Volumes & issues:
Volume 3, Issue 8
10 May 2008
-
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, page: 2 –2
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080813
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
2
(1)
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, page: 4 –4
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080814
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
4
(1)
(7 pages) - Author(s): S. Harris
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, p. 12 –15
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080800
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
12
–15
(4)
The idea behind invisibility is to make light travel around an object in the same time that it would take it to go in a straight line if the object was not there. To achieve this, the object must be surrounded by a material that can propagate light at a speed faster than in a vacuum. Metamaterials, where the structure as well as the chemistry influences the optical properties, have been known for a long time. Metamaterials with a negative refractive index already been produced by bending the light in the opposite way from the expected one - the sort of approach required to make sure that something cannot be seen. Metamaterials work by resonance at a given frequency (related to the wavelength) and will only resonate perfectly at that very frequency. Because the range for visible light is so broad, people predict that current approaches would only make an object invisible at a particular colour. - Author(s): W. Knight
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, p. 16 –19
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080815
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
16
–19
(4)
'Star Wars' creator George Lucas's revisionist approach to cinema history created a revolution by signalling a profound change in the cinema projection business, its operations and management. William Knight takes a look at moving pictures. - Author(s): P. Schewe
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, p. 20 –23
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080801
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
20
–23
(4)
The Large Hadron Collider, outside Geneva, is the world's most powerful microscope and the best time machine in existence two vacuum realms. The engineering vacuum, which is the portion of the LHC apparatus evacuated of all air molecules. This vacuum system, the largest in the world, consists of three parts. First, the pipes carrying the beams around the accelerator must be emptied in order to reduce extraneous interactions between lingering air and the high-energy protons. The second vacuum surrounds the cryostat apparatus used to cool LHC's thousands of superconducting magnets. The third vacuum system helps insulate the pipes that carry the main coolant, liquid helium to the magnets. These magnets, which deflect the protons into their proper trajectories around the ring, operate without any electrical resistance if they are sufficiently cold. Once the pipes are emptied of air molecules (creating the engineering vacuum), scientists try to fill the physics vacuum with collision-produced daughter particles. The relativistic coldest temperatures anywhere prevail only centimetres away from a place (the collision point) experiencing some of the warmest temperatures- trillions of degrees for some LHC collisions. The goal here, as it is with the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) machine at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US, is to study the breakup of large nuclei into their constituent protons and neutrons, and the melting of those protons and neutrons into their constituents, quarks and gluons, into a nuclear liquid referred to as quark-gluon plasma. The vacuum can pose a problem, an obstacle, to the efficient study of heavy- ion collisions at CERN. - Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, p. 24 –25
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080816
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
24
–25
(2)
- Author(s): A. Issakov and C. Edwards
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, page: 26 –26
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080817
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
26
(1)
The downside of donating healthcare equipment to developing countries. - Author(s): D. Birkett
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, page: 27 –27
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080818
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
27
(1)
Big is not necessarily beautiful, assures Dea Birkett. - Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, p. 28 –29
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080819
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
28
–29
(2)
This week, E&T features a selection of audio/visual delights to control your media from the comfort of your sofa. - Author(s): D. Vitaliev
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, p. 30 –31
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080802
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
30
–31
(2)
The author gives expert advice on how to protect computers from malware. - Author(s): C. Edwards
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, p. 32 –35
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080803
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
32
–35
(4)
Just six months since a group of chipmakers claimed that it had put into production the most advanced processes yet for making integrated circuits, a number of the group are already talking about the next big step: doubling the density of chips by shifting from 45nm to 32nm. If, as is so often claimed, the end of Moore's Law is in sight, nobody has told these people. It means that, not long after running the first production wafers of a 45nm process, chipmakers are now trying to drum up interest in its successor. - Author(s): Byoungchul Cho and Sung-ll Yong
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, p. 36 –37
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080804
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
36
–37
(2)
The industry continues to transition from induction motors that are comparatively inefficient and cumbersome from a design perspective to switched reluctance motors that offer high efficiency and smaller size to accommodate the size and weight needs of today's electronics. A switched reluctance motor is an electric motor in which torque is produced by the tendency of the rotor to move to a position where the inductance of the excited winding is maximised. During motor operation, each stator phase is excited when its inductance is increasing, and unexcited when its inductance is decreasing. The air gap is at a minimum at the aligned position and the magnetic reluctance of the flux flow is at its lowest. An easy way to make the rotor turn is to sequentially switch the current from one phase to the next and to synchronise each phase's excitation as a function of the rotor position. Switched reluctance motors promise higher efficiency in exchange for more sophisticated control electronics. Switched reluctance motor operation requires knowledge of the rotor position. They usually include sensors, which increases cost. But it has become possible to control the motors with a sensorless algorithm. - Author(s): G. Richards
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, p. 38 –41
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080805
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
38
–41
(4)
Modern fairground rides deliver thrills without the spills using control technology. Dutch company KMG offers a typical example. It builds and operates its machines all over Europe, and when it designs a new ride it goes through a four- stage process. First is the mechanical design, from which comes the requirements for the electrical and control engineering; second is the engineering of the electrical hardware, where decisions are taken on which signals go where and which main drive unit sizes will be needed. Also at this stage come decisions on to whether to opt for a single electrical cabinet or to go for more decentralised electrical cabinets, and combine or split up signals. The third stage is the design of the software for safety devices such as emergency stops, and the drive units, to control the actual movements using limit switches and motor encoders. The final stage is testing the electrical and software design on the actual machine. - Author(s): T. Schott
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, p. 42 –44
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080806
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
42
–44
(3)
The automotive sector has always pushed the envelope when it comes to automation and control. - Author(s): N. Newman
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, p. 46 –49
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080820
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
46
–49
(4)
The surging price of oil appears to be at the root of all our economic woes, but as Nicholas Newman explains, there may be darker days ahead. - Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, p. 50 –51
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080821
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
50
–51
(2)
With the UK utility sector about to embark on a drive for renewables, the man holding the lead is John Hutton, secretary of state for business, energy and reform. Interview by Mark Venables. - Author(s): M. Venables
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, p. 52 –53
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080807
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
52
–53
(2)
This article deals with the recent US policy that thrusts biofuel, and particularly ethanol, into the limelight as a fuel of the future for transportation. The production and use of biofuels have entered a new era of global growth, experiencing acceleration in both the scale of the industry and the number of countries involved. Surging investment in biofuel production is being driven by a variety of factors, including the development of more efficient conversion technologies, strong new government policies, and, primarily, the rising price of oil. Underlying the commitment of an increasing number of governments to biofuel development is the desire to find new markets for farmers and their products and to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. - Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, p. 54 –57
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080808
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
54
–57
(4)
Enterprises now depend on their networks and the systems that drive them more absolutely than ever, demanding the level of availability and QOS (quality of service) formerly found only in carrier voice services. Increasingly, enterprise IP networks carry voice anyway but on top of that they have to support multiple services at ever higher speeds reaching 10Gbps today, increasing to 40Gbps and then 100Gbps-over the next few years. As a result, the switches and routers providing the fabric of enterprise networks are caught in a spiral of increasing data throughput, reliability, scalability and complexity. There is also a trend towards switching at the level of applications or content rather than just IP packets, in order to improve security, manage traffic better, and provide differentiated levels of service. - Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, p. 58 –60
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080822
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
58
–60
(3)
International law firm Osborne Clark has made astute use of BPM technology to facilitate the transition from largely paper-based operations to a processed managed document and content system. Its head of infrastructure & technology Nathan Hayes explains how IT and culture changes were made complimentary. Interview by Miya Knights. - Author(s): M. Farish
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, p. 62 –67
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080809
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
62
–67
(6)
The author reports, successful factory automation is not just about hardware and software-crucially, it involves a partnership between robot, system provider and end user. No sort of automation can ever provide a purely technological 'fix'. Relevant investment only provides a payback when the hardware involved is made to operate in a business context that is accurately costed and where staff are properly trained and understand what is required of them. Another factor that is facilitating the take-up of automated manufacturing is the increasing ease with which its effectiveness can be assured beforehand through simulation-even with products whose market appeal is based in large part on the perception that they are intensively hand-crafted. - Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, p. 68 –71
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080810
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
68
–71
(4)
The paper discusses the preparations on the communications infrastructure for the coverage of 2008 Beijing Olympics. - Author(s): S. Wolfman
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, p. 72 –73
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080823
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
72
–73
(2)
The mass of people descending on Beijing for the 2008 Olympics provides a great opportunity for mobile phone network operators to provide a variety of roaming services, writes Shlomo Wolfman. - Author(s): P. Wilton
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, p. 74 –77
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080811
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
74
–77
(4)
Ill-health and a culture where 'illness equals weakness' is hitting organisations across the engineering sector. According to new research by the Chartered Management Institute, lack of care for staff is taking its toll in terms of productivity, commitment levels and lower motivation. - Author(s): E. Roe
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, p. 78 –79
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080812
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
78
–79
(2)
The paper tackles the "abuse of dominant position" complaint of AMD against Intel. The author asks what the smaller businesses can learn as spectators on the sidelines of the Intel investigation. - Author(s): N. Smith
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, p. 80 –81
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080824
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
80
–81
(2)
The KTP celebrated its annual awards by honouring a diverse portfolio of collaboration between the engineering and academic communities. By Nick Smith. - Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, page: 84 –84
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080825
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
84
(1)
Forthcoming dates for your diary. - Author(s): V. Vitaliev
- Source: Engineering & Technology, Volume 3, Issue 8, page: 96 –96
- DOI: 10.1049/et:20080826
- Type: Article
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
96
(1)
Vitali Vitaliev is fascinated with an amazingly omniscient 150-year-old reference book.
Editorial
News
Out of mind - out of sight [metamaterials]
The factory of dreams
Engineering the void
Letters to the Editor
If you ask me
The global engineer
Gadgets
e-doctor's tips
A test of mettle [integrated circuit manufacture]
Switch cycle
All the fun of the fair [computerised control]
Innovation hotbed [control automation]
The high price of oil
The man with the plan? Interview with John Hutton
Fuelling the dilemma
Changing platforms [Enterprise IP network]
My way: Interview with Nathan Hayes
Our flexible friends [factory automation]
The broadband Olympics [wireless communications]
Roaming in Beijing
Too ill to take time off? [workplace management]
When the chips are down [integrated circuit market competition]
From mortar boards to drawing boards
Events
After all - Everything explained
Most viewed content for this Journal
Article
content/journals/et
Journal
5
Most cited content for this Journal
We currently have no most cited data available for this content.