Like many of his fellow workers, 48-foot-tall Hammering Man, who stands outside the gate at the Seattle Art Museum, took Labor Day off. It's the only holiday he gets each year. Any other day from 7 a.m. to 10 o'clock at night he's working the swing shift, lifting and lowering his mallet four times a minute.

Plying his trade near the entrance to the Seattle Art Museum, Hammering Man dwarfs museum-goers.

Say what you will about a lot of heart, Hammering Man owes his endurance in part to a Cone Drive double enveloping worm reducer from Textron Power Transmission of Traverse City, Mich. The 450:1 reduction, fitted with special breathers to better suit the sculpture's outside workspace, has been helping Jonathan Borofsky's 1991 homage to workers everywhere pound away at his forge since the statue was raised.

Two considerations in picking the Cone Drive reducer were quietness and smoothness, said Textron senior key account manager Jim Virmala. Where an ordinary 40:1 worm drive engages only 1 1/2 teeth, a double-enveloping design of the same ratio places five teeth in contact. By increasing the surface area in contact, tooth loads lessen and longevity improves.

Line contact, rather than point contact, also enhances the reducer's resistance to high shock and reversing loads. After raising his arm 12 million times, the big guy shows no signs of tiring. Hey, Hammer, how 'bout you buying coffee today?

A California supplier of injection molded plastic tools and parts, mainly to medical device manufacturers, is expanding into an adjacent building to meet present and future growth needs.

The company, Inland Technologies Inc. of Fontana, pointed out that it is expanding when the general economy has slowed down. With the move, the company now occupies a total of 62,500 square feet in its facilities in southern California's Inland Empire, just east of Los Angeles.

The original building will see a 5,000-square-foot expansion of its Class 100,000 cleanroom and installation of additional production capabilities.

The company also has purchased three additional JSW all-electric injection molding machines to complement eight others, 17 JSW hydraulic machines, and three Illinois Precision Corp. rotary-table insert molding machines with vertical clamps. The company now can accommodate up to 40 machines, Gary Hengeveld, vice president and co-owner, said.

Because biological pathogens grow and spread inside the human body on a molecular level, the key to protecting against bioterrorism may be in understanding—one protein at a time—how these pathogens function.

Scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., have begun studying a pathogen called Yersinia pestis, commonly known as the plague, and its complement of proteins in an attempt to find ways to treat and protect against bio-terror agents.

Using mass spectrometers, scientists at the laboratory are studying the proteins that exist when the plague is exposed to the body temperature of a flea, which is 77°F, and that of a human, which is 98.6°F. Fleas are common hosts for the pathogen and are a major source of human infection. The laboratory's mass spectrometers enable more comprehensive and rapid protein studies than other comparable techniques, according to the laboratory.

Scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are studying proteins in the plague pathogen, using a mass spectrometer to find ways of protecting against the disease.

Mass spectrometry is an analytic technique used to quantify known compounds, and to determine the structure and chemical properties of molecules. Detection of compounds can be accomplished with very minute quantities, which means that compounds can be identified at very low concentrations in chemically complex mixtures.

Understanding the pathogen's various proteins that are present under different host and physiological conditions may give scientists insight into which proteins perform functions related to virulence and infection. Having a greater understanding of protein functions could lead to new methods of blocking infections.

A water supplier in Texas is increasing its ability to deliver. The Tarrant Regional Water District has hired Kellogg Brown & Root to build one new pump station and expand another on a pipeline that feeds Fort Worth and the surrounding area.

Kellogg Brown & Root, a Houston engineering firm owned by Halliburton, will add a booster pump station on the pipeline at Ennis, Texas, and expand the capacity of another, in Waxahachie, Texas. The company will supply pumps and other hardware to give both stations a capacity of approximately 180 million gallons a day.

The plants will increase the flow of a 90-inch pipeline that carries water from the Richland-Chambers reservoir to Fort Worth and surrounding Tarrant County.

The project is currently in the design phase. Work is expected to start next July or August, according to David Marshall, manager of the water district's engineering division. The stations are expected to begin operating early in 2005.

The water district, based in Fort Worth, was formed by the state in the 1920s for water supply and flood control. It owns four reservoirs and uses three others. It provides water to 30 wholesale customers, including Fort Worth, Arlington, and the Trinity River Authority.

According to KBR, water demand in the district's service area is likely to double in the next 50 years.

Dirty headlamp lenses coupled with Xenon or high-intensity discharge lighting can cast errant beams at approaching motorists. To prevent that, European regulators made it law that automobiles equipped with the latest lighting must also be fitted with beam cleaners.

One new headlamp washer from Siemens VDO Automotive Corp. of Auburn Hills, Mich., couples an electronic actuator to a fluidic nozzle. The pairing provides exquisite control of the vertical and horizontal spray patterns, said Rolf Schlein, a Siemens VDO research and development manager in Bebra, Germany. By eliminating a dependency on fluid pressure to lift it above the bumper line, the washer's telescoping nozzle gains several advantages, he said. Now, headlights can be washed sequentially. No longer must drivers contend with the short but dangerous illumination loss as both beams were sprayed at once.

Electronic actuation also lets spraying begin when the nozzle reaches the lower edge of the headlamp, pause when it crests the top edge, and resume as the nozzle retracts. The resulting better fluid usage means vehicles can get by carrying less.

The new system can be made to "scan" any headlamp make and model, said Siemens VDO business development manager Andreas Reger. In the vertical plane, the spray pattern oscillates across the headlamp face, thanks to the design of the fluidic head.

Foster Wheeler Energy Oy of Helsinki, Finland, signed an agreement with Stora Enso Kvarnsvaden AB, a paper mill in Borlange, Sweden, to supply a 130-megawatt thermal
circulating fluidized bed boiler. The $54.5 million project, scheduled for commissioning in late 2004, also includes a plant building, fuel silos, electrical systems, instrumentation, automation, and stack.

Analog Devices Inc. of Norwood, Mass., said that it has shipped its 100 millionth MEMS accelerometer. This month, Analog Devices introduced two angular rate sensing gyros, representing a new product family for the company. The ADXRS150 and ADXRS300 packages measure 7 x 7 x 3 mm and are priced at $30 apiece in quantities of 1,000.

SmarTeam Corp. of Kfar Saba, Israel, has released SmartGateway version two, collaboration software that expands the product's connectivity through universal standards to a range of enterprise systems.

Ansys of Canonsburg, Pa., recently introduced engineering simulation software called DesignXplorer, which uses parametric control to provide immediate feedback on proposed design modifications.

Foster Wheeler Power Group Inc. was awarded a contract valued at approximately $200 million by LMB Funding, Limited Partnership, to engineer, procure, and construct a nominal 600-megawatt-capacity, combined-cycle natural gas-fired power plant. Construction is under way at the Lower Mount Bethel project, located in Bangor, Pa. The project will include two gas-turbine generators and one steam-turbine generator designed for high-efficiency operation with very low levels of emissions from the combustion process.

Diversified industrial manufacturer Eaton Corp. of Cleveland will receive $84 million in aerospace business as a result of the purchase of 60 C-17 cargo transport aircraft by the U.S. Air Force. The Boeing Co., which manufactures the C-17, said it will produce and deliver 15 aircraft per year from 2004 through 2007.

Ford Motor Co. has called off operations at its Think electric vehicle division, marking the end of its foray into battery EVs. The company cited low demand as a major reason for the decision. Ford purchased the Norwegian company in 1999.

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