A study by Pew’s Social & Demographic Trends Project reveals that when it comes to technology, Americans are changing their definition of necessity. The study asked 1,000 U.S. adults to name their necessities among such products as cars, clothes dryers, air conditioners, television sets, home computers, cell phones, microwaves and high-speed Internet, among others. The results: Clothes dryers, microwaves; air conditioners and televisions all dropped significantly in importance, while flat screen TVs, iPods, and high-speed Internet made very small gains. Microwaves dropped the most. Whereas 68% considered the microwave a necessity in 2006, only 47% labeled it necessary today. Similarly, clothes dryers dropped 17 percentage points and air conditioners fell by 16. Flat screen TVs meanwhile moved up by 3 percentage points and iPods moved up a single percentage point. So what’s the takeaway? It could be as simple as this: During a recession, less products are considered necessities. Pew says that this is the first year in a decade when Americans defined fewer products as necessary.
Experts say that the intelligent highway will save more lives than seat belts, airbags, and electronic stability control. For sheer lifesaving capacity, nothing in the history of the auto industry will come close to it.
In a bid to help automakers cut the fuel consumption and emissions of next generation engines, Freescale Semiconductor is rolling out a three-core microcontroller said to boost computing performance without drawing more power.
Bionic limbs, innovative infusion systems, and transcranial doppler brain scanners are just some of the innovations engineers are bringing to the exploding medical design arena.
Against a backdrop of mounting product complexity and a need to keep a lid on development costs, companies are recognizing a need to make simulation a more integral part of the design process. In response, vendors in the CAD world are building out CAE functionality as part of their CAD suites while simulation vendors are building tighter integrations to leading CAD tools. Keith Meintjes, Ph.D., Practice Manager, Simulation and Analysis at CIMdata, Inc., joins Design News CAD Editor Beth Stackpole in this radio program to explore the new face of integrated CAD and CAE, how companies are benefitting from this tighter partnership between platforms, and how integrating CAE earlier in the development cycle pays off in optimized product designs.
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