Engineers develop coating that detects bridge cracks using nanotechnology~

For bridge freaks like me, I think this is pretty cool. I'm not sure about the price though ($1/inch2), although if it prevents structural failure, it's probably worth it at any price: Michigan's Ann Arbor News (original article only available for fee) (9/3, Hamon) reports that Jerry Lynch, a University of Michigan professor of engineering, has led a research team in the development of structural coating that will "detect cracks in bridges before the damage is visible." According to the Ann Arbor News, Lynch and his colleagues created the coating with "carbon nanotubes that use electrical currents to find damage like strain and corrosion." Nicholas Kotov, a UM engineering professor and "key developer of the technology," explained that a "carbon nanotube is microscopic and shaped like a long, hollow strand of spaghetti." Moreover, it is "one of the strongest materials available and, when mixed with the polymers, lends strength to the coating." When electricity flows through the skin, "it produces a two-dimensional image via a central computing device," and "electrical resistance shown in the image will indicate structural damage." Kotov said that the "coating costs about $1 per square inch and is engineered to last decades." He added, "Presumably the carbon nanotube coating won't corrode over the lifetime of the bridge."

UW Researcher named 2008 MacArthur Fellow

David Montgomery, 46, professor of geomorphology, University of Washington. He is making fundamental contributions to our understanding of the geophysical forces that determine landscape evolution and of how our use of soils and rivers has shaped civilizations past and present. Complete list of MacArthur fellows for 2008: http://chronicle.com/daily/2008/09/4703n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Information is Power - Even When it’s Wrong

Posted on the ACRL blog: Check out this example proving the importance of information literacy: a sloppy mistake in handling information led to a plunge in a company’s stock prices: http://acrlog.org/2008/09/11/information-is-power-even-when-its-wrong/ More on the story: Tribune Co., Google Explain Revival of Outdated United Bankruptcy Story http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=101&aid=150236

Professional Engineering Publishing Launches Engineering Conferences Online

Professional Engineering Publishing, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (www.imeche.org), has launched Engineering Conferences Online (ECO), a new online publishing service for conference organizers. ECO (http://eco.pepublishing.com) provides conference organizers with a new way of disseminating important engineering research that would normally be very difficult or impossible to locate in traditional book or CD formats. Papers in ECO will usually be available free of charge on an open access basis and will be fully referenced using DOIs.