Archive for June, 2008
A First Step Towards the Hydrogen Economy ?
Monday, June 30th, 2008Recent news has highlighted the opening of the first commercial hydrogen fueling station in California. For people who lease hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (the most common user) or some kind of hydrogen combusion engine, they now have one public place in the state of California where they can refuel their vehicles. A few others already [...]
Life in the Peace Corps, Part 4, Teaching
Friday, June 20th, 2008For background, I am describing some of my experiences from the US Peace Corps in Guinea, West Africa. More information on this series is available in the introduction.
Although, I was one of only two Americans in a small rural school with one class per grade teaching in a foreign language, my experiences in the [...]
True Progress is Looking for Writers
Tuesday, June 17th, 2008True-Progress.com is looking for writers to contribute to the mission of finding enduring solutions. If you or someone you know would like the opportunity to regularly publish articles on this site, please see the details here.
The Aim of Science
Monday, June 16th, 2008Good Science? Bad Science? What do these mean? How do we know the difference? We throw these terms around especially in political and policy arguments as if we all understand what they mean. Exceptions. Uncertainty. Facts. Theory. Bias. These ideas seem to determine whether or not we think any particular scientific idea is good or [...]
Life in the Peace Corps, Part 3, The Beginning
Friday, June 13th, 2008After completion of our training in Senegal, we traveled to Guinea to see our host country for the first time. As the rains had been late in Senegal, our time there was mostly marked by sand and heat and more of the same. The brilliant green lushness of coastal Guinea having already seen months of [...]
Reliability is Not a Constant
Tuesday, June 10th, 2008Often as a reliability engineer, or anyone responsible for researching the reliability of an item, or calculating it, you will find oversimplified published data giving you the impression that reliability is an unchanging physical property like mass or volume, something intrinsic to the materials included in it. This is actually the common sense approach; we [...]
Deep Water Offshore Wind Energy
Monday, June 9th, 2008Drilling for Oil is not the only Potential Energy Producing Activity Offshore
While “green” or renewable energy technologies are often seen as the rival against traditional fossil fuel technologies in some kind of epic battle, they can actually sometimes enhance and support each other. Recent news from wind power companies suggests that they may be able [...]
Life in the Peace Corps, Part 2, Training
Friday, June 6th, 2008On Fridays over the next several weeks, I am describing experiences from my service in the U.S. Peace Corps.
An overnight flight from New York’s JFK airport on Air Afrique put us in Dakar, Senegal the next day. In June, when the rains had still not come, Senegal was a very dry and very hot and [...]
Review – Modern Compressible Flow with Historical Perspective
Thursday, June 5th, 2008Modern Compressible Flow with Historical Perspective by John D. Anderson provides an excellent resource for studies in advanced fluid mechanics. In a field where many texts provide useful content in an entirely unmemorable fashion, this text is an exception. Theory, History, Applications, and other interesting information and stories make this book a beneficial addition to [...]
Zero-Failure Reliability Testing
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008So, you’ve got a design that you want to prove is better than the existing design from your own or another company. What’s the most efficient, fastest way to get to that answer with a very small sample size? Whle there may be several options you have, including accelerated testing, they each can have their [...]
Development and Official Regulation
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008If we consider development to be the general increase in well being of a population, then we have to recognize that there are times when the increase in one type of measure (real income) is countered by the negative action of another type of measure (disease rates). In these cases, government often steps in to [...]
Space Solar Power, The Next Leapfrog Technology ?
Monday, June 2nd, 2008Recently, this article on CNN.com revisits the idea of collecting solar power in space and beaming it down to Earth. With such a large world demand for energy expected in the next 20 to 50 years, and declining costs for access to space, could this be the time for this science fiction technology to become [...]