Interesting engineering news and general interest to get you through the week. » Latest Engineering News » Did You KnowDid You Know
Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Did you know Trivia - Purdue University are the first to precisely measure the forces required to peel tiny nanotubes off of other materials, opening up the possibility of creating standards for nano-manufacturing and harnessing a gecko's ability to walk up walls.
So-called "peel tests" are used extensively in manufacturing. Knowing how much force is needed to pull a material off of another material is essential for manufacturing, but no tests exist for nanoscale structures, said Arvind Raman, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue.
click the link to read more
|
|
Tuesday 29 April, 2008 04:00 PM |
| |
Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Did you know Trivia -BEIJING - Wuxi, a city in Jiangsu province boasting a proud 30-year history of producing cartoons, is set for another shot in the arm from the animation industry.
The city has tasked local animation studios with creating 100,000 minutes of homegrown programming including two new famous cartoon characters, as well as two new online games, by 2010, according to Liu Hongzhi, vice-mayor of the city.
"Fostering a homegrown industry chain comprising original cartoon making and research and development of related products including video games, clothing, publications and toys, is the primary task," Liu said Sunday.
At present, the animation industry's profits are mainly snaffled by U.S. and Japanese firms. A lot of cartoon studios in Wuxi are still limited to producing outsourced work for overseas firms, according to Liu.
click this link to read more
|
|
Tuesday 29 April, 2008 12:23 PM |
| |
Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Did you know Trivia - Just like the classic British comedy was set in a slightly crazy hotel, this temple of propaganda and Olympic Games TV coverage is being built in the middle of a pretty nutty ideological and political situation, on a fantastically tight schedule.
Everybody may have a different take on what China should and should not do, but one thing is clear - they are doing their darnedest to appear the best in the Olympic spotlight. We've heard about their desperate attempt to make Peking an ecologically cleaner city (part of which is... a massive killing of cats, no less!) and we may doubt if they're really going to clean up their act - but they certainly choose eye-catching designs when it comes to architecture!
click this link to read more
|
|
Tuesday 29 April, 2008 08:04 AM |
| |
Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Did you know Trivia -COVENTRY, UK, - The London black cab, regarded as one of the capital city's icons, is to regain its glory through a joint program with a Chinese car manufacturer in Shanghai, where the first London black cab is expected to roll out in about six weeks.
Manganese Bronze, the former sole owner of the London black cab and now a shareholder with Chinese car manufacturer Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd. in their joint venture -- Shanghai LTI Automobile Ltd., said that the new "made-in-China" model, will enable China to leapfrog with greener cabs of international reputation and enliven the London cab which was hard-hit by high costs.
"We are waiting with great excitement to see the London black cab rolling off the Shanghai production line," said Mark Fryer, Manganese's group finance and business development director.
click this link to read more
|
|
Tuesday 29 April, 2008 04:21 AM |
| |
Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Did you know Trivia - The ancient root of the word "walking" is wel, which meant to "twist or roll' and also gave us waltz, welter, whelk and vulva. In engineering terms, walking is an "interrupted fall", as it involves us tipping off balance and to the side to create momentum. This "fall" is then corrected by our other leg and the movement repeated. Our legs are quite efficient: working like a pair of pendulums, they recycle up to 60 per cent of the energy it takes to move them into forward motion.
click this link to read more
|
|
Tuesday 29 April, 2008 12:02 AM |
| |
Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Did you know Trivia - Boeing moved the 787 Dreamliner static test airframe from its Final Assembly facility in Everett to its structural test rig this evening. The test rig is located only 1,000 feet away from Final Assembly at the Everett factory.
Some assembly remains to be completed on the static airframe. That work will be completed concurrently with test set-up. Test set up is expected to begin immediately, with tests commencing this summer.
click this link to read more
|
|
Monday 28 April, 2008 08:06 PM |
| |
Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Did you know Trivia -BEIJING-- Chinese mainland will need to add more than 2,800 passenger aircraft and freighters in the 20 years through 2026, European plane maker Airbus forecast.
The demand, valued 329 billion U.S. dollars, represents 11.6 percent of the world total for more than 24,000 new aircraft during the period, it noted.
China's demand for passenger aircraft is only second to the United States in the period, said John Leahy, Airbus Chief Operating Officer for Customers.
click this link to read more
|
|
Monday 28 April, 2008 04:19 PM |
| |
Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Did you know Trivia - This Wednesday, about fifteen hundred Belgian students simultaneously inserted Mentos into Diet Coke bottles in Ladeuzeplein Square, instantly breaking what must be one of the world's most obscure records, reports Natalie Paris of Britain's Telegraph.
click this link to read more
|
|
Monday 28 April, 2008 02:07 PM |
| |
Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Did you know Trivia -An airbase inside a mountain is the latest sign that North Korea, whose links to Syria’s nuclear programme came to light last week, is cranking up its military machine
North Korean military engineers are completing an underground runway beneath a mountain that can protect fighter aircraft from attack until they take off at high speed through the mouth of a tunnel.
click this link to read more
|
|
Monday 28 April, 2008 01:33 PM |
| |
Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Did you know Trivia - A Polish town has invited John Cleese to judge a special silly walks competition organised in his honour.
The Monty Python comedian is enjoying new found fame in the country as the star of a new advert on Polish TV for local bank BZ WBK.
It features him trying to persuade the bank to let him open an account - and claiming that though he has no Polish address his aunt came from the town of Pcim.
Cleese has already agreed to promote the town of Pcim by letting it use his image on billboards, and now the town's mayor has invited him to a summer festival and invited him to judge a silly walks competition.
click this link to read more
|
|
Monday 28 April, 2008 12:18 PM |
| |
Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Did you know Trivia -Tony Stark's amazing suit is a long way from realization, mostly due to practical energy constraints.
As a comic book fan and physics professor, I am looking forward to the big screen debut of Iron Man. This is due, in part, to the fact that instead of getting belted with gamma rays or being born a demon from hell, industrialist and scientist Tony Stark got his super powers by means of his engineering genius.
But just how realistic is Stark's amazing suit?
Sadly, nearly all of the features of the Iron Man suit, with one important exception, are not likely to be realized anytime soon. Let's look at each of the suit's major elements in turn.
click this link to read more
|
|
Monday 28 April, 2008 11:29 AM |
| |
Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Did you know Trivia - Mexico City - Prices of Mexico's tortillas, a staple food which caused an inflation scare last year, are not likely to rise steeply in 2008 thanks to increased supply of corn, a retail official said on Tuesday.
Vicente Yanez, president of Mexican retailers association ANTAD, said in a radio interview members of his group have been selling a kilogram of tortilla for less than 6 pesos ($0.57).
Tortilla "prices will be set accordingly to supply and demand but we do not foresee significant increases due to the high volume of corn expected for this year," he said.
click this link to read more
|
|
Monday 28 April, 2008 09:15 AM |
| |
Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Did you know Trivia - Dublin Zoo has appealed to the public not to be taken in by hoax text messages that have led to its switchboard being jammed by an estimated 100,000 calls in two weeks.
People are receiving text messages to their mobile phones asking them to ring the zoo's number for an "urgent message".
The texts are signed with names like G Raffe, C Lion, Rory Lyons and Anna Conda.
click this link to read more
|
|
Monday 28 April, 2008 04:17 AM |
| |
Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Did you know Trivia - The number of early humans may have shrunk to as low as just 2,000 before it began to rise again in the early Stone Age, an extensive new genetic study suggested yesterday.
The close brush with extinction for human beings came around 70,000 years ago, according to the report published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
click this link to read more
|
|
Sunday 27 April, 2008 08:15 PM |
| |
Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Did you know Trivia - The Kaibo Zonshinzu anatomy scrolls, painted in 1819 by Kyoto-area physician Yasukazu Minagaki (1784-1825), consist of beautifully realistic, if not gruesome, depictions of scientific human dissection.
Unlike European anatomical drawings of the time, which tended to depict the corpse as a living thing devoid of pain (and often in some sort of Greek pose), these realistic illustrations show blood and other fluids leaking from subjects with ghastly facial expressions.
click this link to read more
|
|
Sunday 27 April, 2008 12:16 PM |
| |
Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Did you know Trivia - Virgin Galactic has been working on consumer space travel for some time — that we know. But once they get that all figured out, where will their spaceships take off from? Certainly not a regular airport. That's for airplanes. Nope, they need to build themselves a spaceport, which is just what they're doing.
click this link to read more
|
|
Sunday 27 April, 2008 04:14 AM |
| |
Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Did you know Trivia - With wars raging in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. defense contractor ITT is in a good position. The company bolstered its earnings with the acquisition of EDO and U.S. government contracts gave the numbers some extra lift.
The White Plains, N.Y.-based industrial conglomerate posted a 22.8% gain in net income, to $171.9 million, or 94 cents per share, 13 cents above the consensus estimate of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial. Sales jumped 33.3%, to $2.8 billion, beating the consensus estimate of $2.6 billion.
click this link to read more
|
|
Sunday 27 April, 2008 12:12 AM |
| |
Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Did you know Trivia - In the first analysis of proteins extracted from dinosaur bones, scientists say they have established more firmly than ever that the closest living relatives of the mighty predator Tyrannosaurus rex are modern birds.
The research, being published Friday in the journal Science, yielded the first molecular data confirming the widely held hypothesis of a close dinosaur-bird ancestry, the American scientific team reported. The link was previously suggested by anatomical similarities.
click this link to read more
|
|
Saturday 26 April, 2008 04:27 PM |
| |
Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Did you know Trivia - (London,) A computer that can interact with humans and react to their non-verbal gestures is being developed by a European engineering team.
Known as SEMAINE, the project will build a sensitive artificial listener (SAL) system, which will perceive user's facial expression, gaze, and voice and then engage with the user.
When engaging with a human, the SAL will be able to adapt its own performance and pursue different actions, depending on the non-verbal behaviour of the user, reports Sciencedaily.
click this link to read more
|
|
Saturday 26 April, 2008 12:26 PM |
| |
Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Did you know Trivia -Specialists at the Orthopedic University Hospital in Heidelberg are presently busy examining a new prosthetic hand that works almost like a natural hand. The specialists state that this prosthetic hand is engineered so that it can move each finger individually and hold an amazing range of grip configurations.
click this link to read more
|
|
Saturday 26 April, 2008 08:24 AM |
| |
Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator
Did you know Trivia - Recent building activity in Iraq has taken place amid growing violence. Contractors operate equipment under the crackle of automatic weapon fire and with the protection of M-1 tanks, Stryker vehicles and Apache helicopters. The workers and engineers in this case are constructing a series of walls to block certain areas of Sadr City, the vast Shi'ite slum in Baghdad.
Dozens of walls have already been built around Baghdad, the southern city of Basra and other Iraqi cities, creating segregated ethnic Sunni and Shi'ite neighborhoods ringed with checkpoints and command posts. The latest flurry of construction activity has little to do with nation building, but rather is more related to a deteriorating security environment.
click this link to read more
|
|
Saturday 26 April, 2008 04:22 AM |
|
| << Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next > End >>
| | Results 148 - 168 of 381 |
|
Save This Page
