Push a lot of electricity through a thin wire, and you generate heat. That's the basis of Edison's light bulb. It's also an unintended consequence of high-powered computers, which send not just bits and bytes but surges of electricity through very thin wires. According to IBM, just a small fraction of the power sent into a data center is doing productive work; the rest is generating—or managing—heat.

For IBM, that's a problem, since it owns some 8 million square feet of data server facilities and oversees another 30 million square feet for clients.

"A typical data center spends $2.6 million a year on power," said Mike Daniels, a senior vice president for global technology services at IBM.

Two conventional servers glow in infrared, but the one in the center is cooled by an innovative system.

To keep energy costs from spiraling out of control as the number of data centers continues to increase, IBM said in May that it is investing $1 billion a year in a program of efficiency measures to cut energy consumption. The goal is to double the capacity of its data centers by 2010 without drawing any additional power.

Some of the changes are physical, such as installing a chilled water cooling panel on the backs of racks of servers to remove heat before it enters the rest of the server room. Others are software-based, such as a new means for consolidating work onto fewer servers.

IBM also plans to offer energy efficiency assessments to its clients and third parties. The company said that the growth in server computers—more than 30 million are in operation worldwide—creates both a huge energy draw and a big business opportunity.

When the European Union polled people connected with the energy business across the Continent, 40 percent said they believe that CO₂ capture and storage is "definitely necessary" in their own country. Another 35 percent said that it is "probably necessary."

An opinion survey went out across Europe to people considered "stakeholders" in the question of energy and greenhouse gases. They included researchers, politicians, environmentalists, academicians, and businesspeople. The study got a 30 percent return, or a total of 512 responses.

A CO₂ capture and storage project has been taking place since 1996 in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea at the Sleipner field. More than eight million metric tons of CO₂ have been stored in a saline aquifer deep below the seabed.

Last February the first onshore CO₂ storage demonstration project in Europe began at the village of Ketzin near Potsdam, Germany. Drilling started on the borehole for injection of the CO₂ into a rock formation that had been used previously for storing natural gas.

Other projects exist in Canada, Algeria, and Germany. In the United States, the Department of Energy plans to fund construction of a 275-megawatt coal-burning power plant that will store CO₂ underground.

Non-government organizations, including environmentalists, are most skeptical about carbon capture and storage. The survey found that 35 percent thought capture and storage were definitely or probably not necessary, and 25 percent said it was necessary only if other options fail. Environmentalists worry about the amount of energy needed to compress and pipe compressed CO₂, and that the investment would pull money from other green technologies.

This past March, European Union prime ministers committed their nations to a unilateral 20 percent reduction in CO₂ emissions by 2020 (and a 30 percent reduction if other industrialized nations make similar commitments). The United Kingdom is proposing a 60 percent reduction by 2050 for its industry.

Carbon capture will not come cheap. Estimates cited by Det Norske Veritas, an independent Norwegian marine safety foundation that coordinated the study, anticipate costs of 2.0 to 5.4 cents per kilowatt-hour for carbon capture and storage. The average cost of electricity in the United States was 8.7 cents per kilowatt-hour in January 2007.

The survey was conducted under the auspices of an EU project called ACCSEPT, an acronym for "Acceptance of CO₂ Capture and Storage, Economics, Politics, and Technology." The lead author of the report was Simon Shackley, an expert in climate change at the University of Manchester Business School in England.

A study by the Rand Corp. for the U.S. Navy concludes that it will be less expensive to develop the next class of nuclear submarines if the workforce is kept occupied and intact, even if it means starting the next cycle as many as five years early.

According to a report issued by Rand, it was hired to study the nuclear sub workforce in 2005 when the Navy was facing a long period of relative inactivity in the area. It would be the longest period without a major development project since the nuclear submarine fleet was launched. The Navy was
particularly concerned about design resources at Electric Boat in New England and at Northrop Grumman Newport News in Virginia, the shipyards that have designed nuclear submarines, and at the key vendors that provide components for submarines.

Lack of a big project raised the Navy's concern about design resources at nuclear sub shipyards.

Rand said its researchers considered two possibilities. One was to let the workforce dwindle and then rebuild it when needed for the next class of subs. The other was to sustain more workers than would be needed during the inactive period. According to Rand, the second plan would result in less cost overall.

One way to keep workers would be to take the normal 15-year design cycle, stretch it to 20 years, and start it early, perhaps in 2009.

The study is titled "Sustaining U.S. Nuclear Submarine Design Capabilities." It was sponsored by the U.S. Navy and conducted within the Acquisition and Technology Policy Center of the Rand National Defense Research Institute.

The U.S. Navy has awarded General Dynamics Electric Boat a $46.7 million contract to perform routine maintenance and modernization work on the USS Alexandria (SSN-757), a Los Angeles-class attack submarine. Groton, Conn.-based Electric Boat is a wholly owned subsidiary of General Dynamics.

Under terms of the contract, Electric Boat will perform a Selected Restricted Availability, which consists of repairs, maintenance work, alterations, and several major systems upgrades. The work will take place at the Navy Submarine Base in Groton and involve up to 300 employees at its peak; it is expected to be completed by September.

General Dynamics, headquartered in Falls Church, Va., employs approximately 82,600 people worldwide and had 2006 revenues of $24.1 billion.

The U.S. Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration have selected Lawrence Livermore National Security LLC to manage and operate Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The contract begins on Oct. 1, 2007.

It is a new management team that includes Bechtel National, the University of California, BWX Technologies, Washington Group International, and Battelle. The team also includes Texas A&M University.

Bechtel is the largest project management contractor in the United States. The University of California is the world's largest academic research institution. BWX Technologies and Washington Group International are the top two DOE nuclear facilities contractors, and between them they manage and operate four of DOE's five safest sites. Battelle is a global leader in science and technology and commercializes technology, performs contract research, and manages laboratories for government and industry. Texas A&M provides an important academic alliance.

LLNS president George Miller, the laboratory's director, said, "As our country continues to respond to threats at home and abroad, our new team will ensure that the employees at Lawrence Livermore are able to continue enhancing our nation's security."

The Greater Trenton Section of ASME, trying to do its part
to foster STEM education, is holding job fairs to recruit teachers of technology for the New Jersey public schools. Three dozen people signed up for the initial event.

STEM is an acronym for "science, technology, engineering, and mathematics." ASME and other professional societies have long advocated for increased attention to these subjects in public schools.

According to Andrew Blelloch, the section's vice chair, the group teamed with other interested parties, including the Technology Educators Association of New Jersey and the Technological Studies Department at The College of New Jersey to hold a workshop. The event also received the support of the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce and the New Jersey Society of Professional Engineers. He said speakers on the program included Colleen Walsh-Barnes, an engineer turned teacher. The program also provided information on requirements for certification as a teacher of technology in the state.

Blelloch said that 36 people registered for the workshop, which was held on The College of New Jersey's campus in Ewing. Twenty showed up and several others sent regrets and indicated an interest in learning more about teaching technology as a career. A similar event will be held in northern New Jersey in the fall, Blelloch said.

A spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Education said the agency is participating in the national Project Lead the Way program, which has developed a four-year sequence of courses. When combined with college preparatory mathematics and science courses in high school, the sequence introduces students to the scope, rigor, and discipline of engineering and engineering technology before they enter college. Several courses have been developed, including Introduction to Engineering Design, Principles of Engineering, and Engineering Design and Development. Courses are in the works that will address subjects such as biotechnical and aerospace engineering.

An understanding of some of the fundamentals of engineering is expected not only to attract more students to the field, but also give those who enter college engineering programs a greater chance at success.

DLI Engineering Corp. of Bainbridge, Wash., has been awarded a $5 million contract to support machinery condition assessment for the propulsion and auxiliary machines aboard U.S. Navy aircraft carriers. DLI is teamed with The Lightship Group LLC of Wickford, R.I., on this project.

Lockheed Martin has been selected to provide a Tactical Reconnaissance and Counter-Concealment Enabled Radar (TRACER) capability to the U.S. Army. Under this contract, worth $40 million, Lockheed Martin will work with the Army to incorporate low-frequency synthetic aperture radar systems into Predator-class unmanned aerial vehicles.

Peerless Mfg. Co. of Dallas was awarded a contract valued at about $14 million for the design and supply of separation equipment for multiple compressor stations along the East-West gas transmission pipeline project in India. These separators will remove solids and liquids from the gas to protect the compressor and its associated equipment. The equipment is scheduled for delivery in 2008.

Curtiss-Wright said it has acquired Scientech LLC of Idaho Falls, Idaho, for approximately $57.8 million. Scientech provides commercial nuclear power instrumentation, electrical components, specialty hardware, process control systems, and proprietary database solutions aimed at improving safety and plant performance and reducing costs. The business will become part of Curtiss-Wright's Flow Control segment, based in Falls Church, Va.

Phoenix Motorcars Inc., a manufacturer of fleet electric vehicles in Ontario, Calif., has placed an order worth $2.2 million for NanoSafe 23 kWh battery packs made by Altair Nanotechnologies Inc. Altair, based in Reno, Nev., said the latest order brings its total value of sales to Phoenix to more than $4 million.

MSC.Software will integrate visualization software developed by Computational Engineering International into its new SimXpert product line.

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© 2007 by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers