Free Republic

An airline is considering two types of engine systems for use in its planes. Each has the same life and the same maintenance and repair record. - System A costs $100,000 and uses 40,000 gallons per 1000 hours of operation at the average load encountered in passenger service. - System B costs $200,000 and uses 32,000 gallons per 1000 hours of operation at the same level. Both engine systems have 3-year lives before any major overhaul. Based on the initial investment, the systems have 10% salvage values. If jet fuel costs $1.80 a gallon currently, and fuel consumption is expected...

Investigators unraveling how concrete ceiling panels cascaded onto a car in one of the Big Dig tunnels should focus on some basic, troubling questions about the way the tunnel ceiling was built, civil engineers and highway construction specialists said yesterday. Officials from the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority suspect that the accident that killed Milena Del Valle began with the failure of a single steel hanger that helped hold up the concrete ceiling, setting off a chain reaction that caused other hangers to fail and send 12 tons of concrete to the highway surface as Del Valle's husband drove underneath. ...

$100 billion in annual exports is India's new target. Add to that 25 million new jobs within the next 4 years. These are India's new economic goals. India expects its low-cost labor force and expertise in engineering to continue to draw investment into the country's manufacturing sector. India, of course, is known as a services hub. She would like to add to that growth in: 1. Engineering 2. Textiles 3. Drugs (legal) & 4. Auto Parts In any event, India will grow and grow and grow... Do you have plans for business with India? Why or why not?

JUNE 7, 2006 | We recently got hired by a credit union to assess the security of its network. The client asked that we really push hard on the social engineering button. In the past, they'd had problems with employees sharing passwords and giving up information easily. Leveraging our effort in the report was a way to drive the message home to the employees. The client also indicated that USB drives were a concern, since they were an easy way for employees to steal information, as well as bring in potential vulnerabilities such as viruses and Trojans. Several other clients...

IN ancient Babylon, they knew from accountability. Under the Code of Hammurabi, "If a builder build a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built fall in and kill its owner, then that builder shall be put to death." What's more, "If it kill the son of the owner, the son of that builder shall be put to death." Engineers these days don't have that worry. Mistakes may carry legal penalties and a measure of shame. The people who die are those who depend on the engineers' work. Nearly 1,600 people died in...

See for example this thread first. A novel plan to design nukes On-line simulation of flukes It straddles the line 'tween Darwin and Design The thread ought to bring out the kooks!

The National Wind Technology Center sits at the foot of the Rockies just south of Boulder. Although within sight of Denver, the swell of the land hides the city, making you feel as if you’re in the middle of nowhere. The site is well chosen. Generally you need good proximity to mountains to take advantage of wind energy. The best sites in America are in the High Sierras, the Rockies, and the Appalachian Mountains. The other “Saudi Arabia of wind” is the upper Midwest, where the Dakotas, western Minnesota, and northwest Iowa catch the jet stream barreling down from Canada....

BALTIMORE - Dismal new results on U.S. student performance in science ought to spur Congress to pass President Bush’s competitiveness agenda this year — and to extend his “No Child Left Behind” program to high schools. The competitiveness agenda — which includes scholarships aimed at producing 10,000 more science teachers per year as well as increases in U.S. research funding — has bipartisan support but is moving slowly through Congress.Markups of key legislation have yet to take place in the House or Senate, and leaders have yet to schedule floor time for the bills, which could represent a major success...

SARATOGA SPRINGS -- It all started last winter, with a faulty remote starter on her 1996 Chevrolet Lumina. Like many others, Sarah Dodge dreaded the thought of having to brave the elements to warm up her car before school. In today's world of high-tech gizmos, the 18-year-old senior at Saratoga Springs High School figured there had to be a better solution. Turns out, there was -- and now Sarah is the first student in a pre-engineering program at the school to have a federal patent pending, teacher Michael Gallagher said.

By most objective measures, the United States is the undisputed world leader in science and innovation, whether it's funding for research and development, the number of PhD students it graduates or its share of the world's patents. For the world's wealthiest nation, this is hardly a remarkable feat. What is remarkable is that the US accomplished this with a supply of domestic talent whose skills in math and science are, also according to most objective measures, merely mediocre. Luckily, in the past, many excellent foreign students have shouldered the load, preferring to come here to study and work than stay...

WASHINGTON — The nation's leading engineering group expressed disappointment with immigration legislation approved this week by the Senate. The controversial Senate immigration bill includes a provision raising the cap on H-1B visas for highly educated temporary workers by 50,000 to 115,000 per fiscal year. It also provides exemptions from both H-1B and employment-based, or "green card," visa caps for foreign workers with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering or mathematics. High-tech and business groups lauded the bill as a boost for U.S. competitiveness. But the IEEE-USA criticized the measure. "We don’t understand why the Senate wants to expand a program...

Big Questions About the Big Easy Hughes Joseph Hughes chairs the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech and serves on the EPA's environmental engineering advisory committee. He toured the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast with President Wayne Clough in November, spoke to former Alumni Association trustees in January and recently sat down with the ALUMNI MAGAZINE. Hughes now is helping coordinate a conference that will address the future of New Orleans.What is Georgia Tech's role in the rebuilding of New Orleans? We're at the stage right now in the discussion where there are real questions whether we should rebuild...

Unsung Engineering Heros: Robert Sherman In 1945, Robert Sherman invented the modern portable, in-window air conditioner (Patent # 2,433,960 granted January 6, 1948). It was subsequently "appropriated" by a large manufacturer who made hundreds of millions of dollars on it. Sherman did not have the resources to fight the big corporation in court (they reportedly promised to "break him" if he tried) and thus never received a dime. He died in 1962. Recognition of his contribution to heating/air conditioning is long overdue. Full Article

Remember the Trebuchet, the original siege engine?It's back and ready to put your physics muscles to the test. Custome build your "Treb" to take on three seperate challenges: Distance, Accuracy and Power. GlobalSpec Treb Challenge

DURHAM, N.C. — For an engineer, Henry Petroski seems strangely enthusiastic about failure. Not his own, of course. Fear of failure is what sent him, with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, to graduate school rather than to work, and then to a career of teaching and writing, not designing and building. From his vantage point, failures in design and construction present perfect teaching opportunities. They are object lessons in the history and practice and beauty of engineering. "Failure is central to engineering," he said in an interview. "Every single calculation that an engineer makes is a failure calculation. Successful...

Penn State University’s Lion Radio is home to Radio Free Penn State, and while it may not be the Rush Limbaugh show, the student talk show with its host Andy Nagypal is both entertaining and insightful. On April 12, the show hosted students, alumni and featured a phone interview with state Representative Gibson C. Armstrong as part of Academic Freedom Week on Radio Free Penn State. Rep. Armstrong reiterated the purpose of his committee and explained what has transpired with the hearings so far. He also encouraged students experiencing political harassment to stand up. “You may get a bad grade...

Take that, Stanford. Two San Jose State students have been asked by the White House to represent budding Silicon Valley engineering talent and rub shoulders with President Bush on Friday when he visits Cisco Systems. College of Engineering Dean Belle Wei said she got a call Tuesday from a valley ``Republican heavyweight,'' asking for names. Wei said she thinks SJSU got the call because ``we have normal students, not Stanford students, privileged students.'' After all, Bush is in town to tout his plan for keeping American industry competitive in the computer age. Wei has tapped two of her top students,...

IF you make your way over to the Javits Convention Center for the New York International Automobile Show — or if you've gone to any auto show in the last year or so — you'll know that hybrid cars are the hippest automotive fashion statement to come along in years. They've become synonymous with the worthy goal of reducing gasoline consumption and dependence on foreign oil and all that this means for a better environment and more stable geopolitics. And yet like fat-free desserts, which sound healthy but can still make you fat, the hybrid car can make people feel...

The Upside of outsourcing While the move of labor elsewhere is unsettling, opportunities emerge for savvy engineers  By Bob Felton Do the present dislocations in manufacturing represent a relatively short-lived reprise of a familiar pattern in the American economy, or are they the beginning of an enduring change as the emerging nations assume ever-greater roles in the design and manufacture of the world’s goods? No less important, what should control and automation engineers be doing to protect their careers in a time of dizzying, almost daily changes? The turmoil wrought by industrial relocations and onshore and offshore outsourcing bears striking...

My wife and I are moving to the Norfolk area in August for the Military and she has started looking for jobs.