All News
All my life, I thought leaves departed trees in the fall because they got too old to hang onto the branch and gravity bested their grasp. It does not work that way. Trees literally release their leaves from the limb. Here is how a leaf becomes the prey of gravity.
As days get colder and shorter,…
Buildings account for about 40 percent of U.S. energy consumption, and are responsible for one-third of global carbon dioxide emissions. Making buildings more energy-efficient is not only a cost-saving measure, but also a crucial climate-change mitigation strategy. Hence the rise of “smart”…
(Hexagon MI: North Kingstown, RI) -- Precision aerospace part manufacturer Alloy Specialties has become one of the first adopters of a new robotic quality inspection technology, Tempo, from Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence division. Tempo has enabled the company to increase its production…
Untitled Document
Burning plastic cart carrying a fax machine, a laptop computer, and a three-ring binder. Click here for larger image. Credit: FCD/NIST
Several centuries ago, scientists discovered oxygen while experimenting with combustion and flames. One scientist called it “fire air.” Today,…
This story was originally published by MIT News.
These days businesses have enough to worry about without thinking about their insurance. Unfortunately, tasks like managing insurance claims and completing annual renewals require a lot of thinking.
The startup Newfront Insurance is seeking to…
(L.S. Starrett Co.: Athol, MA) -- The L.S. Starrett Co., a leading global manufacturer of precision measuring tools and gages, metrology systems and more, has announced the introduction of DataSure 4.0, an advanced wireless data collection system for acquiring precision measurement data. With…
(MSI Data: Milwaukee) -- MSI Data today introduced advanced inspection reporting and analytics to their leading field service management software, Service Pro. These new features make the powerful insights available in field inspection results simpler to access, review, analyze, and share.
Service…
Should quality professionals be worried about the new Covid strains originating in the United Kingdom, South Africa, and elsewhere, and recently identified in the United States?
Authorities have focused on downplaying concerns about vaccine effectiveness against these new variants. While some…
I’ll keep today’s article simple—and fun. Bob Farrell, founder of Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlors, shared the secret to a great customer experience in 1973 (yes, almost 50 years ago!), when he developed a motivational speech for new employees called “Give ’em the pickle!” It was based on a letter he…
(Michigan Metrology: Livonia, MI) -- Michigan Metrology, experts in solving problems related to surface texture, wear, finish, and friction, announce an online, two-day class in surface texture, friction, and wear. The class, which will be held online March 10–11, 2021, is part of a suite of online…
The leading global association for quality professionals, ASQ, announces that Ann Jordan has been confirmed as the society’s CEO, effective immediately. Jordan has served as interim CEO since January 2020. She joined ASQ in 2017 as general counsel and has worked extensively with the board of…
Recently, the team at 4C Creative Cad CAM Consultants in Emmen, Netherlands, was given a unique task: How to get a vintage Harley Davidson motorcycle back on the road again.
What was fun about this project wasn’t how challenging it was, or how much expertise it required. The joy was in the end…
Last month, Google forced out a prominent AI ethics researcher after she voiced frustration with the company for making her withdraw a research paper. The paper pointed out the risks of language-processing artificial intelligence, the type used in Google Search and other text analysis products.…
(ESPRIT: Camarillo, CA) -- ESPRIT, the industry’s most trusted CAM software for CNC programming, optimization, and simulation, announces the debut release of its on-demand training platform, ESPRIT Learning Center, to the general public.
Traditionally, ESPRIT’s applications engineers lead in-…
Ever since the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) included risk-based thinking in ISO 9001:2015, an idea has arisen among some in the quality profession that quality managers can move into the risk management arena without any competition from other professions. This article looks…
According to Gartner, 99 percent of the vulnerabilities exploited in 2020 have been ones known about by security and IT professionals at the time of the incident. However, taking care of them is tiresome, as it takes 38 days to implement a patch and in the past year alone 12,174 new common…
NVision’s engineering services are helping managers of coal-fired power plants converting to natural gas to determine more quickly where to install updated instrumentation necessary to retrofit turbines to accommodate the new power source.
“By measuring the equipment via laser scanning, then…
Any number derived from real observation is made up of three components. The first of these is the intended signal, the “perfect” value from the object being observed. The second is error (or noise) caused by environmental disturbance and/or interference. The third is bias, a regular and consistent…
When your own inbox is overflowing with unread messages, it may not seem like the best tactic, but with the right approach, email can be a powerful negotiation tool, not least in the B2B realm. According to 2019 research by IACCM, a global contract management association, about 75 percent of…
In part one we found the baseline portion of an XmR chart to be the best technique for identifying potential outliers among four tests with variable overall alpha levels. In this part we will look at tests which maintain a fixed overall alpha level regardless of how many values are being examined…
The future of advanced manufacturing in the United States is being built at innovative facilities that enable experimentation in process and product development. The people and organizations at these next-generation facilities are part of a collaborative effort to remove barriers of entry and…
First published Dec. 7, 2020, on MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) news.
In a classic experiment on human social intelligence by Warneken and Tomasello, an 18-month-old toddler watches a man carry a stack of books toward an unopened cabinet. When the man reaches the…
A team of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists has simulated the droplet-ejection process in an emerging metal 3D-printing technique called “liquid metal jetting” (LMJ), a critical aspect to the continued advancement of liquid metal printing technologies.
In their paper, which…
A manufacturing facility can’t operate without a maintenance team. Frankly, most businesses can’t. In one way or another, we all rely on different machines and infrastructure to deliver our products and services.
To avoid expensive, unexpected breakdowns and keep assets in good operating condition…
This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine.
When Stefanie Tellex was 10 or 12, around 1990, she learned to program. Her great-aunt had given her instructional books, and she would type code into her father’s desktop computer. One program she typed in was a famous artificial…
