The United Nations estimates that, at present rates, clearing the approximately 110 million landmines buried in seventy countries could take more than 1,000 years. Richard Craig, a physicist at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, is developing a new method for detecting landmines. His prototype is called the Timed Neutron Detector. Unlike today's metal detectors, which cannot detect all-plastic landmines, it works by detecting the slowing of neutrons that encounter hydrogen. Hydrogen is found in both explosives and plastics. As neutrons leave the detector, a time-tagging radiation source obtained from the DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory records each neutron's exit. Then, neutrons return after either interacting with the soil or with the hydrogen found in landmines. Neutrons that interact with soil will return to the detector at nearly the same speed at which they left. The detector ignores them. Instead, the detector focuses on neutrons that interact with hydrogen. The neutron's speed slows down when it interacts with hydrogen because it has about the same mass as a hydrogen nucleus "It's a little like billiards," says Craig. "When the cue ball strikes another ball of the same mass, the second ball takes some of the energy and the cue ball loses energy and slows down." Additional applications for the neutron detecting technology include forensic and law enforcement applications. For more information, send e-mail to inquiry@pnl.gov. The website for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is www.ornl.com.
For 3D printing to make the jump from rapid prototyping to manufacturing, engineers will need to find easier ways to move products from their CAD screens to their printers.
Gigabit and PoE are two networking technologies moving ahead in tandem as industrial users power remote Ethernet devices such as IP security cameras at 1,000 Mbps over existing CAT5 cable.
New versions of BASF's Ecovio line are both compostable and designed for either injection molding or thermoforming. These combinations are becoming more common for the single-use bioplastics used in food service and food packaging applications, but are still not widely available.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
Early in my career, I worked as a draftsman and remember the days of drawing on vellum with numbered pencils and Mylar with plastic lead. This was a fun experience in the sense that I ...
I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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