PolyThinkers Pad

An international group of leading technological thinkers identified the biggest challenges for engineers in the 21st century. Their conclusions are now available in the report, Grand Challenges for Engineering. The National Academy of Engineering released the report, which identifies 14 areas awaiting engineering solutions, on February 15, 2008.

Here’s the full list of challenges from the academy’s experts:

• Make solar energy economical
• Provide energy from fusion
• Develop carbon sequestration methods
• Manage the nitrogen cycle
• Provide access to clean water
• Restore and improve urban infrastructure
• Advance health informatics
• Engineer better medicines
• Reverse-engineer the brain
• Prevent nuclear terror
• Secure cyberspace
• Enhance virtual reality
• Advance personalized learning
• Engineer the tools of scientific discovery

A Robot driving competition, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was won by a team from Carnegie Mellon. The race highlighted the great advances in robotic technology, featuring such maneuvers as making a left turn in the face of incoming traffic, and even cheating a little to get out of tricky situations.

The prize was given to the vehicle that could maneuver a 60 mile course in under six hours in a simulated city. The vehicles were unmanned, and once started, should not require any human instructions before the race was completed. Many variables, including how well the vehicles adhered to California driving regulations were factored into the judgment, and it was always understood that the winning vehicle was not necessarily the one with the fastest time. (A robot designed by Stanford actually crossed the finish line first). [Read more →]

Open Access publishing continues to rise at an astronomical rate as researchers hope to maximize their impact by providing free access to their scholarly articles online. But all this newly available material does little good if you don’t know where to find it. Fortunately the good folks at Lund University in Sweden have created the Directory of Open Access Journals.

The Directory of Open Access Journals is a carefully vetted list of fully open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journals covering all subjects and languages. It currently lists a total of 2,870 journals, with a net growth rate of 1.2 titles per calendar day over the past year. The directory aims to be a “one stop shop for users to Open Access Journals.”

Subjects covered in the Directory include: [Read more →]

TechXtra is a free service which can help you find articles, books, the best websites, the latest industry news, job announcements, technical reports, technical data, full text eprints, the latest research, thesis & dissertations, teaching and learning resources and more, in engineering, mathematics and computing.

From the website:

TechXtra searches parts of the Web that Google doesn’t, and TechXtra helps you find subject-based information, which Google doesn’t do very well. Many of the things you’ll find through TechXtra come from the ‘Hidden Web’, and are not indexed by Google.

An important note: Search Dibner’s subscription databases first since we may have paid access to some of the resources you will find on TechXtra. Also remember that if they are not free and we don’t have a subscription, you may always make a request using our online document delivery form.

TechXtra is now available in the list of Research Tools in the blog’s right sidebar. Give Google a rest and check out the other great tools listed there when you want to conduct a more focused search.