omniomni/omni-engineering huggingface dataset:
Human–electric hybrid vehicle. A human–electric hybrid vehicle is a hybrid vehicle, or more specifically a hybrid human-powered vehicle, whose drivetrain consists of a human being and an electric motor/generator (and one or more electricity-storage device(s) such as a battery(ies) or ultracapacitor(s)). Some vehicles are able to operate off both human power and be plugged in to operate on battery power.

It  can have characteristics of a bicycle, velomobile or other lightweight human operated vehicles with the addition of faster acceleration and regenerative braking, allowing a higher average velocity, especially in hilly terrain.

Some vehicles have a clutch and three or more wheels, allowing the operator to continue pedaling and charge up the electricity-storage device during traffic stops.

See also

 ()

References

Hybrid vehicles
Human-powered vehicles
Electric vehicles
Bedford VAL. The Bedford VAL is a type of coach chassis that was built by Bedford in the United Kingdom from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s. It was unusual at the time for its multi-axle design, in a "chinese six" wheelplan, i.e. with two front steering axles.

Originally it was fitted with the Leyland O.400 straight six diesel engine.  With this engine, the chassis was designated VAL14.

Over 900 VAL14s were built, from 1963 to 1966, with the largest orders coming from Wallace Arnold of Leeds, Seamarks of Westoning, Don Everall of Wolverhampton, and Bartons.

From 1967, the VAL70, with the slightly larger  engine of Bedford's own manufacture, quickly superseded the VAL14.

Bodywork
The VAL was built with a number of bodies from different coachbuilders. The majority of VAL14s were of Duple or Plaxton origin, although VAL14s were also bodied by several other manufacturers, including Harrington (Harrington Legionnaire bodywork was adopted) and Yeates.

Some VAL14s were given bus bodywork, including 10 by Marshall of Cambridge for British European Airways, and 10 by Strachan for North Western.

In popular culture
The Bedford VAL gained recognition through its use in the film The Italian Job. The bodywork of this vehicle was a Harrington Legionnaire, 'ALR 453B', new in April 1964 to Batten. After modification for the film, the coach went back into coaching, being scrapped in 1990.

A Plaxton-bodied example, 'URO 913E', featured in the 1967 Beatles film Magical Mystery Tour. This coach was new to Fox, Hayes, in 1967. In the film, the coach was raced around RAF West Malling by Ringo Starr himself against sports cars and other modes of transportation, driven by other tourists. Ringo won the race with the VAL in the end.

A Bedford VAL also featured in a devastating crash for the purposes of filming for the ITV soap opera Coronation Street in 1969. The plot involved some characters on a trip to the Lake District, but the coach's steering fails and it harshly crashes into a tree. The Plaxton Elite in the Coronation Street coach crash LXJ574G was new to Holt, Rusholme in March 1969. It was only a few months old when this was filmed. In the stills at the depot there is an earlier VAL-bodied Plaxton in the shots, which presumably was also owned by them. LXJ was not damaged in the sequence and went on to Isaac, Morriston in December 1977, who appear to have sold it about a year later and there is no record of it after then.

Bus tour of Liverpool
A bus tour of Liverpool, marketed as the Magical Mystery Tour, has operated since 1983. The tour visits places associated with the Beatles, such as childhood homes, Strawberry Field and Penny Lane. The tour was originally operated by a Bedford VAL coach as in the film, but more modern vehicles are now used. A Bedford Plaxton Val, originally DOE111K, was used, previously owned by Smiths Imperial Coaches then Watsonians.

References

buslistsontheweb.co.uk - Bedford VAL14 delivery list
Bedford VAL enthusiast page

External links
Bedford VAL sales literature

VAL
Tri-axle buses
Vehicles introduced in 1965
Voluntary observing ship program. Due to the importance of surface weather observations from the surface of the ocean, the voluntary observing ship program, known as VOS, was set up to train crews how to take weather observations while at sea and also to calibrate weather sensors used aboard ships when they arrive in port, such as barometers and thermometers. An Automatic Voluntary Observing Ships (AVOS) System is an automated weather station that transmits VOS program reports.

See also

 Old Weather
 
 AIREP
 PIREP
 Citizen Weather Observer Program
 Phenology

References

External links
The Joint WMO-IOC Technical Commission for Oceanography and Marine Meteorology (JCOMM)
JCOMM Voluntary Observing Ship Scheme
VOS on NOSA
 Australian Voluntary Observing Fleet
 Canadian Voluntary Observing Ships Program
 Dutch Voluntary Observing Ships and PMO Web Site
 Hong Kong Voluntary Observing Ships Scheme
 Indian Voluntary Observing Fleet
 United States Voluntary Observing Ship Program

Meteorological data and networks
Love and Sex with Robots. Love and Sex with Robots by David Levy, first published in 2007, is a book about the future development of sex robots: robots that will have sex with humans. Levy claims that this practice will be routine by 2050.

Reception
Kathleen Richardson of the  wrote a position paper arguing "that Levy’s proposal shows a number of problems, firstly his understanding of what prostitution is and secondly, by drawing on prostitution as the model for human-robot sexual relations, Levy shows that the sellers of sex are seen by the buyers of sex as things and not recognised as human subjects." She goes on to argue that "this legitimates a dangerous mode of existence where humans can move about in relations with other humans but not recognise them as human subjects in their own right."

References

2007 non-fiction books
Robotics books
Sex robots
MS Onego Deusto. MS Onego Deusto (christened Beluga SkySails) is a commercial container cargo ship. It is the world's first ship partially powered by a computer-controlled kite rig, called the SkySails system. It consists of a kite similar to a huge paraglider of up to  area.

Kite power
The kite has an area of  and reduces fuel consumption by 15–20% on average; it was set to be upgraded to  in order to increase fuel savings by about 30%.

Stephan Wrage, managing director of SkySails GmbH – which installed the kite – announced: "During the next few months we will finally be able to prove that our technology works in practice and significantly reduces fuel consumption and emissions." Verena Frank, project manager at Beluga Shipping GmbH, SkySails GmbH's partner, further stated that "the project's core concept was using wind energy as auxiliary propulsion power and using wind as a free of charge energy".

This kite is connected to the ship by a cable, and controlled by an automatic pod of actuators to maximize the wind benefits.
The kite functions at an altitude between  and .

By using this system it is possible to improve the speed of the ship and reduce fuel consumption. SkySails calculates that the use of its technology worldwide could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 146 million tons (about 0.6% of the entire global energy-related emissions of CO2). SkySails estimates the potential upgrade market for its system at more than 40,000 ships. Through 2013, the company was targeting less than 1% of that market – about 400 ships.

During an evaluation performed between 2006 and 2009, the kite mounted on MS Beluga Skysails was estimated to achieve 5% fuel savings on an average route mix, and up to 10-12% fuel savings on North Atlantic and North Pacific routes.

Launch
The ship, owned by the German firm Beluga Fleet Management GmbH, a subsidiary of Beluga Shipping GmbH within the Beluga Group, was launched 17 December 2007 and left the northern German port of Bremerhaven to Guanta, Venezuela on January 22, 2008. The ship was carrying cargo for DHL which sponsored the initiative.

United States Navy charter
On October 6, 2008, the United States Naval Military Sealift Command announced it had chartered the Beluga Skysails to transport Army and Air Force supplies from three European ports of call to the United States.

References

2007 ships
Merchant ships of the Netherlands
Sailing ships of the Netherlands
Ships built in the Netherlands
Solarpunk
AutomationML. AutomationML (Automation Markup Language) is a neutral data format based on XML for the storage and exchange of plant engineering information, which is provided as an open standard. The goal of AutomationML is to interconnect the heterogeneous tool landscape of modern engineering tools in their different disciplines, like mechanical plant engineering, electrical design, HMI development, PLC and robot control.

Approach
AutomationML describes real plant components as objects encapsulating different aspects. 
An object can consist out of other sub-objects, and can itself be part of a bigger composition. It can describe a screw, a claw, a robot or a complete manufacturing cell in different levels of detail.
Typical objects in plant automation comprise information about topology, geometry, kinematics and logic, where logic comprises sequencing, behaviour and control.

AutomationML incorporates different standards through strongly typed links across the formats:
 Topology implemented with CAEX (IEC 62424)Properties and relations of objects in their hierarchical structure
 Geometry implemented with COLLADA of the Khronos GroupGraphical attributes and 3D information
 Kinematics implemented with COLLADAConnections and dependencies among objects to support motion planning
 Logic implemented with PLCopen XMLSequences of actions, internal behavior of objects and I/O connections

For future extensions, AutomationML is designed to integrate further formats using the same referencing mechanism.

History
After first evaluations of exchange formats, Daimler initiated the joint activity of the companies ABB, KUKA, Rockwell Automation and Siemens together with netAllied and Zühlke as well as the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the University of Magdeburg in October 2006 to define and standardize the Automation Markup Language (AutomationML) as an intermediate format for the Digital Factory.
In April 2009, an independent organization was founded. The Fraunhofer IOSB institute became the first new member.
AutomationML is available as open standard free of charge.

See also
Open Packaging Conventions
CAEX
Collada

References
AutomationML Homepage
PLCopen

Computer file formats
Industry-specific XML-based standards
XML markup languages
Habitation Extension Modules. The Habitation Extension Modules (HEM) refers to proposed British-built modules designed to connect to Node 3 (Tranquility) of the International Space Station. They were conceived by a consortium of engineers and scientists led by Mark Hempsell, aeronautical engineer at the University of Bristol.

History
The proposal has no formal support of the British government, , but if funded the modules were intended to be launched sometime in 2011.

The purpose of the modules is to provide a formal British presence in the ISS project, which to date has been nonexistent (Britain is not an independent ISS partner, and does not contribute through ESA). The HEM would be British-built modules designed to connect to Node 3 (Tranquility) of the International Space Station. They were conceived by a consortium of engineers and scientists led by Mark Hempsell, aeronautical engineer at the University of Bristol. The two modules will provide  of living space with enhanced radiation protection, and allow the astronaut crews an enhanced amount of social and personal living space on board the platform.

The two modules are named HEM 'C' and HEM 'D'. HEM 'C' is designed to contain a wardroom arrangement of a viewscreen with a central table for group meetings and conferences with Earth. HEM 'D' would contain improved sleeping and personal work arrangements. HEM 'D' features six separate compartments which each contain a small sleeping area (), a foldaway desk, and a small amount of space for personal effects and other items. From a personal privacy point of view, it affords each crew member an area where they can close a door and be entirely private from the rest of the crew, where they can dress and undress, or perform other acts of a personal nature.

The estimated cost of the modules is £600 million, spread out over the course of 6 or 7 years and takes into account the costs of construction, launching and maintenance.

See also
 Proposed modules for the ISS
 PMM (basic "can")

References

External links
 Habitation Extension Module at the University of Bristol

Components of the International Space Station
Space programme of the United Kingdom
Electroosmotic pump. An electroosmotic pump is used for generating flow or pressure by use of an electric field. One application of this is removing liquid flooding water from channels and gas diffusion layers and direct hydration of the proton exchange membrane in the membrane electrode assembly (MEA) of the proton exchange membrane fuel cells. Additionally, electroosmotic pumps have gained significant attention due to their potential applications in microfluidic channels, lab-on-a-chip devices, and biomedical engineering.

Principle
Electroosmotic pumps are fabricated from silica nanospheres or hydrophilic porous glass, the pumping mechanism is generated by an external electric field applied on an electric double layer (EDL), generates high pressures (e.g., more than 340 atm (34 MPa) at 12 kV applied potentials) and high flow rates (e.g., 40 ml/min at 100 V in a pumping structure less than 1 cm3 in volume). EO pumps are compact, have no moving parts, and scale favorably with fuel cell design. The EO pump might drop the parasitic load of water management in fuel cells from 20% to 0.5% of the fuel cell power.

Types

Cascaded electroosmotic pumps
High pressures or high flow rates are obtained by positioning several regular electroosmotic pumps in series or parallel respectively.

Porous electroosmotic pump
Pumps based on porous media can be created using sintered glass or microporous polymer membranes  with appropriate surface chemistry.

Planar shallow electroosmotic pump
Planar shallow electroosmotic pumps are made of parallel shallow microchannels.

Electroosmotic micropumps 
Electroosmotic effects can also be induced without external fields in order to power micron-scale motion. Bimetallic gold/silver patches have been shown to generate local fluid pumping by this mechanism when hydrogen peroxide is added to the solution. A related motion can be induced by silver phosphate particles, which can be tailored to generate reversible firework behavior among other properties. Titanium dioxide micromotors (TiO2) demonstrated swarming behavior in the absence or presence of additional fuels due to the self-generated electrolyte diffusioosmosis.

See also
Capillary electrophoresis
Electroosmotic flow
Glossary of fuel cell terms
Microfluidics
Micropump
Sol-gel

References

External links
Electroosmotic pump and its applications
Principles of electroosmotic pumps

Hydrogen technologies
Pumps
Microfluidics
Fuel cells
Spindle whorl. A spindle whorl is a weighted object fitted to a spindle to help maintain the spindle's speed of rotation while spinning yarn.

History
A spindle whorl may be a disk or spherical object. It is typically positioned on the bottom of the spindle. The spinner spins the weighted spindle pulling off a mass of fibers which is twisted into yarn.

Historically, whorls have been made of materials like amber, antler, bone, ceramic, coral, glass, stone,  metal (iron, lead, lead alloy), and wood (oak). Local sourced materials have been also used, such as chalk, limestone, mudstone, sandstone, slate, lydite and soapstone. 

Natufian artifacts unearthed in Israel at Nahal Ein Gev II, an archeological site, are believed to be the oldest spindle whorls found to date. Archaeologists say the perforated pebbles found scattered at the village site are 12,000 years old. According to scans of the pebbles, the perforations were biconical in shape and drilled in two directions, creating an hourglass shape.

Gallery

References

Spinning tools
Thomas Harrison. Thomas Harrison may refer to:
Thomas Harrison (architect) (1744–1829), English architect and bridge engineer
Thomas Harrison (cyclist) (born 1942), Australian cyclist
Thomas Harrison (footballer) (1867–1942), English footballer for Aston Villa
Thomas Harrison (general) (1823–1891), Confederate States Army brigadier general, district judge
Thomas Harrison (minister) (1619–1682), English nonconformist minister, active in Virginia and Ireland
Thomas Harrison (ship-owner) (1815–1888), Liverpool ship-owner
Thomas Harrison (soldier) (1606–1660), sided with Parliament in the English Civil War
Thomas Harrison (translator) (1555–1631), English Puritan scholar and a translator for the King James Version of the Bible
Thomas Harrison (surveyor), surveyor in Jamaica
T. Alexander Harrison (1853–1930), American artist
Thomas Elliot Harrison (1808–1888), civil engineer
Thomas Sinclair Harrison (1898–?), South African World War I flying ace
Thomas W. Harrison (1856–1935), U.S. Representative from Virginia (second name Walter; had a cousin Thomas Willoughby Harrison (1824–1910) West Virginia judge
Tom Harrison (baseball) (1945–2023), baseball pitcher
Tom Harrison (cricketer) (born 1971), English cricketer
Tom Harrison (musician) (born 1985), British jazz musician
Tom Harrison (American politician) (1939–2024), American politician
Tom Harrison (Australian politician) (1864–1944), Australian politician
Tommy Harrison (1892–1931), English boxer of the 1900s-1920s 
Tommy Harrison (footballer) (born 1974), Scottish footballer for Heart of Midlothian

See also
Tom Harrisson (1911–1976), British polymath
Thomas Harrison (ship), used to transport free settlers and convicts from Ireland and England to Australia and New Zealand from 1835 to 1842
Zamboni pile. The Zamboni pile (also referred to as a Duluc Dry Pile) is an early electric battery, invented by Giuseppe Zamboni in 1812.

A Zamboni pile is an "electrostatic battery" and is constructed from discs of silver foil, zinc foil, and paper. Alternatively, discs of "silver paper" (paper with a thin layer of zinc on one side) gilded on one side or silver paper smeared with manganese dioxide and honey might be used. Discs of approximately 20 mm diameter are assembled in stacks, which may be several thousand discs thick, and then either compressed in a glass tube with end caps or stacked between three glass rods with wooden end plates and insulated by dipping in molten sulfur or pitch.

Zamboni piles of more modern construction were manufactured as recently as the 1980s for providing the accelerating voltage for image intensifier tubes, particularly in military use. Today such voltages are obtained from flyback converters powered by lithium ion batteries.

The EMF per element is approximately 0.8 V; Zamboni piles can be made to have output potential differences in the kilovolt range, but current output in the nanoampere range. The famous Oxford Electric Bell, which has been ringing continuously since 1840, is thought to be powered by a pair of Zamboni piles.

See also 

 Voltaic pile

References 

Battery types
Italian inventions
Linear molecular geometry. The linear molecular geometry describes the geometry around a central atom bonded to two other atoms (or ligands) placed at a bond angle of 180°. Linear organic molecules, such as acetylene (), are often described by invoking sp orbital hybridization for their carbon centers.

According to the VSEPR model (Valence Shell Electron Pair Repulsion model), linear geometry occurs at central atoms with two bonded atoms and zero or three lone pairs ( or ) in the AXE notation. Neutral  molecules with linear geometry include beryllium fluoride () with two single bonds, carbon dioxide () with two double bonds, hydrogen cyanide () with one single and one triple bond. The most important linear molecule with more than three atoms is acetylene (), in which each of its carbon atoms is considered to be a central atom with a single bond to one hydrogen and a triple bond to the other carbon atom. Linear anions include azide () and thiocyanate (), and a linear cation is the nitronium ion ().

Linear geometry also occurs in  molecules, such as xenon difluoride () and the triiodide ion () with one iodide bonded to the two others. As described by the VSEPR model, the five valence electron pairs on the central atom form a trigonal bipyramid in which the three lone pairs occupy the less crowded equatorial positions and the two bonded atoms occupy the two axial positions at the opposite ends of an axis, forming a linear molecule.

See also
AXE method
Molecular geometry

References

External links
 Indiana University Molecular Structure Center
 Interactive molecular examples for point groups
 Molecular Modeling
 Animated Trigonal Planar Visual

Molecular geometry
Charles Conrad Schneider. Charles Conrad Schneider (; April 24, 1843 – January 8, 1916), often referred to as C. C. Schneider, was an American civil engineer and bridge designer. Schneider was also a member and president of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Biography
Schneider was born in Apolda in the Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. He graduated from the Royal Technical School at Chemnitz, Germany, in 1864, after which he worked as a mechanical engineer. He emigrated to the United States in 1867, where he worked for the Paterson Locomotive Works in New Jersey for four years before moving to Detroit to work for the Michigan Bridge and Construction Company. In 1875, he went to New York City to help review proposals for the Blackwell's Island Bridge across the East River (which would eventually be completed in 1909 and later came to be known as the Queensboro Bridge). While in New York, he met Charles Macdonald and worked with him for the next year at the Delaware Bridge Company.

He married Katharine Clyde Winters on January 8, 1880.

In 1883 he started his own civil engineering business in New York City. In 1885 he submitted a proposal for a bridge across the Harlem River north of High Bridge; his design was selected and opened in 1889 as the Washington Bridge.

He was one of the engineers that were involved in the erection of the Statue of Liberty in 1886. Among the many bridges, he designed and built, are the cantilever Fraser River bridge on the Canadian Pacific Railway, and the Niagara Cantilever Bridge. He was also involved in the 1906 construction of the Longteng Bridge in Taiwan, a development that was never finalized after its collapse from the 1935 Hsinchu earthquake. Schneider also was the head of the team investigating the first collapse of the Quebec Bridge in 1907, and in 1911 became a member of the board of engineers for the bridge.

He was vice president of the American Bridge Company from 1900 to 1903. In 1905 Schneider was named president of the American Society of Civil Engineers. He was twice awarded the Norman Medal which "recognizes a paper that makes a definitive contribution to engineering science," in 1905 and in 1908. About 1910 he ran an engineering office together with Frederick C. Kunz in Philadelphia.

Charles Conrad Schneider died in Philadelphia on January 8, 1916.

Bridges and buildings
Niagara Cantilever Bridge, Niagara Falls (New York) / Niagara Falls (Ontario), 1883
CPR Bridge crossing the Fraser River at Cisco (Siska), 1884
Washington Bridge, New York City, 1886
Railway terminal, Jersey City, 1891

Writings
 General Specifications for Railroad Bridges (1886)
 General Specifications for Highway Bridges (1901)
 General Specifications for Structural Steel Work in Buildings (1905; new ed., 1910)

Notes

References

External links

 

1843 births
1916 deaths
American civil engineers
American bridge engineers
People from Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
19th-century German people
German emigrants to the United States
People from Apolda