omniomni/omni-engineering huggingface dataset:
Contour crafting. Contour crafting is a building printing technology being researched by Behrokh Khoshnevis of the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute (in the Viterbi School of Engineering) that uses a computer-controlled crane or gantry to build edifices rapidly and efficiently with substantially less manual labor. It was originally conceived as a method to construct molds for industrial parts. Khoshnevis decided to adapt the technology for rapid home construction as a way to rebuild after natural disasters, like the devastating earthquakes that have plagued his native Iran.

Using a quick-setting, concrete-like material, contour crafting forms the house's walls layer by layer until topped off by floors and ceilings set in place by the crane. The notional concept calls for the insertion of structural components, plumbing, wiring, utilities, and even consumer devices like audiovisual systems as the layers are built.

History

Caterpillar Inc. provided funding to help support Viterbi project research in the summer of 2008.

In 2009, Singularity University graduate students established a project with Khoshnevis as the CTO to commercialize Contour Crafting. The project was named "ACASA".

In 2010, Khoshnevis claimed that his system could build a complete home in a single day, and its electrically powered crane would produce very little construction material waste. 

Construction of a standard wood-framed house is estimated to create an average of 3-7 tons of waste. Use of contour crafting could significantly reduce environmental impact as it wastes no material at all. In addition, contour crafting does not generate noise, dust or make harmful emissions to the environment given the equipment that is used.

Khoshnevis stated in 2010 that NASA was evaluating Contour Crafting for its application in the  construction of bases on Mars and the Moon.
After three years, in 2013, NASA funded a small study at the University of Southern California to further develop the Contour Crafting 3D printing technique.  Potential applications of this technology include constructing lunar structures of a material that could be built of 90-percent lunar material with only ten percent of the material transported from Earth.

In 2017 the Contour Crafting Corporation (of which Khoshnevis is the CEO) announced a partnership with and investment from Doka Ventures. In the press release, they claim that they "will start delivery of the first printers early next year".

See also

References

External links
 Contour Crafting website

Building engineering
American inventions
3D printing processes
2008 introductions
Z-level programming language. Z-level Programming Language is an array programming language designed to replace C and C++ programming languages in engineering and scientific applications. Because its design goal was to obtain cross-platform high performance, ZPL programs run fast on both sequential and parallel computers. Highly-parallel ZPL programs are simple and easy to write because it exclusively uses implicit parallelism.

Originally called Orca C, ZPL was designed and implemented during 1993–1995 by the Orca Project of the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Washington.

Details
ZPL uses the array abstraction to implement a data parallel programming model. This is the reason why ZPL achieves such good performance: having no parallel directives or other forms of explicit parallelism, ZPL exploits the operational trait that when aggregate computations are described in terms of arrays, many scalar operations must be (implicitly) performed to implement the array operations. This implied computation can be automatically allotted to different processors to achieve concurrency: Parallelism arises from the semantics of the array operations.

ZPL is translated into a conventional abstract syntax tree representation on which program analysis and program optimizations are performed. ANSI C code is generated as the object code. This C program (which is machine independent because it implements certain operations in abstract form) is then compiled using the native C compiler on the target machine with custom libraries optimized to the specific platform.

The creators of ZPL were: Brad Chamberlain, Sung-Eun Choi, E Christopher Lewis, Calvin Lin, Jason Secosky, Larry Snyder, and W. Derrick Weathersby with assistance from Ruth Anderson, A.J. Bernheim, Marios Dikaiakos, George Forman, and Kurt Partridge.

See also
 Array programming
 J
 K
 Partitioned global address space

References

External links
 

Array programming languages
Concurrent programming languages
Programming languages created in 1993
A+ (programming language). A+ is a high-level, interactive, interpreted array programming language designed for numerically intensive applications, especially those found in financial applications.

History 

In 1985, Arthur Whitney created the A programming language to replace APL. Other developers at Morgan Stanley extended it to A+, adding a graphical user interface (GUI) and other language features. The GUI A+ was released in 1988.

Arthur Whitney went on to create a proprietary array language named K. Like J, K omits the APL character set. It lacks some of the perceived complexities of A+, such as the existence of statements and two different modes of syntax.

Features 

A+ provides an extended set of functions and operators, a graphical user interface with automatic synchronizing of widgets and variables, asynchronous executing of functions associated with variables and events, dynamic loading of user compiled subroutines, and other features. A+ runs on many Unix variants, including Linux. It is free and open source software released under a GNU General Public License. A newer GUI has not yet been ported to all supported platforms.

The A+ language implements the following changes to the APL language:
 an A+ function may have up to nine formal parameters
 A+ code statements are separated by semicolons, so a single statement may be divided into two or more physical lines
 The explicit result of a function or operator is the result of the last statement executed
 A+ implements an object called a dependency, which is a global variable (the dependent variable) and an associated definition that is like a function with no arguments. Values can be explicitly set and referenced in exactly the same ways as for a global variable, but they can also be set through the associated definition.

Interactive A+ development is primarily done in the Xemacs editor, through extensions to the editor. Because A+ code uses the original APL symbols, displaying A+ requires a font with those special characters; a font named kapl is provided on the web site for that purpose.

References

External links
, aplusdev.org

 APL programming language family
 Array programming languages
 Data-centric programming languages
Elitegroup Computer Systems. Elitegroup Computer Systems Co., Ltd. (ECS; ) is a Taiwan-based electronics firm. It is the fifth largest PC motherboard manufacturer in the world (after Asus, Gigabyte Technology, ASRock, and MSI), with production reaching 24 million units in 2002.

The company has since concentrated on broadening its product range. After ECS's purchase of laptop manufacturer Uniwill in 2006, the company has been involved in the design and manufacture of laptops, desktop replacement computers and multimedia products. ECS computers used to be sold by Fry's Electronics under the "Great Quality" ("GQ") brand.

Design & Production 
While Elitegroup Computer Systems is headquartered in Taiwan, the company has production facilities in Asia and North America:

 Special Economic Zone Shenzhen: (ECS Manufacturing) & Golden Elite Technology & China Golden Elite Technology
 Suzhou: (China ESZ)
 Juarez, Mexico: China EMX, Mexico EMX Plant

OEM 
Many of these motherboards have been produced for OEM customers and are used in systems assembled and sold by such brand-name companies as Lenovo, HP and Zoostorm. Its main competitors are MSI and ASRock.

ECS has also produced computers for Acer.

History 

Founded in 1987, ECS is headquartered in Taiwan with operations in North America, Europe and the Pacific Rim. The company merged with PCChips, a major manufacturer of low-cost motherboards, in 2005. In June 2003, ECS was selected for two years in a row for Business Week magazine's exclusive Information Technology 100 list.

Since the 2010s, after years of declining market share in the do-it-yourself PC builder business, the company has deemphasized its consumer motherboard business, prioritizing its OEM motherboard and mini-PC businesses.

References

External links

 

1987 establishments in Taiwan
Computer companies of Taiwan
Computer hardware companies
Computer systems companies
Electronics companies of Taiwan
Graphics hardware companies
Motherboard companies
Computer companies established in 1987
Manufacturing companies based in Taipei
Taiwanese brands
Class-responsibility-collaboration card. Class-responsibility-collaboration (CRC) cards are a brainstorming tool used in the design of object-oriented software. They were originally proposed by Ward Cunningham and Kent Beck as a teaching tool but are also popular among expert designers and recommended by extreme programming practitioners. Author Martin Fowler has written that CRC cards may be a sensible means by which multiple alternative interactions may be quickly devised, as they avoid a great deal of drawing and erasing. CRC card sessions may be followed by the creation of sequence diagrams to capture interactions that are identified.

CRC cards are frequently employed during the design phase of system and software development to transition use-case descriptions into class diagrams, allowing a smoother transition with a greater overview and permitting developers to implement solutions with low binding and high cohesion.

CRC cards are usually created from index cards. Members of a brainstorming session will write one CRC card for each relevant class/object of their design. The card is partitioned into three areas:

 On top of the card, the class name
 On the left, the responsibilities of the class
 On the right, collaborators (other classes) with which the class interacts to fulfill its responsibilities

Using small cards minimizes the complexity of the design, reduces class responsibilities and keeps designers focused on the essentials of the classes without exploring implementation details. Because the cards are portable, they can easily be laid out on a table and rearranged while discussing a design.

Creating CRC cards 

Creation of CRC cards normally begins with writing a scenario that identifies the major actors and actions. From the scenario, nouns should become classes, verbs become responsibilities and collaborators are the other cards with which the card will interact.

See also 
 Object-oriented design
 Meta-modeling
 Story-driven modeling
 Unified Modeling Language

References

External links
A Laboratory For Teaching Object-Oriented Thinking paper by Kent Beck and Ward Cunningham
A CRC Description of HotDraw
A concise introduction at extremeprogramming.org
A simple online CRC Editor

Extreme programming
Software design
Electric switchboard. An electric switchboard is a piece of equipment that distributes electric power from one or more sources of supply to several smaller load circuits. It is an assembly of one or more panels, each of which contains switching devices for the protection and control of circuits fed from the switchboard. Several manufacturers make switchboards used in industry, commercial buildings, telecommunication facilities, oil and gas plants, data centers, health care, and other buildings, and onboard large ships.  A switchboard is divided into different interconnected sections, generally consisting of a main section and a distribution section. These two sections are sometimes replaced by a combination section, which is a section that can fulfill the roles of both of the aforementioned sections. Switchboards can also sometimes come with an auxiliary section that is used to house devices that cannot be housed in the same section as other devices.

Definition
The U.S. National Electrical Code (NEC) defines a switchboard as "a large single panel, frame, or assembly of panels on which are mounted, on the face, back, or both, switches, over-current and other protective devices, buses, and usually instruments". The role of a switchboard is to allow the division of the current supplied to the switchboard into smaller currents for further distribution and to provide switching, current protection and (possibly) metering for those various currents. In general, switchboards may distribute power to transformers, panelboards, control equipment, and, ultimately, to individual system loads.

Components
Inside a switchboard there will be one or more busbars. These are flat strips of copper or aluminum, to which the switchgear is connected. Busbars carry large currents through the switchboard and are supported by insulators. Bare busbars are common, but many types are now manufactured with an insulating cover on the bars, leaving only connection points exposed.

In a modern switchboard, the operator is protected from electrical injury by metal-enclosed circuit breakers, switches, and fuses. There may also be instruments and controls for the supply of electricity to the switchboard. For example, a switchboard for a bank of electrical generators, especially frequency would have control of AC power and load sharing, and instruments for frequency, voltage, current, and energy, with perhaps a synchroscope. A main switchboard is a large electrical switchboard that connects to the grid and distributes power to other smaller switchboards on the site.

See also
 Electrical enclosure
 Tri-rated cable

References

External links
 

Electrical components
Switches
Base course. The base course or basecourse in pavements is a layer of material in an asphalt roadway, race track, riding arena, or sporting field. It is located under the surface layer consisting of the wearing course and sometimes an extra binder course.

If there is a sub-base course, the base course is constructed directly above this layer. Otherwise, it is built directly on top of the subgrade. Typical base course thickness ranges from  and is governed by underlying layer properties. Generally made of a construction aggregate, it is spread and compacted to at least 95% relative compaction, thus providing a stable foundation for additional layers of material.

Aggregate base (AB) is typically a mix of different sizes of crushed rock  Aggregate Base, Class 2, is used in roadways and consists of rock particles of size  and less. An aggregate is normally made from newly quarried rock, or it is sometimes allowed to be made from recycled asphalt concrete and/or Portland cement concrete.

See also 
 Track bed

References

Pavement engineering
Road transport
Road infrastructure
Fuel ladder. A fuel ladder or ladder fuel is a firefighting term for live or dead vegetation that allows a fire to climb up from the landscape or forest floor into the tree canopy.  Common ladder fuels include tall grasses, shrubs, and tree branches, both living and dead.  The removal of fuel ladders is part of defensible space 'firescaping' practices.

Fire precautions
Potential fuel ladders should be removed to reduce the risk of fire bridging the gap to the canopy.  To remove the ladder requires pruning any low limbs up to a minimum of 8 feet, and potentially as high as 15 feet.  The required height depends on how low the branch tips hang, the steepness of slope, and the height and spacing of other nearby vegetation.

The desired result is to create a situation in which a low-burning fire could burn to the trunk of a tree, which is protected by its bark, without having thinner, more flammable branches, leaves or needles within easy reach of the fire.

Other fuel ladders
Apart from tree limbs, anything that would help that fire move up into the tree canopy is a fuel ladder.  This includes shrubs and even tall grass or weeds. Non-vegetation fuel sources such as woodpiles, wooden fenceposts and structures should also be considered.

The intent is to maintain a break in vertical and horizontal continuity so that, if for example a woodpile caught fire, it would not be positioned next to shrubs or directly under trees that could then easily catch fire.

See also
 Fire control
 Defensible space (fire control)
 Fire ecology
 Firefighting
 Limbing
 Wildfire
 Wildfire suppression

References

External links
 CAL-FIRE: Homepage + Links  Official CA State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection website.
 CA State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection: "General Guidelines for Creating Defensible Space"
 SBCFD Homepage + Links 'Defending Your Home and Hazard Reduction' - Official Santa Barbara County Fire Department Website
 Santa Barbara County Fire Department: "Landscape 'Firescape' Checklist"

Wildfire suppression
Wildfire ecology
Sustainable forest management
Forest ecology
Environmental terminology
Gardening aids
Sustainable gardening
Max Planck Institute for Informatics. The Max Planck Institute for Informatics (German: Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik, abbreviated MPI-INF or MPII) is a research institute in computer science with a focus on algorithms and their applications in a broad sense. It hosts fundamental research (algorithms and complexity, programming logics) as well a research for various application domains (computer graphics, geometric computation, constraint solving, computational biology). 

Founded November 1988 by the Max Planck Society, Germany's largest publicly funded body for foundation research, MPII is located on the campus of Saarland University.

Research departments 

The institute promotes six departments and three independent research groups on its website. The six departments are Algorithms and Complexity; Computer Vision and Machine Learning; Internet Architecture; Computer Graphics; Databases and Information Systems; and Visual Computing and Artificial Intelligence. The three research groups are Research Group Computational Biology; Automation of Logic; and Network and Cloud Systems.  

The institute, along with the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS), the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) and the entire Computer Science department of Saarland University, is involved in the Internationales Begegnungs- und Forschungszentrum für Informatik.

The International Max Planck Research School for Computer Science (IMPRS-CS) is the graduate school of the MPII and the MPI-SWS. It was founded in 2000 and offers a fully funded PhD-Program in cooperation with Saarland University. Dean is Gerhard Weikum.

Awards and recognition
Institute faculty members have received numerous awards, including The Leibniz Prize awarded to Kurt Mehlhorn (1987), Hans-Peter Seidel (2003), and Anja Feldmann (2011); the Konrad Zuse Medal granted to Kurt Mehlhorn (1995), Thomas Lengauer (2003), and Gerhard Weikum (2021); and the Karl Heinz Beckurts-Preis given to Kurt Mehlhorn (1994) and Christian Theobalt (2017); as well as ACM Fellowships given to Kurt Mehlhorn (1999), Gerhard Weikum (2006), Thomas Lengauer (2021), and Bernt Schiele (2021).

See also 
 Max Planck Institute for Software Systems
 YAGO (database) (developed at the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science)

References

External links 
 Max Planck Institute for Informatics Homepage
 International Meeting Place and Research Centre for Computer Science in Dagstuhl Castle
 International Max Planck Research School on Trustworthy Computing (IMPRS-TRUST)
Soloflex. Soloflex refers to both the Soloflex exercise machine and to Soloflex, Inc., the company that created and produces it.  Instead of pulleys, the Soloflex used an elastomer Weightstrap made of heavy-duty rubber to create variable resistance. The company started out as Bucksteel Mfg in Roswell, New Mexico, in a small plant on the old Army Air Force base south of town. It is now based in Hillsboro, Oregon.

History
Soloflex, Inc. was established in 1978 by Jerry Wilson. The idea behind the weight straps came from Jerry's days flying small airplanes.  The resistance on the plane's controls came from the bungee cord.  Jerry used this idea to create the Weightstraps that provide enough resistance to equal large amounts of free weight.

In 1980, the company relocated to Hillsboro, Oregon.  After the move to Oregon,  Bucksteel changed its name to Soloflex. The company then used model Scott Madsen in an infomercial to promote their product. By 1984, the company's sales had grown to $18 million annually. Over time, several additions to the machine were made, such as butterfly attachments and leg extensions. The newest product addition is the Soloflex Whole Body Vibration (WBV) Platform.  Vibrating while you are lifting weights is thought to magnify the conditioning effects to help promote faster muscle growth.

Products
Soloflex home gym machines use an elastic element to provide resistance. The product also comes with an instructional DVD.

Soloflex's WBV Platform made news in July 2007 for a Consumer Reports review that demonstrated it had been using claims from research that may not apply to their machine. "At press time, even the research on its Website involved competitors' products and lab machines. Some research suggests that certain vibrating machines might help improve strength and balance, but our experts said it's unclear whether the Soloflex would. Its vibration levels differ from those studied."

Soloflex disputed the article's comments on burning calories, but did not comment on other claims.

As of April 29, 2023, the Soloflex website was shut down and an email sent from the company confirmed they are shutting down operations

See also
 Bowflex
NordicTrack

References

Weight training equipment
Exercise equipment
Exercise equipment companies
Companies based in Hillsboro, Oregon
Manufacturing companies established in 1978
1978 establishments in New Mexico