omniomni/omni-engineering huggingface dataset:
Claude Piel. Claude Piel (15 January 1921 – 19 August 1982) was a notable French aircraft designer.

Biography
Piel was born in Paris, the son of an aeronautical carpenter.  One of the best known French designers of light aircraft, over the years, Piel designed several single and two seat aeroplanes, the Emeraude and Diamant being the best known.  His first amateur design was adapted from the Mignet Pou du Ciel ("Flying Flea"). Designated CP10, this aircraft, begun in 1943, was only ever a prototype. It crashed in 1949 after only 5h30m flight time.  Piel himself was piloting and was lucky to escape from the accident.

Piel worked for a variety of French aeronautical companies as a designer. In 1948, he went to work with the Boisavia company where his professional career in aircraft design began. In 1952, he left Boisavia and joined Robert Denize where he designed the CP20, which looked like a miniature Spitfire - its wing shape especially.  The CP20 was to be the basis of his subsequent designs, the highly successful CP30 Emeraude. Copavia began to manufacture the Emeraude commercially.

Piel then went to work for SCANOR (Société des Constructions Aéronautiques du Nord), who also produced Emeraudes.  He also sold copies of his plans to amateurs who built their own aeroplanes.

The Scintex company was established in 1956 by Jean-Michel Vernhes and set up a production line to make Emeraudes, by now in great demand from French flying clubs and private owners. Initially, Scintex made the standard CP.301A model. In 1959, Piel moved to Scintex and the following year they developed the CP301C variant, which had a sliding canopy instead of the upward-opening doors of the earlier model. Scintex also built the Super Emeraude, with an airframe strengthened for aerobatics and a cleaner external design. Most Scintex Emeraudes and Super Emeraudes were built in the Menavia factory at Clermont-Ferrand.

Piel later moved to CAARP (Cooperatives des Ateliers Aéronautiques de la Region Parisienne).  In 1965, CAARP was set up by Auguste Mudry, principally as a design bureau using the skills of Piel, Nenad Hrissatovic and Louis de Goncourt. The company originally built CP1310-C3 Super Emeraudes, and went on to make the CP100 and CAP10 derivatives.

Other designs from Piel included the CP.60 Diamant, CP.80 racer and CP.150 Onyx microlight.

Complete list of designs

Notes

References
 R W Simpson, Airlife's General Aviation Airlife Publishing, Shrewsbury 1991
 Patrick Ehrhardt & Jean Molveau, Claude Piel Histoire de Pierres Précieuses Edition Le Trait d'Union.
 Patrick Ehrhardt & Jean Molveau, "A History of Precious Stones: Claude Piel - A craftsman and a constructor" in Air-Britain Digest, May–June 1985 (edited version in English of above)
 Xavier Massé, Avions Piel : Du CP 10 de 1944 au CP 150 de 1983 Nouvelles Éditions Latines, Paris, 2004
 Nick Bloom, "Piel Emeraude" in  Pilot, February 2005, pp 60–64

External links

 www.avions-piel.com discussion forum and gallery  
 Photo of Piel and CP30, believed on day of first flight
 emeraude 

1921 births
1982 deaths
French aerospace engineers
Critical relative humidity. The critical relative humidity (CRH) of a salt is defined as the relative humidity of the surrounding atmosphere (at a certain temperature) at which the material begins to absorb moisture from the atmosphere and below which it will not absorb atmospheric moisture.

When the humidity of the atmosphere is equal to (or is greater than) the critical relative humidity of a sample of salt, the sample will take up water until all of the salt is dissolved to yield a saturated solution. All water-soluble salts and mixtures have characteristic critical humidities; it is a unique material property.

The critical relative humidity of most salts decreases with increasing temperature. For instance, the critical relative humidity of ammonium nitrate decreases 22% with a temperature from 0 °C to 40 °C (32 °F to 104 °F).

The critical relative humidity of several fertilizer salts is given in table 1:

Table 1: Critical relative humidities of pure salts at 30°C.

Mixtures of salts usually have lower critical humidities than either of the constituents. Fertilizers that contain Urea as an ingredient usually exhibit a much lower Critical Relative Humidity than Fertilizers without Urea. Table 2 shows CRH data for two-component mixtures:

Table 2: Critical relative humidities of mixtures of salts at 30°C (values are percent relative humidity).

As shown, the effect of salt mixing is most dramatic in the case of ammonium nitrate with urea. This mixture has an extremely low critical relative humidity and can therefore only be used in liquid fertilisers (so called UAN-solutions).

See also 
 Deliquescent
 Hygroscopy
 Humidity

References

Chemical properties
Agricultural chemicals
Atmospheric thermodynamics
Humidity
Avança Brasil. The Avança Brasil (Advance Brazil) was a federal infrastructure program under the Cardoso administration. The program had an estimated budget of $43 billion and was planned to be implemented from 2000 to 2020. The program was replaced by the Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento (Growth Acceleration Program) under the Lula da Silva and Rousseff administrations.

References

Proposed transport infrastructure in Brazil
Government of Brazil
Radar Doppler Multitarget. Radar Doppler Multitarget (RDY in its French acronym) is a multimode Look-down/shoot-down Pulse-Doppler radar designed by Thomson-CSF (now Thales) for the Mirage 2000-5 fighter. The RDY-3 derivative has been fitted to Moroccan Mirage F1s. Thomson has claimed that the original RDY outperformed the AN/APG-66/68 of the F-16 and the AN/APG-65 of the F/A-18 Hornet.

Design
The original RDI/RDM radars on the Mirage 2000 only worked in air-to-air mode.  The RDY was designed to add air-to-ground modes, in particular the ability to control Exocet and Kormoran 2 anti-shipping missiles. The  system has a  flat-plate antenna scanning a 3.5° beam over a 60° cone at powers up to 120 kW. Maximum range is  in air-to-air mode and  in look-down mode. The RDY can detect 24 targets, track eight of them and engage four targets at a time. The enhanced RDY-2 has a slightly greater range and adds a SAR mode.

History
Development began in 1984, with the first of nine prototypes flying in July 1987 in a Mystère 20, and the first delivery of a production set in December 1994.

RDY is the standard fit on the Mirage 2000–5,-5Mk2 (RDY-2) and -9 (RDY-2) aircraft and has been retrofitted aboard 37 French Air Force Mirage 2000Cs (aircraft to Mirage 2000-5F standard; 11 aircraft redelivered during 1998, 22 during 1999), 25 Greek Mirage 2000-5 Mk2  and 62 United Arab Emirates' Mirage 2000EAD/DADs. Other customers for the Mirage 2000-5 include Qatar (Mirage 2000-5EDA and -5DDA aircraft) and Taiwan (Mirage 2000-5Ei and -5Di aircraft). India's fleet will receive RDY-2 under a €1.47bn contract signed in July 2011 to upgrade them to 2000-5 standard.

As part of the MF2000 upgrade, 27 Mirage F1 of the Royal Moroccan Air Force are being fitted with the Thales RC400 (RDY-3 or RDC), a derivative of the RDY with an antenna sized to fit the smaller aircraft.

Specification
Frequency:8 to 12 GHz
Band: I/J

See also
 RBE2 - Radar à Balayage Electronique 2, radar on the Rafale

Notes and references

Aircraft radars
Military radars of France
Post–Cold War military equipment of France
Molecular Devices. Molecular Devices, LLC is a supplier of bioanalytical measurement systems for drug discovery and other life sciences research.

Company history
Founded in 1983, Molecular Devices introduced its first microplate reader in 1987 and since then has continually broadened its solution set through a combination of internal research and development efforts as well as strategic acquisitions. In 1996 Molecular Devices acquired the FLIPR technology from NovelTech Systems Inc. of Ann Arbor Michigan and in 2000 they licensed the IonWorks high-throughput electrophysiology system from Essen Bioscience also of Ann Arbor Michigan.  Molecular Devices then acquired Universal Imaging Corporation in 2002, Axon Instruments in 2004, and Blueshift Technologies in 2008, broadening its portfolio to include electrophysiology products, scanners and analysis software for microarrays, and workstations for cell-based screening using high-resolution imaging.

In March 2007, Molecular Devices was acquired by MDS, Inc. (Toronto, Canada) and became part of MDS Analytical Technologies. In February 2010, Danaher Corporation acquired MDS Analytical Technologies, and Molecular Devices, Inc. now operates within the Danaher Medical Technologies segment.

About Molecular Devices
Molecular Devices supplies analytical systems, including instruments, software, and reagents, to accelerate and improve drug discovery and basic life science research.

Molecular Devices is based in Silicon Valley, CA, United States, and has regional offices in the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Korea, China, and Japan to support the global life sciences—drug discovery and basic research—communities.

Products and services
Microplate Readers

ImageXpress Micro System is an instrument offering an inverted widefield microscope that comes in standard or XL models.

References

Biotechnology companies of the United States
Danaher subsidiaries
Companies based in Sunnyvale, California
Biotechnology companies established in 1983
American companies established in 1983
2007 mergers and acquisitions
Cretacolor. Cretacolor is an Austrian brand of writing instruments, specialized in art materials. 

The brand is owned by Brevillier Urban & Sachs.

Overview
Since World War II, the company concentrated on the development and production of high quality art pencils. David J Price, the oil painter is known for using Cretacolor graphite pencils for his drawings. Price used specific grades of Cretacolor Cleos, and since these are no longer available without buying a set it's unknown whether he'll keep using them. He does like them though.

In recent years, high lightfastness has become an issue of increasing importance to artists, and Cretacolor has been one of the first manufacturers launching ranges of lightfast color pencils with its AquaStick and Marino lines.

References

External links
Official Website
Promotional Pens

Pencil brands
Manufacturing companies of Austria
Pen manufacturers
Austrian brands
Writing implement manufacturers
Spectra Shield. Spectra Shield is a composite material (specifically, an ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) fiber) used in bulletproof vests and vehicle armour. It is manufactured by Honeywell. Spectra is a fiber offered by Honeywell, and "Shield" is their patented process for using resin and a "plastic film" to bind multiple overlapping layers of Spectra, without having to have them be woven together.

Other popular fibers with similar uses are aramid (Kevlar or Twaron) and Dyneema (another UHMWPE).

References

External links
 Honeywell: Spectra Fiber

Composite materials
Tubular NDT. Tubular NDT (nondestructive testing) is the application of various technologies to detect anomalies such as corrosion and manufacturing defects in metallic tubes. Tubing can be found in such equipment as boilers and heat exchangers. To carry out an examination in situ (i.e., examination of the tubes in position, where they are installed), a manhole cover is usually removed to allow a technician access to the tubes. Alternatively, a tube bundle may be removed from a heat-exchanger and transported by forklift to a maintenance area for easier access.

The usual means of examination is to insert some type of probe into the tubes, one at a time, while data is recorded for later interpretation. The technologies listed below (ECT, RFT, IRIS, and MFL) are all able to detect defects on the outside of the tube from the inside. The tubes must be clean enough to allow passage of the probe: deposits of debris, rust, or scale may have to be removed by chemicals or pressure washing. In water-tube boilers, the tubes may be examined from the outside when the boiler is shut down, often using ultrasonic testing.

Common methods
 Eddy-current testing (ECT) is commonly used on non-[ferromagnetic] metals and alloys such as copper, brass, and copper nickel. Variations on ECT are partial saturation ECT and magnetic biased ECT, both of which use magnets to allow ECT to operate in lightly ferromagnetic materials or in thin-wall ferromagnetic tubes.
 Remote field testing (RFT) is used on [ferromagnetic] materials such as carbon steel.
 IRIS (Internal rotary inspection system) can be used on all types of metal tubes. IRIS is very slow, but very accurate, and is often used as a back-up to a remote field examination.
 Magnetic flux leakage (MFL) testing is used on carbon steel tubes, although it tends to be less accurate than remote field testing.

References

Sources
 Heat exchangers: Monitoring and maintenance
 H. Sadek, NDE technologies for the examination of heat exchangers and boiler tubes – principles, advantages and limitations, PDF, 2.1 MB.
 Fathi E. Al-Qadeeb, Tubing Inspection Using Multiple NDT Techniques, PDF, 118 kB.

Nondestructive testing
Thomas Eckersley. Thomas Lydwell Eckersley FRS (27 December 1886 – 15 February 1959) was an English theoretical physicist and engineer.

Biography

Eckersley was born in St John's Wood, London, the second of three sons of William Alfred, a civil engineer, and Rachel, fifth child of Thomas Henry Huxley. After early years in Mexico, he attended Bedales School from age 11, where he became very interested in mathematics. Then, at 15, he went to University College London, to read engineering. He discovered that the subject was not for him, and was awarded a second class degree. He joined the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), where he worked on the behaviour of iron under the influence of alternating magnetic fields.

He left the NPL in 1910 to read mathematics at Cambridge, and gained a BA degree in 1912. After a short time in the Cavendish Laboratory he left to join the Egyptian Government Survey as an Inspector (1913–14). When war started he took a commission in the Royal Engineers and worked on problems of wireless telegraphy. As a result, he developed a keen interest in the propagation of radio waves which was to remain with him for the rest of his life. In 1919 he joined Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company Ltd, as a theoretical research engineer, and remained with them until he retired in 1946. A key piece of work in which he was involved was the analysis of the findings of the research team sent to Australia by the Marconi company to study long-wave propagation. The results were published in a classic paper.

In 1940 Eckersley joined the staff of the Air Ministry for secret work and in 1942 became Chief Scientific Adviser to the Interservice Ionosphere Bureau, established at the Marconi Research and Development Laboratories at Great Baddow. His contribution to radar techniques were important, especially in improving the radar detection of submarines.

He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1938 and was awarded the Faraday Medal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1951.

Family

Thomas Lydwell Eckersley married Eva Amelia Pain, daughter of Barry Pain, the author;  on 14 April 1920 at All Saints Church, St John’s Wood. They had three children: Noel, Sylvia and Shirley.

Eckersley suffered from multiple sclerosis following his retirement. He died at Manor House, Danbury, Essex on 15 February 1959, of pneumonia contracted during an epidemic of influenza.

References

1886 births
1959 deaths
Alumni of University College London
Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
Engineers from London
English physicists
Fellows of the Royal Society
Huxley family
Deaths from pneumonia in England
People associated with radar
People educated at Bedales School
Telecommunications in World War II
Scientists of the National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom)
Ball-and-stick model. In chemistry, the ball-and-stick model is a molecular model of a chemical substance which displays both the three-dimensional position of the atoms and the bonds between them. The atoms are typically represented by spheres, connected by rods which represent the bonds. Double and triple bonds are usually represented by two or three curved rods, respectively, or alternately by correctly positioned sticks for the sigma and pi bonds. In a good model, the angles between the rods should be the same as the angles between the bonds, and the distances between the centers of the spheres should be proportional to the distances between the corresponding atomic nuclei. The chemical element of each atom is often indicated by the sphere's color.

In a ball-and-stick model, the radius of the spheres is usually much smaller than the rod lengths, in order to provide a clearer view of the atoms and bonds throughout the model.  As a consequence, the model does not provide a clear insight about the space occupied by the model.  In this aspect, ball-and-stick models are distinct from space-filling (calotte) models, where the sphere radii are proportional to the Van der Waals atomic radii in the same scale as the atom distances, and therefore show the occupied space but not the bonds.

Ball-and-stick models can be physical artifacts or virtual computer models. The former are usually built from molecular modeling kits, consisting of a number of coil springs or plastic or wood sticks, and a number of plastic balls with pre-drilled holes. The sphere colors commonly follow the CPK coloring. Some university courses on chemistry require students to buy such models as learning material.

History
 
In 1865, German chemist August Wilhelm von Hofmann was the first to make ball-and-stick molecular models. He used such models in lecture at the Royal Institution of Great Britain.

Specialist companies manufacture kits and models to order. One of the earlier companies was Woosters at Bottisham, Cambridgeshire, UK. Besides tetrahedral, trigonal and octahedral holes, there were all-purpose balls with 24 holes. These models allowed rotation about the single rod bonds, which could be both an advantage (showing molecular flexibility) and a disadvantage (models are floppy). The approximate scale was 5 cm per ångström (0.5 m/nm or 500,000,000:1), but was not consistent over all elements.

The Beeverses Miniature Models company in Edinburgh (now operating as Miramodus) produced small models beginning in 1961 using PMMA balls and stainless steel rods.  In these models, the use of individually drilled balls with precise bond angles and bond lengths enabled large crystal structures to be accurately created in a light and rigid form.

See also

 VSEPR theory

References

Molecular modelling
Display driver. In electronics/computer hardware, a display driver is usually a semiconductor integrated circuit (but may alternatively comprise a state machine made of discrete logic and other components) which provides an interface function between a microprocessor, microcontroller, ASIC or general-purpose peripheral interface and a particular type of display device, e.g. LCD, LED, OLED, ePaper, CRT, Vacuum fluorescent or Nixie.

The display driver will typically accept commands and data using an industry-standard general-purpose serial or parallel interface, such as TTL, CMOS, RS-232, SPI, I2C, etc. and generate signals with suitable voltage, current, timing and demultiplexing to make the display show the desired text or image.

The display driver may itself be an application-specific microcontroller and may incorporate RAM, Flash memory, EEPROM and/or ROM. Fixed ROM may contain firmware and display fonts.

A notable example of a display driver IC is the Hitachi HD44780 LCD controller.
Other controllers are KS0108, SSD1815 (graphics capable) and ST7920 (graphics capable)

History
The use of integrated circuit technology to drive a display driver chip dates back to the late 1960s. In 1969, Hewlett-Packard introduced the HP Model 5082-7000 Numeric Indicator, an early LED display and the first LED device to use integrated circuit technology. Its development was led by Howard C. Borden and Gerald P. Pighini at HP Associates and HP Labs, who had engaged in research and development (R&D) on practical LEDs between 1962 and 1968. It was the first intelligent LED display, making it a revolution in digital display technology, replacing the Nixie tube and becoming the basis for later LED displays.

In the early 21st century, display driver chips are widely used for mobile displays in smartphones and other smart devices as well as larger flat-panel displays. Between 2003 and 2005, LCD display driver chips sold 9,821.2million units worldwide.

See also
Device driver
Printer driver

References

Graphics hardware
American inventions
Index of robotics articles. Robotics is the branch of technology that deals with the design, construction, operation, structural disposition, manufacture and application of robots. Robotics is related to the sciences of electronics, engineering, mechanics, and software. The word "robot" was introduced to the public by Czech writer Karel Čapek in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), published in 1920. The term "robotics" was coined by Isaac Asimov in his 1941 science fiction short-story "Liar!"

Articles related to robotics include:

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References

External links 

 
Robotics
Robotics
Spähpanzer Luchs. The Spähpanzer Luchs (English: Scout Armored Car "Lynx") is a German 8x8 amphibious reconnaissance armoured fighting vehicle (Spähpanzer) that was in service from 1975 to 2009 with the German Army, who used 408 in their armoured reconnaissance battalions. It was developed by Daimler-Benz between 1968 and 1975, replacing the M41 and the Schützenpanzer SPz 11-2 Kurz.

Design

In the 1960s, the German Ministry of Defence developed a requirement of an Eight-wheel drive reconnaissance vehicle, part of a series of 4 X 4, 6 X 6 and 8 X 8 military vehicles planned for the German Army. Competing designs were produced by Daimler-Benz and a consortium of Büssing, Klöckner-Humboldt-Deutz, Krupp, MAN and Rheinstahl Henschel, with nine prototypes produced of each design from 1968. After extensive testing, in January 1971 the Daimler-Benz design was selected for production. In December 1973, Rheinstahl Wehrtechnik (later Thyssen-Henschel and now part of Rheinmetall) received an order for 408 of the new vehicle, designated Spähpanzer Luchs.

The all-wheel drive Luchs made by Thyssen-Henschel (now: Rheinmetall) is well armoured, has an NBC protection system and is characterized by its low-noise running. The eight large low-pressure tyres have run-flat properties. At speeds up to about 50 km/h, all four axles can be steered. As a special feature, the vehicle is equipped with a rear-facing driver with his own driving position. Up to the first combat effectiveness upgrade in 1986, the Luchs was fully amphibious and could surmount water obstacles quickly and independently using propellers at the rear and the fold back trim vane at the front.

The 20 mm Rheinmetall MK 20 Rh 202 gun in the turret is similar to the one in the Marder IFV. The upgrade to the Luchs A1 starting in 1986 included the incorporation of a thermal observation and gunnery system, which replaced the original infrared/white light night vision system mounted to the left of the turret. VHF radios have been the German SEM 25 / SEM 35 FM short range radios from LORENZ. HF long-range radio was the AN/GRC 9 with the LV 80 100 Watts RF amplifier for Morse Code. This was replaced by the XK 405 100 Watts SSB HF radio made by Rohde&Schwarz in Germany and the incorporation of the new SEM 80/90 radio system gave it the designation SpPz 2 Luchs A2. The Luchs was replaced by the Fennek in Bundeswehr service.

References

External links

 Luchs pictures

Armoured fighting vehicles of Germany
Armoured cars of the Cold War
Wheeled reconnaissance vehicles
Military vehicles introduced in the 1970s
Reconnaissance vehicles of the Cold War
Eight-wheeled vehicles