Blue Star Line Pty Ltd Chairman Professor Clive Palmer has announced the shipping company has signed a contract with Deltamarin for the project development phase for the Titanic II project. Watch : Engineering Newswire 28: Titanic II Will Sink, If You Put a Hole in It Blue Star Line has undertaken the task of building […]
Automotive/Transportation
Chevy Spark EV can go 82 miles per charge
DETROIT (AP) — General Motors said Wednesday that the battery-powered version of its Chevrolet Spark mini-car can travel up to 82 miles (132 kilometers) on a single charge, putting it among the leaders in mass-market electric vehicles sold in the U.S. The Spark EV also gets the equivalent of 119 miles per gallon (50 kilometers […]
Reference design implements highly accurate automotive intelligent battery sensor
Unterpremstaetten, Austria, ams AG released a reference design implementing a complete automotive Intelligent Battery Sensor (IBS) based on its highly accurate AS8515 data acquisition front end. The IBS design from ams is suitable for monitoring the state of charge (SOC) and state of health (SOH) of the latest lithium-iron-phosphate automotive batteries as well as conventional […]
M’bishi Motors identifies cause of Outlander battery problem
TOKYO, April 24 (Kyodo) — Mitsubishi Motors Corp. said Wednesday it has indentified the cause of a battery malfunction of its Outlander plug-in hybrid electric vehicle and will take recall procedures as soon as the effectiveness of preventive measures is confirmed. The automaker said the defect was caused when the lithium-ion battery was mistakenly dropped […]
Scientists Find Asymmetry in Particle Decay
Scientists at the world’s biggest atom smasher have found further reasons for the apparent lack of antimatter in the universe. A team working with data from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider says it has discovered a particle that decays unevenly into matter and antimatter. The lab near Geneva said Wednesday that the particle called ‘B0s’ is […]
Rubber Forming Pad History
Comparisons of Materials and Introduction of Gummilast Polyurethane for Forming Pads and Fluid Cells Short run forming of complex sheet metal shapes using rubber dies and pads is quick and highly effective. This technique was first accomplished using the Guerin process. After the Second World War, the Wheelon process was developed as an improvement over […]
SPE Installs Jon Ratzlaff as President and Vijay B. Boolani as President-Elect
Following longstanding practice, ANTEC 2013 marks the beginning of one-year terms for new officers of the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE), it was announced today by Willem De Vos, SPE CEO. The Society installs Jon Ratzlaff as its new president, succeeding James S. Griffing. Ratzlaff is technical services manager for Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LP. […]
Energy Dept. seizes $21M from electric car maker
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration has seized $21 million from troubled automaker Fisker Automotive Inc. just weeks after the company laid off three-fourths of its workers amid continuing financial and production problems. Fisker had received $192 million in federal loans before a series of problems led U.S. officials to freeze the loan in 2011. […]
US Teens Doing Better Than Public Realizes
American teenagers aren’t doing as poorly on international science tests as adults think. Despite the misconception, people don’t think the subject should get greater emphasis in schools, a survey released Monday found. More Americans than not wrongly think that U.S. 15-year-olds rank near the bottom on international science tests, according to a Pew Research Center […]
Cause of LED Efficiency Droop Finally Revealed
Researchers at University of California, Santa Barbara, in collaboration with colleagues at the École Polytechnique in France, have conclusively identified Auger recombination as the mechanism that causes light emitting diodes (LEDs) to be less efficient at high drive currents. Until now, scientists had only theorized the cause behind the phenomenon known as LED “droop”—a mysterious […]