Jeff Long thinks Huron Valley gets the short end of the stick in funding. Despite that, Huron Valley has success educating its students.
The White Lake man, one of nine candidates seeking one of two seats on the Huron Valley Schools Board of Education in the Nov. 8 election, said addressing the funding inequity among school districts in Michigan would go a long way in ending Huron Valley's financial struggles.
“We need to try to influence legislators to reform funding for all districts, said Long, 47. “Huron Valley is on the low end statewide. We do perform well. We could perform even better if we had the average funding as far as districts get in funding.”
Seeing the direction the state Legislature is taking toward education prompted Long to seek office. Using money from the school aid fund for community colleges and charter schools, he said, compounds funding issues districts have already faced. “If you can correct the funding inequalities, that's short-term and long-term fixes,” he added.
Building improvements are another way to save money down the road. A member of the middle school committee last winter, he learned more about the efficiencies of various buildings. Making buildings more energy-efficient will drop utility costs and lessen the financial constraints the district is facing.
Many buildings are designed in an inefficient way, he said. Using Lakeland as an example, the new front entrance has a vaulted glass front stretching close to 50 feet high. Country Oaks is another example with large outside glass walls.
“Inherently, glass, while beautiful, is not a good insulator,” said Long. “It transfers heat through it easily.”
Alternative energy sources are another option to consider, whether solar, wind or geothermal. Greywater systems can recycle water and reduce costs from pumping even more fresh water or sending it to a wastewater treatment plant. An added bonus can be “to incorporate those systems into education with advanced technologies,” said Long.
There's a number of state and federal grants available, according to Long, to improve energy efficiency.
“We need to take advantage of them before they disappear,” he said. “It helps long-term. That's more money we can spend on education.”
Such improvements would come at a cost, Long noted, but the up-front costs would be worth it.
“With the increased costs of utilities, I'd like to see the district be more proactive. There's no question there's an expense involved,” he said. “It's a long-term, open-ended investment. Most all building improvement is done through bonds and millages. Citizens have been very accommodating in this district when they see the spending is responsible.
“The district does not have the money in its general fund. It we can show the benefits to the public ... I think they may be welcome to it.”
Long, who was endorsed by the Huron Valley Education Association, the district's teachers union, said he pursued that endorsement because he is member of the local electrical union, and he opposes privatization. In the long run, he said, privatization does not save money, and many of the current district employees live in the community.
“Any time a company takes a dollar of profit, that's a dollar not being spent in education,” said Long.
Long said he doesn't think the community is divided. While there's a vocal number of parents expressing their concern, he said he doesn't see it. There is, however, always a rivalry between the Milford-Lakeland set. “I think that's a good rivalry,” he said. “It's good for our district.”
2011年10月27日星期四
2011年10月12日星期三
Graphene's Big Mac creates next generation of chips
The world's thinnest, strongest and most conductive material, discovered in 2004 at the University of Manchester by Professor Andre Geim and Professor Kostya Novoselov, has the potential to revolutionize material science.
Demonstrating the remarkable properties of graphene won the two scientists the Nobel Prize for Physics last year and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has just announced plans for a £50m graphene research hub to be set up.
Now, writing in the journal Nature Physics, the University of Manchester team have for the first time demonstrated how graphene inside electronic circuits will probably look like in the future.
By sandwiching two sheets of graphene with another two-dimensional material, boron nitride, the team created the graphene 'Big Mac' - a four-layered structure which could be the key to replacing the silicon chip in computers.
Because there are two layers of graphene completed surrounded by the boron nitride, this has allowed the researchers for the first time to observe how graphene behaves when unaffected by the environment.
Dr Leonid Ponomarenko, the leading author on the paper, said: "Creating the multilayer structure has allowed us to isolate graphene from negative influence of the environment and control graphene's electronic properties in a way it was impossible before.
"So far people have never seen graphene as an insulator unless it has been purposefully damaged, but here high-quality graphene becomes an insulator for the first time."
The two layers of boron nitrate are used not only to separate two graphene layers but also to see how graphene reacts when it is completely encapsulated by another material.
Professor Geim said: "We are constantly looking at new ways of demonstrating and improving the remarkable properties of graphene."
"Leaving the new physics we report aside, technologically important is our demonstration that graphene encapsulated within boron nitride offers the best and most advanced platform for future graphene electronics. It solves several nasty issues about graphene's stability and quality that were hanging for long time as dark clouds over the future road for graphene electronics.
"We did this on a small scale but the experience shows that everything with graphene can be scaled up."
"It could be only a matter of several months before we have encapsulated graphene transistors with characteristics better than previously demonstrated."~
Graphene is a novel two-dimensional material which can be seen as a monolayer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice.
Its remarkable properties could lead to bendy, touch screen phones and computers, lighter aircraft, wallpaper-thin HD TV sets and superfast internet connections, to name but a few.
Demonstrating the remarkable properties of graphene won the two scientists the Nobel Prize for Physics last year and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has just announced plans for a £50m graphene research hub to be set up.
Now, writing in the journal Nature Physics, the University of Manchester team have for the first time demonstrated how graphene inside electronic circuits will probably look like in the future.
By sandwiching two sheets of graphene with another two-dimensional material, boron nitride, the team created the graphene 'Big Mac' - a four-layered structure which could be the key to replacing the silicon chip in computers.
Because there are two layers of graphene completed surrounded by the boron nitride, this has allowed the researchers for the first time to observe how graphene behaves when unaffected by the environment.
Dr Leonid Ponomarenko, the leading author on the paper, said: "Creating the multilayer structure has allowed us to isolate graphene from negative influence of the environment and control graphene's electronic properties in a way it was impossible before.
"So far people have never seen graphene as an insulator unless it has been purposefully damaged, but here high-quality graphene becomes an insulator for the first time."
The two layers of boron nitrate are used not only to separate two graphene layers but also to see how graphene reacts when it is completely encapsulated by another material.
Professor Geim said: "We are constantly looking at new ways of demonstrating and improving the remarkable properties of graphene."
"Leaving the new physics we report aside, technologically important is our demonstration that graphene encapsulated within boron nitride offers the best and most advanced platform for future graphene electronics. It solves several nasty issues about graphene's stability and quality that were hanging for long time as dark clouds over the future road for graphene electronics.
"We did this on a small scale but the experience shows that everything with graphene can be scaled up."
"It could be only a matter of several months before we have encapsulated graphene transistors with characteristics better than previously demonstrated."~
Graphene is a novel two-dimensional material which can be seen as a monolayer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice.
Its remarkable properties could lead to bendy, touch screen phones and computers, lighter aircraft, wallpaper-thin HD TV sets and superfast internet connections, to name but a few.
2011年9月22日星期四
Secret 3M material is at heart of new superfast chip
When it comes to computer chips, the world has always been flat. Their circuitry is etched onto a thin piece of silicon about the size of your thumbnail.
But that slice of silicon is getting full, and not much more microscopic circuitry can be squeezed onto it, analysts say.
So IBM and 3M have become partners in a new effort to make the chip world three-dimensional. They plan to stack circuitry in high-rise towers on top of computer chips in order to make computing modules that are 1,000 times more powerful than the chips used today in smartphones and other consumer electronics gadgets. This video helps explain the concept.
"You're talking about taking something that would normally sit under a desk being put into a package the size of a thumbnail," said Bernie Meyerson, IBM's vice president of innovation in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. The first thumbnail-sized computer modules are expected to be available in two to five years, he said.
3M, which admittedly is not a computer company, is nonetheless essential to the chip's design. Each layer of silicon circuitry in the "tower" would be separated from its neighbors above and below by layers of a 3M polymer that acts as an adhesive, an electrical insulator and a cooling material to carry away heat. The company declined to provide any details about the new material.
How is it possible to make thumbnail-sized computers? With ultra-thin computer layers. Only the bottom chip in the stack needs to be thick enough to be structurally strong, Meyerson said. The others can be much thinner. As a result, despite its "tower" description, an IBM-3M chip with 100 layers of circuitry stacked on top would not, to the unaided eye, be noticeably thicker than a normal computer chip, he said.
Smallness has its rewards. One of the keys to the IBM-3M package is that its compact size cuts the distance electronic signals must travel from one chip to the other, allowing the chips to run faster and use less electricity.
"So you're saving power and getting tremendous amounts of speed," Meyerson said.
"The fascinating aspect of these chips is that you can put phenomenal capability in a very tiny area," Meyerson said. "But logic chips generate large amounts of heat, and we must get that heat to propagate to the top and sides of the chip to get rid of it. And heat just hates to do that."
Enter the 3M polymer layer, which allows heat to flow through it to get out of the chip. Without that layer, the chip's self-generated heat would cause it to expand and break apart, Meyerson said.
"Without getting into any detail about what's in the 3M polymer, I can tell you that it works because of the linkages between atoms," Meyerson said. "If you can change the way the atoms bond to one another, you can increase or decrease a property of the polymer. This is the miracle of what they do at 3M. It's really magic unless you're a Ph.D in chemistry."
The technology will be watched closely in the competitive semiconductor industry.
"If the 3M-IBM film is truly an electrical insulator and a heat conductor, it is revolutionary, since such materials don't exist in nature and have to be engineered," said Mali Venkatesan, a semiconductor analyst at research firm IDC in San Mateo, Calif. "We have to wait and see the results."
But that slice of silicon is getting full, and not much more microscopic circuitry can be squeezed onto it, analysts say.
So IBM and 3M have become partners in a new effort to make the chip world three-dimensional. They plan to stack circuitry in high-rise towers on top of computer chips in order to make computing modules that are 1,000 times more powerful than the chips used today in smartphones and other consumer electronics gadgets. This video helps explain the concept.
"You're talking about taking something that would normally sit under a desk being put into a package the size of a thumbnail," said Bernie Meyerson, IBM's vice president of innovation in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. The first thumbnail-sized computer modules are expected to be available in two to five years, he said.
3M, which admittedly is not a computer company, is nonetheless essential to the chip's design. Each layer of silicon circuitry in the "tower" would be separated from its neighbors above and below by layers of a 3M polymer that acts as an adhesive, an electrical insulator and a cooling material to carry away heat. The company declined to provide any details about the new material.
How is it possible to make thumbnail-sized computers? With ultra-thin computer layers. Only the bottom chip in the stack needs to be thick enough to be structurally strong, Meyerson said. The others can be much thinner. As a result, despite its "tower" description, an IBM-3M chip with 100 layers of circuitry stacked on top would not, to the unaided eye, be noticeably thicker than a normal computer chip, he said.
Smallness has its rewards. One of the keys to the IBM-3M package is that its compact size cuts the distance electronic signals must travel from one chip to the other, allowing the chips to run faster and use less electricity.
"So you're saving power and getting tremendous amounts of speed," Meyerson said.
"The fascinating aspect of these chips is that you can put phenomenal capability in a very tiny area," Meyerson said. "But logic chips generate large amounts of heat, and we must get that heat to propagate to the top and sides of the chip to get rid of it. And heat just hates to do that."
Enter the 3M polymer layer, which allows heat to flow through it to get out of the chip. Without that layer, the chip's self-generated heat would cause it to expand and break apart, Meyerson said.
"Without getting into any detail about what's in the 3M polymer, I can tell you that it works because of the linkages between atoms," Meyerson said. "If you can change the way the atoms bond to one another, you can increase or decrease a property of the polymer. This is the miracle of what they do at 3M. It's really magic unless you're a Ph.D in chemistry."
The technology will be watched closely in the competitive semiconductor industry.
"If the 3M-IBM film is truly an electrical insulator and a heat conductor, it is revolutionary, since such materials don't exist in nature and have to be engineered," said Mali Venkatesan, a semiconductor analyst at research firm IDC in San Mateo, Calif. "We have to wait and see the results."
2011年6月29日星期三
Concept Group’s New Thermal Insulator Thinner Than Human Hair
Ask an engineer what price he or she has to pay for effective thermal insulation. Their answer will surprise you. They won’t give you a dollar figure. They’ll say that insulation takes up too much space. Or it has to be some standard shape that doesn’t fit. They have to use more ― thicker ― insulation. And they don’t like it.
“But Insulon shaped-vacuum technology does the opposite. It takes material out, leaving a vacuum. Once heat encounters this vacuum, molecule-to-molecule energy transfer cannot occur. Thermal conduction stops.”
Well, there’s good news for thermal engineers. Concept Group’s new Insulon® barrier is a new kind of small-scale insulator. It can be supplied in virtually any shape, down to amazingly small dimensions. For example, Insulon barriers have been manufactured as thin as 0.1mm, the width of a human hair, and the technology can go even thinner. Shape is likewise typically not a limitation. Insulon barriers have been designed into curved-wall devices with just 0.2mm total thickness.
The key to the Insulon barrier’s insulating power is its Hyper-Deep Vacuum™, explained Aarne Reid, President and CEO of Concept Group. “Most insulators use some thickness of material to damp out the conductive transfer of thermal energy, the thicker the better,” said Reid. “But Insulon shaped-vacuum technology does the opposite. It takes material out, leaving a vacuum. Once heat encounters this vacuum, molecule-to-molecule energy transfer cannot occur. Thermal conduction stops.” Reid continued, “That’s why engineers can design an Insulon barrier into such tight spaces, or around such small tubes, or into such small devices. Even the thinnest Insulon barrier stops conduction cold.”
The power of the new insulating technology is being demonstrated in a growing variety of applications. “Thermal engineers are really the ones pushing the Insulon envelope,” said Reid. “The more challenging their application, the better. Odd shapes, small dimensions, extreme temperatures, big temperature differentials. They won’t find a more effective insulator than this Insulon barrier, and we can fit it into or onto whatever shape they’re working with.”
“But Insulon shaped-vacuum technology does the opposite. It takes material out, leaving a vacuum. Once heat encounters this vacuum, molecule-to-molecule energy transfer cannot occur. Thermal conduction stops.”
Well, there’s good news for thermal engineers. Concept Group’s new Insulon® barrier is a new kind of small-scale insulator. It can be supplied in virtually any shape, down to amazingly small dimensions. For example, Insulon barriers have been manufactured as thin as 0.1mm, the width of a human hair, and the technology can go even thinner. Shape is likewise typically not a limitation. Insulon barriers have been designed into curved-wall devices with just 0.2mm total thickness.
The key to the Insulon barrier’s insulating power is its Hyper-Deep Vacuum™, explained Aarne Reid, President and CEO of Concept Group. “Most insulators use some thickness of material to damp out the conductive transfer of thermal energy, the thicker the better,” said Reid. “But Insulon shaped-vacuum technology does the opposite. It takes material out, leaving a vacuum. Once heat encounters this vacuum, molecule-to-molecule energy transfer cannot occur. Thermal conduction stops.” Reid continued, “That’s why engineers can design an Insulon barrier into such tight spaces, or around such small tubes, or into such small devices. Even the thinnest Insulon barrier stops conduction cold.”
The power of the new insulating technology is being demonstrated in a growing variety of applications. “Thermal engineers are really the ones pushing the Insulon envelope,” said Reid. “The more challenging their application, the better. Odd shapes, small dimensions, extreme temperatures, big temperature differentials. They won’t find a more effective insulator than this Insulon barrier, and we can fit it into or onto whatever shape they’re working with.”
2011年4月13日星期三
Saskatchewan's work-related fatalities increase in 2010
The number of work-related fatalities increased to 45 in 2010 from 34 in 2009, largely due to an increase in deaths from occupational diseases, the Saskatchewan Workers' Compensation Board (WCB) said Wednesday.
Of the 45 fatalities, 16 were from deaths from occupational diseases caused by exposure to carcinogens and other hazards in the workplace over years, even decades, the WCB report said.
There were eight fatalities from traumas, such as falls or crushing-type injuries, down from 11 in 2009, the report said.
"There really isn't anything good about having to report fatalities,'' said Peter Federko, CEO of the WCB. "But . . . the good news within these numbers is that fatalities as a result of workplace-specific traumas have decreased."
The other positive in the workplace fatality numbers is there were no workers under 25 killed on the job in Saskatchewan last year. "For the first time in 15 years, we did not have a youth fatality in 2010,'' Federko said.
In 2009, there were three workers under the age of 25 who died from injuries sustained in a work-related incident. "Having zero (in 2010) is wonderful and hopefully we can stay there,'' he added.
Federko said the 16 deaths from occupational diseases are largely the result of long-term exposure to asbestos. "Most of these fatalities were (from) asbestos-related lung disease,'' Federko said. "These exposures occurred 20 or 30 years ago when . . . asbestos was used primarily as an insulator."
The fact that the number of deaths from occupational diseases is rising reinforces WCB's "Mission: Zero'' campaign to eliminate workplace injuries and fatalities.
"What this signals is the importance of what we're doing today — not that we can do anything about those exposures that happened years ago — but to prevent history from repeating itself,'' Federko said.
"We can never, ever stop being vigilant.''
While the total number of workplace fatalities is up over recent years, WCB chair David Eberle noted that time-loss injury rate has fallen by more than 30 per cent since 2002.
"Every workplace death is a tragedy, and we should never lose sight of this. But this increase does not mean our workplaces are becoming less safe,'' Eberle said in a WCB press release
"In fact, there are more people working in Saskatchewan in 2010 and fewer people being injured."
In addition to the WCB fatality claims, each year, there are an average of 14 deaths and more than 200 hospitalizations that occur from farming and ranching work-related incidents.
About 75 per cent of farm deaths and 50 per cent of farm injuries are machinery-related, the WCB said.
Of the 45 fatalities, 16 were from deaths from occupational diseases caused by exposure to carcinogens and other hazards in the workplace over years, even decades, the WCB report said.
There were eight fatalities from traumas, such as falls or crushing-type injuries, down from 11 in 2009, the report said.
"There really isn't anything good about having to report fatalities,'' said Peter Federko, CEO of the WCB. "But . . . the good news within these numbers is that fatalities as a result of workplace-specific traumas have decreased."
The other positive in the workplace fatality numbers is there were no workers under 25 killed on the job in Saskatchewan last year. "For the first time in 15 years, we did not have a youth fatality in 2010,'' Federko said.
In 2009, there were three workers under the age of 25 who died from injuries sustained in a work-related incident. "Having zero (in 2010) is wonderful and hopefully we can stay there,'' he added.
Federko said the 16 deaths from occupational diseases are largely the result of long-term exposure to asbestos. "Most of these fatalities were (from) asbestos-related lung disease,'' Federko said. "These exposures occurred 20 or 30 years ago when . . . asbestos was used primarily as an insulator."
The fact that the number of deaths from occupational diseases is rising reinforces WCB's "Mission: Zero'' campaign to eliminate workplace injuries and fatalities.
"What this signals is the importance of what we're doing today — not that we can do anything about those exposures that happened years ago — but to prevent history from repeating itself,'' Federko said.
"We can never, ever stop being vigilant.''
While the total number of workplace fatalities is up over recent years, WCB chair David Eberle noted that time-loss injury rate has fallen by more than 30 per cent since 2002.
"Every workplace death is a tragedy, and we should never lose sight of this. But this increase does not mean our workplaces are becoming less safe,'' Eberle said in a WCB press release
"In fact, there are more people working in Saskatchewan in 2010 and fewer people being injured."
In addition to the WCB fatality claims, each year, there are an average of 14 deaths and more than 200 hospitalizations that occur from farming and ranching work-related incidents.
About 75 per cent of farm deaths and 50 per cent of farm injuries are machinery-related, the WCB said.
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