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Editorial
Are engineers born or made? |
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Editorial notes
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Monday, 23 October 2006 |
 With engineering salaries stagnant and the number of graduating engineering students dropping where will the engineers of tomorrow come from? It is sobering to learn that steadily diminishing numbers of college students are choosing careers in science and engineering. The past 15 years have seen the number of engineering and computer science B.S. degrees granted in the US drop from about 110,000 to a low of 88,000, although it has recently rebounded to about 109,000, according to the National Science Board (NSB). Despite the rebound, the US still is granting engineering degrees at a lower rate than in the mid-1980s and, nationally, less than 55 percent of students who undertake engineering studies complete them. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) forecasts two million new science and engineering (S&E) jobs by 2012 (National Science Foundation, Science & Engineering Indicators 2006). However, the American educational system is failing to produce a sufficient number of scientists and engineers with university degrees to meet the growing demand for non-academic professionals.
Some people are born to be engineers, it seems. My father was an aeronautical engineers and it was assumed that I would follow in his footsteps. As a child my favorite toy was my Erector Set. It came with a gearbox with exposed, very sharp gears. Among many useful things that I gleaned from working with the Erector Set, I learned at an early age, mainly by acquiring numerous blood blisters, to keep my fingers out of the gearbox when the motor was running. Later I got a novice amateur radio license and spent many happy hours scouring the ham bands for QSLs. I also built and flew model airplanes.
But the educational system was not especially kind to me. I didn’t feel at home in school until I encountered Plane Geometry. There my visual intelligence -- a key intelligence for engineering -- kicked in and I could solve problems faster than I could write out and draw the solutions. I also enjoyed and did well in mechanical drafting classes, particularly in descriptive geometry.
But the science education I received in high school did little to encourage me to become an engineer. The Irish poet W. B. Yeats said a century ago: "Education is not filling a bucket, it is lighting a fire" Of course, all children are naturally inquisitive, eager to learn and ask questions. Only some, it seems, are driven to discover scientific facts and to turn that passion into a relevant career in engineering or science. The conventional wisdom is that the way to increase the number of kids interested in science and engineering is to retain the existing curriculum in middle and high school but with smaller classes and better trained teachers. Could more childred be encouraged to take up engineering if science and engineering were taught in earlier grades?
Is the problem the supply of new US engineers, and the ability of our educational system to train and motivate them? Or is it the stark reality of the job market for emerging students and the massive outsourcing of engineering jobs to the third world. An engineering student today faces competition to land a job in the first place. Many corporations look only at the top 5% of the graduating classes. People with good, strong educations are not even considered. Once a job is secured, rather than an environment of career advancement based on technical achievement and contribution to the hiring company, the new engineer faces a world of frequent layoffs, dwindling benefits, and total indifference and lack of employee loyalty by the hiring company. I think many young adults, when choosing a career path, are taking a realistic view of the engineering and scientific services industries and asking, "Who needs it?"
“The education we provide engineers must prepare them to move beyond merely fulfilling a technological function and become leaders who make wise decisions about technology and set policies that foster innovation,” G. Wayne Clough, Georgia Institute of Technology president and National Academy of Engineering (NAE) member, said in his alumnus magazine.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 26 October 2006 )
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The Mandate For Energy Saving External Power Supplies |
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Editorial notes
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Monday, 16 October 2006 |
A while back I wrote a tongue-in-cheek editorial about saving energy dissipated by wall plug-in power supplies (“wall warts”) when they are not under load. It seems that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) found that wall power supplies dissipate three watts in standby. I counted up the number of plug-in power supplies in my office and multiplied by three watts and the number of hours in a year to calculate the total number of kilowatt-hours I was wasting. At fifteen cents per kilowatt hour it turned out I was saving a small amount of money on my electric bill by plugging in my wall warts to switched plug strips and switching them off when they were not powering their loads.
But, it turns out, energy efficient plug-in power supplies are no joke. Phihong USA has released a line of desktop and wall plug-in adapters that meet the new specifications for external power supplies required by the California Energy Commission as of 1st January 2007. The company, which is active in many environmental programs and serves on a number of eco-oriented committees, has delivered products that meet the standard since 2004 when Energy Star developed standards for the best performing products.
“Our two main concerns were meeting the new standards without increasing cost, as well as doing it in a timeframe which would enable our customers to have their products and inventory ready and prevent them from having products they could no longer sell,” said Keith Hopwood, Vice President of Marketing for Phihong USA. “Many manufacturers are just now realizing that they need to make their products CEC-compliant to legally sell in California, Arizona and Washington by the mandated timeline or risk getting fined or risk having to recall and replace products.”
On 15th December 2005, the CEC adopted appliance energy efficiency standards for power supplies sold or offered for sale in California. Arizona and Washington have now also followed with legislation pending in New York State and several others. The standards, which were to take effect on 1st July 2006, have now been extended to 1st January 2007 to give manufacturers time to implement compliant products. The standards apply to single-voltage external AC- DC or AC- AC power supplies, and among the specifications require a minimum efficiency and maximum standby power when unloaded.
The efficiency level is calculated based on power levels. Maximum energy consumption in no-load mode must be 0.5W if the output is less than 10W and 0.75W if the output is between 10 and 250W – significantly less than the 3W that the NIST found.
Phihong has been active in promoting environmentally sound power products, adapting its product lines to meet RoHS, WEEE, EU Code of Conduct, China Energy Council, Canadian Standards, Australian and New Zealand MEPS, Energy Star, and Proposition 65 standards as well. In January 2005, Phihong became the first manufacturer of external power supplies to be named a partner of the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star Program. On average, Energy Star models are 35% more efficient than conventional designs, and often are lighter and smaller in size. According to the CEC website, the energy savings from the new standards over the next ten years will enable the state to avoid building three large power plants.
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A Wireless PC In Your Pocket? |
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Editorial notes
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Monday, 09 October 2006 |
“Smaller, lighter, cheaper, more performance” is the mantra for consumer electronics. The success of wireless PDAs like the Blackberry has the PC industry developing new portable computing products.
Intel is developing a new category of ultra mobile PCs (UMPCs) that may eventually be small enough to put in your pocket. The UMPC will have extended battery life and will propel the Intel architecture into portable PCs that allow users to take the Internet with them. David “Dadi” Perlmutter, Intel senior VP and general manager for the Mobile Computing Group, sketched out the UMPCs during a keynote address at the recent Intel Developer Forum held in San Francisco. Microsoft unveiled its efforts around the UMPC, code-named Origami, in March.
Intel’s vision of UMPCs centers around the mobile Internet, according to Anand Chandrasekher, senior VP and general manager of Intel’s Ultra Mobile Group. “The fullness of the Internet on mobile devices not been tapped yet,” he said. “Try to download MySpace or YouTube content to your mobile. When we get those capabilities, we will unleash the full potential of the mobile Internet, and that’s the inflection point we are targeting.” Success of the UMPC will require the confluence of several factors, he said, including broadband Internet -- likely in the form of WiMAX. In addition, advances must be made in the user interface and keyboard interface. “The confluence comes together in the two year timeframe,” Chandrasekher said. “In that time frame this category starts to rock.”
The UMPC category creation will start in 2007 and come together in 2008, he said. “A simple event can change the perception of a device,” he said. “The introduction of Centrino did just that.” Chandrasekher and Perlmutter both noted that while notebook PCs existed before Centrino, the category took off once the Centrino platform was launched and gave users access to computing untethered from wires. Similarly, Intel executives believe that the UMPC “device category is about a completely new class of services and capabilities. We are still in the early stage of experimentation,” Chandrasekher said.
A prototype device shown during both Perlmutter and CEO Paul Otellini’s keynote addresses here at IDF was not so small it could fit into a pocket. Rather, it was about the size of portable DVD players that are popular for plane trips. The executives noted that the form factor of the device would shrink, but Chandrasekher said that the device would begin to lose its usefulness once the screen shrank below 5 inches. The prototype shown by Intel featured streaming media, GPS and movie playbacks as some of the features that may be included on such a device. The prototype offered a keyboard, bigger than that on a Blackberry device, but similar in look to a Blackberry keyboard, and smaller than a notebook keyboard.
Intel believes that the UMPC will be a ripe opportunity in 2008 when Clearwire and Sprint are expected to have completed their national WiMAX broadband wireless data networks.
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