Any discussion of grand strategy must begin with a common understanding of the finer points of the eternal logic for keeping and employing arms. Western political elites responsible for recent defense policy have been sadly innocent of this field of knowledge, believing that new weapons and modern concepts have overturned ancient wisdoms.
America's intellectual capital is seriously at risk, and the role of engineering education in saving it is pivotal. But first and foremost, academic leaders must understand that this potential loss - of no less than the cumulative body of technical knowledge and engineering skill that in the past made the United States a leader in the global economy - could be catastrophic. And then, they must take action.
ENGINEERING PROFESSORS' teaching approaches are often rooted in their own experience as students. Conceptions of teaching develop over a lengthy period and are often quite resistant to change. Our study investigated whether faculty approaches to and conceptions of teaching can change as a result of collaboration between engineering faculty and learning specialists. In particular, we sought to discover whether faculty members would shift from an "information-transmission, teacherfocused" approach to teaching to a "studentcentered, learner-focused" approach, the kind that has been shown to promote deeper and more meaningful student learning.
IF DAVID CHESNEY is advising students on how to cooperate during group projects, he offers an anecdote that pokes fun at his own finicky streak: When someone at meeting asked to borrow his Pink Pearl eraser, he grew ,anxious. He knew if he said no, he would look selfish. So he handed it over, only to see the borrower ruin the nice, sharp edge that Chesney reserved for tiny errors. This drove Chesney nuts. " good for me anymore," Chesney told the man. "You can have it." Lesson? Don't let your own hang-ups get in the way of a good working relationship.
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates - The best Middle Eastern texts are "written in Cairo, printed in Beirut, and read in Baghdad." That saying, popular in the 1960s, has since become an epitaph for lost scholarship. The ensuing decades of war, political convulsion, and economic decay left the Arab world intellectually depleted. Home for centuries to some of the world's finest universities and academies, the Arab states have seen their technological and scientific talent shrivel over the past 30 years. According to the World Bank, they have lost 23 percent of their engineers, 50 percent of their doctors, and 15 percent of bachelor-of-science degree holders.
BRISTOL, England - British papers recently were filled with the kind of "frankenscience" stories that make Kathy Sykes cringe. Parliament was preparing to vote in favor of allowing medical research using human-animal hybrid embryos to bioengineer stem cells. Leaders of Britain's Roman Catholic Church charged that the legislation would lead to "monstrous" experiments comparable to those conducted under Hitler's Third Reich. Scientists angrily countered that church officials were grossly misleading the public.
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE TECHNOLOGY Prof. Hal Abelson and Phillip Greenspun have never met Kwadro Gyamfi Osafo-Maafo. They have never visited Ashesi University College or even set foot in Ghana. But Abelson and Greenspun might as well be standing on either side of Osafo-Maafo as he teaches Web Technologies in Ghana's capitan city, Accra. The syllabus he uses, the projects and readings he assigns, the lectures he presents, all are modeled at least in part on their MIT course, Software Engineering for Internet Applications. Osafo-Maafo thinks of Abelson and Greenspun as his mentors - the mentors he's never met.
WHEN A REAL-ESTATE developer read about my interest in the history of wooden-toothpick manufacturing in Maine, he informed me that he had bought the old Forster Mfg. Co. toothpick plant in Wilton. All of its machinery was in place, and he was thinking of starting it up again. He told me I was welcome to visit and look around.
IN MAY 2003, Ron Hira addressed a group of Carnegie Mellon University engineers and issued this warning: Globalization and the growing amount of research and development work being shipped overseas by American companies were putting engineering jobs at risk, scaring students from the profession, and endangering the country's technological lead and economic well-being. "I was laughed out of the room," recalls Hira, an engineer and assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology who specializes in the science and engineering workforce. "I was told these were not issues engineers needed to worry about."
At a time when the economy demands a knowledgeable workforce, access to higher education in the United States is slipping, according to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. A key factor is cost. Since the early 1980s, inflation in tuition has far outpaced the rise in household income and even healthcare costs (see chart). Once a leader in educational opportunity, the United States now ranks seventh in college graduates age 25 to 34.
CAMBODIA - Rice farmers in this Southeast Asian nation have traditionally cleared the land by hand. At the 500-acre farm in northwestern Batta m bang province where Sam Pov works, for instance, 30 people would shred the weeds and trees before planting. But large-scale migration for construction jobs in Phnom Penh,the capital, has created a rural labor shortage, forcing Cam- bodians to shift to newer technologies. With outside aid, including a new $600 million loan from Kuwait, they are adopting modern farm machinery. Sam Pov's farm now uses a $2,000 waste shredder, which he says "makes our lives so much easier. "The result: Cambodia is poised to become the region's next big food exporter. It could produce 1 5 million tons of rice per year, up from the current 6 million tons, if it relied more on machines and cultivated all available land, according to the Council for Agricultural and Rural Development. -GEOFF CAIN
If you visit Shanghai and get a sinking feeling, you're on to something. China's most populous coastal city has had a subsidence problem for decades. This was due, first, to its swampy terrain. Second, there was too much pumping of groundwater. City officials successfully waged a determined effort to replenish depleted aquifers with treated water; they also placed tough restrictions on the use of groundwater. But now, the sinking has returned with a vengeance - at a rate of around 7 millimeters a year. This time, the cause is the city's high-rise building boom, one key result of Shanghai's transformation into a global financial center.
A recession and credit crisis are shutting down U.S. automobile plants, but Ferrari remains confident it can still find 6,000 people a year willing to shell out $200,000 for one of its iconic sports cars. So it's continuing to turn its factory complex in Maranello, Italy, into something the New York Times calls a "museum of architecture."The wind tunnel was designed by Renzo Piano, whose previous works include the Pompidou center in Paris. The assembly hall is by Jean Nouvel, winner of the prestigious 2008 Pritzker Prize.The structures aspire not just to be works of art - to which Ferraris themselves are sometimes compared - but to boost efficiency. According to the Times, they save energy by using solar cells and trigeneration systems, which produce electricity, heat, and cooling simultaneously from a single energy source, like a gas burner. They also feature indoor gardens, where workers can meet or rest between shifts. -TG
Most soldiers killed on the battlefield die within 30 minutes of being wounded. So the faster they can be diagnosed and treated, the better their chances of survival. At the University of California, San Diego, Joseph Wang is working on a "field hospital on a chip" that could start treating wounded GIs well before they reach a real field hospital. A professor of nanoengineering,Wang received a $1.6 million four-year grant from the U.S.Office of Naval Research to develop a device that would continually monitor sweat, tears, and blood for biomarkers that indicate common injuries, including trauma, shock, brain injury, and fatigue. Once an injury is detected, it would automatically trigger a dispenser to administer the correct medication.
With the economy slowing, many states are forced to cut higher-education budgets. But a handful of mineral-rich states are still booming, and their engineering schools benefit. Texas is one. Last August, Mark W. Spong, an esteemed electrical engineer and roboticist, was considering retirement after 24 years at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. But then came the offer to be dean of engineering and computer science at the University of Texas at Dallas, overseeing 90 faculty members and 2,600 students. Spong took it, not wanting to miss the chance of leading a school in"a growth mode," as he told the Chronideof Higher Education. After UT Dallas President David E. Daniel, the former dean of engineering at Illinois, came onboard in 2005, the school opened an $85 million science and engineering research building and has been on a hiring spree. Daniel hopes to draw an additional $210 million from Texas's expected surplus.
When Internet giant Google launched its Book Search project in 2004, it aimed to digitize millions of books, in print and out, allowing readers and researchers to do full-text searches. But the scheme ran afoul of many writers and publishers of books still in copyright. The Authors Guild filed a class-action suit, and the Association of American Publishers sued, as well. Now, as a result of two years of quiet negotiations, an agreement has been reached that will allow the project to continue. Google will spend $125 million to set up the nonprofit, independent Book Rights Registry. For copyrighted books already scanned, it will dispense payments to writers and publishers, and pay their legal costs. In the future, it will manage revenues from the project that will be split between copyright holders and Google. Universities can purchase subscriptions for their students and faculty, while public libraries will be given free portals for users. Other customers will be charged pay-to-view fee
Call it the Facebook of budding scientists and engineers. Underthemicroscope.com is a new social-networking website geared to young women interested in science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM subjects. They can blog, link to resources, read science news articles, and post stories about themselves (one recent topic: What Got You Hooked on Science?). The site also plans to offer information on internships and scholarships. It's part of the Women Writing Science project, an effort launched by the Feminist Press at New York's City University to get young women interested in all things STEM. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the site will also publish books ranging from biographies to histories to how-to guides and fiction - all of which will be offered as free downloads. The site should have no shortage of Friends. -TG
Drought - partly caused by global warming - is becoming a worldwide plague. The amount of drought-affected land has doubled since the late 1970s. So genetic engineers at universities around the world, as well as at companies like Monsanto and DuPont's Pioneer Hi-Bred, are racing to develop drought-resistant crops, from corn to canola, based on a single "drought gene."The first crops could become commercially available in about four years. Performance Plants of Canada is tweaking plants to speed up their water preservation processes as soon as water becomes scarce. At the University of California, Davis, scientists have engineered tobacco plants to hold on to their leaves when drought hits. They picked tobacco because it has large leaves but say the technique should work with many food crops, too.
OK, you're walking down a street, and you point your cellphone at a movie theater. Onto your screen flashes a list of what's playing and the running times. You point it at a restaurant. It shows you the menu. When you point it at an office building, you get a directory of the businesses inside. Welcome to the world's first intelligent city - which is what researchers at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth are hoping to create. Prof A. Stewart Fotheringham, director of the $12.3 million project, says a key challenge is developing a common language for closed-circuit cameras, satellites, and radio-frequency ID monitors and then processing the collected data into useful information. Already researchers are building a three-dimensional computerized replica of Maynooth's North Campus.The immediate goal is an emergency management plan, but the same technology could be used to send live traffic updates to cars' satellite navigation systems or to help the visually impaired maneuver ar
The queen of England already owns countless acres of land in the United Kingdom, and quite a few buildings, too. Now she owns the world's largest wind turbine. Under construction in northern England by Clipper Windpower of California, the 10-megawatt behemoth will tower 574 feet - that's 258 feet taller than Big Ben. It's a prototype for Clipper's Britannia Project, a new class of massive turbines that will operate from deep-sea floating platforms.The Crown Estate, which manages Queen Elizabeth ll's property holdings, bought the mega tur- bine earlier this year. Once in operation off England's coast, it will supply electricity to 3,700 homes and, over its lifetime, will dis- place 2 million barrels of oil and 724,000 tons of carbon dioxide. At 10 megawatts, the turbine will produce five times more electricity than average windmills. Britain has set a goal of producing 33 gigawatts of electricity from offshore wind turbines by 2020. Getting the crown estate involved was essential, since
Scientists call them atmospheric brown clouds (ABCs). They're noxious plumes of soot, sulfates, and other chemicals that are darkening skies over Asia, threatening water and agriculture, disturbing the monsoon system, and shrinking glaciers and snowpacks - not to mention contributing to hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Five ABC "hot spots" are East Asia, including Hong Kong, above; South and Southeast Asia; southern Africa; and the Amazon basin. Caused by autos, slash-and-burn agriculture, dung or wood fires, and coal-fired power plants, they're an added reason for tougher antipollution laws, say authors of a recent United Nations report.
SOME 30 YEARS AGO, Marshall McLuhan declared that in the 20th-century electronic age, the world had become a global village. McLuhan, author, communications theorist, and, briefly, an engineer- ing major, wrote that electronic technologies would allow collapse of space and time. Today, the Internet has indeed globalized communication and enabled users worldwide, from all levels of society, to easily connect and exchange ideas. This month's Prism cover story, "Millions Log In," looks at the bold and revolutionary program MIT developed to offer, via the Internet, its entire curriculum to anyone, anywhere in the world, free. This remarkable effort resulted in a rich educational resource, MIT's OpenCourseWare. The site, composed of MIT's full curriculum, gets 15 million visitors a year. Faculty and students from Ghana, Uganda, and Nigeria use the site, while half of all users log in from Asia. "Free to users" does not mean without cost, however; It's estimated that each course costs the un
A white paper titled "Improving Alternator Efficiency Measurable Reduces Fuel Costs" has been published by Remy, Inc. The paper provides an in-depth explanation of how an alternator works, examines where and how losses can occur within the alternator and quantifies how efficiency plays a role in fuel consumption. The paper can be downloaded from the Delco Remy website at www.delcoremy.com/Alternators HighEjf.aspx. High-efficiency Delco Remy alternator specifications can be accessed from this page as well.
Myths abound when it comes to tire inflation. For instance, owners tend to believe they don't have to check their tires once a month. Technicians sometimes believe they're a better judge of how much pressure a tire should hold than the engineer who designed it. I'm probably in good company admitting that I check tire pressures on my personal vehicles only when I change oil - unless, of course, a tire looks low. Whenever I'm too busy to change my own oil, the tech at the shop I patronize lowers the tire inflation from the specified 36 psi to 32 psi.
Truly, 2008 will go down as one of the most tumultuous years for both the American economy and the global automotive business. What started off as a crisis in the housing industry quickly turned into a crisis in the lending of money for automobile loans. The resulting drop of more than 40% in newcar sales has crippled the American Big Three and hampered the sales of foreign makes as well. Already GM, Chrysler, Ford and others have delayed or canceled new models that were scheduled for release over the next 24 to 36 months.
With the energy crisis and worldwide financial crunch grabbing all the headlines these days, two organizations - Recaptured Energy Technologies and the Engine Repower Council - may offer viable solutions in those areas.
In an effort to present a more consistent branding strategy worldwide, MAHLE Clevite Inc. will immediately transition all of its light vehicle engine part categories - except engine bearings - to the MAHLE Original brand. All heavy-duty products will remain Clevite brand.
Delphi is launching new service and training product lines that it says are comprehensive in coverage and competitive in price. The products in the DS line- DS650, DS850 and DS450 - are designed specifically for aftermarket shops that are looking to increase productivity and increase shop revenue.
Last month the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence (ASE) announced two new additions to the Transit Bus Certification Test Series, which will be available for the May 2009 test administration. The new tests are Compressed Natural Gas Engines (Hl) and Preventive Maintenance and Inspection (H8).
There's more to the story of performance brake rotors than appearance alone. In this article, we'll discuss performance brake rotor design and materials. This information should help you and your enthusiast customers decide what's best for a specific application.
Can something as simple as leaving the ignition switch on cost you an air bag control unit? Indeed, it can. This month, I'll explain that ugly scenario and recap some great tips you've sent me on Honda Civic Hybrid service.
Wells Fargo has provided a $75,000 grant to the Universal Technical Institute (UTI) Foundation to establish the Wells Fargo Technical Scholarship Fund, which will support 25 scholarships for students seeking degrees at UTI.
Dill Air Controls Products last mondi announced the voluntary recall of some of its automobile tire valve stems sold in the U.S. between November 2006 and July 2007. The snap-in rubber valve stems were made by Topseal Auto Parts Co., Ltd., in Shanghai, China and carry the "Dill ACP" brand name. You may want to alert your customers to this recall campaign.
The policy of the government paying to remove older, less-fuel-efficient or high-polluting vehicles from America's highways - referred to as "Cash for Clunkers" by Princeton University's Dr. Alan Blinder in a New York Times article published last year - is receiving renewed attention from policymakers.
In the making of electronic assemblies - and complete vehicles, for that matter - glues, adhesives and interface materials are widely used. In the subsequent repair of these assemblies, glue often is considered the best method to fix something rather than screwing on yet another expensive assembly.
Many of your customers may feel as if they're friends as well. With second- and even third-generation families, it's understandably hard for them not to feel closer to you and your staff than the average customer going into a car dealership or franchise shop. There are lots of pluses to that kind of relationship, but some disadvantages, too. One of the major negatives relates to loaner cars.
I'm old enough to remember black & white vacuum tube televisions and how unreliable they were. When I was a kid, in what seemed liked a monthly ritual, my father would remove a dozen or so tubes from the back of our RCA, gently place them in a brown paper bag, then walk my brother and me to the local Two Guys From Harrison store, where we'd diligently check each one in the Test-O-Matic tube-testing machine. At the time, I'm sure Dad's do-it-yourself attitude had less to do with his desire to understand how a television worked than it did with preserving every possible penny of the household budget. And, even when those tubetesting rituals didn't produce any tangible results, the experience probably left him feeling at least somewhat educated when he had to call a professional in.
New courses that combine tradition- al in-class study with self-regulating Web-based study have been intro- duced by Bosch Training. In this "Blended Learning" curriculum, the Web-based material makes it possible to reduce the length of the courses, thus keeping technicians in the shop where their expertise is needed during part of the training cycle. This so-called learn-whereyou-live approach is supplemented by the traditional hands-on teaching method in a real-world environment. This OEM-level training, which was previously open only to Bosch Car Service (BCS) shops (see below), is now available to all aftermarket facilities, regardless of affiliation.
The basis for sustained recovery in market sentiment arrives when investors feel confi- dent that the worst has been fully account- ed-for. However, as yet, there is scant evi- dence that this moment is at hand. Firstly, economic forecasts remain subject to ongo- ing review as negative trickle-down effects permeate through the global economy; and secondly, it is clear that investors have lim- ited faith in official endeavors at stoking recovery. This is evident from the fact that equity markets are broadly unchanged from late-October despite the implementation of fiscal and monetary stimulus measures of unprecedented proportions. In a world rid- dled with debt, the fact is that the efficacy of traditional economic policy measures has been seriously compromised.
Just a year after Petrobras, Brazil's state-controlled oil company, predicted Brazil would triple its annual ethanol output to around 70 billion liters by 2020, the market appears to be slumping. Falling global oil prices are making Brazilian ethanol less competitive, while a credit crunch, growing investor caution and an international economic slowdown that could ease demand for fuel are conspiring to dampen the sector's prospects.
Central banks around the world dug deeply into their ammunition dumps and unleashed a volley of outsized rate cuts in December, hoping to keep their economies from worsening amid a global recession. The Fed- eral Reserve cut its target for the federal funds rate to a record low range of 0% to 0.25% on Decem- ber 16. However, after a series of rate cuts totaling more than 500 basis points since September 2007, the US economy has deteriorated instead of improving.
A burgeoning global movement to reshape corporate behavior by weaving corporate social responsibility principles into business school teaching got a boost last month. At the first Global Forum for Responsible Management Education, held at the United Nations headquarters in New York, about 260 business school leaders from 43 countries discussed how academic institutions can instill a sense of social responsibility in future business leaders who can then bring those ethics into the corporate world.
Eager to maintain its status as Latin America's largest financial institution, Banco do Brasil, Brazil's largest state-controlled bank, announced the acquisition of Mossa Caixa, a bank owned by the S5o Paulo state government. The move comes on the heels of a merger between rivals Banco ltau and Unibanco. However, Banco do Brasil's $2.25 billion acquisition led to a drop in its share price, as analysts contend the bank's eagerness led to an overpriced deal.
The Central Bank of Nigeria issued guidelines for establishing and operating credit bureaus, in a move that will support the development of the country's credit market by providing greater access to information on creditworthiness. Under the new guidelines, banks and their subsidiaries can invest up to 10% of a credit bureau's paid-in capital, though no financial institution may take a stake in more than one credit bureau. To apply for a credit bureau license, a company must deposit the equivalent of some $4.2 million with the central bank as a refundable minimum capital requirement. The central bank must approve the appointment of all credit bureau directors and managers.
Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa has made good on his 2006 presidential campaign promise to default on any foreign debt deemed illegitimate, defaulting on $3.9 billion in global bonds. This marks Ecuador's seventh default since gaining independence in 1830, with the most recent taking place just a decade ago.
China has increased export tax re- bates and depreciated the value of the yuan relative to the US dollar in recent weeks, prompting fears that protectionist pressures could be tak- ing hold in the world's fastest-growing major economy (see cover story, page 20). Neither of the two issues was re- solved at the fifth China-US Strategic Economic Dialogue, although repre- sentatives from both countries pledged to fight protectionism. The meeting was the last for outgoing US treasury secretary Henry Paulson, who proposed the semi-annual meet- ings in 2006. The dialogue did yield some results, including joint environmental commitments, an agreement providing greater foreign access to China's bond market and a pledge for the two countries to provide global markets with $20 billion in credit.
