IT workers pointed towards engineering jobs - Yesterday - 10:59

Engineering and manufacturing companies are increasingly investing in IT to help career development, it has been revealed.

ComputerWeekly.com reports there is demand for technical skills which means those working in IT could progress in engineering jobs.

John Gilmartin, director of contracting services for North and Midlands recruiter Spring Group, hinted this is likely to become an increasing trend towards the end of the year.

It could be a good move, he insisted, as manufacturing and engineering is "no longer" a "slow-moving backwater".

Mr Gilmartin added: "Because of the huge amounts of investment going in, there is a chance to work with the latest tools and technologies and be involved in juicy projects."

The call for IT professionals to enter the engineering and manufacturing industries follows the news that the last year saw a record number of distance learning students pass engineering HNCs.

A-1 Technical Training claimed those that had passed would be able to get better paid engineering jobs.

OFT to investigate Isle of Man companies - 30-04-2008 - 18:42

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is set to investigate whether or not companies that have been awarded contracts by the UK government were involved in bid-rigging or anti-competitive practices.

Isle of Man Today has reported the OFT has already "named and shamed" 112 construction companies accused of collusion when bidding for contracts.

Four years of investigation have surrounded "cover pricing", the tactic of submitting an excessive bid for a contract you have no intention of winning.

Isle of Man OFT chairman Quintin Gill told the newspaper: "While members will share my hope that local construction contractors would not behave in this manner, it would be naive, given the UK OFT's belief that these practices appear to be widespread, to believe that it could not affect the Isle of Man."

Meanwhile, Richard Northedge, has asked in the Guardian if the OFT has been overzealous.

He said in clearing up any abuses by business which have occurred, the body had to be careful not to tar British commerce in doing so.

Temporary workers bill to exclude engineering contractors - 07-04-2008 - 14:42

A bill which gives temporary workers and agency workers the same rights as permanent employees would exclude engineering contractors, it has emerged.

The Labour MP, who is behind the bill, Andrew Miller, has confirmed that it does not include IT contractors as well as engineering contractors.

Chief executive of Association of Technology Staffing Companies (ATSCo), Ann Swain, said: "ATSCo has constantly pointed out that temporary workers in IT and engineering usually earn significantly more than their full-time counterparts and choose to work as contractors because of the flexible lifestyle benefits."

She added that the message is "finally getting through" to lawmakers.

The proposed bill has been a matter of controversy as employers have said it will cost companies too much and affect competitiveness, while unions have said temporary workers are currently being exploited.

ATSCo was formed in 1999 and provides a voice for IT, telecommunications, and professional-level engineering recruitment industry. It was formed with 14 founder members.

Clifford Chance has 27 offices in 20 countries.

Engineer calls for energy changes - 14-02-2008 - 17:48

A top engineer has called for changes to be made to the ways in which energy is delivered to people around the world.

Dr Hisham Khatib has suggested that the gap between rich and poor nations in their capacity to supply affordable energy to their inhabitants ought to be narrowed as the 21st century goes on.

Noting that commercial power is still out of reach for almost a third of the world's population, Dr Khatib has described it as the duty of organisations in richer nations to bring clean energy to those currently without it.

He went on to say that there are serious challenges facing the energy industry around the world and that engineering experts are ready to take them up.

"We need now to reduce the infringement of energy use on the health of the environment and address the imbalance in global provision," he said.

Dr Khatib is a fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, which has close to 150,000 members in more than 125 countries around the world.

Headteachers want Dyson engineering school in Bath - 06-12-2007 - 15:08

Headteachers in Bath have told civic leaders to make sure that a proposed £25 million engineering and design school, which is being funded by Sir James Dyson, is built in their area.

Sir James, who designed his world famous vacuum cleaner in Bathford, wants the scheme to go ahead in Bath but has encountered numerous problems with the project since announcing it three years ago, reports the Bath Chronicle.

A letter, written and signed by 11 local secondary school headteachers, has urged council leaders not to let issues of heritage come before the future of local children.

The letter said: "All those considering the future for Bath and our area need to recognise the needs and hopes of young people too and, from our perspective, the education and achievement of young people are of no less importance to the future than the buildings and look of the city."

Sir James Dyson opened a research factory in Wiltshire in 1993, out of which came the first vacuum cleaner to give constant suction.

15% growth in engineering jobs at Bristol Panasonic plant - 29-11-2007 - 13:04

Panasonic is to increase the number of engineering jobs at its semiconductor development centre in Bristol.

The move follows the adoption of its IC technology into a commercial product and will consist of building on the Elixent foundations.

Last year Matsushita, Panasonic's parent company, bought Elixent though there had been attempts to incorporate its technology before.

Speaking to Electronics Weekly, centre director Andy Elms, explained why the technology had not found its way into commercial products sooner.

He said: "It has gone through a fairly standard productisation process. The first engagement was at the end of 2002 with the initial investigation, and then it had to be ported to fit on the Panasonic process and then it had to be fitted on to a test vehicle and, when the chip's going into an end system product, it requires a lot of buy-ins from different parts of Panasonic."

Elixent technology is being considered for audio-visual applications with a camcorder being the first product to incorporate it.

Copper cables 'can carry 100Gbps' - 21-11-2007 - 11:26

Electrical engineers are attempting to use copper cables to run data rates usually considered the preserve of fibre-optics.

The scientists at Penn State University are trying to use Category Seven cable, which is standard Ethernet cable, to transmit 100Gbps data rates.

Ali Enteshari, an electrical engineering graduate student said: "A rate of 100 gigabit over 70 metes is definitely possible, and we are working on extending that to 100 metres, or about 328 feet."

The new speeds were made possible on the Cat7 cables that have strict specifications for reducing crosstalk and system noise, which is achieved by shielding individual wire pairs and the cable as a whole.

Their findings were presented at the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers' High Speed Study Group last week as they decided on new standards to apply to both 40Gbps and 100Gbps speeds.

John D'Ambrosia, chair of the study group told Computer Weekly: "The need for speed is growing everywhere, but at different rates. While data output of servers doubles roughly every 24 months, the amount of traffic on carrier networks is doubling every 18 months."

Calls for more women in engineering boardrooms - 20-11-2007 - 14:18

Women are being underrepresented in science, engineering and technology (SET) boardrooms across the UK, according to a new report.

The UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology (UKRC) warned that 92 per cent of directors in SET boardrooms are male, compared with 87.5 per cent for non-SET companies.

Outlining how to transform the boardroom culture, the UKRC report suggested directors foster a more inclusive and welcoming atmosphere in the upper echelons of organisations to dispel the prevailing notion among women that there are caps on how far their careers can progress.

This approach - in conjunction with the continued focus on targeting female graduates for engineering jobs - would help ensure greater equality and harmony in the workplace, the report argued.

"As the report clearly states there are too few women on SET boards," noted UKRC director Annette Williams. "Firm commitment is needed from the top of British Industry to ensure that women are able to progress to their full potential in science, engineering and technology and that their talent is not wasted."

Computer scientists should 'take systems out of the lab' - 16-11-2007 - 10:48

A computer engineer and winner of this year's British Computer Society (BCS) Roger Needham award has encouraged budding researchers to build their own systems.

Professor Mark Handley, based at University College London, told the audience at the Royal Society that they should strive to "above all, build real systems and demonstrate that systems work and can help solve problems".

Mr Handley, who developed session initiation protocol (SIP) - the basis of internet telephony, was presenting the BCS Roger Needham lecture entitled Evolving the Internet: challenges, opportunities and consequences to a capacity audience.

He stressed the importance of testing out ideas in the real internet environment instead of simply in the lab.

One of our tasks as researchers is to persistently question the status quo," said Andrew Herbert, managing director at Microsoft Research Cambridge - a sponsor of the award. "Professor Handley has done just that through his examination of the core architecture of the Internet, leading to a serious call to action for our industry.

"It is for this reason that we are delighted to congratulate him on winning the Roger Needham Award, which recognises distinguished UK-based contributions to computer science research."

Toddlers befriend robot - 15-11-2007 - 12:05

Human toddlers have come to treat robots placed in their midst as a person, the reports from a study show.

The two-foot QRIO robot was placed in classrooms of children between 18 and 24 months old for five months. Instead of ignoring it after the novelty had worn off, the researchers at the University of California, San Diego, found the children continued interacting with the humanoid.

QRIO was programmed with a variety of human social functions including dancing and giggling and the children responded by treating it as one of them.

They would touch its hands, cover it with a blanket and help it stand up when it fell over.

"Our results suggest that current robot technology is surprisingly close to achieving autonomous bonding and socialization with human toddlers for significant periods of time," the researchers report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA reported.

The team also discovered the importance of touch, with the children bonding more strongly with QRIO when the robot was programmed to giggle in response to the infants' touch.

Smallest computer found - 26-10-2007 - 11:24

An electrical and computing engineering student has won a $25,000 (£12,100) prize for proving the simplest possible machine that can perform any computation.

Alex Smith, a 20-year-old Birmingham University student, won the prize after proving that a Turing machine made up of a two-state, three-colour cellular automaton was the simplest computer.

A Turing machine is a theoretical abstraction of a computer in which each subsequent state is defined by a set of rules and its current state. While a universal Turing machine can carry out any computation, it is not practically useful.

Mathematician Stephen Wolfram originally defined the computer five years ago and offered the money to anybody who could prove or disprove that the simple machine could carry out any computation possible, including those carried out by vastly more complex computers.

Smith, who started using computers at the age of six and is reportedly familiar with about 20 programming languages, had his 40-page proof accepted.

He said: "I saw the prize problem primarily as a puzzle. At first, I didn't think the Turing machine would be universal. But then I found a way to show that it is."

Scientists print gold ink electronics - 26-10-2007 - 11:24

Scientists in Switzerland have discovered a method to print microelectronics using nano-particles of gold.

Working with the mechanical engineering department of the University of California at Berkeley, the ETH Zurich scientist published a paper on printing a field effect transistor.

The team has used an ink that contains nano-particles of gold to print the electronic structures.

Using an inkjet or a small pipette the scientists print an ink with gold nano-particles - which melt at 150 degrees C instead of 1,063 degrees C that gold melts at - onto an organic substrate.

An argon ion laser is then used to make the gold solid, to sinter it, to write accurately defined structures.

The team used their technique to produce a field-effect transistor, though it is equally suitable for applications such as radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, thin-film photovoltaics or flexible sensors, the researchers told Nanotechnology journal.

"We have yet to run the tests over the long term (years), but the laser-sintered devices were as good as the lithographically processed electronics over a period of several months," Seung Ko from UC Berkeley's department of mechanical engineering, told nanotechweb.org.

Tiny wires come under control - 22-10-2007 - 11:07

Engineers have developed a system for controlling wires so thin that they could lead to the development of minute microchips.

The team of engineers at Edinburgh University made a program which can predict the behaviour of wires 1,000 times thinner than a human hair.

Wires which are measured on a nanoscale - in millionths of a millimetre - behave very differently to larger wires.

Dr Michael Zaiser, of Edinburgh's school of engineering and electronics, told the Herald newspaper: "We looked at what would happen if we deformed a very small wire. When we made the wires smaller and smaller they started to behave in a funny way."

Instead of coiling into rings they take on unpredictable shapes, complicating attempts to manipulate the tiny filaments for use in microchips.

But the engineers, who worked with colleagues at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany and the University of Rome developed a program that allows engineers to predict when problems could occur.

With this knowledge smaller microchips could be developed, which could lead to smaller computers, mobile phones and medical advances.

Dyson's wind hits the catwalk - 11-10-2007 - 17:22

British engineer and designer James Dyson stepped away from the world of home appliances and into the heady world of fashion.

Dyson, best known for his bagless vacuum cleaner, designed the set and runway for the Issey Miyake show at Paris Fashion Week earlier this month.

He was invited to participate because the Japanese designer had taken his inspiration from the Dyson vacuum cleaner parts.

Although surprised, the designer and engineer told the Gazette and Herald newspaper that the collaboration was not as strange as it first appeared to be.

"It's not so odd when you consider that our approach is actually very similar," he said.

"It's about the latest technology, experimentation, testing and truly inventive design."

He added that the collaboration was a good way of showing the world that design and engineering can be exciting.

Dyson, who will be designing a special handheld vacuum cleaner dedicated to the fashion brand, recently saw his bid for a piece of land on which to build a £25 million engineering and design school in Bath turned down, might get a second chance after the winning bidder - Bath Spa University - pulled out.

Mobile phone engineers awarded - 09-10-2007 - 11:07

Engineers whose work resulted in the first mobile phone prototype are to have their endeavours recognised with the 2007 GlobalSpec Great Moments in Engineering award.

On the 35th anniversary of their success, the Applied Research team at the former Communications Division of Motorola, will be honoured for their transformation of the telecommunications industry.

Now there are mobile phones in all shapes and sizes, but it started with the team's work on a 3-D model of a hand held telephone as well as component parts small enough to fit it.

The portable DynaTAC, which was shown to the world in April 1973, was the end result of their three months' work.

Chairman and chief executive officer of specialist search engine GlobalSpec Jeffrey Killeen said: "Thirty-five years ago, this talented and ingenious team of engineering professionals embarked on a project that would lead to an innovation so commonplace today that we rarely pause to reflect upon the extraordinary creativity it took to design and build it."

He added: "The development of the DynaTAC, the world's first hand-held, portable telephone, was really about creative innovation and the engineering ingenuity."

Engineers working on LED streetlights - 03-10-2007 - 15:30

The school of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Manchester is to assist a North Yorkshire firm to develop light emitting diode (LED)-based streetlamps.

Dialite Lumidrives has received a £175,000 grant from the Department of Trade and Industry - which it matched - to conduct applied research to use highpowered LEDs in streetlights.

Working with the University of Manchester, the firm is studying how to pack groups of the LEDs so they generate 12,000 lumens.

The firms managing director, Gordon Routledge, studied at the university and said that once it has figured out how to pack the LEDs together, the future of streetlights could be LEDs.

He said: "Although many companies have made demonstrators of LED lighting in existing lighting applications, very little work has been completed into the associated technologies beyond LEDs at the component level.

"Significant improvements in cost, efficiency and reliability are therefore essential."

Prize for engineering firm and university collaboration - 25-09-2007 - 11:07

An engineering firm is set to create jobs after winning an award for a new technology it developed with a university in the north-east.

Kablefree Systems, which worked with Northumbria University, was awarded the SME and University Collaboration Award at the national Technology and Innovation Awards in London.

The two organisations co-operated to create an emergency lighting system which uses radio to test whether lights are working and can activate backup power from a secondary source. It has already been installed in various hospitals.

More jobs are set to be created as the company sets out to make and sell more units.

Thomas Lovell, director at Kablefree Systems, told North East Business: "This is one of the biggest developments this business has seen and, although I can't give a number, we are looking to create a number of new jobs to push the product forward."

He also praised the collaboration with Northumbria University saying it showed how businesses could benefit from working with the educational establishments.

Beeb brains gets Faraday medal - 21-09-2007 - 11:49

Professor Steve Furber, whose famous work includes the BBC Micro and ARM architecture, has been awarded a prestigious engineering prize.

The professor was presented with the Faraday medal by the Institute of Engineering and Technology.

Named after magnetism pioneer Michael Faraday, the annual award recognises notable engineering accomplishments.

Professor Furber's BBC Micro, one of the first computers to move out of massive rooms and onto desktops, was first released in 1981 and was in high demand.

His ARM processor architecture, first developed in 1985, is still present in a vast range of consumer electronics.

The professor, who has previously received the Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal and the Queen's Award for Technology, said of winning the award: "It is a great honour to receive this. I have been very fortunate to work with many outstanding colleagues both at Acorn and at Manchester, and to find myself in the right place at the right time to work on projects that turned out to have an impact.

"The first half-century of computing has been extraordinarily exciting, but watch out, because the next half-century promises even bigger changes and more rapid development."

Engineers in short supply - 04-09-2007 - 11:05

Engineering and technology companies are having difficulty recruiting experienced or mid career staff, giving engineers an advantage when looking for jobs, according to a survey.

The poll of 500 companies, taken by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) revealed that more than 70 per cent of companies in the engineering were facing this difficulty.

Only 56 per cent of the respondents said they believed they would be able to fill all the engineering positions they needed to. This figure represents a nine per cent drop from last year.

The skill most lacking, according to the employers, was leadership, with a quarter of the businesses claiming that recruits often did not meet expectations.

Some 35 per cent said a shortage of specific skills was behind the recruitment troubles, 29 per cent blamed a lack of qualified candidates and one in five claimed prospective employees didn't have the right experience.

Companies are now starting to develop their own mentoring, coaching and training to develop existing staff's communication and leadership skills.

IET also offers financial awards to engineering students to try to attract more to engineering courses at university.

A-levels show hope for engineering skills shortage - 20-08-2007 - 17:42

Encouraging signs that the skills shortage in engineering could find some relief can be seen in the number of pupils taking maths and physics at A-level, according to the Royal Academy of Engineering.

The skills shortage, reported anecdotally across the industry and quantified in last months Institute of Engineering Technology, could be eased as the number of recent A-level pupils who could take up related degrees did not drop as in the past.

An IET study reported that only 56 per cent of engineering companies thought they would be able to find sufficient candidates to recruit this year.

But with a halt to the trend of falling numbers of students completing A-levels in Maths and Physics, pre-requisites for an engineering course, a start has been made to making up the shortfall.

Professor Matthew Harrison, director of the Royal Academy of Engineering's education programme, told the builderandengineer website: "The most important thing is that it is not a fall. Year after year we've had a drop in physics and for the first time in years we haven't had that fall. And that's fantastic."