An Engineering Librarian Recommends…
The UVA Student Chapters of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Society of American Military Engineers are pleased to announce this presentation about
by
Regan McDonald, PE
Atkins Global
on Tuesday, February 14, 2012, at 6:30 – 7:30 PM in D223 Thornton Hall
Free Pizza & Soda
For more information, please contact ASCE or SAME:
Michael Boone (mrb6zt) or Matthew McDonald (mpm2p)
Research Experience in Carbon Sequestration 2011 (RECS 2011) will be held June 5-15, 2011 in Birmingham, Alabama, for up to 30 participants including early career professionals, Ph.D. students, and graduate students with backgrounds in geology, chemistry, hydrology, physics, climate science, engineering, carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems, and related social science fields. The intensive 10-day program takes an interactive approach that combines classroom instruction with group exercises, CCS site visits, and hands-on field activities including geologic storage site characterization, CO2 monitoring, and modeling fluid flow in the subsurface. Topics covered by the RECS world-class faculty cover the range of scientific, technical, and policy issues associated with CCS deployment. RECS 2011 is currently under development; please check the program page for updates. Applications are due before April 15.
The City of Charlottesville, the County of Albemarle, and the University of Virginia are hosting a Community Workshop inviting the public to learn more about ongoing initiatives related to energy opportunities and impacts, including recent efforts to identify effective energy management strategies.
Cost: Free
Date: Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Time: 6:00-8:00 pm
Note: Display Stations will be available for viewing in the Lobby all day on January 26th
Place: Albemarle County Office Building Auditorium and Lobby, 401 McIntyre Road, Charlottesville, VA
Further information: www.charlottesville.org/agreencity
Event details: display posters on view in the Lobby with specialists on hand to answer questions/discuss issues; an interactive community survey with real-time responses; comment/suggestion boxes for community input.
The Washington Post (9/17, Shin) reports, “A team lead by Charlottesville developer Oliver Kuttner has won an international competition sponsored by Progressive Auto Insurance and the US Department of Energy to build a car that can go 100 miles on a gallon of gasoline.” By achieving 102.5 miles per gallon with its Very Light Car, Kuttner’s Edison2 “was awarded the largest chunk of the $10 million purse offered by the X Prize Foundation, which created the competition.” The vehicle achieved the increased efficiency by “using lightweight materials, aerodynamic design and a combustion engine. It beat out vehicles that relied on batteries, which are heavier — and thus create more drag — more expensive, and dependent on electricity generated by greenhouse gas-emitting power plants.”
Reuters (9/17) quotes X PRIZE Foundation Chairman and CEO Peter Diamandis as saying, “We’re living in a day and time where literally anything is possible. … A man or woman can go out and build a spaceship or a 100 mile per gallon car. This is only the beginning.”
The Los Angeles Times (9/17, Hsu) reports Edison2 received $5 million for taking first place in the mainstream class. Meanwhile, the tandem class was won by Switzerland’s X-Tracer team and its “battery-powered E-Tracer #79,” which “can run up to the equivalent of 205.3 miles per gallon and has two extra stabilizing wheels that emerge at low speeds.” X-Tracer was awarded $2.5 million. Similarly, “Li-ion Motors Corp. of North Carolina won $2.5 million in the alternative side-by-side class with its Wave II electric vehicle,” which achieved “the equivalent of 187 miles per gallon.” The Times notes, “The three winners now qualify for a Department of Energy program that will help prepare the vehicles for commercialization in the United States.”
Focusing on Edison2 and its Very Light Car No. 98, the AP (9/17) reports that, according to Kuttner, “a team of around 100 people – including many racing veterans – developed the car. They opted for a one-cylinder, ethanol-capable engine instead of an electric car because batteries add weight and gas is readily available. But the team said its innovations in aerodynamics and the use of lightweight materials could apply to any kind of vehicle.” A racecar driver himself, Kuttner said “We’ve been working on these types of solutions, really, all our lives. … In racing, fuel is a precious resource. One less pit stop is the difference between winning and losing.”
“The X Prize is only the beginning,” Kuttner is quoted as saying in the Wired (9/16, Squatriglia) “Autopia” blog. “We need to demonstrate that low-mass cars can be safe and meet FMVSS safety standards. We need to show how our Light Car principles can dramatically improve efficiency for electric, hybrid, diesel and natural gas systems. And we need to create cars to fit the wide needs of consumers: SUV’s, family sedans, sports and utility models – all light, aerodynamic, safe and incredibly efficient.”
NPR (9/17) reports that, according to David Champion of Consumer Reports, “car engineers still need to iron out kinks with braking, emergency handling and acceleration.” Scalability is also an important consideration, experts said. But while these vehicles are still “very much in their development stages,” Champion said the competition “really showed the passion and the drive and the ingenuity of these engineers to produce these cars that were extremely fuel efficient.” X Prize Foundation CEO Peter Diamandis said, “This is a prize to show the public that you can have a car that is beautiful, affordable, fast, safe and, ‘Oh by the way – it can get over 100 mpg or the gas equivalent.’ And why would you want anything else?” The Wall Street Journal (9/17) website carries a slideshow of the winning vehicles, and ultra-efficient cars in general.
Reposted from the 9/17/10 ASEE First Bell.
Looking for authoritative information about oil spills, clean-up and restoration? Give this resource a try:
Resources on Oil Spills, Response and Restoration: a Selected Bibliography
http://tinyurl.com/NOAAOilSpillResponse
This is listed on the NOAA Central Library Subject Guides and Bibliographies page, along with numerous others:
http://www.lib.noaa.gov/researchtools/subjectguides/bibliographies.html
The Piedmont Rotary Council has joined forces with the UVA School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) on a 3-year water project in Wum, Cameroon, Africa.
To raise money for this project, the Piedmont Rotary Council and the UVA SEAS will hold a fundraiser on Friday March 12, 2010. The event will begin at 6:30 pm and will feature stories of Africa, Wum music dancers, live and silent auctions, and a dinner.
For more information or to register, click here.
Lecture Series sponsored by the Rodman Scholars Program at the University of Virginia, open to the University community and general public. Lockheed Martin has generously sponsored this years lecture series as a part of the larger Lockheed Martin Sustainability Grant to the Rodman Scholars Program.
Lectures will generally be held on Tuesday nights at 5. All lectures will take place in Jefferson Hall (Hotel C) on the West Range.
Noting that “windows that change color in response to changes in the weather can help save on electricity costs by absorbing sunlight in the winter and reflecting it in the summer,” but “they are expensive and not widely used,” Technology Review (12/4, Bourzac) reports, “Now researchers are developing cheap printing methods for making these electrochromic systems, and hope to make electrochromic films that can be cut to fit existing windows.” The article explains that “electrochromic windows sandwich materials that change color when a small electrical field is applied across them. This change is triggered by changes in light or temperature measured by sensors.” One of the researchers said that “spraying the films is not only a cheaper alternative,” but “it also provides some advantages in performance.” They “found that adding a small amount of lithium to the nickel-oxide ink solution before it’s printed made for a film that changes color much faster and within a wider range.”
Reposted from ASEE First Bell for 12/4/09
Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) has unveiled Green Footstep, a free online carbon calculator for reducing carbon emissions in building construction and retrofit projects.
While many carbon calculators are available online, none address multiple building emissions over the building lifetime. “Green Footstep makes it easier for design professionals to set the design targets theyll need to achieve a carbon neutrality that includes not just operation, but also embodied carbon and others,” said Victor Olgyay, AIA, principal at RMI. “Just as a life cycle cost analysis of a green building design shows the operating costs you are saving over time, Green Footstep shows you the saved carbon.”
Green Footstep also shows designers how to comply with specific design goals such as LEEDs energy credits and the 2030 Challenge, the organization that has challenged designers to make all new buildings carbon neutral by 2030. Edward Mazria , founder and executive director of Architecture 2030, says, “Rocky Mountain Institute’s Green Footstep is an extremely valuable goal-setting and evaluation tool that will help building designers assess a project’s carbon emission impacts with regard to site, construction, and operations. Because the 2030 Challenge is integrated into the program, this tool can also help designers in their efforts to meet or exceed the 2030 Challenge targets.”
The Green Footstep tool can be used on residential and commercial new and retrofit building construction projects, from pre-design through occupancy. The tool
Try out Green Footstep or learn more about its capabilities at http://www.greenfootstep.org/
(Portions of this post excerpted from a November 11, 2009 ACRL Science and Technology Discussion List posting by Frederick Stoss.)
This multidisciplinary database provides comprehensive coverage of the environmental sciences, including energy resources, environmental engineering, industrial hygiene, water resource issues and waste management. Abstracts and citations are drawn from over 6,000 serials including scientific journals, conference proceedings, reports, monographs, books and government publications from 1967 to the present.
Deep Indexing
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For additional information, please see the ProQuest Deep Indexing: Environmental Sciences factsheet. You can learn more about this database from its Factsheet or begin searching the database at CSA Illumina.
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