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TransCanada Alaska Co.'s (TC Alaska) proposed natural gas pipeline project is preferred by the Alaskan government more than BP and ConoPhillips' proposals. A license has yet to be given to the project, which could reach $30 billion, or $10 million more than TC Alaska's market capitalization. Details on the pipeline's projected revenue are discussed.

Howard P. Zinschlag received the Albert F. Sperry Founder Award for his pioneering work in automating silicon ingot growth. A description of the process and Zinschlag's other achievements are also included.

The increasing use and benefits of automated infrared (IR) imaging technology in high-temperature product making industries is discussed.

Fifty influential measurement and control individuals were selected, by over 80 individuals in the field in the early 21st century, to commemmorate InTech magazine's 50th anniversary.

Multimedia applications running under the IBM computer platform churn out at an extremely high pace. This has been made possible by the company's thrust of developing technology and industry standards that allow for third-party support. Current multimedia applications with high marketing potentials for the company include training applications and information systems. The company has also shown support to the development of multimedia applications operating in a wide-are network environment through the linking of PS/2 computers with RISC System/6000 workstations., Audio/visual presentations, shop-floor training, collaborative multimedia conferencing, wide-area multimedia networking, speech recognition systems, delivering customized business desktop news, on-demand marketing, publishing titles, just-in-time manufacturing. The range of applications IBM's multimedia [...]

Imagine being asked to create a computerized still image picture database of 5,000 horses for Santa Anita Racetrack. Imagine further that the job required six images per horse, making a [...]

Fluid Science Laboratory has joined the International Space Station to study the dynamics of fluid flow in zero gravity. Results of the experiments are expected to be useful in several engineering applications. The facilities and equipment to be used for the experiments are discussed.

IBM Multimedia Strategy: Platforms, Software, Partners, Add-Ons When promoting multimedia products, take a multi-pronged marketing strategy. That seems to be International Business Machines Corp.'s philosophy, as it plunges into a [...]

Wanted: Computer-Savvy Artists The 'Help Wanted' advertisements in the classified section of a typical Sunday newspaper tell the story. 'MAC ARTISTS (3), $30-40K, Ad agencies, Strng Quark, Adobe, Grt Typography, [...]

Like bees to pollen, vendors of DOS-based graphics software and hardware systems are attracted in droves to Microsoft's Windows 3.0. Lured by a new memory-management system that breaks the old [...]

Going electronic: Who controls the buying decision? If you're seriously considering buying an electronic publishing system, here's the advice of veterans who have crawled through the decision-making minefiled: Be sure [...]

William Jeffrey, director of the US Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology, has been elected ISA Honorary Member for 2007 due to his work at NIST promoting the advancement of measurement science and standards.

Opinions of the executives and industry experts present at the ISA Expo 2003, about the manufacturing industry, its gaining momentum and the good times ahead have been discussed. The list of companies and their exhibits is also given.

Product life-cycle management (PLM) is a stratetic/enterprisewide business method that is part of the new industrial buzz word 'collaborative era' in which the entire life cycle of a product or piece of equipment is important. AMR Research estimated that PLM revenues grew by 35 percent in 2001. This article provides an overview of this trend.

NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center has developed a quality flowmeter and an ethernet-based data acquisition system that has commercial viability. Better sensitivity than existing capacitance sensors is one of the benefits of the flowmeter. The ethernet-based data acquisition technology, a low-cost system, uses standard TCP/IP to communicate to any PC.

Growing terrorism and the 2001 anthrax attacks have created a need for chemical and biological agent detectors with higher sensitivities, and the United States government has increased funding for product development.

Forrester Research predicted that the auto industry will develop build to order information systems. Among other things, this will allow auto makers to custom build cars to customers' orders, and also improve profits. Other manufacturers, including semiconductor manufacturers are also expected to following suit.

Cyberterrorism has become a critical concern to companies that require access to computer systems, and data. Also important is protecting computer systems from industrial espionage. Advice is offered to prevent or at limit the impact of these situations.

Manufacturers are increasingly finding the value in using information management software to control production, and thereby improve efficiency and cost savings. Some software programs, including software from Wonderware, are well equipped to assemble data from very different input devices.

The industrial communications equipment industry has been transformed by the development of advanced industrial Ethernet equipment. Such equipment, which offers manufacturers cost savings and improved plant efficiency, allow manufacturers to expand their networks while making it simpler to access data.

MES (manufacturing execution systems) software is expected to lower manufacturing expenses while increasing production efficiency. San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco Systems Inc. employs collaborative MES through outsourcing 90% of its manufacturing operations.

Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics exhibit or SIGGRAPH '92 was held in Chicago, IL, with more than 31,000 in attendance. The exhibit featured the latest innovations in computer graphics plus an art exhibit, technical paper presentations and panel sessions. Vendors showed the newest graphics software packages, hardware platforms amd networks which make computer graphics design and production faster and with better image resolution., CHICAGO--Like the annual showcase it's supposed to be, SIGGRAPH '92 aptly demonstrated today's state-of-the art in computer graphics is rich, robust, and moving forward at an amazing pace. More than [...]

Armed with a broad array of new multimedia products about to burst out the door, a joint startup venture with Apple Computer, award-winning DVI technology from Intel, and relationships with [...]

LOS ANGELES -- Sports artist Joni Carter claims with a laugh she's now 'the most prolific computer artist in the world.' It's hard to dispute that, however, considering more than [...]

Seybold Meeting Spotlights Windows, Workgroups, Color Pre-Press Action SAN JOSE, Calif. -- What are the 'in' things in desktop publishing and presentation-making? Windows 3.0, workgroups, color, compression and, unfortunately, recession [...]

What's the single biggest concern voiced by graphics systems users? (1) Compatibility/connectivity issues? (2) Rendering time? (3) Ease of use? If you guessed No. 1, you're right. A recent Datapro [...]

Witco Corp., a Greenwich, CT-based global manufacturer of specialty chemicals, included the reliance to Microsoft Windows NT as part of its restructuring program that involved investment of $600 million in three years. The restructuring included the consolidation of assets, improvement of business systems and the upgrade of facilities as well as automation projects. The company accorded preference to the Windows NT engineering and operator workstations as they offer maximum convenience at minimum costs.

Ottawa, Ontario - A nearly 30-times increase in productivity of instrument technicians occured after a Foundation fieldbus-based automation system started up reciently at pulp and paper maker Avenor's Gatineau mill. A mill manager said the recent kraft pulper automation overhaul resulted from a $4 million (Canadian) plant modernization that began 6 years ago. Avenor settled on Fisher-Rosemount's (F-R) PlantWeb field-based achitechture for the kraft pulper system, driven by a DeltaV process sustem with intergrated asset managment software. The installation also includes 3 level transmitters, a pressure transmitter, and a tempurature transmitter, all from F-R; several brands of valves, including 2 from Neles Controls equipped with F-R actuators; one conventional magmeter; 20 discrete outputs; and 15 dicrete inputs.

K. Arvid Johanson has been given the ISA Life Achievement Award for his work as head of the Process Control Function Team at the Process Industry Practices Consortium, a task group made up of representatives from the manufacturing industry.

Chang-Dong Feng is awarded the Arnold O. Beckman Founder Award for his research in advanced electrochemical sensing and analysis instrumentation.

Software company Wonderware's former president and chairman, Peter Pitsker has won the ISA life achievement award.

Jerome Paros has won the Sperry award for developing a quartz crystal resonator sensor technology that can help detect Tsunamis.

Chemical industry UOP's chief Carlos Cabrera has won the ISA award for honorary member.

Zewu Chen has won the Beckman award for inventing x-ray based sulfur measurement and detection technology.

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Long-simmering divisions over the proposed Lufthansa settlement in agents' antitrust suit against major carriers came to the forefront last week as a U.S. District Court judge now [...]

Linux based systems are being used for seismic oil exploration. Oil and gas company Amerada Hess has replaced the exploration system from the existing IBM super computers with Linux, which proved to be easy to install and upgrade. WesternGeco, an imaging service provider also recently shifted to the Linux system.

Web services, a browser-based resource centre, use open standards like HTTP, XML and SOAP. The advantage that human-machine interface (HMI) has over web services is its faster real-time response. Many of the major manufacturers are trying to replace HMI with web services and a few of the implementations are described.

Invensys studied industrial plant purchases made via the internet to determine that two very different customers exist, a casual and a power customer. Based upon this research, different web-based purchasing software is needed.

This overview provides an introduction for small companies to better manage their outsourcing of manufacturing and business software. Current events are also mentioned as part of the overview.

PC control systems threatened to replace programmable logic controllers (PLCs) for manufacturing operations, but unreliability of personal computers has improved the PLC market, with some PC components being integrated into PLC systems.

The International Electrotechnical Commission's compromise proposal for the 8-part fieldbus standard 61158 has been approved by a majority of voting countries. A total of 88% of voters voted in favor of the standard which is expected to help remove international barriers to trade. However, it prolongs the availability of alternative choices when the end user has asked for suppliers to agree on fewer choices. It is also perceived not to foster competition or lower costs.

If you're seriously considering buying an electronic publishing system, here's the advice of veterans who have crawled through the decision-making minefield: Be sure to get opinions from everyone whose job [...]