Photo Courtesy of Sunlink Corp. The 20-ft by 20-ft shake table at PEER is the largest multidirectional shaking table in the U.S. For the first time, a solar racking manufacturer tested its ballast-only roof-mounted racking system on U.C. Berkeley's Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) shaking table in Richmond, Calif., and it appears to have passed with flying colors.The March 5 test "provided us with information on how our roof mounting system acted [when] not connected to a roof," said Mike Williams, senior vice president-engineering for SunLink, San Rafael, Calif. The product "acted like we thought it would," he added.SunLink
Photo courtesy of columbia university SENSING GREATNESS Cable mock-up under tension is encased within a custom-made corrosion chamber. Positive results from field tests of a corrosion detection and remote monitoring technology for suspension bridge cables have raised researchers' hopes the tools could be used for testing the health of bridges worldwide.The test confirmed that "we have the tools to reliably assess and quantify the level of corrosion on a suspension bridge for damage assessments," says Raimondo Betti, a civil engineering professor at Columbia University and lead project engineer on the $1.8-million collaborative research study. Before, the process involved subjective judgment
Related Links: Readers Recommend Wish List: What Readers Want the Most in Infotech What Readers Like About Their Infotech Today The information technology satisfaction index among ENR readers is high, but if past is prologue, users' bullish expectations for the future may be too optimistic, particularly with respect to their greatest desire: true interoperability of all their software and systems.That's the conclusion after studying 445 responses to a survey conducted in late February by ENR. We asked readers to tell us about the best new tech tools they use now as well as the tech tools they would like to
FIRST READ COMMENTARY: Providing valuable, credible information can be the foundation of a sound business model, something the earliest online business learned in a hurry.Take Autobytel, for example. The web’s first car-buying website launched in 1995, supplying consumers with information they’d never before had access to: how much automotive dealers paid for new cars. “The dealers hated it,” recalls Thomas Heshion, a former executive.Autobytel will always be remembered as the first dot-com to advertise on the Super Bowl, but it’s thriving more than a decade later because it supplies information that helps car buyers better understand what they’re buying, and
With creative use of laser scanning, Alberici Constructors has shaved four weeks off its schedule to install two 120-ton steel vertical-lift gates that are part of a $165-million complex.
A team of researchers recently shifted its operations to Edmonton, Alberta, from Hong Kong to continue development of a new alignment-control and surveying system for tunnel-boring operations. The city is helping with on-the job testing of the system, which is based on a successfully tested, smaller version for utility tunnels. Researchers aim to have a fully operational system for use in the construction of a large-diameter drainage tunnel this April.“The tunneling industry is losing productivity and having problems with quality control” because it lacks real-time survey data, says Ming Lu, associate professor at the University of Alberta. He says the
Image courtesy of Lantronix The xPrintServer by Lantronix helps iPads print. As elegant as they are, the Apple iPhones and iPads surging into the workplace still have a few rough edges, including the limited number of printers that work with them.But that's about to change.In February, Lantronix, an Irvine, Calif.-based technology firm, will start shipping the xPrintServer, a $149 plug-and-play device that can be added to any network Ethernet port, allowing wireless iOS devices to print out at almost any subnet printer. Early testers rave about it.The need stems from Apple's iOS engineering, which supports only AirPrint-compatible printers. While the
Bottom: PHoto courtesy of Lantronix, TOP: Photo courtesy of Air Burners Inc. Good FIT Air Burners Inc. puts QR codes on new equipment to get manuals, and sends out stickers for old rigs, too. At all hours, the staff at Air Burners Inc., Palm City, Fla., answers phone calls and e-mails about maintenance and repair questions from operators of the company's waste processing units around the world.The company's air-curtain burners cost up to $150,000 and are used in rugged environments such as landfills, construction sites and military operational zones—which leads to a problem. "They're usually far from where the manuals
Rendering Courtesy of Cornell University The Cornell-Technion team will receive a 99-year lease and $100 million in city funding to help with building and related costs of the campus. New York City is on its way to becoming the "world's capital of technological innovation" with the selection of Cornell University and its partner Technion-Israel Institute of Technology to build a state-of-the-art applied sciences campus, says NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The Cornell-Technion team's proposal for an 11-acre, $2-billion-plus campus on Roosevelt Island beat out several other proposals under the mayor's Applied Sciences NYC initiative, which aims to boost the city's global
Related Links: LightSquared's Press Release LightSquared Faces Critics, Floats GPS Plan Changes GPS Industry Groups Reject LightSquared's Network Fix The ongoing fight over the future of LightSquared's plans to build a broadband satellite network using GPS spectrum entered a new phase this week.The Reston, Va.-based LightSquared filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission on Dec. 20, seeking a declaratory ruling on whether it can make use of the spectrum it has been licensed for its proposed 4G LTE broadband network.The network plans would occupy frequencies adjacent to those used by most of the GPS receivers currently in use. GPS
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