Engineering &…

Ten million dollars is now at stake for engineers, scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs who create breakthrough hydrogen fuel technology in the next 10 years. On Wednesday, the House passed legislation creating the “H-Prize,” modeled after the privately funded Ansari X Prize on a 416-6 vote. A companion bill is to be introduced and is expected to pass in the Senate this week. H-Prize Act would award four prizes of up to $1 million every other year for technological advances in hydrogen production, storage, distribution and utilization. One prize of up to $4 million would be awarded every second year for the creation of a working hydrogen vehicle prototype. The grand prize of $10 million is to be awarded within the next 10 years for breakthrough technology.

Some argue that encouraging hydrogen as an alternative energy source is a mistake because engineers and scientists first have to find a source for extracting hydrogen, which is currently a difficult and energy-intensive process. Authorities would also need to develop a better infrastructure for delivering the hydrogen fuel. Currently, it is not easily transported, requiring very high or very low pressures in tanks or pipes which have yet to be installed on a large scale.

Despite these arguments, the H-Prize should still prove to be beneficial because it creates a real incentive to develop alternative energy sources by establishing a precedent for federally funded prizes of this nature. Read more about the H-Prize here and the Department of Energy’s current hydrogen initiatives here.

Image courtesy of evworld.com

MONEY Magazine and Salary.com researched hundreds of jobs, considering their growth, pay, stress-levels and other factors and Software Engineering came out number one! From money.cnn.com:

Why it’s great Software engineers are needed in virtually every part of the economy, making this one of the fastest-growing job titles in the U.S. Even so, it’s not for everybody.

Designing, developing and testing computer programs requires some pretty advanced math skills and creative problem-solving ability. If you’ve got them, though, you can work and live where you want: Telecommuting is quickly becoming widespread.

The profession skews young — the up-all-night-coding thing gets tired — but consulting and management positions aren’t hard to come by once you’re experienced.

What’s cool Cutting-edge projects, like designing a new video game or tweaking that military laser. Extra cash from freelance gigs. Plus, nothing says cool like great prospects.

What’s not Jobs at the biggest companies tend to be less creative (think Neo, pre-Matrix). Outsourcing is a worry. Eyestrain and back, hand and wrist problems are common.

Top-paying job Release engineers, who are responsible for the final version of any software product, earn six figures.

Education Bachelor’s degree, but moving up the ladder often requires a master’s.

How do you keep gas prices down in the face of a shaky energy policy? Engineers and legumes, of course. The Bush administration issued new rules on Wednesday improving gas mileage requirements for pickup trucks, sport utility vehicles and vans, for the first time covering the largest SUVs on the road like the Hummer H2 and Chevrolet Suburban. If adhered to properly, the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) system is expected to save 10.7 billion gallons of fuel over the lifetime of the vehicles sold during the period, officials said.

However, this might not be enough to prevent gas shortages and price hikes in the immediate future. Oil refiners plan to stop using an additive, methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE, which accounts for about 10 percent of the volume of every gallon of gasoline with which it is blended (1.4 percent of the nationwide supply) next month because Congress refused to grant them protection from lawsuits. MTBE will be replaced with ethanol, but there are doubts within the Energy Department and the oil industry about whether there will be enough of the corn-derived fuel to meet the anticipated surge in demand, and whether the country’s distribution system is ready to handle it.

Engineers at the Agricultural Research Service are hard at work developing alternative ways to derive Ethanol from new organic sources. One promising prospect is peas. Chemical Engineer Bruce Dien, teamed with other scientists at the ARS have been working on a process that separates the peas’ protein and starch and uses enzymes and yeasts to ferment the starch’s sugars into ethanol. Read more about what engineers at the ARS are doing to help prevent a national fuel shortage here and here.

Engineers at NASA have found more than one use for their Laser Scaling and Measurement Device for Photographic Images (LSMDPI). This device, contained in a small black box, was initially designed to provide a non-intrusive means of adding a scale to a photograph of an object in space when there is no size reference. Twin lasers, an inch apart, shoot from the box, and add scale to photographs. In other words, the laser offers the ability for someone to look at these special photographs and have a better understanding of just how big or small objects really are. For example, engineers will use this to measure the distance from one part of the shuttle to a dent from a hailstorm.

Since the LSMDPI weighs only a half-pound and can be attached directly to a camera’s tripod, it can also be used on Earth in crime and accident scene investigations. “I think that the greatest contribution that the Laser Scaling Measurement software offers to law enforcement is it ‘un-cuffs’ the investigators hands with digital image evidence by facilitating fast and accurate measurement analysis of anything in a crime scene photo, not just the intended target,” said Kim Ballard, NASA electrical design engineer. Additional uses include oil and chemical tank monitoring or aerial photography. Read more about this exciting new technology.

Are you reading this on your BlackBerry? You may not for long. Since NTP won its patent infringement lawsuit against Research In Motion (RIM), the creator of BlackBerry’s technology, RIM has been involved in an extensive legal battle to continue its operations. After NTP won, an injunction was issued in 2003 but was then stayed while the case was on appeal. An appeals court later upheld the infringement ruling. On Monday, the Supreme Court declared it would not hear the case, leaving RIM to settle or close for good in the U.S.

Faced with a crowd of nervous BlackBerry users, IT employees around the country are busily coming up with contingency plans should RIM be forced to end its service. Microsoft Corp. is also in the process of testing its new “push” e-mail offering as a replacement. Other companies are busy creating or improving techologies to prepare for the potential mobile computing vacancy. Replacing BlackBerry service and handheld devices could cost up to $845 per person, according to J. Gold Associates in Northboro, MA.

In the ongoing debate over the impact of offshoring on the American workforce, BusinessWeek notes a new study arguing that the engineering deficit may be a myth. This new study by Vivek Wadhwa of Duke University points out that “Indian and Chinese numbers [of engineers] can be wildly exaggerated, while America’s are understated.” The reason for these discrepancies in data reporting stems from the fact that India and China use different, looser criteria than the United States in defining what an engineer is, giving them artificially inflated numbers. In fact, when applying a consistent definition of an engineer, the U.S. graduates more engineers per capita than either of these two rising superpowers.

While optimistic, this finding does not mean that the engineering deficit is just a myth. As cited in an earlier Engineering &… post, the number of engineering degrees granted in the United States has risen, while companies are having an increasingly difficult time filling their more specialized technical positions. One reason for this, as BusinessWeek points out, is that

Many of the U.S. engineers who are getting displaced lack the more demanding skills required by American tech companies today. Because routine tasks can be done more cheaply offshore, many executives say, they need U.S. engineers who can rapidly move on to next-generation technologies, work well with customers, and manage R&D teams.

The fact that only these highly demanding positions remain open to the American workforce discourages many from entering the engineering field. Unless engineers graduate with the necessary skills to enter a workforce that is increasingly limited by offshoring, America’s engineering deficit will only continue to grow.

Is the shortage of engineers a myth? The Wall Street Journal certainly seems to think so. According to a recent article, companies that employ engineers in large numbers, such as Raytheon and Boeing, have been experiencing great trouble in filling their staffing needs. Their difficulties with finding engineers are not a result of lack of applicants, but rather a lack of qualified candidates. The number of bachelor degrees in engineering rose to 72,893 in 2004 from 61,553 in 1999, according to the American Society for Engineering Education. Perhaps, then, engineering graduates are not leaving school with enough skills to satisfy top employers. If that is the case, it is up to the engineering schools to make their students even better prepared for an increasingly competitive world. Many engineering schools, however, are rising to the challenge by offering semester-long co-op programs in which students leave academia and work for a company. Mike Brody, a recent mechanical engineering graduate from Cornell University, reflects on his co-op program:

My co-op experience put me ahead of my class in terms of having an insight into how engineering really happens in the private sector. While I got to learn the scientific principles about why engines are built a certain way and how they work at school, my co-op gave me the chance to look a step beyond function and see how different components are designed and evaluated for assembly and maintenance too. Additionally, having a successful co-op at a company sends young people right to the front of the line when it comes to hiring after graduation; a lot of my friends are still at some of the very companies they co-oped for during school — many of them even in engineering leadership/management programs.

The co-op seems to be essential in rounding out the undergraduate engineering curriculum. As more and more students participate in such programs, employers might find their searches a bit easier in the future.

New innovations in medical technology are always crucial to the success of our economy’s biomedical sector. Until recently, work in biomedical engineering has been primarily auxiliary in nature – from high-tech wheelchairs and breathing aids for paraplegics to chirping traffic signals to help the blind cross the street safely. Thanks to the newly established Biomimetic MicroElectronic Systems (BMES) Engineering Research Center at USC, biomedical engineers, electrical engineers, and research physicians will undertake research that might eventually lead to a better understanding of how the brain and physical tissue work together, and perhaps lead to cures for currently incurable maladies. “Our very ambitious goal is to help the blind see, the paralyzed walk, and to restore the function of memory,” says C. L. Nikias, dean of the University of Southern California (USC) College of engineering. Learn more about this in PRISM, ASEE’s award-winning magazine.