Archive for May, 2008
Life in the Peace Corps, Part 1, The Decision
Friday, May 23rd, 2008For the next several Fridays, I am going to retell some of my experiences from my service in the United States Peace Corps. This is probably not obviously directly related to the aim of True Progress, but I feel that it can be instructive and I believe that the Peace Corps has a specific [...]
Progress and Unintended Consequences
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008So, what happens when the very actions that we each individually take to improve our lives in the end cause detrimental consequences to all of us? The sage might say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and she might be right. But, does it have to be that way? Are we [...]
Review – Microscale Heat Transfer – Fundamentals and Applications
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008This review concerns a niche of mechanical engineering that involves heat transfer at very small scales. Understanding this phenomenon, which is considerably different from typical heat transfer and thermodynamics experienced in the everyday world, is critical to the advancement of nanotechnological machines and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS).
Energy Efficiency: Good News onto Deaf Ears ?
Tuesday, May 20th, 2008Energy efficiency is a wonderful investment both for businesses and consumers often paying far better returns than the stock and bond markets. If so, then why don’t we take advantage of it? Increases in efficiency can reduce energy consumption for the same or increasing amount of output. All the while, pollution is reduced and money [...]
Assigning a Value to Life
Monday, May 19th, 2008Why considering a monetary value of life is not only acceptable, but morally necessary
Typically, the first time we consider someone placing a monetary value on protecting a life, the risk of death, or other similar circumstances, we cringe. The mere mention of life in the context of money seems cruel and far too calculating. Rightly, [...]
Review – Kill-A-Watt Electricity Usage Monitor
Friday, May 16th, 2008With energy costs increasing faster than inflation and much faster than income in the United States, many have a desire to conserve. But, without information, our conservation may be more expensive than it is worth and hardly as effective as it could have been. The kill-a-watt electricity usage monitor provides a useful way to be [...]
CAFE Standards and Speed Limits, Round 2
Thursday, May 15th, 2008In this earlier article on the new CAFE standards, I found that depending on the assumptions made for the number of future miles driven, restricting the speed limit to 55 miles per hour would be a more cost effective and more energy efficient solution than changing the CAFE standard. That analysis only considered the total [...]
Calculating Reliability with Partial Test Results
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008Getting answers before you are finished. Why are people always so impatient? Why can’t they just wait until testing is complete before they ask for answers? I suppose it is just human nature, as I have heard that question any time I have been involved in reliability testing programs. And, although we would know much [...]
Landfills as an Energy Source
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008As landfills which hold municipal solid waste are closed the emissions from decay of the material in the landfill becomes a pollutant. That pollutant can either contribute to smog and the increase in greenhouse gases, or it can be used as an energy source. A free, environmentally friendly fuel, potentially harmful if released, is not [...]
Education in the Developing World
Monday, May 12th, 2008Increasing the quality and quantity of education in poor countries is critical and absolutely necessary to their development, but let’s not lose sight of how disruptive a free and generous education can be. Education changes cultures, economies, and governments, and for nations entering that transition period the way must be prepared.
Defining Sustainable Technology
Friday, May 9th, 2008Sustainable technology is an idea that may produce a new level of real progress around the world. But often today, the term is more of a marketing badge that may or may not prove to be true when put to the test. I have written before about sustainable technology and some of the problems with [...]
Convert B10 or L10 Bearing Life to MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures)
Thursday, May 8th, 2008As a reliability analyst, sometimes none of your data matches the form you are interested in. It all comes in different collections of units, statistical distribution parameters, failure rates, environments, MTBF, MTTF, and on and on. In this article, let’s consider one common conversion for which my research found too little information available [...]
Producing Enough Engineers in the United States
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008What is the state of the American university system? Does it produce the types of professionals needed to keep the American economy strong and innovative?
We often hear a lot about how our contemporary economy requires plenty of professionals skilled in science and technology to maintain a healthy rate of innovation. There are are many reasons [...]
True Progress Releases Free Weibull Reliability Calculator
Tuesday, May 6th, 2008True-Progress.com has released its Free Weibull Reliability Calculator version 1.0.2.
You can download this tool by following this link.
This simple calculator utilizes the Weibull distribution to generate reliability data for your system
The Fallacy of Human Error
Monday, May 5th, 2008Why pilots (and humans in general) get a bad rap during accident investigations.
In my earlier article on root cause analysis, I mentioned that every cause present in a given situation can be considered equally responsible for the occurrence of the failure in question. Many times, however, investigations end up ascribing the fault of the entire [...]
A Call to an Internet Arms Race
Friday, May 2nd, 2008Progress via a True Global Internet
In our contemporary world, one of the most important factors constraining the growth of societies is lack of information. In some places, infrastructure is not sufficiently developed in communications and electricity and the availability of electronics in the market to even allow people to connect to the information available via [...]
Conservation and the Marketplace
Thursday, May 1st, 2008How Conservation and Efficiency Can Sometimes Increase Consumption
Conservation and efficiency are always good, right? Unfortunately, not always.
Many of us, myself included, consider ourselves conservationists. We don’t buy or take things that we don’t need (for example, lots of extra paper napkins at the restaurant). We consider the energy efficiency of [...]