Perhaps outsourced manufacturing and services have spooked engineers. Maybe they worry about the dearth of American students in U.S. engineering graduate programs. Possibly the warnings about competitiveness in the National Academies' report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm, caught their attention. Whatever the reason, when engineers meet, they talk increasingly about how to encourage more students to enter their profession.

Inspiring and educating future engineers proved to be the theme of several sessions of National Instruments Corp.'s user meeting in Austin, Texas, in August.

At a seminar on engineering education, panelists wrestled with why students take a pass on engineering classes. Ben Streetman, dean of the University of Texas College of Engineering in Austin, noted that only 5 percent of U.S. degrees are in engineering, compared with 40 percent in China. He noted that young people had few opportunities to do things with their hands, like build electronics from kits or fix a car, that traditionally lead to an interest in engineering.

Educators hope that Legos and more hands-on projects will show that engineering is child's play.

He also acknowledged that engineers had an image problem: "A recent study by the U.S. Association of University Women found that the number one reason why women didn't go into engineering was that the engineers were the nerds in high school and they didn't want to be like them. Can we convince them we're not nerds, or that it's not so bad to be a nerd?" he asked.

Leah Jamieson, the newly appointed dean of Purdue University's College of Engineering who founded the nation's first school devoted to the study of engineering education, talked about her school's emphasis on community service. "It makes a statement about engineering as a helping profession," Jamieson said. "There are stereotypes about this profession, and we need to get out there and show we're contributing to making the world a great place."

Mary Wells of the Texas High School Project discussed the state's science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM, program. Funded in part by $50 million in donations from the Gates and Dell Foundations as well as by local businesses, the program has established 35 STEM academies around the state, often in poor urban districts.

"The importance of maintaining student interest cannot be overstated," Wells told the seminar. "We designed STEM for project-based learning, and we're seeing nice results as we move to STEM educational practices in the classroom. We also need to focus on removing the stigma attached to excelling in math and science. We hope these academies will focus on building that culture."

Jens Maibom, vice president of education at Lego, emphasized starting with younger children. "Children are naturally curious," she said. "They want to know how things work. It's not enough to talk about high school or middle school. We should start earlier."

NI and Lego Group used the meeting to show off their latest toy for youngsters, the Mindstorms NXT robotics kit, and to introduce a complementary school curriculum developed with Tufts University's Center for Engineering Educational Outreach and Carnegie Mellon University.

The goal is to make engineering cool in school. "For younger students, it's not so much about teaching robotics as using robots to teach math and science," said Ray Almgren, National Instruments' vice president of product marketing and academic relations. "Perhaps you read a book in fifth or sixth grade and instead of writing a report, you program the robot to act something out. We want to show that math and science are fun."

The keynote speaker at the event was Dean Kamen, the inventor who founded the FIRST robotics competition for high school students and recipient of several ASME medals. He asked corporate managers in the audience to support programs designed to popularize engineering. As Kamen explained it, lack of interest in engineering is a cultural issue.
"Americans love sports and competition," he said. "So why not create sports with engineering content?"

From 28 teams in 1992, FIRST has grown to more than 1,000 teams, competing to design the robot that is best at putting a ball through a goal. There is also a FIRST Lego League for younger students, a ready-made market for the Mindstorms NXT.

A British racing team has followed through on its effort to set a new bar for diesel cars. The JCB Dieselmax has been officially clocked at an average of just over 350 mph in two passes of a measured mile on the Bonneville Salt Flats. The record was set in late August under the auspices of the FŽdŽration Internationale de l'Automobile, based in Paris.

The car is sponsored by JCB, a manufacturer of construction equipment with headquarters in Rochester, England. The company also manufactures a diesel engine of its own, originally designed for a backhoe. The basic JCB 444 diesel engine was modified to power the racecar. The JCB Dieselmax carries two of the engines.

To give its attempt added interest, the racing team engaged Andy Green to drive the car. Green, whose day job is wing commander in the Royal Air Force, became a celebrity in land speed racing in 1997, when he became the first man to break the sound barrier in an automobile. On that occasion, he drove a vehicle powered by two jet engines in Nevada.

Diesel has not been a popular choice of power plant in speed competition. JCB Dieselmax's record more than doubles the speed of the previous recordholder in its class. That car maintained an average of just over 158 mph in 1936. JCB Dieselmax is a Class 11 car. A Class 10 diesel topped 235 mph at Bonneville in 1973.

The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. has agreed to sell its global tire fabric operations to Hyosung Corp., pending government and regulatory approvals.

Goodyear and its affiliates will receive approximately $80 million for their tire fabric manufacturing plants and assets, which include operations in Decatur, Ala.; Utica, N.Y.; Americana, Brazil; and Colmar-Berg, Luxembourg. The facilities, which employ about 1,000 people, produce and treat fabric that is used in Goodyear's tires.

After the sale, Goodyear plans to enter a supply agreement with Hyosung. Goodyear expects to make purchases worth approximately $350 million to $400 million in the first year.

Hyosung, headquartered in Seoul, South Korea, has produced tire fabric since 1968. It has operations in its home country as well as in China and the United States.

Akron, Ohio-based Goodyear employs about 80,000 people worldwide.

Try bending a sliver of silicon and before long you'll have two shards. That's a problem for researchers trying to make microelectromechanical-based displays: The material of choice for MEMS just isn't flexible enough to do the job adequately.

But now, engineers at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., say they have found a substitute that can potentially add a whole new range of capabilities to MEMS. Writing in the July issue of the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, Shahyaan Desai and his colleagues claim that simple carbon fiber is superior to silicon for many MEMS applications.

Carbon fibers—made from rolled-up sheets of graphite—are familiar from their use in composite materials that make high-end bicycle frames and aircraft parts. But the unbound raw fibers have properties that make them potentially useful in applications where suppleness, not strength, is at a premium. According to members of the Cornell team, carbon fiber is about 10 times more flexible than silicon.

In experiments, Desai and his colleagues vibrated millimeter-size carbon fibers and found that they could whip back and forth like tiny fishing rods, deflecting as much as 90 degrees more than a billion times without cracking.

To test its potential for use in MEMS-based optics, the team built a scanner made of a minuscule mirror supported by two carbon-fiber hinges. The assembly then was vibrated at 2,500 hertz over a range of 180 degrees. The fibers—each only 55 micrometers across—showed no fatigue.

Oscillating mirrors much like the experimental setup could one day be employed in an array to form a small, cheap display. Other potential uses for the fibers' flexibility include micrometer-scale clock springs that could uncoil to power MEMS devices.

Westar Energy Inc. of Topeka, Kan., said it plans to build a new 345-kilovolt high-capacity transmission line from northwest of Wichita, near its Gordon Evans Energy Center, to the Hutchinson, Kan., area. Westar also plans to build additional high-capacity power lines to improve the electric network in Kansas, and strengthen the state's access to the broader regional transmission system.

Westar's plan to expand its transmission network with new high-capacity lines is one of several major initiatives to invest in long-lived electricity infrastructure to serve Kansas into the 21st century.

Westar Energy Inc. is the largest electric utility in Kansas, where it provides electric service to about 667,000 customers. The company has nearly 6,000 megawatts of electric generation capacity.

Sierra Pacific Resources has signed a power purchase agreement with Nevada Geothermal Power Inc., to provide up to 35 megawatts of new renewable generating capacity for its utility subsidiaries, Nevada Power Co. and Sierra Pacific Power Co.

The contract is for purchases over 20 years from Nevada Geothermal Power's planned Blue Mountain Project in Humboldt County, Nevada. The contract requires review and approval by the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada. The plant is expected to be completed in 2009.

Nevada Geothermal Power Inc. is developing geothermal projects in the United States to provide electrical energy that is clean, efficient, and sustainable.

Headquartered in Reno, Nev., Sierra Pacific Resources is a holding company whose principal subsidiaries are Nevada Power Co., the electric utility for most of southern Nevada, and Sierra Pacific Power Co., the electric utility for most of northern Nevada and the Lake Tahoe area of California.

Sierra Pacific Power also distributes natural gas in the Reno-Sparks area of Nevada.

When Knovel Corp. told us that the latest additions to its online technical library service included the United States Air Force Dictionary, they told us that the language is English, but a highly specialized English, and it might be a good resource for anyone wanting to do business with the service. You know, to understand the dialect.

We took Knovel up on an offer to see for ourselves. We didn't have to go far to realize we were in an unusual linguistic environment. The dictionary starts with three entries for capital A, including one with 12 listed meanings, from "Army," "Aircraft," "Amphibian," and "Attack," to "Aggregat," which we are told is "a German word meaning 'complex machinery.' " The listing under "Abbreviation," by the way, occupies the equivalent of more than half a page.

Knovel operates a Web site, Knovel.com, which makes a library of scientific and technical texts and databases available to subscribers. According to Jim Willis, the company's director of e-marketing, Knovel has about 950 titles available in electronic form. Texts incorporate applets, such as a beam-analysis tool, that let researchers solve equations, plot graphs, and carry out other technical work on the site.

Air France has placed orders that will let it install the Boeing Class 3 Electronic Flight Bag for its entire fleet of 777 airplanes, including 42 currently in service and 13 to be delivered. The Boeing Class 3 EFB is a computer integrated into an airplane's avionics that can serve as a communications gateway between the airplane in the sky and an airline's operations center and maintenance department on the ground.

Curtiss-Wright Corp. of Roseland, N.J., has acquired TechSwan Inc. (also known as Swantech) of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for $3.6 million. Swantech has developed advanced software to monitor, predict, and evaluate the operating condition of high-performance critical equipment, primarily in the marine, power, and process markets.
The business will become part of Curtiss-Wright's Flow Control segment.

Sermatech has completed a science and technology center in Limerick, Pa., where it will conduct advanced aerospace and industrial coatings research and development.

Saturn is equipping versions of its latest sedan, the Aura, with StabiliTrak electronic stability control by Delphi Corp. of Troy, Mich. (For more on electronic stability control, see Technology Focus in this issue.)

Boeing has selected Goodrich Corp. to provide landing gear maintenance for the U.S. Air Force's fleet of C-17 aircraft. The contract is expected to generate up to $38 million in sales over the next three years.

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