omniomni/omni-engineering huggingface dataset:
TR Araña. The TR Araña (Spanish, meaning "route tracing spider") is a robot that is claimed to remotely analyse the composition of the ground. The device was created by Chilean inventor Manuel Salinas and was reported to be able to operate at depths of up to 50 metres. It is widely believed by the scientific community to be a fraud.

Principles
Answering a request by the Chilean Commission on Nuclear Energy, Salinas wrote the following paragraph:

At a presentation to students, physicists, and engineers at the Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María in Valparaíso, Chile, on 12 October 2005, Salinas gave improbable and seemingly irrational theories to explain how his machine worked. He offered inconsistent explanations of the device, including using concepts from science fiction, when questioned by the audience. The presentation and questioning were stopped when a professor, Dr. Patricio Häberle, announced that the University would neither support it nor give space for it to be presented, and that what Salinas had talked about was not genuine.

Criticism

Salinas says that the robot bounces a nuclear signal off materials to search for specific atomic compositions. Consensus exists among scientists that the technology Salinas says is used on the robot worksbut only to depths of 30 cm and anything beyond that, such as the dozens of meters he claims to be able to probe, would be considered a technological advance.

Salinas has refused to patent the machine, saying the technology is "an industrial secret."

References

External links 

"TR Araña: La octava maravilla" (El Mercurio) (in Spanish)

Detailed Image
Padre de TR Araña

Rolling robots
Robots of Chile
2005 robots
Pseudoscience
Hoaxes in science
Academic scandals
OPC Historical Data Access. This group of standards, created by the OPC Foundation, provides COM specifications for communicating data from devices and applications that provide historical data, such as databases. The specifications provides for access to raw, interpolated and aggregate data (data with calculations).

OPC Historical Data Access, also known as OPC HDA, is used to exchange archived process data. This is in contrast to the OPC Data Access (OPC DA) specification that deals with real-time data. OPC technology is based on client / server architecture. Therefore, an OPC client, such as a trending application or spreadsheet, can retrieve data from an OPC compliant data source, such as a historian, using OPC HDA.

Similar to the OPC Data Access specification, OPC Historical Data Access also uses Microsoft's DCOM to transport data. DCOM also provides OPC HDA with full security features such as user authentication and authorization, as well as communication encryption services. OPC HDA Clients and Servers can reside on separate PCs, even if they are separated by a firewall. To do this, system integrators must configure DCOM properly as well as open ports in the firewall. If using the Windows firewall, users only need to open a single port.

See also
OLE for process control
OPC Foundation
OPC Data Access

External links
OPC Foundation
OPC Historical Data Access specification

Industrial automation
Computer standards
Component-based software engineering
Reference design. A reference design is a technical design of a system that is intended for others to copy. It contains the essential elements of the system; however, third parties may enhance or modify the design as required. When discussing computer designs, the concept is generally known as a reference platform.

The main purpose of reference design is to support companies in development of next generation products using latest technologies. The reference product is proof of the platform concept and is usually targeted for specific applications. Reference design packages enable a fast track to market thereby cutting costs and reducing risk in the customer's integration project.

As the predominant customers for reference designs are original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), many reference designs are created by technology component vendors, whether hardware or software, as a means to increase the likelihood that their product will be designed into the OEM's product, giving them a competitive advantage.

Examples
 NanoBook, a reference design of a miniature laptop
 Open source hardware (also :Category:Open source hardware)
 RONJA, a free and open telecommunication technology ("free Internet")
 VIA OpenBook, a free and open reference design of a laptop

References

Electronics manufacturing
M-class blimp. The Goodyear Aircraft Company of Akron, Ohio built the M-class blimp for the US Navy as the follow-on to the K-class anti-submarine warfare blimp used during World War II. It was a significantly larger airship, 50% larger than its predecessor. Four airships, designated M-1 through M-4, were delivered in early 1944. Operations of K-ships in tropical regions had shown a need for a blimp with greater volume to offset the loss of lift due to high ambient temperatures.
 
A contract was awarded to the Goodyear Aircraft Company for the prototype M-class blimp on August 16, 1943. This contract was followed by another contract on September 11, 1943 for 21 M-class blimps. These airships were given the Navy designation of ZNP-M, (Z = lighter-than-air; N = non-rigid; P = patrol; M = type/class.) However, on November 22, 1943, the quantity of blimps was reduced to four. These were delivered to the Navy in February, March, and April 1944. The M-Class airships were retired from service by 1956. The gondola of the M-4 was retained in the conservation area at NAS Lakehurst until the mid-1970s.

The M-class blimps were  long with a  long control car. In order to maintain the proper loading on the catenary, the control car was built in three sections with universal joints between the sections. The catenary is the webbing internal to the envelope from which the control car is hung from the top of the envelope. Control of the weight distribution from the catenary is necessary to control wrinkling of the envelope. The capacity of the envelope of the M-1 was 625,000 cu ft (17,698 m3) with an increase in capacity to 647,000 cu ft (18,321 m3) for M-2 through M-4. These airships were powered by two Pratt & Whitney radial air-cooled engines.

Goodyear produced a final follow-on design, the N-class blimp, in the 1950s. The N-class was 50% larger than its predecessor, which was itself 50% larger than the K-class.

Specifications (M-2)

References

See also

1940s United States anti-submarine aircraft
Airships of the United States Navy
Goodyear aircraft
Brock Motors. Brock Motors Ltd. (formerly Stansell Motors Ltd.), was founded by William Riley Stansell in 1921 in Amherstberg, Ontario, Canada. The factory had previously been home to the Amherst car. The company announced that it intended to build 10,000 vehicles per year. Financial backing for the project was based on a share float for 2,000 stockholders. Before production started Stansell Motors was renamed as Brock Motors Ltd and only one car was ever produced, the Brock Six, a large five-passenger touring car powered by a 55 bhp Continental engine. The company closed in 1921.

Stansell moved to London, Ontario in 1921, where he manufactured the London Six.

References

Vehicle manufacturing companies established in 1921
Defunct motor vehicle manufacturers of Canada
History of manufacturing in Ontario
Vehicle manufacturing companies disestablished in 1921
1921 establishments in Ontario
1921 disestablishments in Ontario
Imbibition. Imbibition is a special type of diffusion that takes place when liquid is absorbed by solids-colloids causing an increase in volume. Water surface potential movement takes place along a concentration gradient; some dry materials absorb water. A gradient between the absorbent and the liquid is essential for imbibition. For a substance to imbibe a liquid, there must first be some attraction between them. Imbibition occurs when a wetting fluid displaces a non-wetting fluid, the opposite of drainage in which a non-wetting phase displaces the wetting fluid. The two processes are governed by different mechanisms. Imbibition is also a type of diffusion since water movement is along the concentration gradient. Seeds and other such materials have almost no water hence they absorb water easily. Water potential gradient between the absorbent and liquid imbibed is essential for imbibition.

Examples 
One example of Imbibition in nature is the absorption of water by hydrophilic colloids.  Matrix potential contributes significantly to water in such substances. Dry seeds germinate in part by imbibition. Imbibition can also control circadian rhythms in Arabidopsis thaliana and (probably) other plants. The Amott test employs imbibition.

Proteins have high imbibition capacities, so proteinaceous pea seeds swell more than starchy wheat seeds.

Imbibition of water increases imbibant volume, which results in imbibitional pressure (IP). The magnitude of such pressure  can be demonstrated by the splitting of rocks by inserting dry wooden stalks in their crevices and soaking them in water, a technique used by early Egyptians to cleave stone blocks.

Skin grafts (split thickness and full thickness) receive oxygenation and nutrition via imbibition, maintaining cellular viability until the processes of inosculation and revascularisation have re-established a new blood supply within these tissues.

Germination

Examples include the absorption of water by seeds and dry wood. If there is no pressure due to imbibition, seedlings would not be able to emerge from soil.

Radicle growth
The radicle is the first part of a seedling (a growing plant embryo) to emerge from the seed during the process of germination. The radicle is the embryonic root of the plant, and grows downward in the soil (the shoot emerges from the plumule) where it absorbs more water. Most of the seed is stored energy so nutrients are not essential during the first days for the seedling.

See also
 Amott test
 Dye-transfer process
 Syneresis (chemistry)
 Technicolor

References

Biological processes
 
Chemical mixtures
Colloidal chemistry
Bernard Benson. Bernard S. Benson (28 January 1922 – 15 May 1996) was a British inventor and author.

Biography 
Benson was a fighter pilot during World War II, and later worked on the design of early British missiles. He emigrated to the United States where at Douglas Aircraft Company., in Santa Monica, California, he worked on the Douglas F4D Skyray fighter and various Douglas missiles.

Early in the 1950s, he founded Benson-Lehner Corporation with George F. G. Lehner, a psychology professor at UCLA. Soon after its founding, futurist Donald Prell joined the company as vice president, Application Engineering. The new company was successful, as it filled a niche designing systems that were used to provide data input and output to and from the early computers. The B/L machines semi-automatically read oscillograph and photographic flight test data producing punched tape and IBM punch cards which were then entered into computers. After being processed, the data was then automatically printed on large flatbed graph-plotters. This process automated the formerly manual reading and subsequent hand-plotting of data. B/L plotters soon became the industry standard, and were sold worldwide. After an IPO, the company expanded into the field of high speed photography. Two photo-mechanical engineers, Guy Hearon and Harry Katt, were hired, who designed a series of 16mm, 35mm, and 70mm high speed cameras and accessories. Trade catalogs from the Benson-Lehner Corporation are held by the National Museum of American History Library.

In 1961, Benson was one of the first people to warn against the privacy risks raised by computers, claiming that digital data could one day be fed into a single system, leaving individuals at the mercy "of who or what controls the machine".

Writing 
Books that Benson wrote included: The Minstrel, an allegorical story about Elvis Presley, Alice in Plunderland, Strictly Birdsmanship (or how to lay the egg that kills the golden goose), On Being an Egghead; or Engineersmanship for the Shell of it, and The Peace Book.

Retirement 
Early in the 1960s, Benson retired and moved to France, where he purchased the Chateau de Chaban located in the Dordogne. While living there with his first wife Jane Lysbeth Saville Sneath and their seven children, he began writing children's books based on the philosophy of a group of Tibetan monks, who shared his estate. Benson tried to make their philosophy readily understandable to both young and old. He then married Maryse Lheureux and had three daughters.

In 1975, during a visit to France by H.H. the 16th Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, he offered land to the Karmapa. Dhagpo Kagyu Ling, the Karmapa's main seat in Europe, was founded there in 1976.

References

English children's writers
Privacy
1996 deaths
1922 births
Royal Air Force pilots of World War II
British World War II fighter pilots
British Buddhists
Girder. A girder () is a beam used in construction. It is the main horizontal support of a structure which supports smaller beams. Girders often have an I-beam cross section composed of two load-bearing flanges separated by a stabilizing web, but may also have a box shape, Z shape, or other forms. Girders are commonly used to build bridges.

A girt is a vertically aligned girder placed to resist shear loads. 

Small steel girders are rolled into shape.  Larger girders (1 m/3 feet deep or more) are made as plate girders, welded or bolted together from separate pieces of steel plate.

The Warren type girder replaces the solid web with an open latticework truss between the flanges.  This arrangement combines strength with economy of materials, minimizing weight and thereby reducing loads and expense. Patented in 1848 by its designers James Warren and Willoughby Theobald Monzani, its structure consists of longitudinal members joined only by angled cross-members, forming alternately inverted equilateral triangle-shaped spaces along its length, ensuring that no individual strut, beam, or tie is subject to bending or torsional straining forces, but only to tension or compression. It is an improvement over the Neville truss, which uses a spacing configuration of isosceles triangles.

Gallery

See also

 Box girder
 Joist
 Plate girder
 Structural steel
 Truss
 Universal beam
 Wide Flange Steel Materials and Rolling Processes (U.S.)

References

 Song W, Ma Z, Vadivelu J, Burdette E (2014). Transfer Length and Splitting Force Calculation for Pretension Concrete Girders with High-Capacity Strands. Journal of Bridge Engineering. 19(7), DOI 04014026.
 Chen X, Wu S, Zhou J (2014). ”Compressive Strength of Concrete Cores with Different Lengths.” Journals Materials and Civil. Engineering, 26(7), DOI 04014027.

 
Structural system
Bridge components
Gino Girolamo Fanno. Gino Girolamo Fanno (Conegliano, 18 November 1882 – Pegli, 23 March 1962) was an Italian mechanical engineer who developed the Fanno flow model.

Early life and education
Fanno studied in a technical institute in Venice and graduated with very high grades as a mechanical engineer. Fanno was not as lucky as his brother, who was not able to get into academia. Faced with anti-Semitism, Fanno left Italy for Zurich, Switzerland, in 1900 to attend graduate school for his master's degree. In Zurich he was able to pose as a Roman Catholic. For short time he went to live in the Jewish home, Isaak Baruch Weil's family.

As were many Jews at that time, Fanno was fluent in several languages including Italian, English, German, and French. He likely had a good knowledge of Yiddish and possibly some Hebrew. In July 1904 he received his master's diploma.

Career
Fanno later returned to Italy to find a job in industry. Fanno turned out to be a good engineer and he later obtained a management position. He married, and like his brother, Marco, was childless. He obtained a Ph.D. from Regio Istituto Superiore d'Ingegneria di Genova. However, in February, 1939, Fanno was denounced as a Jew and lost his Ph.D.

During World War II, he was put under house arrest to avoid being sent to the concentration camps. To further camouflage himself, Fanno converted to Catholicism. Apparently, Fanno had a cache of old Italian currency (which was apparently still acceptable) that helped him and his wife survive the war. After the war, Fanno was only able to work in agriculture and agricultural engineering. Fanno died without world recognition for his model.

See also 
Fanno flow

References

External links
Maurice W. Downey, Gino Fanno

Fluid dynamicists
Converts to Roman Catholicism from Judaism
20th-century Italian Jews
1882 births
1962 deaths
Yiddish-speaking people
Italian Roman Catholics
Platform Computing. Platform Computing was a privately held software company primarily known for its job scheduling product, Load Sharing Facility (LSF).  It was founded in 1992 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and  headquartered in Markham, Ontario with 11 branch offices across the United States, Europe and Asia.

In January 2012, Platform Computing was acquired by IBM.

History

Platform Computing was founded by Songnian Zhou, Jingwen Wang, and Bing Wu in 1992. Its first product, LSF, was based on the Utopia research project at the University of Toronto. The LSF software was developed partially with funding from CANARIE (Canadian Advanced Network and Research for Industry and Education).

Platform's revenue was approximately $300,000 in 1993, and reached $12 million in 1997. Revenue grew by 34% (YoY) to US$46.2 million in 2001, US$50 million in 2003.

In 1999, the SiteAssure suite was announced by Platform to address website availability and monitoring market.

On October 29, 2007, Platform Computing acquired the Scali Manage business from Norway-based Scali AS. Scali was cluster management  software. On August 1, 2008, Platform acquired the rest of the Scali business, taking on the industry-standard Message Passing Interface (MPI), Scali MPI, and rebranding it Platform MPI.

On June 22, 2009, Platform Computing announced its first software to serve the cloud computing space. Platform ISF (Infrastructure Sharing Facility) enables organizations to set up and manage private clouds, controlling both physical and virtual resources.

In August 2009, Platform acquired HP-MPI from Hewlett-Packard.

In January 2012, Platform Computing was acquired by IBM.

Open-source participation
 Platform joined the Hadoop project  in 2011, and is focused on enhancing the Hadoop Distributed File System
 Platform Lava - based on Platform LSF, licensed under GPLv2. The Lava scheduler is part of Red Hat HPC. Discontinued in 2011.
 OpenLava - successor to Platform Lava.
 Platform FTA - File Transfer Agent for HPC clusters 
 Nagios Plug-ins 
 Community Scheduler Framework - a meta-scheduling framework

Memberships
Platform Computing is a member of the following organizations:
The Green Grid
Open Grid Forum

Standards
Platform products adopted the following standards:
DRMAA
Intel Cluster Ready
HPC Profile
JSDL
Open MPI
Project Kusu, the basis for the Platform Cluster Manager

See also 
 Computational grid
 CPU scavenging
 Beowulf (computing)
 Job schedulers

References

External links 
 Platform.com The Official Website for Platform Computing HPC Management Software
 User forum
 Platform Computing user portal for downloads and commercial support

Software companies of Canada
Companies established in 1992
IBM acquisitions
Grid computing
ROF Dalmuir. ROF Dalmuir was an Engineering Royal Ordnance Factory owned by the UK government during World War II. The factory manufactured medium-calibre guns, particularly anti-aircraft guns. After the war, the factory manufactured armoured fighting vehicles.

Formation
Part of the site of the former William Beardmore and Company's Naval Construction Works at Dalmuir, Clydebank, Dunbartonshire, Scotland was bought by the Ministry of Supply, in January 1939, and it was converted into an Engineering ROF.

The Naval Construction Works had closed down in January 1931 (during the economic crash of 1929), with much of the equipment and plant sold off by auction. Some of the works' buildings were used by the new ROF, as they had already been converted by Beardmores for reuse as a locomotive works, tank manufacture and artillery manufacture. Other buildings were demolished and new buildings erected for the ROF.

World War II production
ROF Dalmuir started production as a Royal Ordnance Factory under the control of the Ministry of Supply, it opened on 16 January 1941. In August 1941 it was handed over to William Beardmore and Company to run as an Agency Factory; and it returned to ROF Management control in September 1944.

It produced QF 3.75 inch AA and 4.5 inch (114 mm) anti-aircraft guns.

The main offices were hit in the Clydebank Blitz of 13 and 14 March 1941 and burned for three days; but the factory reopened in three weeks.

Post-war production
In 1951 ROF Dalmuir was converted to manufacture armoured fighting vehicles and this  continued until 1957 when the site was leased to Babcock & Wilcox of Renfrew on a 15-year lease.

Closure and the site reuse
Babcock & Wilcox stopped using the ROF site in 1969 and the Ministry of Defence sold the site in 1970. Many of the buildings were demolished between 1971 and 1973 and Clydebank Industrial Estate was created. Part of the site is now occupied by the Golden Jubilee Hospital and the Beardmore Hotel.

References
 Johnston, Ian, (1993). Beardmore Built: The Rise and Fall of a Clydeside Shipyard. Clydebank: Clydebank District Libraries & Museums Department. .
 Hay, Ian, (1949). R.O.F: The story of the Royal Ordnance Factories. 1939 - 1945. London: HMSO.

Dalmuir
Dalmuir
Motor vehicle manufacturers of Scotland
Economy of West Dunbartonshire
History of West Dunbartonshire
Military of Scotland
Buildings and structures in West Dunbartonshire
Clydebank
Reciprocating motion. Reciprocating motion, also called reciprocation, is a repetitive up-and-down or back-and-forth linear motion. It is found in a wide range of mechanisms, including reciprocating engines and pumps. The two opposite motions that comprise a single reciprocation cycle are called strokes.

A crank can be used to convert into reciprocating motion, or conversely turn reciprocating motion into circular motion.

For example, inside an internal combustion engine (a type of reciprocating engine),  the expansion of burning fuel in the cylinders periodically pushes the piston down, which, through the connecting rod, turns the crankshaft. The continuing rotation of the crankshaft drives the piston back up, ready for the next cycle. The piston moves in a reciprocating motion, which is converted into the 
circular motion of the crankshaft, which ultimately propels the vehicle or does other useful work. 

The reciprocating motion of a pump piston is close to but different from, sinusoidal simple harmonic motion. Assuming the wheel is driven at a perfect constant rotational velocity, the point on the crankshaft which connects to the connecting rod rotates smoothly at a constant velocity in a circle. Thus, the displacement of that point is indeed exactly sinusoidal by definition.  However, during the cycle, the angle of the connecting rod changes continuously, so the horizontal displacement of the "far" end of the connecting rod (i.e., connected to the piston) differs slightly from sinusoidal. Additionally, if the wheel is not spinning with perfect constant rotational velocity, such as in a steam locomotive starting up from a stop, the motion will be even less sinusoidal.

See also

References

Mechanical engineering