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The Drawing Board - Engineering News with Attitude - Be Inspired -
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Environmental and Life Cycle
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Sean
When the owner of Bluehouse , an environmentally conscious Baltimore home store, needed to decorate his newest location, he didn't want subtle.
He wanted something striking, something that would shout - even passionately sing - a testament to green living.
David Buscher went with a living wall.
The living wall, or green wall as some call it, is a massive installation of greenery that, reaching from floor to ceiling, dominates the new Bluehouse store at The Shops at Kenilworth mall in Towson. Composed of thousands of plants, the wall is part foliage, part air filter, part art - but all statement.
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Monday 5 January, 2009 01:39 AM |
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Environmental and Life Cycle
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by George Tan
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Most of the new California electric car start-ups were started by the auto-design equivalent of fashionistas - auto afficionados who love cars for their gorgeous design, the thrill of the torque and the 0-60 in whatever seconds. So they build beautiful electric cars able to attain speeds that only those of us who can afford the speeding tickets could ever afford.
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Sunday 4 January, 2009 11:23 PM |
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Environmental and Life Cycle
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
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The management of Singapore’s famous riverside entertainment hotspot, Clarke Quay , opted to install simple canopies, which are more cost effective than covering walkways with glass and air-conditioning them, says manager Dawn Tan. Those canopies saves the Quay S$1.5mil (RM3.64mil) in energy and maintenance costs every five years.
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Sunday 4 January, 2009 03:22 PM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by John William
It might look like a retro-styled kit car, but the IFR Aspid is probably one of the most futuristic machines on the road. It is also one of the fastest. The figures are scarcely believable: 0-62mph takes 2.8sec and hitting 100mph takes just 5.9sec.
Those sorts of numbers put it on a par with the Bugatti Veyron, but unlike that car, which costs about £1m, the Aspid, when it first appeared, was expected to cost a more modest £90,000. But perhaps the most surprising thing about the Aspid is its country of origin: Spain. In fact, with the exception of Fernando Alonso, the former Formula One world champion, it is probably the fastest thing to ever come out of the country.
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Sunday 4 January, 2009 03:20 PM |
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Environmental and Life Cycle
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Barot Casha
For all of its 21st-century advancements , the shipping industry drags a lot of old technology around.
Giant vessels are so sophisticated that they require only a handful of crew members. But the ships still burn a thick, dirty sludge called bunker fuel while at sea and slurp diesel to keep the lights and air conditioning running while in port.
Inefficient yard tractors and cranes guzzle fuel and spew exhaust as they stack containers. And tugboats, pound for pound the most powerful vessels on the water, waste most of that idling or cruising.
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Sunday 4 January, 2009 12:40 PM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Dillon Smatcher
FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) launched its
eighteenth FIRST Robotics Competition season today with a Kickoff of a new
robotics game called "Lunacy" at Southern New Hampshire University in
Manchester, NH, hometown and headquarters of FIRST.
"Forty years ago, NASA fueled a generation`s imagination with the success of
Apollo 11. As we celebrate that remarkable feat of technology and engineering
with our 2009 game, "Lunacy," we are sparking more of that kind of inspiration
through the FIRST Robotics Competition," said FIRST founder, Dean Kamen. "Just
as NASA scientists landed a man on the moon and returned him safely to earth in
1969, so too will these young people go on to explore new frontiers and develop
breakthrough technologies that will change the world."
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Sunday 4 January, 2009 11:18 AM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Rose Shah
A vehicle that travels 500 km on a litre of fuel , with water as an important component. That's the prototype of `Project
Garuda RVCE Supermileage' by students of R V College of Engineering in their bid to build an energy-efficient, eco-friendly vehicle.
The project tackles the twin crises of exhaustion of renewable energy
resources and global warming. "Our first prototype released in August last year delivered a mileage of 180 kilometre per litre. The new vehicle is being touted as the most fuel-efficient vehicle in India," observes Aashay Sahay, Project Garuda team member.
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Sunday 4 January, 2009 07:16 AM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
A new robot concept is raising the hopes of the building industry that the high-tech future will be populated with smart excavating robots that will easily replace the high-cost of insurance-needing human contractors.
If the Eddy machine comes to pass, it also appears that gravediggers soon will be looking for a job.
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Saturday 3 January, 2009 02:53 AM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
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An army of ironworkers , masons, carpenters and laborers are swarming the campus of the University of Michigan these days, as the university undertakes a construction campaign budgeted at $2.5 billion, ranking it among the largest university building programs in the United States.
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Friday 2 January, 2009 10:52 PM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Adam Crighton
It's smaller than a Mini but the British inventor says it seats four in style, goes like a bomb and does 80mpg. Pure hype - or a glimpse of the future?
Your car - handsome and fast though it may be - is a dinosaur. Under those sleek lines - and the veneer of electronic, sat-navved and airbagged sophistication - it is bloated, heavy and hungry.
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Friday 2 January, 2009 06:50 PM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
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Housed in a long-abandoned nursing home outside Waynesburg, Greene County, off the R&D path trod by the likes of Carnegie Mellon University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a firm that comprises primarily Ph.D.-educated researchers using some of the most modern equipment found anywhere.
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Friday 2 January, 2009 02:49 PM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
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The two accompanying charts record what is happening with respect to employment in the design services in Canada . The first chart shows the numbers on employment, as derived from the labour force survey (LFS) of Statistics Canada. The second takes the absolute numbers in the first chart and records them as year-over-year percent changes.
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Friday 2 January, 2009 10:47 AM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Dave Ellery
Starting this year, Koreans will be able to travel across the country on a high-speed train made with independent Korean technology.
With the tentatively named KTX-II train, Korea will be the fourth country in the world - after Japan, France and Germany - to have the technology to manufacture a high-speed train which runs at 300 kilometers (186 miles) per hour or faster.
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Friday 2 January, 2009 10:01 AM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Simulation of a massive Southern California quake suggests about 5 steel high-rise buildings would collapse. But many engineers say other buildings are riskier and should receive priority in retrofit plans.
Modern steel buildings have long been considered among the most sturdy in the event of a major earthquake. But a model of a massive quake in Southern California has sparked debate among scientists and engineers over whether these structures are more vulnerable than previously thought.
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Friday 2 January, 2009 06:45 AM |
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Environmental and Life Cycle
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by John William
Although not popular to many in the environmental community, one low/zero-carbon energy supply alternative that has to be at least put on the table for serious consideration is nuclear energy.
Yes, yes, we know the litany of concerns about nuclear energy: runaway fission leading to explosive catastrophes like the one that occurred in 1986 at Chernobyl, long-lived and extremely toxic waste products, and the use of fuels that make for scary weapons-grade materials for terrorists to exploit.
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Wednesday 24 December, 2008 11:25 PM |
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Environmental and Life Cycle
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Pat Sheen
T. Boone Pickens may well have been right: Oil dependence is almost certainly “one emergency we can’t drill our way out of.” But if a University of Michigan engineer knows half of what he thinks he knows about water power, the solution to the world’s energy needs doesn’t have much to do with the billionaire oilman’s much-advertised vision of an endless line of windmills stretching from Texas to Canada.
The real answer may be a cylinder continuously moving up and down in an 8,000-gallon water tank in the Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering Building on the University of Michigan’s North Campus in Ann Arbor.
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Wednesday 24 December, 2008 04:23 PM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Bob Smith
More people are turning to the classics - and we're not talking about literature.
We're talking four wheels and a chassis, covered in sleek metal that harks back to an earlier day when cars had a stronger sense of individuality beyond the cookie-cutter sedans of today.
For a small bit growing breed of independent-minded car enthusiasts enamoured of classic cars, buying an original isn't a practical choice. Hard-core purists may insist on lovingly restoring their hand-sourced acquisitions to their original glory bit in Singapore, where the mantra "new is good" applies to all purchases, a car that is new but looks classic is one niche that several boutique car makers are looking to fill.
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Wednesday 24 December, 2008 12:29 PM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Late Monday afternoon officials with Pinellas and Hillsborough counties took the advice of engineers and closed the entire Friendship Trailbridge .
“This bridge at its current conditions is unsafe and should be closed immediately,” concluded the 261-page final engineering report from outside engineering firms Kisinger Campo & Associates and SDR Engineering Consultants.
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Wednesday 24 December, 2008 08:21 AM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Tar sands are a mixture of hydrocarbon-rich bitumen mixed in sandstone layers. When the hydrocarbons are separated, the bitumen released is a heavy, black and sticky semi-liquid of high viscosity. Today, SRI Consulting published its new Heavy Oil from Tar Sands report, a technical and economic analysis of production processes, capital and operating cost estimates, important issues that impact the industry, and key drivers for success and failure.
Author and Senior Consultant Anthony Pavone commented, "With rational engineering and prudent business decision making, grass roots tar sands projects should be economically viable at benchmark crude oil prices below US$60 a barrel."
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Friday 19 December, 2008 12:08 AM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Sean
When the Steelers beat the Ravens Sunday, Ben Roethlisberger and Hines Ward had another of their patented moments during the final drive.
The quarterback fired a low pass and the wide receiver slid and scooped the ball up just before it hit the turf.
In this case, the referees -- and the camera -- had a clear view of the play. But what if their vision had been obscured, even with the multiple camera angles of today's National Football League?
That's where Priya Narasimhan and her students think they might be able to help.
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Thursday 18 December, 2008 08:06 PM |
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Clipped to the Drawing Board by Pat Sheen
The engineering design challenges of ShoWare Center started below the ground and continued up to the building’s highest point.
The project’s tight budget and restricted schedule also complicated design: the city of Kent wanted a lot of arena for their money, and they wanted it in time for the 2008 Thunderbird hockey season. Starting in early 2007, the game was on, and Magnusson Klemencic Associates, the project’s structural and civil engineer, worked with LMN Architects to develop a winning strategy.
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Thursday 18 December, 2008 02:05 PM |
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