Blogs
An itch for telecom reform
March 18, 2013 5:00 pm | by Brian Santo, Editor-in-Chief, CED magazine | CommentsMore than two decades after the Cable Act of 1992, and almost that long since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, it appears that the sentiment that it’s time for wide-ranging, substantive telecom reform is beginning to coalesce among legislators.
Mourning the death of Google Reader (and finding a suitable replacement)
March 18, 2013 3:40 pm | by Jason Lomberg, Technical Editor | CommentsLike many of you, I was shocked, dismayed, and several other adjectives upon learning that Google Reader will soon go kaput. As a journalist, I sift through copious amounts of content daily, and it would be no exaggeration to say that Google Reader makes my job exponentially simpler, so I took its demise rather hard.
Unleashing engineering creativity: The Kano model
March 18, 2013 2:32 pm | by Joe Berk, Principal Member, Eogogics Engineering Faculty | CommentsHow do we decide which features to include in new products? That’s a great question. If we miss important features or include unnecessary features, customers will reject our products. If we include unexpected and exciting features, though, we can delight customers and jump ahead of the competition.
Lady brains: Dumbing down technology for women
March 15, 2013 3:53 pm | by Kasey Panetta, Associate Editor | CommentsManufacturers are constantly trying to find ways to appeal specifically to women. The justification is often that their product—be it pens, cars, or toys—sells with men, but they’re trying to attract more women. It’s a logical thought process: figure out what a demographic wants, market those specific traits, sell more product.
Green energy pirates
March 15, 2013 9:26 am | by M. Simon, Technical Contributor | CommentsI got an e-mail from a friend recently railing against what he called (loosely translated by me) "Green Energy Pirates". Let me quote one sentence from his e-mail. "There is a whole slew of companies that move from subsidy to subsidy globally and then abandon 'green projects' when the subsidies dry up."
Using biometrics to avoid credit fraud
March 14, 2013 2:45 pm | by Kasey Panetta, Associate Editor | CommentsCredit fraud is a growing problem, and new technology isn’t making it any better. With the advent of electronic wallets and fewer cash transactions, maintaining privacy and verifying identity are becoming an alarming issue.
Huge human population boom 40,000 to 50,000 years ago
March 14, 2013 10:38 am | by Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog | CommentsInteresting open access paper on looking at the Y-chromosome to explore our ancestry: A calibrated human Y-chromosomal phylogeny based on resequencing. I can’t understand all the details but the basic idea isn’t that complicated. It is interesting to see these...
Is the Nobel Prize obsolete?
March 14, 2013 9:29 am | by Cynthia Fox, Bioscience Technology | CommentsOver the last few months, the Nobel Prize has generated much controversy—again. More than 3,000 scientists contributed to the most high profile science event of 2012: the discovery of the Higgs boson subatomic particle. Yet the Nobel can only be split between three laureates. Was the Nobel Prize finally obsolete, the press fretted, in one angst-ridden blog after another?
The apocalyptic threat of undead projects
March 13, 2013 9:31 am | by Alan Nicol, Executive Member, AlanNicolSolutions | CommentsAre there any of us who haven’t been assigned to the "undead" project? You know, those projects that seem to go on forever without ever possessing the priority or proper resources to get finally to launch, or the ones that are constantly re-directed or re-defined such that we never make meaningful progress...
The best use for Google Glass yet
March 13, 2013 9:05 am | by Kasey Panetta, Associate Editor | CommentsThere is something universally horrifying about that moment at a party when you meet someone briefly but you can’t recall his name when you bump into him a few minutes later or running into a coworker on the street during lunch and being unable to come up with anything besides "that lady who works two cubes down from me".
Drone pilots don’t need a “participation trophy”
March 12, 2013 4:31 pm | by Jason Lomberg, Technical Editor | CommentsSometimes — and I stress sometimes — the government does work for the people. Case in point: The new Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, has halted production of the new Distinguished Warfare Medal — awarded to drone operators — in response to veterans' complaints that the "participation trophy" ranks above combat medals like the Purple Heart and Bronze Star.
Solving the counterfeit crisis, engineers weigh in
March 11, 2013 9:57 am | by Kasey Panetta, Associate Editor | CommentsHow would you stop counterfeiting? One of the hottest topics in electronic components--and basically every other industry-- is how to deal with the issue of counterfeiting. So we put it to the readers to come up with the best solutions for the counterfeiting crisis.
Will future technology herald "the end of insight"?
March 11, 2013 9:08 am | by Chris Fox, Associate Editor, PD&D | CommentsWe all know the cliché regarding the robot apocalypse – we’ve even taken a few stabs at it on the Engineering Newswire. As we broach the crest of technology that operates upon the barrier between autonomous and thinking, it is easy to see the inevitability of crossing over. Immersing ourselves in a world not far off from Futurama, where robots have personalities and rights (sort of).
Array fracking extracts oil safely and effectively
March 8, 2013 12:27 pm | by M. Simon, Technical Contributor | CommentsIt looks like we may have more available oil than we thought, thanks to a new procedure called array fracking. What does that mean? It means that the oil boys are drilling the oil holes closer together. And since fracking is about horizontal drilling, that means the wells are parallel to each other.
CDC Again Stresses Urgent Need to Adjust Practices or Pay a Steep Price
March 8, 2013 2:56 am | by Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog | CommentsUntreatable and hard-to-treat infections from Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) germs are on the rise among patients in medical facilities. CRE germs have become resistant to all or nearly all the antibiotics we have today. Types of CRE include Klebsiella pneumoniae Carbapenemase … Continue reading →
