A group working for the National Science and Technology Council has issued a report recommending that federal research and development programs give priority to three manufacturing areas—hydrogen energy technologies, nanotechnology, and intelligent and integrated manufacturing.

According to the report, the areas were chosen because of their "current and future importance to the nation's economic and national security." The three areas are squarely within the American Competitiveness Initiative. They are covered by the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, the National Nanotechnology Initiative, and the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Program.

According to the report, the federal government is the largest supporter of basic research in the United States. It estimates that federal R&D spending accounts for about 61 percent of the total investment. Industry accounts for another 16 percent. The report attributes most of the balance to state governments and nonprofit institutions.

The group sees manufacturing R&D for hydrogen technologies as a means for the U.S. to achieve energy security by not having to rely on foreign oil. Operating a hydrogen-powered fleet would also eliminate most vehicle emissions. Research would be aimed at advancing the manufacture of hydrogen production and storage facilities, and fuel cell components and systems.

Nanomanufacturing R&D, to develop mass production of nanoscale materials and devices, is seen as a foundation for economic growth. The continued miniaturization of top-down processes and the development of self-assembly, or bottom-up production methods, are expected to revolutionize manufacturing.

Intelligent and integrated manufacturing involves information technology for control and monitoring of machinery.

The report, Manufacturing the Future: Federal Priorities for Manufacturing R&D, was prepared by the NSTC's Interagency Working Group on Manufacturing R&D. The full text is available online at www.manufacturing.gov.

According to David Stieren, executive secretary of the group that produced the report, "Our objective was to focus on issues of national importance, and to identify manufacturing areas that have the potential to deliver major benefits to the economy. These benefits include creating new jobs, enhancing manufacturing competitiveness and making progress toward accomplishing major national goals."

Stieren is also technology deployment manager of the Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a service operated for U.S. manufacturers in the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

For years, engineers and scientists have worried that American students didn't learn enough mathematics to pursue their disciplines once they got to college. After two years of assessment, the President's National Mathematics Advisory Panel agrees. It says that American student achievement in math is "at a mediocre level" compared with peer nations, and recommends a thorough revision of the American math curriculum.

The panel's most important message is that students need to learn fewer math topics, but learn them well. It calls for a "streamlined" K-8 mathematics curriculum that emphasizes "a well-defined set of the most critical topics in the early grades."

The panel looked at the nations that performed best on international math tests. It found that those nations taught a relative handful of math topics, especially in the early grades, but covered them at great length so that children fully mastered the material.

This contrasts with U.S. math curricula. Most states introduce first- and second-graders to five, 10, or even 20 different topics within the first two years of school. The goal is to provide a "comprehensive" math education, but students rarely have the time to master one set of skills before moving to the next subject. The hope is that students will build on what they learned when they return to the topic in future grades.

The panel recommends that, instead of trying to teach everything, educators pare down the curriculum to "a well-defined set of the most important topics." It also warns: "Any approach that revisits topics year after year without bringing them to closure should be avoided."

The panel's streamlined K-12 curriculum would focus on preparing students for algebra by grade 8. This will require proficiency with whole numbers, fractions, and certain aspects of geometry and measurement. The panel notes that schools must spend more time on fractions, which it describes as "the most important foundational skill not developed among American students."

The panel also seeks to end conflicts over the best way to teach mathematics. It calls debates over methodologies "misguided." Instead, it says that "conceptual understanding, computational and procedural fluency, and problem solving skills are equally important and mutually reinforce each other."

The panel also supports memorization of mathematical facts to free "working memory" for solving more complex problems. The panel believes an emphasis on effort will improve outcomes, and that children will work hard if they see that their work pays off.

The panel supports better training for math teachers and the use of specialists to teach elementary mathematics. It also encourages teachers to assess student work between tests, and to provide numerous and clear models for solving problems to help students who struggle. The panel wants to give gifted students the chance to tackle more complex math.

Finally, the panel calls on publishers to produce "shorter, more focused and mathematically accurate" textbooks, and national and state tests to emphasize the most critical knowledge and skills leading to algebra.

Seeking to reduce the number of accidents at nuclear materials facilities in their country, Russian researchers have teamed up with several human factors and cognition experts from Sandia National Laboratories to figure out ways to determine, on any given day, if workers are ready to perform critical operations.

"The Russians came to us seeking help in developing some kind of protocol for assessing human readiness for duty," said Elaine Hinman-Sweeney, who manages Sandia's U.S.-Russian collaborations for the Nuclear Weapons Science and Technology Program. "They want to know what factors might cause a person not to do well at his or her job."

The reason for their concern is that between 1945 and 1999 a total of 22 accidents occurred in nuclear process facilities in the U.S., Russia, and the United Kingdom, resulting in nine fatalities and amputations in three survivors. One of the most serious was at reactor 4 of the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine in 1986. Nuclear process facilities include both nuclear weapons laboratories and nuclear power plants, where operations involve fissile materials that require physical and administrative controls to prevent critical or near-critical events from occurring.

Causes of the serious accidents were due primarily to human error and included failure to follow procedures, failure to notice abnormal conditions, communication errors, and inadequate supervisory monitoring of operations. Also contributing to accidents were deficiencies in training, equipment, and processes.

Sandia, based in Albuquerque, N.M., is a National Nuclear Security Administration laboratory. The lab is hoping to get funding to pursue the matter further.

Promoting the joint research were representatives of VNIIEF, a Russian experimental physics laboratory. Rus- sian researchers at St. Petersburg State University have invented a technology that evaluates readiness in people employed in Russia's railroad system, looking at immediate skill levels and physiological indicators of emotion and stress resilience. The skill portion is specific to the ability to operate trains.

The Russian researchers want to adapt the same technology to the nuclear materials operations and have turned to Sandia human factors and cognition experts for assistance.

Sandia psychologist Courtney Dornburg said that one of the first activities she and Hinman-Sweeney engaged in was to develop a glossary of common neuroscience, cognition, and human factors terms.

"The Russians use some of the same vocabulary as we do, but in our initial conversations, we found that our words really had different meanings," Dornburg said. "The glossary put us on the same page so that when we talked through an interpreter we understood each other."

Dornburg and Hinman-Sweeney also reviewed a survey of all the accidents that occurred in the Russian nuclear weapons complex to better understand their seriousness and determine which accidents could be attributed to human error and stress.

In October, they spent a week in St. Petersburg, meeting with Russian professors and researchers, giving all the team members the opportunity to talk face to face. This was the third meeting between the Russians and Americans in Russia. Two other meetings were held earlier at Sandia.

An international engineering company, URS Corp., has opened a facility in South Carolina that will be the new headquarters for its commercial nuclear power operations. The facility, called the URS Nuclear Center, is in Fort Mill.

URS's commercial nuclear business is handled through its Washington division, the former Washington Group International, which URS acquired late last year.

According to the division's senior vice president of commercial nuclear operations, John A. Simmons, the division's two other principal offices, in Princeton, N.J., and Aiken, S.C., will continue to operate. Some personnel from those offices may be transferred to the new headquarters, he said, and the company also is recruiting. Simmons will relocate to Fort Mill.

The Fort Mill facility will have a staff of 300 to 400 people, Simmons said.

The Washington division also operates a number of smaller offices around the United States. The Washington division provides licensing, design, engineering, procurement, and construction services for nuclear generation facilities. The division is currently working on numerous nuclear assignments, including providing engineering and related services supporting major original equipment manufacturers in the deployment of next-generation nuclear power plants, including both boiling water reactors and pressurized water reactors.

Two companies, Shell and Virent Energy Systems Inc. of Madison, Wis., have announced a joint research and development effort to convert plant sugars directly into gasoline and gasoline blend components, rather than ethanol.

The collaboration could herald the availability of new biofuels that could be used at high blend rates in standard gasoline engines. This could potentially eliminate the need for specialized infrastructure, new engine designs, and blending equipment, the companies said.

Virent's BioForming platform technology uses catalysts to convert plant sugars into hydrocarbon molecules like those produced at a petroleum refinery. Traditionally, sugars have been fermented into ethanol and distilled. These new biogasoline molecules have higher energy content than ethanol (or butanol) and deliver better fuel efficiency, Virent said. They can be blended to make conventional gasoline or combined with gasoline containing ethanol, according to Virent.

The companies so far have collaborated for one year on the research. They say the BioForming technology has advanced rapidly, exceeding milestones for yield, product composition, and cost. Future efforts will focus on further improving the technology and scaling it up for larger-volume commercial production.

Virent is a biofuels company commercializing an advanced biofuel technology to power today's vehicles in place of fossil fuels. The company has 68 employees in a catalytic biorefining development facility in Madison.

Royal Dutch Shell plc has its headquarters in The Hague.

Ford Motor Co. has agreed to sell its Jaguar Land Rover operations to India-based Tata Motors.

The transaction is the culmination of Ford's decision last August to explore strategic options for the Jaguar Land Rover business, as the company accelerates its focus on its core Ford brand and "One Ford" global transformation.

The sale is expected to close by the end of the next quarter and is subject to customary closing conditions, including receipt of applicable regulatory approvals.

The total amount to be paid in cash by Tata Motors for Jaguar Land Rover upon closing will be approximately $2.3 billion U.S. At closing, Ford will then contribute up to approximately $600 million to the Jaguar Land Rover pension plans.

One early spring day in the middle of March, city leaders, residents, and newspaper reporters gathered in a seven-acre parking lot outside a still-vacant shopping center in Williamsburg, Va.

Why the fuss?

Williamsburg city planners have billed the parking lot, which will serve a mall expansion, as the largest pervious concrete project in the United States, according to a newspaper account that appeared in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot.

The concrete allows rainwater—which can become polluted with drips of oil, gas, dirt, and chemicals—to filter back harmlessly into groundwater supplies instead of washing off and damaging nearby creeks or streams.

The gray, porous concrete allows rainwater to pass through to the ground below—while still providing a flat, stable parking lot, according to Stephen Romeo, vice president of Landmark Design Group, a Williamsburg engineering company that planned the lot. He was quoted in the newspaper article.

Storm water runoff is a significant source of the pollution that afflicts the Chesapeake Bay and other waterways. The runoff is often linked to increasing amounts of traditional concrete and asphalt, or impervious surfaces, Romeo said.

At Prime Outlets mall, the filtered rainwater will also be used to irrigate trees, shrubs, and flowers that dot the parking-lot landscape.

To curb localized flooding, heavy rains will be piped to an underground field of plastic crates—hundreds of them, lashed together with plastic zip-ties—that will store and then slowly release excess water over time.

This storm-management system also will be covered with pervious concrete, and can be used, too, as an auxiliary parking lot, Romeo said.

A researcher at Imperial College London has updated a nearly 140-year-old math problem to make it applicable to modern engineering use.

Darren Crowdy, chair in applied mathematics, said he's extended the formula used for an area of mathematics known as conformal mapping.

This is a theoretical tool used by mathematicians, engineers, and scientists to translate mathematical information about a complex shape to a circular shape, for example, making it easier to analyze. This theoretical tool has a long history and has uses in a large number of fields, including modeling airflow patterns over intricate wing shapes in aeronautics. It's also used in neuroscience to visualize the complicated structure of the grey matter in the human brain.

A formula, now known as the Schwarz-Christoffel formula, was developed by two mathematicians in the mid-19th century to enable them to carry out this kind of mapping. However, for 140 years there has been a deficiency in this formula: It worked only for shapes that didn't contain any holes or irregularities, Crowdy said.

Crowdy has made additions to the Schwarz-Christoffel formula so that it can be used for these more complicated shapes.

"With my extensions to this formula, you can take account of these differences and map them onto a simple disk shape for analysis in the same way as you can with less complex shapes without any of the holes," Crowdy said.

Axial Vector Engine Corp. said that two assembly facilities, one in Detroit and the other in Dubai, are scheduled to come online to meet the demand for AVEC products.

The Detroit facility is an 18,000-square-foot plant currently housing Adaptive Propulsion Systems, which is being purchased by Emirates International Capital Advisory. Final assembly of 100 kW generators will be completed in this building. Primary sales and distribution from this location are expected to be geared for U.S. military and generator conversion systems.

For the Dubai facility in the United Arab Emirates, AVEC has narrowed the choices to three buildings that average 40,000 square feet apiece. A final decision was pending as this issue went to press.

This facility will also complete assembly for 100 kW generators as well as final assembly for multifuel Work Horse engines. The facility will begin with one assembly line that can be expanded to add three more. Request for bids on block casting and subcomponents have been tendered to three suppliers on each category.

Axial Vector Engine Corp., based in Portland, Ore., owns, develops, and licenses proprietary intellectual property regarding unique internal combustion engine, generator, and electric motor technologies. AVEC says it is applying these technologies to develop a smaller and lighter internal combustion engine that produces more horsepower and three times more torque on less fuel than conventional engines of similar size.

Quickparts Inc. of Atlanta, which provides custom manufactured plastic and metal parts, has launched its QuickQuote Online storefront from which customers can order prototypes and production parts and tooling. Customers can create multiple quotes from multiple processes, view images and dimensions of the files they want to quote, and use a new lead-time calendar that allows them to choose when their part ships.

Optimal Solutions Software LLC of Provo, Utah, has released SculptorPLUS, design deformation software that gives users the choice to include T-Spline and Grid Clip.

Quantum Fuel Systems Technologies Worldwide Inc. of Irvine, Calif., announced that its German solar partner, Asola Advanced and Automotive Solar Systems GmbH, has won a $20 million contract from Krannich Solar, for the supply of high-efficiency silicon photovoltaic solar modules. Krannich Solar, one of the largest solar system providers in Europe, will take delivery of Asola's products this year.

Distributed Energy Systems Corp. of Barre, Vt., a leader in wind power technology, received an order for its advanced Northwind 100 gearless wind turbines from Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, the fourth largest utility company in Canada. Three Northwind 100 turbines will be installed in Ramea, a small remote island on the south coast of Newfoundland and one of 22 isolated communities served by Hydro. Ramea is the site of a five-year innovative research and development project for an isolated wind- hydrogen-diesel generation system.

Water Remediation Technology LLC of Wheat Ridge, Colo., has installed and put into operation two new Z-88 radium removal systems in the village of Antioch, further expanding its operations in Illinois. Under a 20-year contact, the WRT system will improve the quality and safety of drinking water for residents.

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