The Contra Costa Times has a pretty good video of last night's I-580 overpass collapse that is sure to gridlock traffic in San Francisco that on a normal day is tough to navigate. In a terse one sentence advisory, the I-580 traffics condition report urges commuters to seek alternate routes. The collapse caused an inferno from an exploding gasoline truck that failed to negotiate a curve. The disaster is reminscent of the Big Dig ceiling collapse in Boston last summer that tied up traffic for months.
Should a highway be able to withstand such an unusual accident? Indeed, the engineering in the rebuilding of I-880 in Oakland from the 1989 earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter Scale factored in future earthquakes. But how often does a truck explode in California? Comparatively, quite a bit. I was in San Francisco when a gasoline truck exploded inside the Caldecott Tunnel on April 7, 1982, killing seven. In 2001, a truck driver rammed the California state Capital Building with a truck loaded with 65,000 cans of evaporated milk that caught fire.
So funky things like tanker explosions inevitably occur on California highways and byways. Should (or could) a highway be able withstand such an inferno? Hardly. Though, I am not a civil engineer, that would would be tantamount to making them withstand a bombing.
Safety networks have become more complex, and have actually become simpler and easier to deploy for plant operators. This slideshow highlights developments in plant safety with an emphasis on integrated safety networks.
As the MEMS industry spans a myriad of industries and markets, the future of MEMS in consumer electronics will enable a myriad of functionality, applications, and personalization.
The Nest is a sleek-looking digital thermostat which can actually "learn" its owners' schedule and then continue to regulate temperature to suit the user's preferences and patterns.
Thanks to embedded electronics, medical devices are getting smaller and smarter than ever. Pacemakers and implantable defibrillators are now able to call physicians. MRIs, CT scanners, and ultrasound machines are gaining mobility. And the venerable Band-Aid may soon be able to detect illnesses ranging from fevers to heart arrhythmias. On February 21, join Design News senior editor Charles Murray for a wide-ranging discussion, "Embedded Angles for Medical Products," which will explore the latest developments in medical electronics. The discussion will examine advances in medical device technology and offer an inside look at the embedded electronics behind it.
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