Solar power photovoltaics (PV) is on the road to becoming a mainstream energy technology

REVE
March 28, 2011

Solar energy photovoltaic (PV) has a critical contribution to the three pillars of the EU's energy policy: competitiveness, energy security of supply and sustainability.
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Daimler puts up €1.75 M to fund PhDs and drive knowledge transfer for electric cars

Science Business
March 23, 2011

The German carmaker is teaming up with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the State of Baden-Wuerttemberg Launch to launch a PhD research group specialising in electric vehicles.
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Warwick and partners awarded £1.4M in national solar energy program

Science Business
March 28, 2011

The University of Warwick is a key part of a consortium that has just been awarded £1.4 Million by a new national programme designed to develop the next generation of solar energy harvesting technology.
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Stanford engineers put a damper on 'aeroelastic flutter'

Stanford University
March 24, 2011

Anyone who has ever flown knows the feeling: an otherwise smooth flight gets a little choppy. If you are lucky, the plane skips a few times like a rock across a pond and then settles. For the not-so-lucky, the captain has turned on that seatbelt sign for a reason, but even the worst turbulence usually fades.
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ASME Articles of Interest - The Era of Insufficient Plenty, Manufacturing at the Crossroads, Custom Model, Credit to the Bicycle

The Era of Insufficient Plenty

"For more than 100 years, the United States has been the world’s largest industrial power, consuming a plurality of the world’s resources. Outstanding science and engineering have made it possible to extract and process natural resources to make almost any type of product at a reasonable cost and the United States has never confronted a situation in which another country matched our consumption. Today, we face that situation from China and India, nations with enormous populations, very large workforces of educated professionals, fast-growing economies, and voracious appetites for resources."
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Manufacturing at the Crossroads

"U.S. manufacturers have taken a beating this past decade. As the economy pulls itself out of the recession, they are approaching a crossroads. What happens as the United States climbs out of the recession? Does production move overseas or return home? Does American manufacturing muscle bulk up or atrophy? Job losses in manufacturing have been staggering. From 17-18 million manufacturing workers for 20 years prior to the 2001 recession, employment has plummeted, down to 12 million workers in 2009."

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Custom Model

"Dell is offered up again and again as the prime example of customized manufacturing done right and done successfully. Shortly after its founding in 1984, Dell began a configure-to-order approach to manufacturing. Customers choose from multiple options for their own computers on the Dell Web site and then the computer is manufactured."

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Credit to the Bicycle

"Today an estimated one billion bicycles are used throughout the world, but they often don’t get the credit they deserve.  The first 90 years of the bicycle made world-changing engineering achievements possible that extended to modern motorized forms of transportation. What’s ahead for the next?"

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Bridgepoint's Ashford University Closes Ombuds Office

The private, for-profit coeducational liberal arts university owned by Bridgepoint Education has announced that it is closing the Ombuds Office it opened three years ago. To replace the Ombuds program, Ashford will open a Student Dispute Resolution Center on April 1, 2011. The new resource will provide, "expedited informal resolutions, confidential facilitated negotiation services and a formal grievance process."

The university says that the current Ombuds (Michael Kilpatrick and Jen Graf Sims) are working to close or refer their cases. The implication is that neither will transition to the new Student Dispute Resolution Center. As Ashford's first Ombuds, Kilpatrick was responsible for revising the formal mandate of the office to bring it within IOA standards. This is the second Ombuds office closure that Graf has endured -- she was previously an Ombuds at the University of Hawaii. (Ashford Student Dispute Resolution Center.)

Related posts: Ashford University Opens Ombuds Office; Bridgepoint Education Hires Associate Ombuds; Job Posting.

New trash-to-treasure process turns landfill nuisance into plastic

American Chemical Society
March 27, 2011

With billions of pounds of meat and bone meal going to waste in landfills after a government ban on its use in cattle feed, scientists today described development of a process for using that so-called meat and bone meal to make partially biodegradable plastic that does not require raw materials made from oil or natural gas. They reported here today at the 241^st National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).
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