Like millions of others, my home page was the simple Google search page. But lately, it’s been forcing me to Yahoo and you know, it’s just as good a search engine. Google has been accusing me of spamming it and as a result makes me repeat those squiggly letters before it will conduct my query – Not always, but enough to make me give Yahoo a try. This only happens at work, BTW. 

I do a couple of dozen of searches on a slow day so it’s irritating. So hello Yahoo, goodbye Google, for now.

Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby are both credited with inventing the microchip. This video discusses the development of the microchip, looking at the contributions from by Noyce and Kilby. There is also a third inventor who helped with the process of developing the microchip.

Booming demand for aircraft and power generation plants is fueling higher requirements for a specialized investment casting process that creates complex hollow internal shapes.   Use of molded ceramic cores allows turbine engine blades and vanes to be cast to size with complex cooling passages, permitting engines to operate at higher temperatures with greater efficiency. GE Aviation has a record number of engines on order through 2012, its third record year in a row. The cores are also used for turbines in natural gas power generation plants.

 

One of the beneficiaries is a company called Certech, which is the largest independent producer of ceramic cores for investment casting. Technology growth is in materials development. “We’re always looking for a better mousetrap to give a better yield to the customer,” says Michael Kasberg, vice president and general manager of Certech. “When they pour metal around our parts sometimes they want to pour hotter metal. As a result you need a ceramic that won’t melt when it sees a higher temperature. “

The firms responsible for designing and managing Boston’s Big Dig project reached a $458 million settlement with state and federal officials today. The settlement will allow these companies to avoid criminal charges in the 2006 fatal tunnel collapse and any civil liabilities with infrastructure problems. The settlement and terms were announced this afternoon at a press conference with U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan and Attorney General Martha Coakley. Under the settlement terms, Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff will pay $407 million and 24 other companies involved in the project will pay about $51 million.

 

The settlement will keep Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff from facing criminal charges in the death of a 38-year-old woman who was killed in July 2006 when a portion of the I-90 Connector tunnel collapsed and crushed the car she was a passenger in. Her husband survived the accident.

 

State officials could seek additional money from Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff over the next 10 years if the project has a major failure in the future causing more than $50 million in damage. Its liability would be capped at $100 million.

Today could be the day the firms responsible for managing and designing Boston’s Big Dig will reach a settlement with Boston authorities. The settlement is said to be about $450 million.

 

The settlement is part of several legal battles over the Big Dig project, which not only claimed the life of a 38-year-old woman in 2006 when a portion of the ceiling collapsed and crushed the car she was driving in, but is also facing more flaws in design with constant leaking within the project’s tunnels.

 

According to the Boston Globe, the settlement would allow authorities to seek additional damages from Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff if the project has a major failure in the future. The “major failure” is defined as any incident which causes more than $50 million in damages, according to a source quoted by Globe reporters. The article also says “the consortium’s liability would be capped at $100 million in any future failure, and an arbitrator would have to determine that the consortium was at fault.”

 

In late August, a federal judge accepted a guilty plea from Aggregate Industries NE Inc. for supplying 5,700 truckloads of substandard concrete used in Boston’s Big Dig project. The pleacame as part of a settlement in a fraud case that will cost the company $50 million.

 

In September, employees from Powers Fasteners, the company indicted last month on one count of involuntary manslaughter in last summer’s Big Dig tunnel ceiling collapse, appeared in Suffolk Superior Court in Boston and pled not guilty to the charges. The Brewster, NY-based company provided the epoxy used to secure the bolts to suspend the tunnel roof ceiling. Powers Fasteners is the only company to be charged in connection with the death of a 39-year-old woman when a portion of a ceiling collapsed inside a Big Dig tunnel, killing her when the car in which she was a passenger was crushed. Her husband survived. Under current Massachusetts law, the maximum penalty Powers Fasteners could face if convicted is a fine of $1,000.

 

Several companies faced indictment for their role in the July 2006 Boston Big Dig tunnel collapse that killed a 38-year-old woman when the car she was riding in was crushed by falling ceiling panels.