The link between technological education, employment and competitiveness – Part 3 – UK

In part 2 of the series I looked at India and how it tries to implement a large scale operation to upgrade its educational and competitive capability. Today’s example is the United Kingdom, a developed country with steady population and the longest tradition in industry and technology in modern history.

It is the homeland of some of the greatest minds and technical feats in history. Despite the disintegration of the British empire in the 20th century, during the first post-war decades it has managed to stay in the forefront of industry and innovation. Since then however, many things have changed. The UK is no longer able to match the US and the shear manufacturing size of large rising economies like China and India.

Furthermore, ever tighter integration of the British economy with the EU and the huge size of the EU market mean that the UK does not enjoy the freedom of the past, despite political will and a decision to not adopt the euro. In the 80s, Margaret Thatcher decided to increase competition, open the country to external investment -all Japanese brands set up facilities thanks to attractive tax packages and a skilled workforce- and give extra bias to services.

Although British industry was not decimated as pessimists predicted, the UK has lost some of its momentum compared to Italy, France and Germany, despite very satisfactory overall financial performance. An area where the UK still excels is its universities and their science and engineering departments. One would say that the UK’s educational system is the closest to the North American one from all EU states.

The link between technological education, employment and competitiveness – Part 2 – India

The introductory part of this series stressed the close relationship between technological education/training, employment opportunities and competitiveness. Part 2 is devoted to India, as an example of a rising technological star with large population and high promises.

Unlike China and its manufacturing prowess, India has so far mainly specialised on the service part of the economy. For years now, call centers of many -mainly American- companies are operated in India. A good grasp of the English language, good IT skills and a number of open-thinking service companies led to an explosion that soon spread to the medical field, databases, programming and many other activities that could be undertaken at large distances from clients.

The skills that helped make this progress -do not forget that language, IT and medical skills are all a direct result of education and training- are now in short supply. Companies that set up operations in India are having the awkward problem of employee supply, with the extra twist of personnel that is not well enough educated to meet the new challenges and expectations. University degrees are not a guarantee for employers and foreign-educated scientists are not enough to fill the void.

The link between technological education, employment and competitiveness – Part 1

I have decided to start a small series on employment & competitiveness, and their close relationship to technical know-how. Having lived and worked in different countries and regions in Europe, I have noticed that there is a pattern. In dynamic or traditionally industrial areas there is places and companies that have more steady employment, whereas in others there is considerable fluctuations.

By steady employment, I do not naturally mean the life-long employment model of Japan, but the ability to stay employed on a permanent basis, independently of the fact that one has to move companies or activities on a few occasions in a lifetime.

On a global scale, the cost of employment is of course a deciding factor, and everybody has their sight on China that keeps increasing its manufacturing capacity. However, in both the US and Europe, the more financially progressive states are not necessarily the cheapest. Take for example California, Washington, Germany, Denmark and Switzerland. Do you get cheap labour in any of those? Far from it…

9 reasons you should not get drawn in the operating system discussion black hole

Since the appearance of Windows 3 and the proliferation of Microsoft’s operating system, the comparison with Apple’s Macs and operating systems is a popular and never-ending issue of discussion. A lot of ink -and now web pages- are devoted to a topic with no clear answers in sight. The equation became even more complicated when Linux entered the market in several different flavours, each with its own virtues. And not only that! Microsoft users have got in the debate process as to whether it is worth moving on to Vista or sticking to XP.

I consider the whole process of trying to convince other users as to the superiority of a particular operating system as a waste of time -therefore the ”black hole” title. And here is nine reasons:

1. Most people participating in the discussions are simple users, and by this I do not imply a low level of sophistication for applications they use, but simply the fact that the operating system is the underlying platform on which software is run for work or pleasure. So if for example you are a graphic user that uses Photoshop 90% of the time what is the difference between operating systems? Nothing, absolutely nothing!
2. Instead of arguing about a situation that you can only change with your personal choice, focus your attention on your work instead. Having an opinion is a good thing, but being a supporter of any company is not going to win you extra money. Concentrate on your work instead for extra income and satisfaction.

Energy harvesting – Part 2 – Is it really viable?

In part 1 of the series I discussed the practical difficulties for widespread energy harvesting adoption. In this second and last part, I will go through some ways that I believe would make widespread adoption easier and faster. The number of applications is huge and I would say that it is wise to divide them in small and large scale.

Small scale harvesting would include all devices installed in homes or buildings that are in the form of modules of the larger electrical system. Large scale applications would be more complicated and involve a multitude of harvesting modules combined in a larger harvesting system to be installed from the start of construction, like for example in a train station.

In any case, I want to look at things from the consumer point of view with the simplest and first remarks that come to mind:

1. If I ever wanted to install a harvesting module, I would like to have the harvesting functionality integrated. For example, for a revolving door with a harvesting mechanism, I would like to be able to buy a model involving a clean and quick installation, that can do what I want it to do without modifications. This means it would be easier to compare prices with traditional models and that installation is a simple matter -except for the electrical connectivity part. As consumers, we are so spoiled with out-of-the-box functionality, that demanding from customers any form of modification would probably lead to commercial failure.

Energy harvesting – Part 1 – 5 obstacles to widespread use

A few days back I wrote about the Fluxxlab design proposal to harvest energy from revolving doors. Managing to install standalone energy producing devices is a significant event, much like when the first solar panels hit the market in the past. Therefore, I have decided to write a two part series, the first part is about obstacles to widespread use, part 2 is for now a viable and necessary option.

Despite the initial enthusiasm, energy harvesting is an old idea that has stayed on paper and is only now gaining some momentum. Car braking systems that recuperate energy to charge batteries are only now starting to appear in mass production and represent a very obvious application. As concepts, designers and engineers will seek more new applications for buildings and transport, it is inevitable that they are going to run against some hefty problems that need to be solved. Here is a few:

1. Energy availability: Like in the revolving door’s case, the energy source is neither continuous, nor of the same intensity. In other words, some of the time -in some cases most of the time- it is not possible to produce any energy at all, and during the periods when harvesting is possible things are not rosy with a well determined input.
2. Energy conversion: Energy harvesting is useless if we do not convert the available kinetic or other form of energy to useful electric energy. The efficiency of this conversion has to be pretty high, especially when we have short bursts of production. Most systems only work well under certain conditions, for example when mechanical revolutions are constant, or when wave patterns are regular. In many cases, for example when harvesting kinetic energy from random vibrations, it is awfully difficult to convert this random pattern in regularly flowing energy. The same when we have kinetic energy in the form of rotations, in which case frequency control is a major issue.

Tags, the valuable ingredient of all web content

I have come across this interesting article that presents the latest statistics on YouTube video views in terms of number and spread over time from the initial upload. Most videos have a decent chance of being viewed early, even those from unknown videographers with no previous activity on the site. However, some videos keep drawing the crowds in depth of time, viewers keep coming back again and again.

After billions of hours online, I have also come to the realisation that it is risky to try to put barriers between content types of text, video, photographs or whatever. Thinking about it, I go to certain sites not because of the content type, but because I find the quality high and the experience useful or entertaining. Some sites offer many combined types of content so the division is virtually no-existent, everything is seamlessly integrated in the web page.

The convergence towards the web

There is loads of opinions on the attempted buyout of Yahoo by Microsoft. Whether there will be a new higher offer is debatable. What matters is that Microsoft needs Yahoo pretty badly in order to enhance its web activities, an area where Redmond’s success has been very limited. Ten years ago we measured success by sales of PCs. Now does anybody consider Dell as a cutting edge company? Its model has remained the same for years and does not attract the attention we were used to in the 90s.

Although hardware sales are still important, IT companies strive to offer those extra services that will keep them competitive and allow them -with customer feedback- to continuously evolve towards more attractive and value added services. Google is the current web master and the medium it uses is much more flexible -and uncertain of course- than PC operating systems. On the other hand, Yahoo has not managed to take advantage of its huge user base, despite the fact that some of its applications are strongly entrenched in the market.

The era when every device will be online is not far, and there is already signs that the future of pure hardware manufacturers is threatened. If Apple can make MP3 players and other hardware that will match its software, I cannot see why the opposite is not possible or necessary. Sony already realises that and tries to get in the game with PS3 services -like Microsoft and its Xbox 360.

Are OTEC energy islands the answer to our energy needs?

Source: Telegraph

Big problems require large scale innovative solutions. ElectronRun has so far covered solar proposals for the energy needs of the EU and the US. Now OTEC artificial energy islands come as another large scale idea whose main energy source is water temperature differences. The idea is that when we have a difference of about 20 degrees Celsius between warm sea surface water and cold water from large depths, it is possible to drive turbines for energy production.

OTEC means Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion and is a method that was thought by French physicist Jacques-Arsene d’Arsonval. In fact, Georges Claude, a French inventor, proved the validity of the theory with his tests in the 1920s, but unfortunately did not manage to develop further.

There is two OTEC cycle types. The closed cycle uses ammonia that is vaporised by warm surface water, then drives turbines for energy production and is finally converted to liquid by cold water. The open cycle has an extra advantage, that of producing huge amounts of drinking water. There is quite a few ocean areas that offer the minimum required temperature differences, mostly around the equator.

BiTMICRO introduces 1.6 TB solid-state high performance storage

Hard-disc? What hard-disc? Spinning platters and moving heads are not yet out of fashion for our personal computers, but in high performance space and military applications expectations are very different. BiTMICRO is very experienced in this field and is now upping the ante by offering 1.6 TB of capacity -up from the previous 832 GB- with the E-Disk Altima Ultra320 SCSI SSD -phew!

It comes in standard 3.5 inch form factor and the transfer rate is a fast 230 MB/sec. What is amazing however, is neither its capacity, nor its data transfer rate. This thing operates in temperatures between -40 and +85 degrees Celsius, can withstand shocks up to 1500 Gs and has a reliability that many devices would envy. BiTMICRO is certainly going to great lengths to ensure manufacturing precision for reliable use of a lifetime.