One aviation company recently sought to bring its jet design time up to jet speed.

To get there, Aviation Technology Group Inc. brought in product lifecycle management software. The company, in Englewood, Colo., is set to begin production of its Javelin Executive Jet, a military-style jet for the civilian market, said Charlie Johnson, the president and chief operating officer.

The jet's prototype made its maiden flight in September.

ATG's newly implemented software lets company vendors and partners around the globe pass documents back and forth on the same software system, thus compressing the design cycle, said George Bullard, director of engineering for ATG. Partners design aircraft components in a variety of CAD applications and pass them across the PLM system using the open JT 3-D data format. This makes it easier to compile the 3-D digital product mockups that give ATG engineers an overall view of the aircraft, Bullard said.

The company implemented Teamcenter PLM software from UGS Corp. of Plano, Texas.

To most people, turbulence is the rolling and jolting that airplane passengers sit through as their jet moves through a rough pocket of air.

But to engineers and scientists, turbulence is the chaotic flow of a gas or liquid in which parts of the current curl into irregular, ever smaller and tighter eddies. The common phenomenon is difficult to understand. Engineers can't often easily predict how a turbulent flow will behave.

Now, researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore say they've discovered a new mathematical formula that could lead to more precise computer models that describe turbulent flow. Charles Meneveau, a professor of mechanical engineering, and Yi Li, a doctoral student in the department, described the equation in the October edition of the journal Physical Review Letters.

"Ultimately, we believe this will help researchers put together more precise models that could be used to predict weather patterns, movement within bodies of water, and even some turbulent events that take place within an internal combustion engine," Meneveau said.

"This equation gives us a mathematical shortcut to describe a complex characteristic of turbulence called intermittency," he added. "It solves just one piece of the overall turbulence puzzle, but it's a very important piece."

Intermittency refers to abrupt, very concentrated changes in the speed of a moving fluid. This characteristic has been particularly tough to include in computer models of turbulence because representing it numerically requires a great number of calculations and a huge amount of computing power, Meneveau said.

Meneveau and Li devised a shortcut by tracking two particles as they move with a turbulent flow and writing an equation to describe their movement. The resulting equation gave them a tool to predict intermittency, Meneveau said.

A manufacturer of automotive door panels, quarter panels, lift gates, and instrument panels finds injection molding a tricky process so it has brought in a consultant to get things right.

Intier Automotive does injection molding at its Intertech facility in Nashville, Ill. The site also is set up for low-pressure molding and assembly operations.

CAE Services offers mold analysis help for a vehicle supplier's injection-molded tools and parts.

In order to mold a part, Intier engineers have to be aware of proper gate locations, the optimal number of gates, and the ability to fill a complicated cavity, according to Jim Betters, Intier's processing technology and tooling manager.

That's why Intertech makes use of a computer-aided engineering consulting company, CAE Services of Batavia, Ill., for mold analysis and design. The consulting firm offers filling, packing, cooling, and warpage analyses using Moldflow Plastics Insight software from Moldflow Corp. of Framingham, Mass.

"The design, processibility, and long-term manufacturability of a tool starts with the basic understanding of how a mold will fill and how the stresses and temperature profile of the tool and material during processing will affect part appearance and dimensional characteristics," Betters said.

The company initially decided to have the mold-filling analysis done for large tools that include multiple gates and complex geometry. Management thought that computer analysis would cut costs because it would eliminate trial-and-error experimentation with gate locations and could determine in advance where engineers faced problems in initial tool design.

They were not disappointed.

The consulting firm helped reduce the time and number of molding trials it took to get a new, mold right, Betters said.

High-speed wireless Internet connections are now commonplace in U.S. cities and suburbs. Yet that kind of access still isn't available in most rural areas.

However, engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology's research institute in Atlanta believe they've found a way to provide rural access. They recently demonstrated the video streaming, Web surfing, and e-mail capabilities of the wireless technology standard IEEE 802.16, also called WiMax, an acronym for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access.

Jay Sexton, a researcher at Georgia Tech, sets up wireless equipment on a mountain near Missoula, Mont. The equipment could help bring wireless Internet access to rural areas.

WiMax is a standard for delivering point-to-point as well as point-to-multipoint wireless broadband connectivity. Point-to-point transmission is a direct transmission, as from a tower to a central location up to 30 miles away. From the central location, point-to-multipoint connectivity can extend up to five miles.

"WiMax is important because it's potentially the most cost-effective approach for broadband data service in rural areas," said Jeff Evans, a GTRI senior research engineer.

In rural areas, the cost to lay fiber for wired broadband service is about $200,000 or more per mile, an investment that communications companies typically don't want to make because they cannot recoup their money fast enough, Evans said.

"But with WiMax, an Internet service provider that wants to reach a small community up to 30 miles away can set up a wireless link for thousands of dollars rather than hundreds of thousands," Evans said.

Access may soon be available in Georgia and elsewhere, he added.

Despite having the bones and muscles to perform a variety of gaits, human beings have developed an overwhelming preference for just two: walking and running. Why?

Now, computer analyses that simulate the infinite styles of two-legged locomotion definitely show that humans' favored modes of bipedal travel use the least amount of energy.

In a recent online edition of the journal Nature, Andy Ruina and Manoj Srinivasan, engineers at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., compared the mechanics of walking and running with many other strange and unpracticed gaits. They used a set of computer models that simulated physical measurements such as leg length, force, body velocity, trajectory, and forward speed.

"We wanted to find how a person can get from one place to another with the least muscle work," Ruina said. "Why do people not walk or even run with a smooth level gait, like a waiter holding two cups brim-full of boiling coffee?"

The engineers' computer simulations conclude that walking is simply the most energy efficient for travel at low speeds and running is best at higher speeds. And, they report, a third walk-run gait is optimal for intermediate speeds, even though humans do not appear to take advantage of it.

The findings help to explain why the possible—but preposterous—gaits in the Monty Python sketch, "Ministry of the Silly Walks," have never caught on in human locomotion, the researchers said. Their work might improve the design of prosthetic devices and energy-efficient bipedal robots, Ruina added.

One Taiwanese company has introduced PLM software intended to help assure that the company meets current environmental regulations.

The European Union, China, and various U.S. states have announced new environmental protection laws affecting electronic equipment.

In Taiwan, high-tech manufacturers like Primax rely on the export of their goods. Primax makes electronic products, such as scanners, computer peripherals, paper shredders, and mobile phones.

In late 2004, Primax executives determined that most of its clients would eventually have to satisfy environmental regulations, said Honda Lee, director of the Engineering Service Center.

With that in mind, the company recently upgraded its PLM system, Windchill, from PTC of Needham, Mass., to include modules that track supplier-provided parts and designs to assure that they meet current environmental standards.

The system now searches bills of materials to determine compliance and identifies lead-free production procedures required by specific plants, among other tasks.

And the winner is ... a Volkswagen named Stanley.

In October, a driverless Volkswagen Touareg, modified by Stanford University engineering students, won a $2 million Pentagon-sponsored race across the Mojave Desert. All the participating vehicles operated automatically, without drivers.

Stanley zipped through the 132-mile course in six hours and 53 minutes, using only its computer brain and sensors to navigate rough and twisting desert and mountain trails, said team leader Sebastian Thrun. He's an associate professor of computer science and director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

The contest was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Officials there hope the Pentagon can one day make use of driverless technology to develop battlefield robots that don't rely on remote control, said Tony Tether, DARPA director. He expects the technology to have other uses, too.

Stanley was equipped with a wide variety of sensors and much custom-written software, including machine-learning algorithms. The vehicle grew smarter with practice, Thrun said, and eventually mastered finding a path and detecting obstacles and avoiding them while staying on course.

Applications of the racing vehicles' technology could range from the development of unmanned ground vehicles for dangerous military missions to driver assistance systems that keep civilian drivers, passengers, and pedestrians safe, Tether said.

A red Humvee from Carnegie Mellon University called Sandstrom finished second, followed by a Hummer, also from Carnegie Mellon, named H1ghlander. Fourth was a Ford Escape Hybrid named Kat-5, designed by students in Metairie, La., who lost about a week of practice—and some, their homes—to Hurricane Katrina.

Students' ability to manage emotions contributes to their academic success, at least when it comes to studying information technology, according to researchers at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va.

The researchers measured how well students in computer science and information systems coped with stressful situations. They also looked at the students' levels of emotional intelligence, defined as the ability to perceive, assess, and positively influence their own and others' emotions. The team then examined the effects of these intrapersonal factors on student grades.

Faculty members at Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech spearheaded the study, although more than 600 undergraduates at more than 20 U.S. colleges and universities participated.

"One of the study's premises was that meeting the challenges of demanding curricula often requires more than innate intelligence," said France Belanger, a Pamplin associate professor of accounting and information systems and a research team member.

Her team found that, although the emotional intelligence of students was not directly linked to academic success, those with higher levels of emotional intelligence were more confident that they could handle problems and challenges. This enhanced academic performance.

"One of the implications of these findings is that computing curricula might need to be redesigned to include emotional intelligence training, which is a learnable skill," Belanger said. "For example, computing students could be trained on the development of important relationships with other students, which could help them function better in groups."

Ansys Inc. of Canonsburg, Pa., is offering new versions of two applications. ASAS 14 is structural finite element software for the offshore industry, and AQWA 5.6 is a hydrodynamic assessment software suite.

Archway Systems Inc. of Huntington Beach, Calif., has released VersaCAD 2005 for the Macintosh X Tiger operating system.

Kubotek USA of Marlborough, Mass., has updated its KeyCreator design and manufacturing software to version 5.

Machine toolmaker Emco Maier GMBH of Salzburg, Austria, and DP Technology, a CAD and CAM company in Camarillo, Calif., have agreed to cooperatively market DP's Esprit programming system, specifically adapted to Emco's products.

Empresa Solutions Inc. of Phoenix, which makes collaborative data and process management software,
has released version 2.0 of Kinnosa Workflow for PDMWorks. The software adds engineering change management capabilities to PDMWorks, which is made by SolidWorks of Concord, Mass.

RuleStream Corp. of Wakefield, Mass., has issued RuleStream 6.0, a Microsoft.Net-based version of the company's rules-driven product management software.

Autodesk Inc. of San Rafael, Calif., has acquired certain assets of Engineering Intent Corp., a Waltham, Mass., provider of engineer-to-order software and services.

CAE Systems of Witten, Germany, has launched Virtual Studio Software for 3-D CAD presentations.

Geomagic Inc. of Research Triangle Park, N.C., says its line of software for digital shape sampling and processing now supports Microsoft Windows XP Professional, 64 Edition.

The Ashlar-Vellum development team has translated Graphite, its Macintosh and Windows CAD application, into Japanese. The company is located in Austin, Texas.

Maplesoft of Waterloo, Ontario, says its CCA Engineering Simulation Software will be distributed in China.

Aveva of Houston has released Vnet version 3.3. The software allows information compiled by experts in one business area to be used by non-experts in other parts of
the business or in different organizations.

Tech Soft America of Oakland, Calif., which provides graphics components for the CAD, CAM, and computer-aided engineering industry, now offers custom development services to assist with applications development.

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