paul
Published: July 2018

This article highlights of how sometimes travelers sacrifice comfort to shorten transit time. Transportation planners in Pittsburgh and the Baltimore–Washington region, mindful of comfort expected by travelers, are finishing up the details of two proposals for high-speed maglev trains that will tie each city’s downtown closer to local airports. Both areas made it into the semi-final round of a seven-region playoff for nearly a billion dollars in federal funding for a maglev demonstrator. Eventually, the short lines being proposed may grow long enough to provide real alternatives to short-hop flights. Statistical projections for the Berlin–Hamburg maglev project, canceled two years ago with a change of party majority in the nation’s government, anticipated only one hour’s worth of “non-station” stops for every two years of operation. A Baltimore–Washington maglev could also provide residents with a second airport choice, alleviating crowding at Reagan National Airport. The Baltimore–Washington route, while expected to stand on its own in terms of financial and technological feasibility, would be a showcase for a larger maglev line that, by 2040, might duplicate the alignment of the Northeast corridor.
FEA Finds its Place
Authors: Thilmany Jean
Published: July 2018

This article focuses on engineers who are examining innovative ways to fold analyses into their design cycles. Although many engineering companies currently use finite element analysis (FEA) software programs, the practice of coupling analysis with everyday design is still relatively new. Engineers today are responsible for much of the analysis done on their own designs. Increasingly, engineers have to judge for themselves, based on their own analyses, which systems or components to include in a product and how best to tweak a part if analysis shows it does not meet specifications. For some engineers the fact that the newer FEA software packages are easy to use just plain trumps the worry that engineer-run computer analyses might not be as complete, or yield as many answers, as simulations carried out by a formally trained analyst. As FEA becomes more commonly available and more useful to mechanical engineers not specifically trained in the process, companies find new uses for the technology.
New Wheels for Grandma
Authors: Ehrenman Gayle
Published: July 2018

This article focuses on how engineers are adding enabling technologies that make cars easier and safer for an aging population to drive. By 2011, the baby boom generation will begin to turn 65, and by 2030, one in five people will be age 65 or older, according to US Census Bureau projections. A large percentage of the older Americans are expected to still be tooling down the highways. Ford Motor Co. of Dearborn, Michigan, Detroit-based General Motors, and automotive interior supplier Lear Corp. of Southfield, Michigan, have all undertaken studies to help them understand the needs and wants of older drivers in an effort to create vehicles that are ergonomically attuned to them. Ford has taken a different approach to defining the needs of the aging baby boomers. Like Lear, it conducted consumer research, but Ford also used a unique tool to help young engineers know what it feels like to be a 65-year-old trying to operate a car. The concept vehicle is using information gleaned from Lear’s Masters Study to determine the best colors, lighting levels, and rate of change in lighting for instruments and warning sensor displays.
Back to Motor School
Authors: Sharke Paul
Published: July 2018

This article focuses on stepping, brushless permanent magnet, switched reluctance, and synchronous reluctance motors; suddenly all of these looked a lot more appealing in an era of cheapening power electronics and improving permanent magnets. DC machines using brushes to commutate the incoming direct current had a major disadvantage themselves. The carbon or metalized brushes wore out, created dust and arcs, and were troublesome from a maintenance person’s perspective. Placing permanent magnets on the rotor severed this mechanical link, which the DC machine had needed to power its rotating electromagnets. Electronic commutation dispatched the mechanical switching needed to race the current around the poles. About 80 percent of the motor industry is concerned with controlling speed, while the other 20 percent worries about controlling position. But it is the positioning side that is called the “bleeding edge.” Successful mechanical engineers today simply have to be comfortable with electronics. It has become such an integral part of the motion-control world that it cannot be ignored.
Carbon Underground
Authors: Winters Jeffrey
Published: July 2018

This article discusses carbon sequestration. Carbon sequestration, as it is called, is quickly becoming a cornerstone of the Bush administration’s approach to dealing with the issues surrounding global climate change and the influx of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Geologists know of a natural mechanism for getting rid of excess carbon from the atmosphere. CO2 and water form carbonic acid, which then react with certain minerals, such as magnesium-rich serpentine, to create quartz and the kinds of rocks called carbonates. Of course, these carbonates formed through the weathering of precursor minerals over the course of millions of years. Surely, someone will come up with a way to make something useful out of all that carbonate, if not bricks or building blocks, then fertilizer or fireproofing. After all, our treating an industrial byproduct—CO2—as worthless waste is why carbon sequestration has become a research topic in the first place.
Alphabet Soup
Authors: Thilmany Jean
Published: July 2018

This article focuses on how acronyms serve a useful purpose to people in a certain industry because they know right away what area is being referred to without having to go into a long, elaborate explanation. For the record, CAD stands for “computer-aided design,” CAM for “computer-aided manufacturing,” and PLM for “product lifecycle management,” which are all software applications used by engineers. Acronyms that are bandied about without ever being defined can make all but seasoned veterans feel as if they are in a subject over their heads. Manufacturers have an ongoing task of sorting through acronyms and finding those that have meanings for them, as opposed to those that are merely flavors of the day and will ultimately fall by the wayside.
Engines for the Cosmos
Authors: Reisz Aloysius I. , Rodgers Stephen L.
Published: July 2018

This article highlights how exploration of deep space requires systems of propulsion that can go the distance. To explore the outer planets in a reasonable time, engines must generate either high exhaust velocity or high specific impulse. The United States recognized early the benefit that nuclear propulsion could provide for interplanetary exploration and ran an extensive research and development program devoted to it. Electric propulsion devices require an energy source and an electric generation method in order to operate. Engines being engineered for deep space missions are, out of necessity, fueled by clean energy from light gas atoms. The fuels are brought to certain physical states and subjected to electric or magnetic fields that accelerate and eject charged particles out of the engine, thereby giving momentum to the spacecraft. These new deep space engines will enable to send missions to the far reaches of the solar system and beyond with exploratory instruments.
Too Much Information
Authors: Thilmany Jean
Published: July 2018

This article reviews organizing information—after gathering it in the first place—is the key to actually using it. In this web-linked, data-rich world, engineers, like other professionals, must organize for easy access both the growing amount of information they create during the course of their day and the information they need to do their jobs. Indexing and linking documents and other information sources is an important first step, but engineers also must have a way to organize the information so they can find it via an easy search. Concept maps can be used to collect a designer’s knowledge and cognitive skills not available to other designers. The concept map explains through a formal step-by-step visual representation how an engineer attacked a design problem, struggled with it, attacked it from another angle, and eventually solved it. The maps are archived in a database and can be referred to for help with similar problems.
Getting on the Grid
Authors: Thilmany Jean
Published: July 2018

This review discusses grid computing that is a low-cost way to harness the central processing units of a group of workstations. The grid can be made up of any number of central processing units (CPU), and they may be far-flung or within the same company, or even in the same department. Grid computing puts to work on the grid all available CPUs at idle workstations and thus does away with the need for powerful servers or supercomputers. Sun Microsystems Inc., Santa Clara, CA, and IBM of Armonk, New York, have both released software within the past three years that can divide and farm out pieces of an application to several thousand linked computers. Microsoft is developing grid-computing software for use with its products, as are Hewlett-Packard, Palo Alto, CA, and others. Grid software is written in Linux, the open-standards operating system. However, because no gatekeeping technology is currently in place for grids, the hard work of IT managers seeking to implement grid technology comes when negotiating policies among departments and setting up grids accordingly.
Taking the Long View
Authors: Chalmers Peggy
Published: July 2018

The article highlights that minor changes in layout can produce positive pressure gradients at the ends of aisles triggering recirculation paths and creating hot spots. Urged on by economic demands, social concerns, or environmental considerations, a growing number of engineers have turned their attention to the way products use energy at every step, from manufacture to operation and recycling. A combined heating, cooling, and power system at the University of Maryland is the subject of study for increased energy efficiency on a small scale, up to 100 kW. The goal is a plug-and-play design. Hewlett-Packard operates a huge recycling program, with plants that handle as many as three million pounds a month of its own and other computer vendors' products. Using computational fluid dynamics (CFD), Hewlett-Packard researchers learned that poorly placed vents could cause undesirable mixing of air.
A Touching Sensation
Authors: Thilmany Jean
Published: July 2018

This article discusses Haptics technology that is being used to train surgeons and rehabilitate patients. Haptics technology, a recent enhancement to virtual reality technology, gives users the touch and feel of simulated objects they interact with, usually through a device like a specialized mouse or a haptic glove. John Hollerbach, a computing professor and an adjunct professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Utah, says haptic devices and robotic devices share the same drawbacks, particularly involving limits to the miniaturization of motors. Haptic devices that fit the hand, like the one sold by Immersion Corp., or the force-feedback glove developed at Rutgers give the wearer a sense of touch, as if one is squeezing a ball or tracing an object. Hollerbach of the University of Utah said the future looks bright for haptics. The Rutgers ankle simulates walking over several types of terrain for patients undergoing physical therapy. Haptics can simulate assembling a part to ensure that it is designed for easy construction.
The Conquest of Friction
Authors: Leibensperger Robert
Published: July 2018

This article discusses the evolution of bearings and its functional use in making a wheel work. The beginning of the anti-friction bearing industry started in the early 1880s when Friedrich Fischer in Germany developed a way to manufacture precision spherical balls economically in high volumes and gave birth to Fischer AG. As per the early technology for producing bearings, the factory’s grinders were driven by belt and pulley arrangements connected to a single power source. Developments in the electronic field gave the bearing industry the tools to verify these theories, to understand the fundamentals of machine tool dynamics to improve grinding precision, and to develop ultrasonic equipment to improve the quality and the performance specifications of steel. The performance of bearings is greatly influenced by the quality and performance specifications of the steel used to make the bearings and the precision of the bearing's internal geometry. High-performance bearings should have internal tolerances that are consistently controlled to approximately 1/ 100 of the diameter of a human hair.
A Little Knowledge
Authors: Brown Stuart B.
Published: July 2018

This article explains microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) design concepts that are under investigation for their application in different domains. MEMS provide numerous performance advantages. Miniaturization improves packaging and simplifies installation and maintenance. Power consumption can drop dramatically. Analysis shows that appropriate hermeticity and cleanliness remain a challenge, because sufficient contamination to introduce frequency drift may result from the migration of trace contaminants within a package itself. Many reliability issues apply to different MEMS in diverse ways. Work to date indicates that low-stress, hermetically packaged devices pose little concern about crack growth. The increasing maturity of MEMS and the emphasis on reliability represents good news for the industry, as it reflects the natural evolution from initial product design to fabrication technologies to long-term reliability. Despite current challenges, there is no fundamental constraint to reliability improvements as our knowledge of failure mechanisms and countermeasures increases.
Containing Explosions
Authors: Nickell Robert E. , Romero Christopher
Published: July 2018

The design analysis techniques, used to determine vulnerability to attack or lethality of an explosive detonation, have been tested against a large database of experimental and test results. Building explosive testing chambers presents a whole new set of challenges, since the purpose of such tests is not the survival or destruction of the vessel, but gaining a better understanding of the explosion's dynamics. Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have chosen to combine aboveground testing using mock materials, advanced X-ray and proton radiography, and advanced computing capabilities for complex simulations. These vessel systems, when used with diagnostics such as flash or proton radiography, provide important data that help our weapon's designers validate design codes and support the certification of the weapon systems. The Atomic Weapons Establishment in the United Kingdom has similar activity under way. Testing has shown that within a millisecond, the stresses within the pressure vessel shift from a sharp, uniform impulse to a 1 kHz vibration. The amount of stress, or excitation, that the impulse places on the structure can be figured as the integral of the load over time of duration.
Hooked Up
Authors: Thilmany Jean
Published: July 2018

This article discusses benefits incurred by buyers and suppliers over the Internet. The benefits of using the Internet to pull a wider range of clients are clear for both buyer and supplier. Manufacturers buying parts can choose from a greater number of quotes and compare fees and supplier capabilities much more readily. Suppliers get to plumb a deeper market for customers who may seek their specialization or may be outside the geographical market they normally serve. A sea change has begun for companies of Intellipack’s size that seek suppliers. The online business model works well for manufacturers who find new suppliers on the Internet. The online service MfgQuote lets suppliers that pay to use the service bid on requests for quotes that are submitted by potential buyers. QuickParts in Atlanta, using the company’s QuickQuote software, lets buyers upload three-dimensional computer-aided design (CAD) data to the site and include their project specifications. Company founders developed the QuickQuote software that allows them to accept 3-D CAD files, analyze them, and quickly make a customized quotation that addresses the quantity and type of parts the vendor specified.
Making the Grade
Authors: DeGaspari John
Published: July 2018

This article highlights methods that are under study to bring non-destructive evaluation into wider use. Non-destructive evaluation is the subject of a good deal of research, which may soon make it easier than ever to integrate testing into assembly lines, and so may take the technology to new corners of industry. Increased sensitivity, higher computing power, and better imaging are improving the quality of information and ease of use. R. Bruce Thompson, Director of the Center for Non-destructive Evaluation at Iowa State University, Ames, points out that advances in sensing technology have improved understanding of how energy behaves in the microstructure of a material. One of the developments at Iowa State is a set of modelling tools to help determine if an investigative technique will be adequate. The US Department of Energy has a goal of using of lightweight materials in automobiles as an energy-conservation measure. Overall, manufacturers are acknowledging the value of selected non-destructive evaluation techniques, and researchers are getting better at adapting non-destructive evaluation techniques to the plant floor through portability, fine resolutions, and smart software.
High-Tech Delivery
Authors: DeGaspari John
Published: July 2018

The US Postal Service is automating its vast infrastructure to stand up to its competition. The Postal Service is betting that investments in modern technology can help it improve efficiency and reduce costs. The tactic is part of an overall strategy, known as the Transformation Plan, to keep the Postal Service competitive in the face of competition from e-mail and private carriers, an expanding network of delivery points, and declining revenues. Wide Field of View cameras boost productivity of letter-sorting machines by reading a higher percentage of barcoded mail. The 534 Advanced Flat Sorter Machines, deployed in 2001, use optical character recognition and remote keying technology to sort mail into 120 separations. The Postal Service is integrating systems within processing facilities as tubs and trays are combined into larger wheeled containers for shipment. The Postal Service has established the Mail Technology Strategy Council to help it evaluate innovative technologies. The council consults with industry to get an idea of where modern technologies are headed and which ones are feasible to incorporate.
Simple Medicine
Authors: Hutchinson Harry
Published: July 2018

Abbott Laboratories’ diagnostics division claims that the systems improve laboratory workflow. A patented feature of the machines is an automated system called the retest sample handler, which can hold up to 135 sample vials for the i2000sr, 185 for the c8000, and 335 for the ci8200. The samples, which are accessible to a three-axis carrier transport robot, can be picked up in any sequence so they can be retrieved for retesting when it is necessary. Eliminating separate rails and associated fasteners and reducing machining of large surfaces resulted in significant cost savings. In addition, the single extrusion offers improved structural strength in the given space at the lowest weight. Fewer parts minimized tolerance stackup. Electronic components in the original design included circuit boards and cable harnesses in different configurations for each module type. The final design has 18-inch-long circuit boards that can be joined to form a continuous board up to 10-feet long, without cables.
A Practical Hero
Authors: Lyman Frederic A.
Published: July 2018

This article illustrates history and evolution of hero turbine. In 1830s, William Avery, a mechanic, designed and built a Hero turbine that could manage significant, useful work. It powered several gristmills and sawmills in New York State, and even drove a locomotive. Ambrose Foster and William Avery were granted a patent on September 28, 1831 for their improvement in the Steam Engine, commonly called the Reacting Engine. The Avery engine probably had other problems such as noise, vibration, the difficulty in sealing the rotary coupling, and the problem of speed regulation. These problems would have been difficult to solve with 1830s technology. Although one is said to have driven a mill for 20 years, the Avery engine probably had problems that were too difficult to solve in the 1830s. The only memorial to William Avery around Syracuse is a New York State historical marker on Route 92 near his family’s farm in Oran. It claims that the steamboat he built and launched there in 1823 became the first on the Erie Canal. Avery also built the machinery for the first steamboat on Lake Ontario, as well as for several other lake steamers.
Hot Case
Authors: Winters Jeffrey
Published: July 2018

The US Department of Energy has commissioned research into advanced gas-cooled designs that would employ extreme heat to generate hydrogen for use in fuel cell-powered vehicles, and such designs are being considered as part of the Generation IV Nuclear Energy Systems Initiative. Another design that has received much attention is known as the pebble bed reactor. In this scheme, coated fuel particles are formed into billiard ball-size spheres, which are stacked in the containment vessel. Gas flows through the gaps between the stacked balls to convey the heat to a heat exchanger. The pebble-bed design has been tested in Germany, and South Africa has an active program. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory team has been investigating using non-carbon coatings that would wave by fast neutrons. Materials such as zirconium nitride have been looked at with the goal of creating an easily dissolved ceramic that could be used in fast-breeder reactors.
What Do You Know?
Authors: Thilmany Jean
Published: July 2018

This article focuses on the fact that when the time comes for mechanical engineering students to look for their first professional jobs, how much does it count which computer-aided design system they learned in college. In the 1980s, when most engineering organizations were newly acquainted with CAD and computer-aided manufacturing technologies, employers emphasized their need for engineers with very specific knowledge of a particular computer-aided engineering system. Mechanical engineering majors should understand the methods behind solid modeling, such as the principle of orthographic projection. The method of representing objects does not include the viewer’s perspective and can take a bit of practice to pick up. Eifel maintains the CAD programs UGS and I-deas from EDS, and Catia from Dassault Systemes of Paris. Engineers use ICEM Surf from ICEM Ltd. of Southampton, England, for surface design, and Power mill from Delcam Plc of Birmingham, England, for CAM.
You Gotta Pay to Play
Authors: Thilmany Jean
Published: July 2018

This article reviews how an automobile is born in a rough sketch and finally hits the road years later. In a viciously quick design cycle, pressure to save time and reduce costs gets passed from the top down to the little guy and from the little guy to the smaller guy. As major auto producers have increasingly outsourced product development over the past two decades, suppliers who may have initially resisted jumping at their customer’s demands to bring in this or that technology have learned the importance of giving in. Automotive stylists can be said to be the clothiers of the industry. They help automakers refine the shape and the look of the vehicle so it appeals to customers, and looks cutting edge and modern. Like parts suppliers, the design firms need to keep up with swift technology developments or they risk losing customers.
Down But Not Out
Authors: Siegel R.P.
Published: July 2018

This article discusses profile of Jerome Lemelson who was the high-rolling inventor. He held more than 590 US patents, including claims for camcorders, fax machines, cassette players, bar code scanners, and automatic teller machines. His inventions were often so far ahead of their time that, in many cases, the technology required to build them did not yet exist. Nonetheless, by tenaciously pursuing his rights as an individual inventor, he was rewarded for his technological foresight to the tune of more. Lemelson’s most recent patent, 6,708,385, titled “Flexible manufacturing systems and methods,” was issued on March 23, 2004. The idea, first conceived in the early 1950s, was to use newly emerging imaging and data processing technologies to introduce flexibility into mass production. The patent had been decades in prosecution because of delays caused by restrictions, continuations, and interference proceedings. There were also transfers of assigned rights between Lemelson and Molins, a British company that had licensed the technology, to further delay the proceedings. This complex history may explain, at least in part, the reason for the patent's astounding 694 claims.
Engineering for the Spectacle
Authors: Boehm Robert , Frayer Brackley , Aldridge Joe
Published: July 2018

This article reviews a design revolution that is taking place in entertainment, and technology is playing a major role. Just as computer graphics have enhanced movies and video games, live entertainment, too, is showcasing spectacles requiring evermore sophisticated technical effects. Nowhere has this trend been more evident than in Las Vegas, the live-entertainment capital of the world. In its work, Sceneing Solutions involved engineering collaboration with theater people to perform a number of analyses. Included were finite element calculations of the structural function, and input on the manufacturability of the various scenery elements. All of the aspects were developed with the assistance of CAD drawings. The last two decades have seen a rapid increase in the technical sophistication of live entertainment. Nowhere is there more spectacle than in Las Vegas, as each new hotel casino tries to offer more excitement to draw customers. To service this growing demand, there is a new technical business for theatrical engineers, who can both design and realize the high technology of stagecraft.
The True Harnessing of Steam
Authors: Varrasi John
Published: July 2018

This article discusses that although it remains the worst maritime disaster in the US history, the Sultana explosion was not an isolated incident in the United States. Boiler explosions occurred with alarming frequency, not only on board steamboats, but also in factories, mines, sawmill, and woodworking shops. Legend has it that the group came together expressly to address the problem of unsafe boilers, but the initial objectives of ASME were modest. The founders were seeking a reliable system for technical information exchange as well as a social setting. The publication of the first ASME Boiler Code in 1914 was a symbolic moment in the history of the Society, an event that would help define the organization and contribute to its stature and importance in the mechanical engineering community for decades to follow. Ninety years later, the Society today has approximately 3400 active volunteers working on committees that combine to issue more than 600 standards. The standards detail the proper dimensions of a wide range of manufactured objects, from pressure vessels and piping to screw threads. However varied they are, they serve a single purpose: to make sure that all the pieces fit and hold together safely, even under pressure.
Going the Distance
Authors: Hutchinson Harry
Published: July 2018

This article discusses a Turkish auto manufacturer that had been marketing its heavy commercial vehicle for years, but new emissions requirements were looming. The rules came from the European Parliament in Brussels. Turkey, which is not part of the European Union, has been pursuing membership for decades and many nearby countries belong, so the rules could not be ignored. The company decided to redesign its truck. The testing company, LMS International, crunched numbers and devised a schedule of track driving that would accelerate fatigue-inducing events a hundredfold. LMS engineers began by getting a snapshot of what the roads do to trucks in Turkey. LMS will not disclose details of the final test schedule, but according to the project manager on this job, Michael Kienert, the truck traveled a total of 10,000 km over the track in eight weeks. The team of engineers inspected it at regular intervals during the test.
Disruptions of Progress
Authors: Ahmed K. Noor
Published: July 2018

This article focuses on the engineering profession that is currently facing an unprecedented array of pressures to change. Economic and environmental problems facing industry and society are increasingly global and intractable. The skills that must be brought to bear on their solution go well beyond the historical scope of engineering practice. The profession is becoming more complex, with the boundaries established in the 19th and 20th centuries between the traditional engineering and science disciplines blurring or disappearing. The pace of technological change continues to accelerate. Technological advances are fueling more technological advances and are providing exciting opportunities as well as challenges to the engineering profession. New knowledge is created at a faster rate than anyone can learn it. A number of disruptive technologies emerging from the biology, nanotechnology, and information fields are likely to cause radical changes in the way products and systems are developed, as well as in the way engineering work are performed.
Virtual Engineering
Authors: Bryden Mark , McCorkle Doug
Published: July 2018

This article discusses future of virtual engineering. Not only will the plant of the future be different from the current one, but also the design tools that engineers use will be different. To reduce cost and shorten development time for the future plants, the DOE is developing virtual engineering as an enabling technology. To integrate all the parts in an intuitive manner will require a software framework, which is being developed by the Virtual Engineering Research Group at Iowa State University. The software is a virtual engineering toolkit called YE-Suite. It is composed of three main software engines—VE-CE, VE-Xplorer, and VE-Conductor—that coordinate the flow of data from the engineer to the virtual components being designed. YE-CE is responsible for the synchronization of the data among the various analysis and process models and the engineer. VE-Xplorer is the decision-making environment that allows the engineer to interact with the equipment models in a visual manner. YE-Conductor is the engineer’s mechanism to control models and other information.
Lies Your ERP System Tells You
Authors: Brown Alan S.
Published: July 2018

This article focuses on the difficulties enterprise resource planning (ERP) faces in bridging gaps between businesses and vendors. Enterprise resource management systems promise to simplify business planning, but gaps remain in moving information to and from the factory floor. ERP vendors are making it easier to get that information. Market leader SAP, for example, is collaborating with companies that make manufacturing software. Management execution systems manage automated equipment, and moderate the flow of information to and from enterprise systems. Vendors have also rethought how ERP delivers value. Instead of emphasizing control, they talk increasingly must do it despite ongoing changes in models, specifications, and configurations. Data grow stale and corrupt over time, according to a consultant. Experts suggest that when operational personnel take as much responsibility for manufacturing data as they do for their pay checks, they will be able to count on their ERP systems to tell the truth.
Virtual OR
Authors: Brown Alan S.
Published: July 2018

This paper focuses on the Virtual Operating Room (OR) system for practicing surgery and other skills on model patient in simulated spaces. The Virtual OR creates complex interactions between real and virtual space than the debridement system. The space itself is a combination of the real and the virtual. High-intensity lights glare down on a mannequin lying on the operating table. The room's walls display virtual monitors, instruments, and a transfusion kit. As the virtual operating room evolves, it is expected to drill students and residents in critical thinking and communications skills. They will see more and more varied emergencies than the cases that come through the hospital doors when they are on shift. They can also schedule virtual team practice at their own convenience. The Virtual OR gives human factors researchers a tool to study how and why surgeons make mistakes.
Dream Machine
Authors: Winters Jeffrey
Published: July 2018

This article discusses features of a high-efficiency car. The group setting up the contest, the X Prize Foundation, used a cash prize to lure a private company to launch its own space vehicle. Automakers have been better at producing high-efficiency concepts, such as the Chevy Volt than actual high-mileage cars. After the success of the Ansari X Prize, the directors of the X Prize Foundation looked for other fields in need of a push. In an era of rising gasoline prices and stagnant fuel efficiency marks, the idea of setting up a prize for a highly fuel-efficient vehicle was a natural. The contest tests vehicles on several factors, not just the single metric of fuel economy. The eventual winner of the Automotive X Prize will be much different. For starters, the car must meet federal safety standards and will be judged on physical attributes such as exterior styling, interior comfort, and the quality of the workmanship. According to the managers of the competition, the most important objective of the Automotive X Prize is to encourage not only the mainstream industry but also people on the periphery to really layout on the table some strong ideas.
Online and In Synch
Authors: Thilmany Jean
Published: July 2018

This article explains the concept of systems and negotiations theory. The article also discusses that by applying complex systems and negotiation research to collaborative design, research scientists have come up with several sound ideas to help engineers work together toward the best product possible. According to experts, the marketplace is making increasing demands for innovative, sustainable design. Many engineered products will have to be different from anything conceptualized today. In order to get there, engineers are going to have to work together in the smoothest possible manner. Using knowledge about systems and negotiation theory, researchers have turned their attention to the way that engineers negotiate as they work together on a single design. Researchers found that to get the best digital model possible, everyone involved must give a little. The article explains that collaboration was the norm when Boeing and Marshall Space Flight Center engineers worked on the lab module for the International Space Station.