NIWeek Highlights Energy and Education
An NIWeek Wednesday afternoon session that was part of the energy summit highlighted LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reaction), which is the generic name currently used to refer to “cold fusion” and similar related effects. One speaker in the session represented Brillouin Energy Co., which is one of eight or nine companies, according to the speaker, that have made significant progress in this field. The original “cold fusion” experiment was reported in 1989 by Pons and Fleischmann. They claimed that excess heat was generated when palladium was heated in the presence of deuterium. Brillouin Energy claims to have duplicated the result but using only palladium and distilled water.
As the speaker explained in response to a question from the audience, palladium is the only element with a completely filled D shell and an empty S shell—S and D being the lower two electron energy levels, D being higher than S. His explanation for the “anomalous heat effect” is electron capture by the S shell. Regardless of the exact cause, it is difficult to believe that excess heat energy is not being generated: almost twice as much energy is being measured as is applied to heat the materials. With such a large difference between heat input and output, a measurement error is unlikely. NI equipment is used by many of the experimenters.
Thursday Keynote
Ray Almgren, vice president for core platform marketing, introduced the Thursday keynote. Throughout the three days of NIWeek, the SpaceX Dragon ship success was highlighted—NI equipment was used, and the control room displays were all based on LabVIEW. Several of Almgren’s previous positions within the company were directly involved with academia, and engineering education also was featured today. According to Almgren and reports he cited, engineering education all too often has tended to be a math education, devoid of hands-on project-oriented experience. Without direct involvement, many students enrolled in an engineering curriculum don’t pursue engineering as a career.
The team led by Dr. David Keeling and Ali Alazmani from Leeds University, UK, fresh from winning several prizes at Tuesday evening’s Graphical Design Awards ceremony, described some of the work they were doing with robotic systems to assist cerebral palsy patients. They were followed by University of Manchester, UK, faculty who described the significant improvement in student performance and attitude after experiment-based learning was added to the engineering curriculum. Students work on real projects of relevance to and suggested by specific industries.
And, a team from Olin College in Needham, MA, described the autonomous sailboat they had designed, built, and campaigned in a robotics competition. Important parts of the learning experience were organizing the parallel operation of the various groups making up the team and maintaining cooperation and communication among them.
The keynote speaker was Dr. Tom Kurfess, assistant director for advanced manufacturing in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Dr. Kurfess described several interrelated government initiatives directed toward greater manufacturing capabilities. Manufacturing matters because it creates wealth as well as jobs. He said the longer term goal of the National Robotic Initiative is to bring about a closer relationship between robots and people to achieve greater efficiencies.
Education is key, and Kurfess emphasized the need to continue learning throughout your career to stay on the leading edge. As an example, he cited 3-D printing that has become an accepted manufacturing process but is affordable for schools and small companies.
Because of his manufacturing background, Kurfess evaluates innovations by their potential to be scaled. For example, if a new material has been developed, when can it be made available by the ton or by the hundreds of tons? Bridging this gap between innovation and production is the goal of the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation, a collaborative effort between industry and academia doing applied research and training.
See previous posts on NIWeek:
Software Boosts Vector Signal Transceiver
LabVIEW 2012 shares stage with vector signal transceiver
See earlier Online Exclusive: “New Breed of Semiconductors Demands New Breed of Semi Characterization and Test Solutions.”