Free Republic

It may be a tight race in the national polls, but the design and development community is clearly behind President George W. Bush in this year's presidential contest. By a 48 percent to 40 percent margin, respondents favor re-electing the president over electing challenger Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts. Our respondents offered that support despite their apparently declining faith in the vibrancy of the U.S. technology industry. Salaries are up, unemployment is down and product development starts have picked up — but only a third of the engineers and managers who responded to our survey said they believe American...

..."This is definitely a transitional year," said Andrea Koncz, a NACE spokesperson. NACE releases its "Salary Survey" quarterly, with the final report for the 2003-2004 recruiting year due in September. Engineering majors are seeing the most cash, led by gains from chemical engineering graduates who now earn $52,819 a year, up 1.9 percent from a year earlier. Computer engineering graduates are following closely behind with $51,572, but that figure represents a 0.3 percent decrease from last year. Those graduating with a degree in computer science are seeing heartier increases. According to NACE, information sciences and systems graduates earn $43,053 a...

Boeing is not outsourcing THESE engineering jobs. Calling all System Engineers, among others. Most in Southern Cal., but openings at all Boeing sites. See the Boeing website. FYI.

Vivek Paul occupies a unique vantage point in the controversy roiling the technology industry over offshore outsourcing. An American citizen, Paul also is a native of India and chief executive officer of Wipro Technologies, one of that country's largest IT service companies. Many American techies are increasingly bitter about the pickup in the stream of IT jobs from the United States to India, arguing that the trend threatens to erode job prospects in the nation's high-tech sector. At the same time, however, members of the Bush administration and a number of economists argue that the natural flows of capital can't...

San Francisco State University is considering eliminating its School of Engineering to help close a $14 million budget gap, a dramatic shift in strategy to deal with ever-diminishing funds. San Francisco State spokeswoman Christina Holmes said campus President Robert Corrigan does not want to make across-the-board cuts as he has in the past few years because that erodes the quality of the entire university. Instead, he wants to make targeted cuts, she said. "Right now every college is under review," Holmes said. She emphasized that eliminating the engineering school "is just a proposal," and nothing has been decided. Other programs...

Mimicking humpback whale flippers may improve airplane wing design DURHAM, N.C. -- Wind tunnel tests of scale-model humpback whale flippers have revealed that the scalloped, bumpy flipper is a more efficient wing design than is currently used by the aeronautics industry on airplanes. The tests show that bump-ridged flippers do not stall as quickly and produce more lift and less drag than comparably sized sleek flippers. The tests were reported by biomechanicist Frank Fish of West Chester University, Penn., fluid dynamics engineer Laurens Howle of the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University and David Miklosovic and Mark Murray at...

NASA faces a major transformation if the 45-year-old agency is to achieve President Bush's goals of returning explorers to the moon and sending manned missions to Mars, members of a White House advisory panel said Tuesday. The proposed changes that will be spelled out in a report from the President's Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond in early June would likely mean a higher level of federal oversight as well as closer links to private industry, the military and other government agencies. Without the transformation, the space agency will not get the public, political and financial support that will be...

The State of Engineering The world of engineering has undergone tremendous change in the past few decades. While established fields such as mechanics and electricity have advanced, new fields such as space travel, nanotechnology and fiber optics have emerged. What’s more, the materials and tools that engineers work with have improved and increased dramatically. For example, engineers can now build things with designer materials for which they can specify properties such as conductivity and elasticity. And when it comes to tools and technologies, they are seeing explosive growth—with many of the innovations generated by the profession itself—including the development...

J-K Flip-Flop J-K Flip-Flop Structure Switching Example: J-K Flip-Flop J-K Flip-Flop Data Transfer

SAN FRANCISCO — A university 45 minutes north of the heart of the Silicon Valley is considering cutting its entire engineering program to save money as it struggles to deal with budget cuts. San Francisco State University, trying to close a projected $14 million budget gap, has notified engineering-school officials that it could close the 45-year-old program, according to a report in Tuesday's (April 6) San Francisco Chronicle. The successful school — which offers undergraduate degrees in electrical, mechanical, civil and computer engineering and a master's of science in engineering — has 700 students and another 600 enrolled for next...

In my composite role as administrator of the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) and engineering educator, I am greatly concerned about the impact of outsourcing on the engineering community, both in the short term and in the very long term. What can we do now? What should we do soon? What must we do ultimately? I believe that education is an integral part of the answers to these questions; for the salable skills in this new world are not those that have earlier prevailed. Briefly put, there is a need for reeducation; individuals must possess new knowledge-knowledge that makes their...

A weapon that delivers a debilitating electric shock to its victim without the need for wires is being developed in Germany. New Scientist has seen video stills of a prototype of the "Plasma-Taser" in action during firing-range tests. The pictures were shown at the European Symposium on Non-Lethal Weapons in Karlsruhe, Germany, two weeks ago. In the first image, a spray of dark gas is seen approaching a human-sized target. In the next, taken a fraction of a second later, there is a lightning-like flash of electrical discharge intended to incapacitate the targeted person. The Plasma-Taser, developed by defence company...

An exotic kind of nuclear explosive being developed by the US Department of Defense could blur the critical distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons. The work has also raised fears that weapons based on this technology could trigger the next arms race. The explosive works by stimulating the release of energy from the nuclei of certain elements but does not involve nuclear fission or fusion. The energy, emitted as gamma radiation, is thousands of times greater than that from conventional chemical explosives. The technology has already been included in the Department of Defense's Militarily Critical Technologies List, which says: "Such...

The US military has begun development of an ultra-high speed weapons system that would enable targets virtually anywhere on Earth to be hit within two hours of launch from the continental US. Ten companies have been given grants by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Pentagon for six-month "system definition" studies. If the Pentagon likes the results, a three-year design and development phase will begin. The ultimate aim, slated for around 2025, is a reusable Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle (HCV) that can take off from a conventional runway in the US and strike targets up to 16,700 kilometres (10,350...

But then, the blocks that Wallace T. Wallington moves around near his home in a rural Flint area have weighed up to nearly 10 tons. And by himself, he moves these behemoth playthings, not with cranes and cables, but with wooden levers. "It's more technique than it is technology," Wallington says. "I think the ancient Egyptians and Britons knew this." Last October, a production crew from Discovery Channel in Canada came to Wallington's home to record him as he raised a 16-foot, rectangular, concrete block that weighed 19,200 pounds and set it into a hole. That taping was made into...

Undergraduates in U.S. universities are starting to abandon their studies in computer technology and engineering amid widespread worries about the accelerating pace of offshoring by high-technology employers. A new study, to be published in May, shows there was a dramatic drop-off of enrollment in those fields last year -- 19 percent -- and some educators warn about the potential consequences for America's global competitiveness.

Outsourcing: A New Occupational Hazard Paul Craig Roberts Wednesday, Mar. 10, 2004 Who does Bill Gates think he is fooling? Microsoft's chairman spent the last week of February on the college stump trying to talk up computer engineering. But nothing he can say can overcome the fact that students have been reading announcements from every American high-tech company, including Microsoft itself, about thousands of engineering and research jobs being moved to Asia. On Feb. 16, The Associated Press reported that Siemens announced that the firm will move most of the 15,000 software programming jobs from its offices in the...

Rather than obtain innovative equipment the old-fashioned way--by purchasing it--NASA plans to send America to the moon, Mars and beyond on technological breakthroughs resulting from a series of contests with cash prizes. Executives of the space agency's new Office of Exploration Systems detailed their plans in a briefing to industry representatives Wednesday. They said NASA wants to stimulate innovation in ways that standard federal procurements cannot. "This is a very different approach from how NASA or any federal [research and development] agency has gone about technical innovation in the past," said Brant Sponberg, manager of what the agency calls its...

The message at a technical symposium Thursday afternoon at Livingstone College was that this country needs to work harder to get children excited about math and science. Participants discussed strategies to get this generation of young people into the math and science educational pipeline as early as possible so they'll be prepared to meet the nation's increasing need for math and science graduates. Dr. Bernard Harris, a retired astronaut who was the first African-American to walk in space, participated in the panel discussion, which was moderated by John Hairston of NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Harris told his...

In rehabilitating a crucial powerplant, Iraqi engineers are enhancing their skills and broadening their experience under the supervision of a U.S.-based contractor while strengthening their country’s generation base. But the Bechtel-led restoration project at Baghdad’s 640-Mw Daura Powerplant also highlights the difficulties Iraqi contractors face on restoration contracts and the dangers they confront in cooperating with the U.S. occupation. In November 2003, San Francisco-based Bechtel awarded Iraq’s United Co. the $1-million subcontract to provide labor to revamp two steam turbines at the four-unit Daura power station on the outskirts of Baghdad. Fawzi Elia, United’s project manager, explains that the company...