The community of engineering societies supporting the UN’s International Year of Sustainable Energy for All and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s Sustainable Energy for All Initiative continues to grow.  (See post below on 28 April 2012.) Currently the statement of support has been endorsed by 45 engineering societies having a combined membership of over 2 million in 26 countries.  It is featured on the UN’s Sustainable Energy for All web site, which also provides a link to a video IEEE produced to publicize the statement.

To my knowledge, this is the first time that a broad international coalition of engineering societies has spoken out together on an important issue in technology policy.

The real challenge, though, is in working to achieve the three goals:

• Ensuring universal access to modern energy services,
• Doubling the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency, and
• Doubling the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix.

And here the good news is that governments and other organizations are stepping up to contribute.  Lists of commitments can be found in a press release from the United Nations and on the Sustainable Energy for All web site.

On August 1, the US Energy Information Administration reported that, in the first quarter of 2012, emissions of carbon dioxide in the US related to energy dropped to a 20-year low.  It cites three factors contributing to the decline.

• A mild winter that reduced household heating demand and therefore energy use
• A decline in coal-fired electricity generation, due largely to historically low natural gas prices
• Reduced gasoline demand

The first-quarter, year-year, reduction was 8%.  For that same period, carbon dioxide emissions from coal dropped 18%, presumably because of low prices for, and greater use of, natural gas.

Natural gas prices in the US are currently much lower than in other parts of the world, primarily because of the introduction of new, and still controversial, production techniques.  And, per unit of energy obtained, combustion of natural gas releases substantially less carbon dioxide than coal.  The obvious question is the future price, given the present wide variation and strong demand.

Kevin Begos, of the Associated Press, seems to have taken the lead in reporting this new data.

There is a perennial debate among policy makers in developed countries about the government’s role in supporting research that leads to innovation.  Should a government’s role be limited to supporting research aimed entirely a advancing knowledge, mindless of potential applications?  Should a government support research aimed at advancing knowledge in ways that can be expected to lead to societal benefits?  Should a government support research aimed at solving specific problems that, if solved, could lead to important advances in quality of life and greater prosperity?  The debate is often driven by ideology and philosophy about the proper role of government.  It is compounded by a lack of agreement even about the terms used to describe research undertaken with different goals.  You will notice that I avoided labels in my questions above.

The Economist, through one of its online debates, has just made a substantial contribution to this debate.  The proposal was “Should public money support applied research?

Andrew Miller, UK Labour MP and Chair of the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee, led the argument that is should.  His opening statement was “Private funders of research will rarely be persuaded to put the necessary money into the long-term, low-return applied research that was crucial to the early development of space technology or future energy potential such as advanced battery technology.”

Terence Kealey, Vice Chancellor, University of Buckingham, led the argument that it should not.  His opening statement was “The OECD has speculated that, when governments fund research, they might only displace or crowd out its private funding. Companies fund their own research, so, when governments fund it, companies may simply withdraw their own money.”

More complete statements from both Mr. Miller and Prof. Kealey, and Jan Piotrowski, the Economist’s Online Science Editor who served as moderator, can be found online, along with comments from about 40 others.

The discussions were interesting, but perhaps the most significant result was that 85% of those casting a vote in the debate supported public funding of applied research!

Women in engineering and science and, in a broader context, all of the rest of us,  have just lost a great professional role model.  Sally Ride was the first American woman in space, and is still the youngest American to have gone there.  She gave up a potential career as a professional tennis player to study physics and astrophysics, at a time when it was very uncommon for women to become scientists.  The story is told that she answered a newspaper advertisement from NASA seeking astronaut candidates and was selected from a pool of thousands of applicants.  She flew two missions to the International Space Station on the Space Shuttle Challenger, and was preparing for a third space mission when the Challenger tragedy occurred in January 1986.  She then became a prominent member of the Presidential Commission (The Rogers Commission) that investigated the tragedy.  In 2003, she served on the NASA Columbia Accident Investigation Board, which investigated that tragedy.  More recently she founded and led Sally Ride Science, an NGO dedicated to science education in elementary schools.  The New York Times published an excellent obituary titled “American Woman Who Shattered Space Ceiling.”

While in Boston recently for IEEE meetings, I had the chance to help dedicate three new IEEE Milestones, the LORAN navigation system (1940-1946), the Whirlwind Computer (1944-1959), and SAGE, the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment System, (1951-1958).  The citations on the plaques follow:

Whirlwind Computer (1944-1959)
The Whirlwind computer was developed at 211 Massachusetts Avenue by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  It was the first real-time high-speed digital computer using random-access magnetic-core memory.  Whirlwind featured outputs displayed on a CRT, and a light pen to write data on the screen.  Whirlwind’s success led to the United States Air Force’s Semi automatic Ground Environment – SAGE- system and to many business computers and minicomputers.

Pictured at right are Whirlwind developers Profs. Jay Forrester and Robert Everitt at the dedication.  For more information on the Whirlwind computer, see the MIT Press Release and the IEEE Milestone page.

LORAN (1940-1946)
The rapid development of LORAN — long range navigation — under wartime conditions at MIT’s Radiation Lab was not only a significant engineering feat but also transformed navigation, providing the world’s first near-real-time positioning information. Beginning in June 1942, the United States Coast Guard helped develop, install and operate Loran until 2010.

Pictured at right are Captain Alan Arsenault, Commanding Officer of the Coast Guard Research and Development Center in New London, Connecticut and William Freeman, professor of Computer Science at MIT at the dedication.  For more information on the LORAN Milestone see the MIT Press Release and the IEEE Milestone page.

SAGE (1951-1958)
In 1951 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology undertook the development of an air defense system for the United States. The centerpiece of this defense system was a large digital computer originally developed at MIT. The MIT Lincoln Laboratory was formed to carry out the initial development of this system and the first of some 23 SAGE control centers was completed in 1958. SAGE was the forerunner of today’s digital computer networks.

Pictured at right at the dedication is Lincoln Labs Director Eric Evans.  More information on SAGE is available in the MIT Lincoln Labs Press Release and on the IEEE Milestones site.

An elegant solution to both arsenic contamination in Bangladesh and arsenic demand in Silicon Valley.…

First place in the IEEE 2012 Presidents’ Change the World Contest goes to a project from the University of Oxford, called “Clean Water: Transforming a Natural Disaster into a Natural Resource.”  Team members Stephen Honan, Sarah Yazouri, and Kevin Baum identified a fern that can be easily grown in Bangladesh and developed a low cost filtration system that uses the fern to rapidly purify drinking water.  In addition, the team developed an environmentally friendly and cost-effective process to recycle the waste product from the filters to reclaim the arsenic, which is used in the production of semiconductors and solar panels. Together, the ferns and the recycling of the captured waste products provide an elegant solution to both the arsenic contamination in Bangladesh and the arsenic demand in Silicon Valley.  Team member Stephen Honan (right, with Yazouri, center, and Baum, left) accepted the First Place honorarium during the IEEE Honors Ceremony on June 30th, in Boston.

The IEEE Presidents’ Change the World Contest was created in 2009, by 2009 IEEE President John Vig, Past President Lewis Terman, and President-Elect Pedro Ray.   The competition recognizes student teams who develop unique solutions to real-world problems using engineering, science, computing, and leadership skills to benefit their community and/or the world at large. The sitting President, Past President, and President-Elect make the final award selections.  First, Second, and Third Place prizes carry honoraria of $10,000, $5,000, and $2,500 respectively.

The 2012 Second Place Project, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, is “Wound-Pump: Development of a Simplified Negative Pressure Wound Therapy Device.”  This project addresses the need for the development of a simplified wound pump for use where negative pressure wound therapy is not readily available due to lack of electricity, high costs, and other constraints. The use of this simplified wound pump could result in decreasing rate of infections in austere environments and decreasing the loss of limbs due to amputations.

The 2012 Third Place Project, from the University of Washington, Seattle, is “FoneAstra: Leveraging Commodity Mobile Phones and Sensors to Save the Lives of Children in Resource-Poor Developing Countries.”  The project focuses on developing a platform that enables sensors to be connected to commodity mobile phones to address two critical healthcare issues faced by impoverished communities:  access to potent vaccines and the safe pasteurization of breast milk for vulnerable infants.

My congratulations to all three winning teams.

One of the best parts of being the President of IEEE is being able to present awards, and the annual IEEE Honors Ceremony, where IEEE’s most prestigious awards are presented, is the best of the best.  This year the Honors Ceremony was held on June 30 in Boston, during the annual IEEE June meeting series.  Twenty-two awards were presented to 26 individuals.

John Hennessy received IEEE’s highest recognition, the IEEE Medal of Honor, for “Pioneering the RISC processor architecture and for leadership in computer engineering and higher education.”  Since 2000, Hennessy has served as the President of Stanford University, the first engineer to hold that position.  The recipients of all of the major IEEE awards, along with the recipients of the IEEE Technical Field Awards, two IEEE staff awards, and all of the 2012 Class of IEEE Fellows, are honored in the 2012 IEEE Awards booklet (right).  A video of the awards ceremony can be found on IEEE.tv.

In June of last year, IEEE launched a new conference, the IEEE Technology Time Machine (TTM), in Hong Kong.  It was one of the more interesting conferences I’ve attended in a long time.  You’ll find some of my comments at the time in a post below (June 6, 2011).  Summaries of many of the papers presented are available through IEEExplore.

In May, the second  TTM was held in Dresden, Germany, and TTM 2012 was even better.  There were over 250 participants from 32 countries, including many executives from large high-tech organizations.  Attendees heard  plenary talks from senior industry and university leaders and participated in ten panel discussions.  Summaries of the sessions are available at the links below.

• “Networks Supporting Future Applications“
• “Cyber Physical Systems“
• “Cloud Computing“
• “Collective Intelligence“
• “Electronics beyond CMOS“
• “Future Applications“
• “Smart Power“
• “Future of Media“
• “Advanced Medical Technologies”
• “Smart Transportation“

This is a milestone year for IEEE.  As you almost certainly know, IEEE was formed on January 1^st, 1963, through the merger of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and the Institute of Radio Engineers.  So 2012 is our fiftieth year and we intend to modestly celebrate that.  We are focusing our attention primarily on the 9400 or so current IEEE members who were members in 1963 and have been members continuously since then.  Yes, its about 9400 members.  The list is available here on the IEEE Website

We will be honoring them with a special “Member 1st 50 Years” pin that we hope they will wear with pride, and we are inviting them to contribute their professional recollections to a special section of the IEEE Global History Network.

If you are at all interested in the history of technology or predictions about its future, may I suggest that you check out the centennial issue of IEEE Proceedings.  It’s a special 13th issue of volume 100, and is dated May 13, 2012, the 100th anniversary of the approval the constitution of the Institute of Radio Engineers.  As most members know, IEEE was formed on January 1, 1963 through the merger of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) and the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE).  The IRE already had a journal which it called the Proceedings of the IRE and, with the merger, that journal took the new name, Proceedings of the IEEE, and continued the existing volume numbering, with volume 51.

The centennial issue contains over 650 pages of articles, many dealing with the history of technology over the past century, others looking forward.  Start with the Table of Contents.  I think you will find several articles you would like to read.  You can download them for free for your personal use on the IEEE Proceedings page of IEEEXplore.