EARTHQUAKE-PROOF ISTANBUL

Istanbul is at high risk in the event of an earthquake. Now Turkish officials have teamed with Purdue University engineers to offer a bold proposal: Build a second city.

The new city would offer residents of the old one a refuge and emergency services should an earthquake strike, said Mete Sozen, a Purdue civil engineering professor.

With some cities around the world at risk from rising ocean waters caused by global climate change, building cities in new locations may become common in coming decades, Sozen said.

Many buildings in Istanbul weren't constructed to withstand earthquakes and the city itself isn't well designed for such a catastrophe. Streets are narrow and winding, and would quickly fill with debris after an earthquake, preventing aid from reaching those who are trapped or injured, Sozen said.

Purdue researchers created a fly-through animation to
give Turkish officials a look at how a proposed
earthquake-proof city within Istanbul might look.

The new city, as envisioned by Sozen and his team, features strong buildings and wide streets. It would take advantage of earthquake-proof building techniques and incorporate modern technologies like electronic locks and video communication, Sozen added.

To give Turkish officials a feel for the proposed city, the Purdue researchers created a 3-D fly-through animation showing what it would look like. To animate the huge data file, they turned to TeraGrid, an open-science computing grid comprising the computing capabilities at 11 research institutes, including Purdue.

CLEARLY STATED

It's not enough to be on top of your research game. The next generation of researchers needs to be able to talk about research findings in ways that others can understand, according to Jim Frenzel, an associate professor of electrical engineering at the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho.

Researchers may make life-changing discoveries, but if they can't communicate the benefit to external parties, the research can be virtually useless, he said.

To that end, the university's Microelectronics Research and Communications Institute has added an interdisciplinary communications component to its summer undergraduate program, which draws students from around the country for research in biology, neuroscience, chemistry, psychology, computer engineering, and computer science.

The new component is intended to help students communicate their research in a clear, concise manner with those who might have no background in it, Frenzel said. He's part of the institute staff.

Meredith Drennan, a junior in electrical engineering from St. Louis University in Missouri, said that lessons learned last summer helped her translate technical topics for nontechnical audiences.

"It gave us a feel for how to talk to people without the technical jargon," she said.

Although she is an engineering-neuroscience researcher, she's often confused by terminology used by other scientists.

"Biologists use long words that are not understandable at all," Drennan said.

PART REUSE

A manufacturer, MTS Systems Corp. of Eden Prairie, Minn., is using its enterprise resource planning system to create new digital assembly designs by swapping out interchangeable, digital parts.

"Over time, this system should save our customers many hours in their project schedules," said Rod Ingalls, engineering services manager at MTS.

MTS Systems uses its SAP enterprise resource planning system to access CAD files, which the company has created in SolidWorks.

MTS Systems makes testing hardware and software to isolate the mechanical behavior of materials, products, and structures. Products simulate road wear for use in the automotive industry and earthquakes for use in building and construction. It also makes test beds for aircraft frames and biomedical devices as well as a variety of sensors.

The CAD software helps engineers efficiently design, configure, and assemble these test systems, Ingalls said. MTS engineers use the analysis program CosmosWorks, which is integrated within the CAD application, to analyze the assemblies it creates digitally.

For instance, MTS used the digital system to develop a high-performance road simulator, the Heavy Truck 329 system, which can apply nearly any force to any combination of wheels on a heavy truck. The simulator tests yaw, camber, and response to braking, jouncing, vertical acceleration, and lateral acceleration, Ingalls said.

MTS Systems' CAD supplier, SolidWorks, is based in Concord, Mass. SAP, its ERP supplier, is in Walldorf, Germany.

VITAL FEEDBACK

With the help of computerized image analysis and a haptic pen, radiologists may one day feel the images they see on screen, according to an Uppsala University professor helping to develop the new technology.

Computerized image analysis is just as the name implies. A computer analyzes on-screen images to determine the size of an organ—say, the liver—or to construct a three-dimensional model of the organ. The images can help radiologists isolate changes in shape or migrations, said Erik Vidholm, a researcher at Uppsala University's Center for Image Analysis in Sweden.

These findings are vital to doctors who plan radiation treatment. But image quality can vary, which is one drawback to this type of analysis. To get around the problem, doctors typically mark the areas of interest on the image, then let the computer analyze that particular area up close.

But Vidholm said that a specialized haptic pen he's developing could be paired with the analysis system to let radiologists better home in on an area of interest. They could digitally feel and manipulate the organ—via feedback mechanisms contained within the pen—as they outline it on screen. The analysis program would respond accordingly, Vidholm said.

"The models would be adapted to the images partly on the basis of the content of the image and partly with the input of the user wielding the haptic pen," he said.

COMPUTERS TO DETECT ANEURYSMS

Thousands of people die each year from ruptured brain and aortic aneurysms. The bulges, which occur in weakened areas of blood vessel walls, can rupture without warning.

Finding aneurysms before they rupture can help physicians save lives. But the diagnosis isn't always easy for a doctor to make with today's technology.

Promising results are emerging from computer modeling initiatives that use computational fluid dynamics to simulate blood flow through the arteries to pinpoint weakened areas, said Karla Vega, a graduate research assistant at the Texas Advanced Computing Center Visualization and Data Analysis group. But CFD can use more power than research systems may have available.

Researchers at the University of Texas have harnessed advanced computing power for their work in order to create 3-D blood-flow animations that are specific to a patient.

When used to simulate blood flow, CFD returns a huge volume of information—sometimes terabytes of data—which can overwhelm computers. Vega's group, housed at the University of Texas in Austin, provides the computing resources to bolster computationally intensive research.

For instance, Vega works with Yuri Bazilevs, a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, also at the University of Texas, who uses computer power to develop 3-D blood-flow simulations. The simulations are animated with the help of EnSight Gold simulation software from Computational Engineering International Inc. of Apex, N.C.

These types of animations could play a future role in diagnosing aneurysms, Bazilevs said.

"One aspect of this that is very exciting is the animations that Karla develops correspond to a real person," Bazilevs said. "These models are setting the groundwork for use one day in clinical settings to assist in identifying diseases of the cardiovascular system and in surgical treatments."

Vega and Bazilevs believe that the daily use of this technology in a clinical setting is still in the future, although the ultimate benefits are clear.

"This will definitely be used some day," Bazilevs said. "Today, the models are still quite complex and would be challenging for physicians to use in a clinical environment, but we doctors are getting more and more excited by the possibilities this presents as part of the medical decision-making process."

HOW DO YOU FEEL?

Facebook's success proves that we're more than willing to share personal information across the Internet. So how about emotions?

In the future, you might use the Internet to determine where your friends are, what they're doing, and how they feel, thanks to a field of research called ambient intelligence.

By studying information returned from sensors placed on peoples' skin, in their clothing, or embedded elsewhere, researchers are making swift headway into understanding how emotion and feeling could be transmitted via a wireless network, said Laurent Herault, who heads the European e-Sense project.

The project aims to capture a user's location and even their feelings, then feed that info to other users through a wireless network of sensors. Information could be transmitted via mobile phone, for example.

The project is made up of a consortium that includes a number of European universities, research institutes, and companies like IBM, Fujitsu, Nokia Siemens Networks, EADS, and Mitsubishi.

The sensors note the wearer's temperature, heart rate, and skin conductance levels. Researchers are now matching information returned with corresponding feelings.

"For instance, we show people films and analyze their reaction via sensors. We can determine if a person is afraid, happy, or sad," Herault said.

The potential for applications is vast, Herault said. When a car strikes someone, sensor information might be sent directly to an emergency responder so an ambulance could be on the scene shortly.

Other applications are less grim.

"We can measure the feelings you experience while skiing, such as acceleration, speed, and happiness. This can be useful if you want to share your experiences with friends," Herault said.

Still, a number of obstacles need to be overcome for ambient computing to become reality. Researchers need to create small, unobtrusive sensors, clever interfaces, data-secure systems, flexible network protocols, and more efficient wireless infrastructures, he said.

ONLINE TRAINING

A company that offers machine-shop services online, EmachineShop.com, offers a free online CAD training program at www.emachineshop.com. The CAD software features direct manufacturing capability. Training includes basic drawing techniques, how to select materials, and selecting various machining operations.

BRIEFLY NOTED

A maker of rapid prototyping machines and materials, Stratasys of Minneapolis, has introduced FDM 360, a new additive fabrication system for prototyping and direct digital manufacturing applications. /// Radan of Bath, England, has released Radan 08, an upgrade to its CAD and CAM software for sheet metal applications. /// Coade Inc. of Houston has released Tank 3.00, an updated edition of its software program for the design, analysis, and evaluation of welded steel oil-storage tanks. /// Creative Dimension Software Ltd. of Farnham, England, has released 3Dsom Pro 2.1, which creates 3-D models from photographs. With the upgrade, users can publish 3-D models in a Flash-based Web format. /// Schroff Development Corp. of Shawnee Mission, Kan., has released two new books about the SolidWorks CAD program: Beginner's Guide to SolidWorks 2008 and SolidWorks 2008: The Basics. /// XPDG of Brighouse, England, is now shipping Sheetmetal Rapid Prototyping, with which custom sheet metal parts can be rapidly prototyped from 3-D CAD files. /// Konica Minolta of Ramsey, N.J., which makes the Vivid line of precision 3-D laser scanners, and SensAble Technologies Inc. of Woburn, Mass., which makes touch-enabled systems for 3-D modeling, have announced an offering that allows Vivid's scan data to be imported into the SensAble modeling system. Applications include reverse engineering for product design, or body scans to produce patient-specific orthotic devices, according to the developers. /// IBM of Armonk, N.Y., is now offering Dassault Systèmes' product lifecycle management version 6. Dassault is headquartered in Paris. /// CS Odessa of Odessa, Ukraine, is shipping ConceptDraw 7.5, a vector drawing and diagramming software package.