Category Archives: Engineering
New analysis helps solve mystery of ancient Greek computer – Interesting Engineering
Since its discovery over a hundred years ago, the Antikythera mechanisma 2,000-year-old mechanical computer recovered from an ancient shipwreck off the coast of Greecehas been one of the most remarkable mysteries in archaeology, and new research may reveal further clues about its purpose.
A new study published last week in the Horological Journal reveals fresh details about the ancient Antikythera mechanism, a sophisticated hand-operated mechanical computer discovered in 1901 near the Greek island of Antikythera.
Divers exploring a sunken shipwreck found the shoebox-sized device, which dates back to the second century BCE. Although fragmented and heavily corroded, its intricate gears hinted at a complex mechanism that appears to predict eclipses and calculate the astronomical positions of planets.
Now, recent research by scientists at the University of Glasgow (UG) has provided new insights into the mechanisms so-called calendar ring. Utilizing statistical analysis techniques, the researchers determined that the ring most likely contained 354 holes, aligning with the lunar calendar rather than the Egyptian or other 360-day calendars.
Graham Woan, a professor at UGs School of Physics & Astronomy spearheaded the study after getting an unusual tip from a colleague. Towards the end of last year, a colleague pointed to me to data acquired by YouTuber Chris Budiselic, who was looking to make a replica of the calendar ring and was investigating ways to determine just how many holes it contained, Woan said in a UG statement.
It struck me as an interesting problem, Woan added. I set about using some statistical techniques to answer the question.
Woan applied Bayesian analysis, which quantifies uncertainty based on incomplete data, revealed that the ring likely had 354 or 355 holes, based on the positions of the surviving holes and the placement of the rings six remaining fragments.
Dr. Joseph Bayley, a research associate at UGs Institute for Gravitational Research and co-author of the paper, added to the study by applying techniques used in gravitational wave detection to further analyze the ring. By adapting methods from the LIGO detectors, which measure spacetime ripples caused by astronomical events, Bayley scrutinized the calendar ring using Markov Chain Monte Carlo and nested sampling methods.
The results confirmed the high probability of a 354-hole ring within a radius of 77.1mm, with a radial variation of just 0.028mm between each hole, showcasing the extraordinary precision of the ancient Greek artisans who crafted the device.
The precision of the holes positioning would have required highly accurate measurement techniques and an incredibly steady hand to punch them, Bayley said. This precision reinforces the notion that the Antikythera mechanism was used to track the lunar calendar.
Its a neat symmetry that weve adapted techniques we use to study the universe today to understand more about a mechanism that helped people keep track of the heavens nearly two millennia ago, Woan said.
The study sheds light on the remarkable craftsmanship behind the Antikythera mechanism and its use in ancient Greece. We hope that our findings, although less supernaturally spectacular than those made by Indiana Jones, will help deepen our understanding of how this remarkable device was made and used by the Greeks, Woan added.
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John Loeffler John is a writer and programmer living in New York City. He writes about computers, gadgetry, gaming, VR/AR, and related consumer technologies. You can find him on Twitter @thisdotjohn
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New analysis helps solve mystery of ancient Greek computer - Interesting Engineering
Half of Stockholm’s power to come from planned floating wind farm – Interesting Engineering
Swedish greentech company Eolus has just applied for a new 2.2 gigawatt (GW) offshore wind farm permit. To be called the Skidbladner offshore wind farm, the new farm is planned to comprise up to 147 wind turbines.
If the Swedish government approves the permit, it will be sited around 12.4 miles (20 km) north of Gotska Sandn. According to Eolus, the estimated output of 11.7 terawatt-hours (TWh) per year from the project will be enough to meet half the power needs of Stockholm.
It will also provide around ten times the electrical needs for Gotland. The turbines will have a maximum height of 360 meters, and the entire farm will cover an area of roughly 540.5 square miles (1,400 km2).
According to Eolus, the farm should be operational by 2033, subject to approval.
Given the enormous need for new electricity production in Sweden, offshore wind power will need to be expanded gradually over many years to come. A wind farm of this size would therefore make a significant contribution to the Swedish electricity supply, says Per Witalisson, CEO of Eolus.
Eolus is planning to build several offshore wind farms in Swedish waters. Two of these farms, Skidbladner and Herkules, are in the Swedish economic zone off Gotland.
Founded in 1990, Eolus has spent the last 30 years innovating and developing customized energy solutions. Their primary focus is on renewable technologies like solar and wind.
Together, they have the potential to supply Sweden with 4.6 GW of installed capacity and produce approximately 25 TWh of electricity per year.
Skidbladner marks an important milestone: the application has been submitted to the Government. The planned turbines will be mounted on floating foundations anchored to the seabed.
The goal is for Gotland to have a completely renewable energy system by 2040, and initiatives like the Skidbladner offshore wind farm fit very well into that plan, says Lars Thomsson, coordinator of Energy Island Gotland.
The Skidbladner wind farm area is approximately 62 miles (100 km) southeast of Stockholm. The farms planned capacity will, according to Eolus, provide enough electricity to power millions of households. So much so, in fact, that roughly half of Stockholm Countys current electricity consumption could be met.
One advantage of floating wind power is that it can be placed further out from the coast where wind conditions are even better and the visual impact is minimal, says Anna Lundsgrd, head of offshore wind power at Eolus.
Eolus was a pioneer when we started as a wind power developer in the 90s. Now we look forward to being among the first to realize floating wind power in the Baltic Sea, she added.
The Skidbladner project was once part of a joint venture with Irish floating offshore wind developer Simply Blue Group. Eolus later agreed to take full ownership earlier this year.
According to a recent report by RenewableUK, Sweden has one of the largest offshore wind pipelines, with a capacity of 68 GW.
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Christopher McFadden Christopher graduated from Cardiff University in 2004 with a Masters Degree in Geology. Since then, he has worked exclusively within the Built Environment, Occupational Health and Safety and Environmental Consultancy industries. He is a qualified and accredited Energy Consultant, Green Deal Assessor and Practitioner member of IEMA. Chris’s main interests range from Science and Engineering, Military and Ancient History to Politics and Philosophy.
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Half of Stockholm's power to come from planned floating wind farm - Interesting Engineering
Russia to exit ISS, build own four-module space station by 2030 – Interesting Engineering
Russia has announced a timeline for building and deploying its space station modules, Reuters reported on Tuesday. Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, aims to create a four-module core by 2030.
This new station will enable Russia to perform research and development that was previously impossible on the International Space Station (ISS) due to constraints and international agreements.
For decades, the ISS has been a symbol of international cooperation in space exploration. But recently, there have been cracks in the Russia collaboration for various reasons, including the Ukraine invasion.
Back in 2022, Russia first announced plans to launch a space station in the low-Earth orbit. Reportedly, this planned outpost is named the Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS).
Yuri Borisov, head of Roscosmos, announced recently the ambitious construction schedule of the space station. The first module, for science and power, is targeted for launch in 2027. Three more modules will be added by 2030 with another two by 2033. Around 19 companies will contribute to the construction of this space station.
Building the station is just one part of the project. Russia also needs to develop new crewed spacecraft and upgrade its launch infrastructure.
Reuters reported Roscosmos stating that this new station will solve problems of scientific and technological development, national economy and national security that are not available on the Russian segment of the ISS due to technological limitations and the terms of international agreements.
Russia has been a major partner of the ISS since its construction began in the 1990s. This collaboration is significant because its one of the few areas where Russia and the US still work closely together.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, relations between Russia and the West, have deteriorated significantly.
Russia initially planned to leave the ISS partnership by the end of 2024. However, they have decided to extend it until 2028.
One of the key reasons cited for leaving the ISS is the increasing maintenance needs of its modules. Some Russian modules have been in operation for nearly 25 years, exceeding their original design lifespan of 15 years.
In an interview published by the Russian space agency in 2022, Russia stated cosmonauts spend more time fixing and repairing the aging modules, leaving less time for conducting scientific research, a major purpose of the space station.
Last year, the Russian space program faced a major setback when their Luna-25 mission to the Moon failed to land. This touch-down was important as it was the first lunar mission for the country in over 47 years. Despite this, Russia is determined to remain a major player in space exploration.
Will Russia succeed in building its space station? Only time will tell. But one things for sure, the race for space station dominance is heating up.
China is one major player, which has its orbital station up and functional. Tiangong is not yet as massive as the ISS, but its steadily growing. At present, the orbital station consists of three modules. It is being built in stages, with different portions launched individually before docking together in space.
For the US, commercial firms are gearing up to fill the void of ISS and continue microgravity research for the nation. One such firm, California-based Vast Space has already announced a timeline to launch their Haven-1 module on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in 2025.
The race clearly suggests that there will be 3 to 4 space stations orbiting in the low-Earth orbit in the coming years.
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Mrigakshi Dixit Mrigakshi is a science journalist who enjoys writing about space exploration, biology, and technological innovations. Her professional experience encompasses both broadcast and digital media, enabling her to learn a variety of storytelling formats. Her work has been featured in well-known publications including Nature India, Supercluster, and Astronomy magazine. If you have pitches in mind, please do not hesitate to email her.
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Russia to exit ISS, build own four-module space station by 2030 - Interesting Engineering
Capgemini reinforces its automotive systems engineering capabilities in Germany with the acquisition of Lsch & Partner – Capgemini
Paris, Munich, July 1st, 2024 Capgemini announces the acquisition of Lsch & Partner to augment its capabilities in application lifecycle management and systems engineering, notably for German automotive manufacturers. The transaction closed on June 28, 2024.
Lsch & Partner is headquartered in Munich. Since its creation in 1984, Lsch & Partner has built-up deep expertise on industry leading tools and processes for application lifecycle management and systems engineering in the automotive industry, establishing it as one of the most experienced and specialist boutique providers in Germany. Capgemini and Lsch & Partner share a number of common clients in the automotive space.
As a strategic business partner to its clients, Capgemini is pioneering intelligent industry the new era of digital transformation characterized by a growing convergence of the physical and virtual worlds in terms of products, software, data, and services. The management of applications, throughout their lifecycle, is crucial to the development and maintenance of software-defined products that are driving intelligent industry.
Henrik Ljungstrm, managing director of Capgemini in Germany, comments Capgemini is designing, developing and delivering tomorrows products and services that are both smart and connected. We welcome the Lsch & Partner team to the Group. Their specialist expertise will augment our in-demand services for software-defined products that are at the heart of intelligent industry for automotive players and manufacturers more broadly.
Lsch & Partner enables the future competitiveness of manufacturing companies via state-of-the-art product development processes, to enable the convergence of software and hardware. This fits perfectly with Capgeminis end to end approach to enabling intelligent industry. Combining our expertise and leveraging the Groups global scale will mean we can better serve the needs of our joint clients, said Nick Dudok, CEO of Lsch & Partner.
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Seed Funding Incubates Ideas to Improve Agriculture Through Engineering – University of Arkansas Newswire
U of A System Division of Agriculture/Paden Johnson
Mechanical engineering master's student Justin Dykstra, left, works with Cengiz Koparan, assistant professor of precision agriculture technology in the Agricultural Education, Communications and Technology Department. Koparan is one of 10 U of A System faculty members recently awarded $25,000 in the first Engineering Applications in Agriculture seed funding program.
Ingenuity in agriculture requires collaboration, and seed funds, to make an impact.
That's the mindset behind Engineering Applications in Agriculture, an innovation accelerator created with funding from the U of A College of Engineering, the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Stationand the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences.
"This initiative was designed to foster collaboration and create opportunities for significant impact," saidSandra D. Eksioglu, associate dean for research in the College of Engineering. "The two criteria used for selecting proposals to fund through this program were intellectual merit and broader impacts."
On July 1, five winning teams in the first Engineering Applications in Agriculture program were awarded $25,000 each to carry out their projects. Over the next year, they'll conduct research to put their ideas into action.
Mary Savin, head of the Horticulture Department, said the overarching goal of the program is for researchers to develop new collaborations with colleagues from other colleges and to assist them in developing proof-of-concept outcomes that have "strong potential to secure future external funding."
"When the teams later submit their work to the National Science Foundationor the U.S. Department of Agriculture, they will be better positioned to make a compelling case and have a higher chance of receiving funding," added Eksioglu, who is also professor of industrial engineering and Hefley Professor in Logistics and Entrepreneurship.
During the spring semester,Savin and Eksiogluorganized two workshops to bring together faculty from both colleges, providing them with a platform to network, share research and form teams aimed at pursuing external funding. Next, they established the Engineering Applications in Agriculture program, an internal seed funding program, to support the newly formed teams.
The winning teams and projects for the first Engineering Applications in Agriculture program include the following faculty members, with principal investigators and their co-principal investigators, respectively:
To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website:aaes.uada.edu. Follow on Twitter at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visituada.edu/.Follow us on Twitter at@AgInArk. To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visitwww.uaex.uada.edu.
About the College of Engineering:The University of ArkansasCollege of Engineeringis the largest engineering program in the state of Arkansas. Over the past 15 years, the college has experienced unprecedented growth. Undergraduate enrollment reached just over 3,300 in fall 2023, and total enrollment in the college is nearly 4,500 students. The College of Engineering offers graduate and undergraduate degrees in seven engineering departments: biological and agricultural, biomedical, chemical, civil, electrical and computer science, industrial and mechanical. The college also offers distance learning and interdisciplinary programs, including data science. Faculty in the college conduct research in many key areas, including biomedical and healthcare, electronics, energy, healthcare logistics, materials science, nanotechnology, transportation and logistics. Emerging research areas include advanced manufacturing, cybersecurity, data science, infrastructure, membranes and separation and water.
About the Division of Agriculture:The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture's mission is to strengthen agriculture, communities, and families by connecting trusted research to the adoption of best practices. Through the Agricultural Experiment Station and the Cooperative Extension Service, the Division of Agriculture conducts research and extension work within the nation's historic land grant education system.The Division of Agriculture is one of 20 entities within the University of Arkansas System. It has offices in all 75 counties in Arkansas and faculty on five system campuses.The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture offers all its Extension and Research programs and services without regard to race, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, religion, age, disability, marital or veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status, and is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.
About the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences:Bumpers College provides life-changing opportunities to position and prepare graduates who will be leaders in the businesses associated with foods, family, the environment, agriculture, sustainability and human quality of life; and who will be first-choice candidates of employers looking for leaders, innovators, policy makers and entrepreneurs. The college is named for Dale Bumpers, former Arkansas governor and longtime U.S. senator who made the state prominent in national and international agriculture. For more information about Bumpers College, visit ourwebsite, and follow us on Twitter at@BumpersCollegeand Instagram atBumpersCollege.
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Scheeres joins ESAs Hera asteroid mission | Ann and H.J. Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences – University of Colorado Boulder
Dan Scheeres has been named a NASA participating scientist on the European Space Agencys Hera mission.
Scheeres, a distinguished professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, is one of 12 individuals announced by NASA to join the space probe mission, which is scheduled to launch in October 2024.
Hera will study the binary asteroid system Didymos, including the moonlet Dimorphos, which was impacted by NASAs DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft on Sept. 26, 2022. The objectives of DART and Hera collectively aim to validate the kinetic impact method as a technology to deflect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth, if one is ever discovered, and to learn more about the near-Earth asteroids that are the source of this natural hazard.
The Smead Department was heavily involved with the DART mission, and Hera is really the culmination of that project. My overall focus will be on interpreting the pictures we obtain of the Didymos binary asteroid system to better understand the orbit and spins of the two bodies about each other, and to understand what the surface environment is like, Scheeres said.
Scheeres is a National Academy of Engineering member, recognized for pioneering work on the motion of bodies in strongly perturbed environments such as near asteroids and comets.
Hera is scheduled to arrive at the Didymos/Dimorphos binary asteroid system at the end of 2026, where it will gather otherwise unobtainable data about the mass and makeup of both bodies and assess the changes caused by the DART spacecrafts kinetic impact.
There are many aspects of this system that don't seem to make sense, so puzzling out these different issues will be an exciting and exhilarating experience, Scheeres said. The Hera mission will be able to take crucial measurements that will determine how effective the DART impact was in moving the secondary asteroid Dimorphos.
The goal of NASAs Hera Participating Scientist Program is to support scientists at U.S. institutions to participate on the Hera mission and address outstanding questions in planetary defense and near-Earth asteroid science. The participating scientists will become Hera science team members during their 5-year tenure with the mission.
DART was the first flight mission from NASAs Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which oversees the agencys ongoing efforts in planetary defense. International participation in DART and Hera, including the Hera Participating Scientist Program, has been enabled by an ongoing worldwide collaboration in the planetary defense research community known as the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment.
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WillowWood Global to open a Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center – PR Newswire
MOUNT STERLING, Ohio, July 3, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- WillowWood is excited to announce it has been awarded nearly $5M over 5 years from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) to establish a Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) for Prosthetics and Orthotics. RERCs are considered national centers of excellence for a particular area of rehabilitation. WillowWood has become the first manufacturer to secure this award and will partner with long time collaborator, The Ohio State University, to collectively work on Innovative Design and Research for Enhancing Assistive Devices or what will be referred to as the IDEA Center. The goal of the IDEA center is to advance clinical care, specifically for the interface between human and device, through digitization, sensorization, and adaptation to positively impact patient health outcomes and overall performance. The advancements anticipated through the research will be realized and sustained through a robust education and dissemination program as a core activity of the IDEA Center. This award brings the total grant funding portfolio of WillowWood Global to $13M secured in just the last 2 years.
"The challenges for pairing a patient with their prosthesis or orthosis require multidisciplinary teams and multifaceted approaches to overcome. The RERC mechanism enables our team to partner with cross functional experts to comprehensively transform the interface. We are grateful for this opportunity from NIDILRR," Matt Wernke PhD, Director, Research and Development for WillowWood and Co-Principal Investigator for the IDEA Center.
"Our team has been building to this point for many years, and we are thankful to continue our research trajectories as well as explore novel ideas. I know our faculty and students are eager to engage in the IDEA Center," Heather Powell PhD, Professor at The Ohio State University and Co-Principal Investigator for the IDEA Center.
"WillowWood remains focused on enabling the best clinical outcomes for patients, and this partnership with Ohio State University combined with the support from NIDILRR will help us continue to deliver a positive impact. The partnership with The Ohio State University has been incredibly successful over the last 10 years, resulting in several products commercialized and award-winning presentations at domestic and international conferences. Through our past collaboration and projects included in the IDEA Center, we expect to greatly transform the interface between patient and device," Daniel Rubin, Chief Operating Officer for WillowWood.
"Ohio State's partnership with WillowWood has flourished, from numerous research grant collaborations to their investment in experiential learning through student capstone projects and the Robert E. Arbogast Teaching Laboratory. This latest victory for the team certainly bolsters the impact we are making together," Dean Ayanna Howard PhD, College of Engineering, The Ohio State University.
About WillowWood Global LLC
Based in Mount Sterling, Ohio, WillowWood Global (www.willowwood.com) is an industry leading designer, manufacturer, and distributor of prosthetic products, including liners, feet, vacuum systems and components. Recognized for its products' superior innovation, quality, and patient outcomes, WillowWood's portfolio includes the Alpha family of liners, the Koa LP and Meta families of high-activity feet, the LimbLogic vacuum system, and the OMEGA CAD system. For over 117 years, WillowWood's prosthetic products have helped individuals with limb loss find comfort and functionality, remain active and live life to the fullest.
About Ohio State University
The Ohio State University College of Engineering's graduate and undergraduate programs are both ranked 1st among all Ohio universities and 14th among public universities according to U.S. News & World Report. The College of Engineering offers 18 undergraduate majors, 16 graduate programs and a growing cadre of online degrees and certificates. In 2023, total College of Engineering enrollmentincluding undergraduate and graduate students across all campusesrose to 11,111 students, a 3.3% increase from 2022 and a record-high. The new first-year students are also academically gifted. Of the engineering students on the Columbus campus, 97.3% are in the top 25% of their high school class and 74.8% are in the top 10%. In fiscal year 2022, this research was supported by over $162 million in externally sponsored research expenditures. Industry R&D expenditures for the College of Engineering in fiscal year 2022 totaled over $50.5 million.
Media contact: [emailprotected]
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WillowWood Global to open a Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center - PR Newswire
Engineering researchers receive NSF funding to develop computational tools to monitor ablation therapy on cardiac … – Rochester Institute of…
Researchers at RIT are developing non-invasive technology that will better assess cardiac tissue response to thermal energy, a common therapy approach for both cancer and cardiac arrhythmia treatments.
Cristian Linte, a professor of biomedical engineering, is leading a cross-disciplinary team that was recently awarded National Science Foundation Collaborative Research funding to further develop an interactive, computing platform to characterize and monitor thermal cardiac tissue ablation therapy.
Ablation is a medical technique using heat, extreme cold, or chemical interventions to destroy abnormally functioning, diseased tissues. While effective, understanding how ablation affects healthy surrounding tissue has had limited study.
RIT
RIT biomedical engineering professor Cristian Linte
Understanding thermal effects on biological tissues is crucial for many biological applications, including thermal therapies aimed at destroying pathological cells while preserving surrounding healthy tissue. However, there are no feasible means to monitor tissue response to thermal energy to characterize and visualize ablation patterns to ensure reversible injury and avoid incomplete ablation, said Linte, an expert in medical imaging and image-guided technologies in RITs Kate Gleason College of Engineering.
Modern, minimally invasive ablative treatments for some cancers or heart rhythm disorders rely on the use of heat delivered to tissue in the form of radiofrequency energy to destroy a cancerous tumor or diseased tissue in the heart that causes rhythm abnormalities. The process blocks irregular heart signals and is a means to restore standard heartbeat patterns. Ablation provides an effective and less invasive option, but as many as 50 percent of ablation patients experience disease recurrence due to incomplete tissue ablation, Linte explained.
Successful treatment requires continuous ablation patterns that induce permanent thermal damage to the tissue. However, temperature measurements inside the heart are invasive and unfeasible, he said. Unfortunately, routine medical imaging provides no quantitative appraisal of the induced thermal damage. Traditional computational tools used to study ablation are prohibitive for intra-operative use. There are no effective means to quantify heat transfer in biological tissue to interactively characterize and visualize thermal ablation lesions.
RIT
RIT mechanical engineering professor Satish Kandlikar.
As part of the research team, Linte will be joined by Satish Kandlikar, RIT professor of mechanical engineering, and Suzanne Shontz, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Kansas, experts in heat transfer and computational bioengineering respectively.
Combining a cross-disciplinary approach, the team will explore heat transfer theory, image computing and visualization, biomedical modeling and simulation to build, model and quantify tissue response to thermal energy.
Experimental validation is essential to confirm analytical and numerical models, especially in biological systems, said Kandlikar who leads RITs Thermal Analysis and Microfluidics Lab. He will focus on the propagation of thermal energy and provide a temperature map of tissue during the ablation process in simulated tissue material that mimics biological tissue at the cardiac wall. The experimental data will be used to further refine the models developed during this study.
Since knowledge of tissue temperature distribution is critical to accurately predict thermal effects, computationally efficient models that integrate engineering heat transport mechanisms alongside tissue pathophysiology are needed to quantify thermal energy effects on tissues and interactively characterize, visualize, and monitor induced thermal injury, said Shontz, who also serves as the University of Kansas associate dean of research.
Shontz and Linte have collaborated on an earlier diagnostic project, also funded by the NSF, and similar in its development of computing and engineering models to appraise biomechanical heart functions.
This current project is already contributing new knowledge in scientific computing, engineering, and physiological modeling by helping to characterize thermal injury delivered to heart tissue during therapy.
This research has the potential to reshape biological, engineering and material science applications that involve heat transfer modeling and heat flow characterization by enabling, for the first time, intra-operative, quantitative monitoring of heat transfer and thermal effects, said Linte.
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Engineering the Maximum Mustang GTD – Design News
Ford revealed plans for the Mustang GTD last summer when it announced plans for a new peak-performance version of the veteran pony car. The 800-horsepower beast is derived from the companys Mustang GT3 race car but is street-legal.
The car is the product of an unusual incidence of the life-imitates-art axiom. To race in the global GT3 sports car category in high-profile races like the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Ford engineers created the Mustang Dark Horse, whose high-performance components served as the foundation for race cars for both the GT3 and GT4 racing categories.
Ford turned to frequent partner Multimatic, not just for the Mustangs sophisticated spool valve shock absorbers, but also for the design and construction of the race cars. Ford president Jim Farley, a Mustang owner and racing enthusiast, got one look at the in-progress GT3 and asked the engineering team what it would take to make the GT3 race car legal for customers to buy and drive on the street. The Mustang GTD is that car.
With this as the GTDs back story, Ford took the occasion of the 2024 edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans to provide the first in-person look at the GTD, with some discussion of the car by the team that created it.
As if the GTD wasnt already sufficiently track-focused, Ford announced at the race that there will be a Performance package that adds active aerodynamics and magnesium wheels. The purpose is to deliver a Nurburgring lap time of less than 7 minutes. Unlike the rules-constrained GT3 racing category, however, the GTD is comparatively unfettered, which means it can deliver even more power than the race car.
Related:Maximum Mustang: The Mustang GTD Is an 800-hp Racer for the Street
Multimatic chief technical officer and engineering guru Larry Holt was on hand at the 24 Hours of Le Mans to supervise the GT3 racing program, which finished third in the GT3 class in the race. Before the race started, Holt spoke in Fords display tent in the Manufacturers Village at the track, outlining Multimatics work to turn the Dark Horse into a GT3 and to turn a GT3 into a GTD.
He started by reviewing aerodynamic work on the car. Weve got a really unique wing stanchion that goes into the most structurally strong part of the car at the bottom of the C-pillar, he said. The [GT3] race cars got it, so we thought that would be the way to go. The gooseneck rear [wing] mounts are the way, if you look out there on the racetrack now, everybodys got their wing mounted to their top surface rather than the bottom. It is just a more efficient way to do it.
But the GT3 race car must conform to rules that are designed to level the playing field across the many manufacturers with their wide variety of body styles and engine configurations. The production GTD is free to get more advanced with its management of airflow, so the team upgraded the aerodynamic systems on the car.
Related:To Le Mans in the 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse
If you look at that race car, its got a single-element wing with a fixed Gurney [flap], Holt noted. This is a dual-element rear wing, and that flap, thats active. This thing generates, in its high-downforce mode, a massive amount of downforce.
Downforce is good when you need grip for cornering, but it comes at a price. Theres also a massive amount of drag, he said. So when youre out on the autobahn, and you want to go faster than everything else thats on the autobahn, you put it in [drag reduction system] mode and the flap flattens itself out.
A change in downforce and drag at the rear of the car demands a corresponding change at the front, to keep the cars grip and handling balanced. That would cause a problem with the front if you just did that, Holt explained. This [GTD] has a huge front underwing. If you look under there, its not flat. Thats got a big curvature underneath the front of the car. We open two flaps in there that screws that all up so it doesnt generate quite as much downforce.
Related:Goodyear Racing Takes on Le Mans
Multimatic made its name in racing with its dynamic spool valve shock absorbers, so naturally they devised advanced suspension for the car. We did some radical things! said Holt in video posted on Fords YouTube channel. Its got inboard suspension like a lot of prototype race cars. We put a transaxle gearbox in the back. A transaxle is what racecars have. Was that an easy thing to do? In a car that was never designed to have a transaxle? No! It was a smokin hard problem to solve.
Back at the track in France, Holt explained some of the capabilities of that inboard suspension. We have two ride heights for this car and two spring rates for this car, he said, noting that the Ford GT, which Multimatic built for Ford, also featured. When you put it in Track mode, it pulls the front down 40 [mm] and the rear down 30 [mm]. So not only do we get the center of gravity down, we also put a little rake into it, so it gives is a little bit more front [grip] so the cars really well balanced for the track.
The systems capabilities go far behind adjustable ride height, though. Then it does something else, Hold continued. It doubles the rear spring rate and takes the front spring rate up by 2.8 times. Now youve got an extremely stiff car; low, raked, big aero.
These are the kind of technologies that can produce extremely fast lap times at race tracks, even though the GTD is a street car. Fords goal is to set a new benchmark time at Germanys Nurburgring circuit with the GTD. From the lightweight carbon fiber body on every GTD to the active aerodynamics of the Performance package, weve learned from motorsport how to make the Mustang GTD excel everywhere, all in the quest for a sub-seven-minute lap of the Nurburgring, said Mustang GTD Chief Engineer Greg Goodall.
The company will make that attempt this summer, so stay tuned for the outcome.
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Prompt engineering techniques and best practices: Learn by doing with Anthropic’s Claude 3 on Amazon Bedrock … – AWS Blog
You have likely already had the opportunity to interact with generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools (such as virtual assistants and chatbot applications) and noticed that you dont always get the answer you are looking for, and that achieving it may not be straightforward. Large language models (LLMs), the models behind the generative AI revolution, receive instructions on what to do, how to do it, and a set of expectations for their response by means of a natural language text called a prompt. The way prompts are crafted greatly impacts the results generated by the LLM. Poorly written prompts will often lead to hallucinations, sub-optimal results, and overall poor quality of the generated response, whereas good-quality prompts will steer the output of the LLM to the output we want.
In this post, we show how to build efficient prompts for your applications. We use the simplicity of Amazon Bedrock playgrounds and the state-of-the-art Anthropics Claude 3 family of models to demonstrate how you can build efficient prompts by applying simple techniques.
Prompt engineering is the process of carefully designing the prompts or instructions given to generative AI models to produce the desired outputs. Prompts act as guides that provide context and set expectations for the AI. With well-engineered prompts, developers can take advantage of LLMs to generate high-quality, relevant outputs. For instance, we use the following prompt to generate an image with the Amazon Titan Image Generation model:
An illustration of a person talking to a robot. The person looks visibly confused because he can not instruct the robot to do what he wants.
We get the following generated image.
Lets look at another example. All the examples in this post are run using Claude 3 Haiku in an Amazon Bedrock playground. Although the prompts can be run using any LLM, we discuss best practices for the Claude 3 family of models. In order to get access to the Claude 3 Haiku LLM on Amazon Bedrock, refer to Model access.
We use the following prompt:
Claude 3 Haikus response:
The request prompt is actually very ambiguous. 10 + 10 may have several valid answers; in this case, Claude 3 Haiku, using its internal knowledge, determined that 10 + 10 is 20. Lets change the prompt to get a different answer for the same question:
Claude 3 Haikus response:
The response changed accordingly by specifying that 10 + 10 is an addition. Additionally, although we didnt request it, the model also provided the result of the operation. Lets see how, through a very simple prompting technique, we can obtain an even more succinct result:
Claude 3 Haiku response:
Well-designed prompts can improve user experience by making AI responses more coherent, accurate, and useful, thereby making generative AI applications more efficient and effective.
The Claude 3 family is a set of LLMs developed by Anthropic. These models are built upon the latest advancements in natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML), allowing them to understand and generate human-like text with remarkable fluency and coherence. The family is comprised of three models: Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus.
Haiku is the fastest and most cost-effective model on the market. It is a fast, compact model for near-instant responsiveness. For the vast majority of workloads, Sonnet is two times faster than Claude 2 and Claude 2.1, with higher levels of intelligence, and it strikes the ideal balance between intelligence and speedqualities especially critical for enterprise use cases. Opus is the most advanced, capable, state-of-the-art foundation model (FM) with deep reasoning, advanced math, and coding abilities, with top-level performance on highly complex tasks.
Among the key features of the models family are:
To learn more about the Claude 3 family, see Unlocking Innovation: AWS and Anthropic push the boundaries of generative AI together, Anthropics Claude 3 Sonnet foundation model is now available in Amazon Bedrock, and Anthropics Claude 3 Haiku model is now available on Amazon Bedrock.
As prompts become more complex, its important to identify its various parts. In this section, we present the components that make up a prompt and the recommended order in which they should appear:
The following is an example of a prompt that incorporates all the aforementioned elements:
In the following sections, we dive deep into Claude 3 best practices for prompt engineering.
For prompts that deal only with text, follow this set of best practices to achieve better results:
The Claude 3 family offers vision capabilities that can process images and return text outputs. Its capable of analyzing and understanding charts, graphs, technical diagrams, reports, and other visual assets. The following are best practices when working with images with Claude 3:
Consider the following example, which is an extraction of the picture a fine gathering (Author: Ian Kirck, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A_fine_gathering_(8591897243).jpg).
We ask Claude 3 to count how many birds are in the image:
Claude 3 Haikus response:
In this example, we asked Claude to take some time to think and put its reasoning in an XML tag and the final answer in another. Also, we gave Claude time to think and clear instructions to pay attention to details, which helped Claude to provide the correct response.
Lets see an example with the following image:
In this case, the image itself is the prompt: Claude 3 Haikus response:
Lets look at the following example:
Prompt:
Claude 3 Haikus response:
Lets see an example. We pass to Claude the following map chart in image format (source: https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions), then we ask about Japans greenhouse gas emissions.
Prompt:
Claude 3 Haikus response:
Lets see an example of narration with the following image (source: Sustainable Development Goals Report 2023, https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2023/The-Sustainable-Development-Goals-Report-2023.pdf):
Prompt:
Claude 3 Haikus response:
In this example, we were careful to control the content of the narration. We made sure Claude didnt mention any extra information or discuss anything it wasnt completely confident about. We also made sure Claude covered all the key details and numbers presented in the slide. This is very important because the information from the narration in text format needs to be precise and accurate in order to be used to respond to questions.
Information extraction is the process of automating the retrieval of specific information related to a specific topic from a collection of texts or documents. LLMs can extract information regarding attributes given a context and a schema. The kinds of documents that can be better analyzed with LLMs are resumes, legal contracts, leases, newspaper articles, and other documents with unstructured text.
The following prompt instructs Claude 3 Haiku to extract information from short text like posts on social media, although it can be used for much longer pieces of text like legal documents or manuals. In the following example, we use the color code defined earlier to highlight the prompt sections:
Claude 3 Haikus response:
The prompt incorporates the following best practices:
Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) is an approach in natural language generation that combines the strengths of information retrieval and language generation models. In RAG, a retrieval system first finds relevant passages or documents from a large corpus based on the input context or query. Then, a language generation model uses the retrieved information as additional context to generate fluent and coherent text. This approach aims to produce high-quality and informative text by using both the knowledge from the retrieval corpus and the language generation capabilities of deep learning models. To learn more about RAG, see What is RAG? and Question answering using Retrieval Augmented Generation with foundation models in Amazon SageMaker JumpStart.
The following prompt instructs Claude 3 Haiku to answer questions about a specific topic and use a context from the retrieved information. We use the color code defined earlier to highlight the prompt sections:
Claude 3 Haikus response:
The prompt incorporates the following best practices:
In this post, we explored best prompting practices and demonstrated how to apply them with the Claude 3 family of models. The Claude 3 family of models are the latest and most capable LLMs available from Anthropic.
We encourage you to try out your own prompts using Amazon Bedrock playgrounds on the Amazon Bedrock console, and try out the official Anthropic Claude 3 Prompt Engineering Workshop to learn more advanced techniques. You can send feedback to AWS re:Post for Amazon Bedrock or through your usual AWS Support contacts.
Refer to the following to learn more about the Anthropic Claude 3 family:
David Laredo is a Prototyping Architect at AWS, where he helps customers discover the art of the possible through disruptive technologies and rapid prototyping techniques. He is passionate about AI/ML and generative AI, for which he writes blog posts and participates in public speaking sessions all over LATAM. He currently leads the AI/ML experts community in LATAM.
Claudia Cortes is a Partner Solutions Architect at AWS, focused on serving Latin American Partners. She is passionate about helping partners understand the transformative potential of innovative technologies like AI/ML and generative AI, and loves to help partners achieve practical use cases. She is responsible for programs such as AWS Latam Black Belt, which aims to empower partners in the Region by equipping them with the necessary knowledge and resources.
Simn Crdova is a Senior Solutions Architect at AWS, focused on bridging the gap between AWS services and customer needs. Driven by an insatiable curiosity and passion for generative AI and AI/ML, he tirelessly explores ways to leverage these cutting-edge technologies to enhance solutions offered to customers.
Gabriel Velazquez is a Sr Generative AI Solutions Architect at AWS, he currently focuses on supporting Anthropic on go-to-market strategy. Prior to working in AI, Gabriel built deep expertise in the telecom industry where he supported the launch of Canadas first 4G wireless network. He now combines his expertise in connecting a nation with knowledge of generative AI to help customers innovate and scale.
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