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Just turned on the news. 35W bridge collapsed in the Mississippi River. Cars, trucks, semis..... Fires burning, tanker trucks, at least one school bus, more than ten cars...... Just now breaking.......

A spy in the sky not much bigger than a fly has been developed by a top American university. Scientists at Harvard have invented a robotic fly to send on reconnaissance missions in areas too dangerous for humans, such as those contaminated by chemical or biological weapons. It can also be used to find hidden bombs and in search missions. The "flybot", which can fit on a fingertip, is made of lightweight carbon and weighs less than a pin. Researchers, led by Professor Robert Wood, spent seven years on the project with the backing of the US military. "The...

The U.S. aircraft manufacturer Boeing has unveiled its latest airliner model with great fanfare, and great focus on technological advances in its construction. At a ceremony at a company hangar in the state of Washington Sunday afternoon, some 15,000 guests saw Boeing's 787 Dreamliner for the first time. Boeing says the new airliner will use 20 percent less fuel than other similarly sized planes because of the carbon composite material used in its airframe. An airplane made of composites weighs less than a metal plane, and requires less fuel to do the same job. The 787 has not yet left...

ROLLA, Mo. — Camp Winnigootchee was never like this. A group of high school students stood at the edge of a limestone quarry last month as three air horn blasts warned that something big was about to go boom. Across the quarry, with a roar and a cloud of dust and smoke, a 50-foot-high wall of rock sloughed away with a shudder and a long crashing fall, and 20,000 tons of rock was suddenly on the ground. The campers laughed. “That’s cool!” said Ian Dalton, a student from Camdenton, Mo. Austin Shoemaker, a student from Macon, Mo., concurred. “It was...

Switzerland has opened the world's longest rail tunnel on land - the 34-kilometre (21-mile) Loetschberg tunnel under the Alps. It will cut the journey time between Germany and Italy by at least a third.

Helicopter Shield Invention Gets Attention Of U.S. MilitaryBy KEVIN COUGHLIN   Richard Glasson, chief engineer at Control Products Inc. in East Hanover, N.J., with his invention, a prototype net mesh parachute to be deployed by rockets as protection for helicopters from enemy fire. (Photo by Patti Sapone)     [Morris County, NJ ] -- Richard Glasson spends most days hunkered in an office cubicle, where he designs computer sensors for bulldozers and backhoes. But he's proudest of an invention he dreamed up in the shower.His patent-pending "rocket-propelled barrier defense system'' is a simple idea with a serious goal: snagging rocket-fired...

May 4, 2007 — An unemployed former aerospace engineer has built a better spacesuit glove, claiming the first payoff in the NASA-backed Centennial Challenges competition. Peter Homer clinched a $200,000 prize in this week's Astronaut Glove Competition with a spacesuit glove that proved more comfortable, durable and flexible than gloves currently used by spacewalking astronauts. NASA turned to cash-prize competitions in an effort to solve some of its technical problems with low-cost, innovative solutions. Homer, for example, bought most of the materials for his gloves at local shops in his hometown of Southwest Harbor, Maine, and on eBay, said Alan...

JENNINGS, La. — The sun shone brightly on the crowd gathered at the rusting old oil refinery here, as company officials showed off diagrams explaining how they planned to turn weeds and agricultural wastes into car fuel. Government officials gave optimistic speeches. In the background, workers prepared a new network of pipes, tanks and conveyor belts. That was in October 1998, when ethanol from crop wastes seemed to be just around the corner. It still is. Last February, company officials gathered here once again, to break ground on a plant designed to make ethanol by yet another method. At the...

Miss January -- wearing only a G-string thong -- says she likes tattoos and Harley Davidsons. Miss July -- appearing in pink lingerie and a lab coat -- says she likes going to the beach but also the book Anna Karenina. Miss February likes taking naps, live music -- and "fun science demos." Like a Playboy pinup collection, this 2007 calendar features a dozen scantily clad models. But these students at the University of Illinois aren't your typical models. The women in the "Girls of Engineering" calendar were accepted to the Downstate campus' nationally ranked engineering program, where students on...

Baby Boomer Retirements Could Trigger A&D Engineering Crisis By Joseph C. Anselmo Dire warnings of an aerospace brain drain have been issued for so many years that it's easy to tune them out. Four years ago, a presidential commission predicted a "devastating loss of skill, experience and intellectual capital." Across the U.S., CEOs say the industry is not attracting nearly enough young engineers to replace the baby boomers that will start retiring in large numbers in the next few years. This magazine sounded the alarm in 1999, then 2000 and again in 2003.Yet the aerospace and defense (A&D) industry has...

Germany’s Automobilewoche reports that with the change in Volkswagen’s top management is coming a change in strategy for hybrids. Martin Winterkorn, who formerly headed the company’s Audi AG unit, became CEO after Bernd Pischetsrieder resigned at the end of 2006. Pischetsrieder had brought in Wolfgang Bernhard from DaimlerChrysler to run the Volkswagen unit. Berhard has now left (as of today), and Winterkorn will personally oversee the VW brand for the time being. Now, rather than target a mild hybrid Jetta for sale into the California market in 2008 as described by Pischetsrieder, Volkswagen will focus first on a full hybrid...

Robots Are Honored in Japan By HIROKO TABUCHI TOKYO - A feeding machine and a furry, therapeutic seal _ both designed to make life easier for older people _ were among robots honored at a government-sponsored robotics award ceremony in Japan on Thursday. The "My Spoon" feeding robot, which won a prize in the "service robots" category of the Robot Award 2006, helps older or disabled people eat with a joystick-controlled swiveling arm that shovels morsels from a plate to the person's mouth. My Spoon, which is already sold in Japan and Europe, doesn't force feed: the spoon-fitted arm stops...

New Delhi, Oct 30 (IANS) US engineering jobs are being 'offshored' to countries like India and China, a trend that is 'gaining momentum', says a study just out. But it says that it is still 'not clear' whether this would erode US competitiveness or provide long-term benefits to the West. 'What is clear is that there is insufficient independent research on this study,' says the study by the Durham, NC-based Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering Research. The study is titled 'Industry Trends in Engineering Offshoring'. Significantly, this study challenges the often-accepted view that China and India 'graduate 12 times...

Scientists have long said the only way to restore Louisiana’s vanishing wetlands is to undo the elaborate levee system that controls the Mississippi River, not with the small projects that have been tried here and there, but with a massive diversion that would send the muddy river flooding wholesale into the state’s sediment-starved marshes. And most of them have long dismissed the idea as impractical, unaffordable and lethal to the region’s economy. Now, they are reconsidering. In fact, when a group of researchers convened last April to consider the fate of the Louisiana coast, their recommendation was unanimous: divert the...

This is true Professor Wichman E-mail Claim: A Michigan professor sent an e-mail telling Muslim students to leave the country Status: True. Professor Wichman E-mail Hooray for Michigan State University (The Spartans) and Professor Wichman! Well, what do we have here. Looks like a small case of some people being able to dish it out, but not take it. Let's start at the top. The story begins at Michigan State University with a mechanical engineering professor named Indrek Wichman. Wichman sent an e-mail to the Muslim Student's Association. The e-mail was in response to the students' protest of the Danish...

FRANKFURT - When high school junior Daria Schirmer conducted scientific experiments with 8-year-olds as part of a school project this year – building a periscope or a compass with a magnet – she became not only an inventor of sorts but also part of the solution to what looms as one of Germany's greatest challenges: how to keep its sterling reputation as the world's leader in engineering. For centuries, Germany led the world in technological prowess, from the motorcycle to the refrigerator. In the 19th century, inventors and entrepreneurs like Gottlieb Daimler, Carl Benz, and Carl Wilhelm Siemens developed products...

A system that provides electricity, refrigeration and water - the three vital elements of emergency situations such as hurricanes and war - has been created by two University of Florida professors. William Lear, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and S.A. Sherif, a mechanical engineering professor, combined a gas turbine power plant with a heat-operated refrigeration system. The cool air from the refrigerator makes the turbine more efficient and powerful, Lear said, while waste heat from the turbine then powers the refrigeration. The engine, which runs on conventional fossil fuels, biomass-produced fuels or hydrogen, also forms about one...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — When hurricanes, wars or other emergencies force authorities to respond, three essentials top their list of must-haves: water, electricity and refrigeration. Now, in a project funded by the U.S. Army, two University of Florida engineers have designed, built and successfully tested a combined power-refrigeration system that can provide all three – and, with further development, be made compact enough to fit inside a military jet or large truck. “If you’re in a forward base in Iraq, it costs you the same per gallon of water as it does per gallon of fuel,” said William Lear, a UF...

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. ...