Frequently Asked Interview Questions -

Frequently Asked Interview Questions -Your resume looks fabulous, and youve been getting tons of calls from companies that want to interview you. Your interview preparation should include looking at the employers Web site in buchen to familiarize yourself with the specifics of the business. However, keep in mind that employers already know about their company, and therefore are most interested in learning about YOU during an interview. Here are some questions interviewers love to askWhat is it that appeals to you about this position?As you apply for different jobs, its a good idea to save the job description for each position with a recognizable file name. Before your interview, you can review the job description and give some thought to not only what makes the job interesting to you, but also why your qualifications offer a good fit. Employers use this question to determine whether youre genuinely interested in the openingor just trying to find a job any job.What would your previou s supervisors or coworkers say about you?If youve never thought about other peoples perspectives of your work, this question can catch you off guard in an interview. Prior to your interview, take some time to remember any compliments previous coworkers have given you, or strengths your previous supervisors have noted during performance evaluations. Then, rather than speculating on what previous coworkers might say, you can offer a concrete story from the past.What are you still working on as a professional?This is a simple rewording of the traditional, What are your weaknesses as an employee? Its good to have an answer ready to go for this question. Every employee has areas in which there are opportunities for growth, but its important to have an answer prepared that youll feel good about when the interview is over.Why did you leave your last job?If you were terminated from your last position or you left due to personal conflicts, this is another question for which you should be pre pared. Lying in an interview can be grounds for future termination, so its important that you find a way to represent yourself both honestly and professionally.What are you looking for in your next job?This type of inquiry makes it sound as though an employer is interested in your personal wants and interests, but thats sometimes not the true reason for the question. Employers often use this question to rule out people who are looking for something other than what their opportunity provides. For instance, if you are asked this question by the hiring manager for a busy police department, and you answer that youre looking for a peaceful, calm working environment, you will appear to be a poor fit. Your answer to this question should be in line with something the employer can offer youlike the opportunity to grow with the company or to perform community service with coworkers.Preparation is the key.People who have to present themselves in front of others spend a lot of time preparing. J ust think about all the prep time put in by pageant contestants, legal witnesses, or political candidates. An interview is your chance to present yourself in the most favorable light possible. Its important to prepareand to have great answers ready for the tough questions.Jessica Holbrook Hernandez is an expert resume writer, career and personal branding strategist, author, speaker and President/CEO of Great Resumes Fast. She creates high-impact, best-in-class, resumes and cover letters that transform job searches into interviews and ultimately job offers. For mora information about professional resume writing or to read more career and job search related articles visit http//www.greatresumesfast.com or call 1.800.991.5187.

What You Get From a Free Resume Critique Online

What You Get From a Free Resume Critique Online Busting Myths What You Get From a Free Resume Critique OnlineShould you trust every free resume critique service you come across?Take a look at your resume. What would you change about it? What are the areas of strength, and where does it come up short? Im sure you have a strong opinion positive or negative.Heres something to consider, though Your opinion about your resume is subjective and, in a way, irrelevant. The opinion that truly matters is that of a hiring manager, and you may leid know what you need to do to make sure that hiring managers opinion of your resume is a positive one.A free resume critique online, however, provides the foundational, expert opinion that knows your industry, knows hiring managers needs, and knows how to make your resume the best it can be.Why a resume critique?Some people may think a resume critique isnt helpful or offers outdated, inaccurate information. Were here to clarify these myths. TopResume of fers a free resume critique that provides a third-party, objective view of your resume, taking into account industry trends, insights, and best practices.Here are the facts you need to know concerning TopResumes resume critiques.They provide an unbiased perspective on your resumeLike we mentioned above, your opinion of your resume isnt what will get you the job. Therefore, a second set of eyes (without bias) can be a great way to get feedback. When providing a resume critique, TopResume offers an in-depth, informed opinion to judge its strength, effectiveness, and strategy.They provide specific details and examples from your resumeIt is fair to expect specific details and examples from the text to source information to support the critique, and TopResume provides this in their free resume review. For example, we will refer to a particular section of your resume, such as your skills section or your professional summary, and provide feedback specific to that area.They focus on strateg yYour resume is a strategic document, and it should be specifically crafted to present you as the strongest possible candidate. One of the most important ways this is accomplished is through the way it is written whether or not it includes action verbs, keywords to beat applicant tracking systems (ATS), and details that tell the hiring manager the impact you made in your previous roles. Additionally, your resume needs to be formatted appropriately so that it is visually appealing, but without letting design be a distraction.A resume critique will focus on all of this, providing feedback on how your document can strategically work to improve your job application and land you more interviews.RelatedWhat Is an ATS? How to Write a Resume That Beats the BotsThey give constructive criticismA good online resume critique is not meant to simply tear your resume apart and make you feel like you could never rework it yourself. A TopResume critique will show you the weak areas of your resume, explain how they can be strengthened, and provide details on how improving the areas will benefit your resume and, ultimately, you. Its not just about a quick fix its about equipping you with the knowledge that will help you in your job search.Final thoughts the benefits of a resume critique onlineThe bottom line is this When done correctly, an online resume critique should be the foundation to the process for improving your resume, whether you choose to do it yourself or turn to a professional resume writer, like one of TopResumes. The critique should provide insights that you couldnt landsee yourself, not just observations. After all, thats what expert feedback is all about. Ultimately, it should be a starter tool you can use to strengthen your resume.Not all online resume critiques are created equal, however. Pay attention to resume-critique services that provide accurate, objective value and meet the criteria outlined above. The top resume writing services will do this, providi ng proven strategies and insights and even offering sample resumes and other resources for job seekers to consider.Theres enough stress and uncertainty involved in a job search. Dont let a resume critique contribute to more. Choose a free resume critique designed to be helpful.TopResumes free critiques provide expert, objective feedback on your resume. Find out where you stand and submit for a resume critique today.Recommended ReadingHow to Get the Most From Your Resume-Writing Service5 Signs You Need a Professional Resume ReviewWhat Makes a Good Resume-Writing ServiceRelated Articles

Why Almost Everything Youve Learned About Resume Writing Additional Skills Keywords Is Wrong and What You Should Know

Why Almost Everything Youve Learned About Resume Writing Additional Skills Keywords Is Wrong and What You Should Know Soft skills arent that measurable. They are the skills that apply to every job. Mainly because they cannot be easily taught. In most instances, your soft skills can boost your hard skills. The Advantages of Resume Writing Additional Skills Keywords Perhaps your skill set is wholly different. Assess how good youre at every one of your abilities and talents. Showing your employer you have the correct abilities and talents, together with a proven work history can be all you should move up in your career. After that, be sure to bring some information regarding something you do extremely well, additional complementary abilities, and any achievements or awards youve been given. Using teaching keywords isnt confined to resumes. Now you should determine the resume keywords and phrases utilized for your intended position. The next step after understanding the si gnificance of resume keywords is to know more about the correct keyword phrases to be applied in your resume. For instance, if you concentrate on a couple of your skills within the body of your letter, be certain that your abilities and the keywords match the keywords and description from the work listing. Resume Writing Additional Skills Keywords for Dummies Double-check if youre employing the proper abilities and experience keywords. The keywords might also be the ones you will include in your resumes Skills section. Use job-related keywords you do not posses. In any event, its critical that you include the vital key phrases in the content of your resume. Resume Writing Additional Skills Keywords - the Conspiracy If you get a wide selection of technical abilities, however, your abilities might wind up being precisely what gets you hired. If you believe you dont have the skills to create a keyword rich resume, you can discover expert help. Naturally, dont use a skill keywo rd in case you dont have that skill. Resume Writing Additional Skills Keywords No Longer a Mystery Essentially, a skill is anything that youre good at. Hard skills can be classified in various ways, depending upon your job title. Technical skills are either something youve got or you dont, but theyre always something which youre able to learn. The Pain of Resume Writing Additional Skills Keywords First off, you have to discover the correct job offerone that fits with your professional interests and experience level. Teaching keywords are important since they immediately project you as the very best candidate for work. Youve got to tailor your skill sets to match the job demands of the position youre applying for. If youre asking for a job which has unique requirements, you might need another edition of your resume to completely demonstrate your qualifications. A Key Skills section, on the flip side, is listed on top of a resume. Identifying desirable vital skills is cri tical. Youll find more details on various types of skills for a resume in the previous section. Its crucial you construct a resume thats well-written and contains important details such as professional abilities and educational background.

ASME Launches Online Digital Collection

ASME Launches Online Digital Collection ASME Launches Online Digital Collection The ASME Digital Collection the Societys online repository of current and archival literature was is now available on SCM6, an online publishing platform from Silverchair Information Systems. The state-of-the art platform will provide expanded accessibility and discoverability for ASMEs e-Books, journals and conference proceedings by leveraging the latest in semantic technology and a host of other features and functionality.Formerly known as the ASME Digital Library, the ASME Digital Collection is comprised of the Societys Transaction Journals published since 1960, ASME conference proceedings from 2002 to the present, and selected ASME Press eBooks published since 1993.The new publishing platform from Silverchair allows us to fully integrate all of our content and improve information discovery for researchers, educators and students, said Philip DiVietro, ASME managing director of publishing. The ASME Digital Collections unparalleled depth, breadth and quality of mechanical engineering technical content is easier and faster to access than ever. We are pleased to collaborate with Silverchair to provide a unified user experience.The Silverchair SCM6 platform features a wide range of applications and capabilities including . a new taxonomy that delivers highly accurate and related content of greater relevance drawn from ASMEs collection of proceedings, journal articles as well as eBooks full text and taxonomic search capabilities optimized for mechanical engineering information with precise filtering by multiple facets new topical collections to browse content in specific subject areas and easily find the most recent publications in those areas across all ASME publications enhanced content display and tools enables sophisticated organization and viewing of tables and figures, the ability to export to PowerPoint slides for lectures and presentations, as well as additional tools to manage content sharing, citation and permission requests, and more improved usability, information discovery and ease of reading facilitated by an intuitive user interface employing the best practices in web interface design personalization capabilities that enable customized page display, saved figures and tables, email alert management, subscription summaries and article access as well as mobile access activation through a personal login and optimized viewing for all web-enabled smart phones and tablets.To take a look at the various titles available on the ASME Digital Library and try out the new sites functionality, visit http//asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/.John Varrasi, ASME Public Information

Modeling Blood Flow Heart Pumps

Modeling Blood Flow Heart Pumps Modeling Blood Flow Heart Pumps Blood and water they may both be liquids, but blood, a complex flow, contains solid platelets flowing within liquid plasma. The mix of solid with liquid spells the difference between a fluid flow easily simulated on desktop computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software and a flow analysis on a powerful number cruncher.Blood coursing through arteries contains both solidsplateletsand liquids, making for a fluid flow that cannot be simulated very easily.Although a number ofCFD vendors sell desktop software that helps model complex flows, most flows are rather difficult and many are impossible to model. Typically, more than one type of force acts on the complex fluids, or they contain a mix of solids and liquids. To be solved, they need supercomputer power, according to Marek Behr, researcher and chair for computational analysis of technical systems at RWTH Aachen University in Germany. Behr and a colleague, Matteo Pasquali, i n the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Rice University, Houston, TX, are now at work writing a CFD application that will help a heart-pump manufacturer analyze how blood would move through different pump configurations.Modeling ChallengesModeling blood flow in rotors is a huge problem. The solution needs to account for time, fluids, and solids, and bring in elements concerned with both the chemistry and biology of the fluid.In blood, about half the volume is red blood cells, Pasquali said. You can think about them as dropletsalthough theyre flat when at rest, surrounded by plasma thats like water. Having those droplets as 50% of the volume makes blood behave in a way thats different from the way water or air would behave.According to Behr, Classic mechanical engineering materials dont have a timescale. Water doesnt. But blood has all these capsules and droplets that can be stretched. The timescale is the time it takes for one of these blood cells to relax back to its shape once its stretched.He adds that CFD programs that depict blood damage usually depict blood cells that stretch rather than break because stretching is easier to analyze for.But, if a pump rotor were to shear droplets, hemoglobin could be freed from the cells and leak into the plasma. At a particular mix, that hemoglobin in the plasma becomes toxic to the patient. Applications that analyze shear are very important to pump designers. They would like to predict how much hemoglobin would leak out when blood flows through a centrifugal rotor to keep shear below a toxic level.You have to design a pump that pumps enough blood within its small footprint but doesnt damage the blood cell, Behr says. You need the pump to be small because its in your body. But it pumps several liters a minutethe heart pumps five liters a minuteand that amount of flow in a device that small makes for a great shear rate.Helping Scale for Child-Sized PumpsHeart pump maker Micromed Cardiovascular, Inc., Houston, TX, approached Behr and Pasquali to collaborate on an analysis program to depict blood shear around a rotor in an axial pump that could help them analyze and scale pump flow to a size suitable for children.Theyve turned to the universitys Cray XD 1 supercomputer to compute what Behr called a very computer-intensive problem, the largest hes ever run. Its an equation with five million unknowns, Behr says.The geometry of the pump is quite complicated and it has to be analyzed for flow and time. For example, the actual pump has no flow before the rotors start turning. It takes about five 5 or 10 revolutions after blood flow starts before that flow is quasi-steady.In real life, that takes a fraction of a second, Behr says. Depicting those 5 to 10 revolutions for analysis takes 10 supercomputer hours.They understand the importance of their task for the children who will need these pumps. Pasquali envisions that maybe someday a doctor could look at a patient, run a number of test s, and give specifications based on those tests to create a pump appropriate for a person of that size and age. So despite the difficulty of the problem, they push onward, knowing that many of the things we take for granted today were once impossible, too.Adapted from Modeling Blood Flow for Heart Pumps, by Jean Thilmany, Associate Editor, Mechanical Engineering, April 2006.The solution for modeling blood flow in rotors needs to account for time, fluids, and solids, and bring in elements concerned with both the chemistry and biology of the fluid.

Engines of the Future

Engines of the Future Engines of the Future Engines of the FutureOver the past several years, road transportation has seen some significant advances in what are considered alternative technologies. Energy storage, electric drive ordnungsprinzips, and fuel cell technology all seem to be poised to find a significant place in the automotive marketplace.But it would be a mistake to believe that such technologies will completely sweep aside what has come before. Instead, the internal combustion engine will continue to be integral to the transportation of people and goods for the foreseeable future.That is elend to say that things will stay as they are now. The engine is undergoing a significant evolution of its own, as new fuel economy and emissions standards in the light-duty and heavy-duty sectors push the development of new technologies on an unprecedented scale toward the theoretical limits of engine operation. Coupled with continuing research into fundamental engine processes, the in troduction of affordable high-wertmiger zuwachs computing, and the adoption of advanced manufacturing techniques throughout industry, those new technologies are leading to kompetenzly disruptive opportunities for the introduction of engines with extraordinarily high efficiencies. How behauptung new engines perform and how they will be integrated into new vehicle architectures will be the story of personal mobility for this half of the 21st century.From my fleck at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, I have been able to see the intersection of knowledge discovery, advanced engine and vehicle technology development, and the use of one-of-a-kind computing resources. Although the public tends to think of automobile and engine research as a purely private-sector concern, my colleagues and I at ORNL are helping to realize the full efficiency potential of internal combustion engines.The internal combustion engine has seen a remarkable evolution over the past century. Before 1970 the evolution o f engine design was driven by a quest for performance and an increase in octane in the fuel supply. Since then, however, the imperative was the need to meet new emissions and fuel economy regulations. Vitaly Prikhodko of ORNLs Fuels, Engines and Emissions Research studying advanced catalysts which are used to reduce vehicle pollution. Image ORNLInternal combustion engine efficiency has historically been limited mora by the state of technology than innovation. As an example, the potential of technologies such as gasoline direct injection were known and attempted in production more than 50 years ago, but direct injection has only become widely available in production within the last decade and now makes up approximately 38 percent of new light-duty vehicle sales. Another example is low-temperature combustion modes such as homogeneous charge compression ignition combustion- in which fuel and air are injected during the intake stroke and then compressed until the entire mixture reacts spontaneously- which were demonstrated in a laboratory more than 30 years ago but are still many years away from market introduction. Game-changing advances in recent years are improvements in engine technologies, sensors, and onboard computing power. This combination of technologies will enable unprecedented control of the combustion process, which in turn will enable real-world implementations of low-temperature combustion and other advanced strategies as well as improved robustness and fuel flexibility. In fact, technological advances are blurring our historical distinction between spark-ignition and compression-ignition engines we will see new engine concepts that blend the best characteristics of both engine types to push the boundaries of efficiency while meeting stringent emissions regulations worldwide. The push toward higher-efficiency engines will alter exhaust temperatures and chemistry and may create challenges for emission control technologies. For example, new higher-e fficiency engines will have lower exhaust temperatures, due to more efficient work extraction at the piston. Lower exhaust temperatures will, in turn, require the development of new emission control technologies, which must not only be effective at low temperatures but also must survive high exhaust temperatures encountered under high load conditions. custompagebreak Even the most efficient and robust engine technologies will never make it to market without the vehicle system meeting emissions regulations. But this is not the first instance where significant emissions control advances were needed to transition a combustion technology to market. Advances in catalyst technologies more than 40 years ago were critical to meeting emerging emissions regulations the effectiveness of catalysts for conventional spark-ignition engines has since improved by a factor of 100 while achieving a substantial reduction in expensive platinum group metals. Meeting the new challenges is a very active ar ea of research at ORNL and other U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories, as well as in industry.Low-temperature combustion processes are of significant interest due to very high thermal efficiencies with significant reductions in many criteria pollutants. As mentioned above, LTC has been a challenge due to the state of technology unlike conventional spark-ignition and compression-ignition combustion modes, most LTC modes are kinetically controlled and hence much more sensitive to environmental conditions and ever-changing speed/load demands. Recent advances in enabling technologies such as fuel injection systems, turbomachinery, valve actuation, sensors, and onboard computers have led to new real-time control opportunities which are enabling the potential of LTC engines with production-viable hardware. Glass capillaries with diameters on the order of a human hair allow sampling of exhaust pollutants inside the flow channels of catalytic converters (left) yielding critical u nderstanding of the chemical process for the whole devise (below). Photo ORNLGasoline compression ignition combustion is an advanced combustion mode that has received considerable attention in recent years. While GCI combustion is not a new concept, it has evolved over the past several decades as technologies improve. Earlier GCI research was focused primarily on homogeneous charge compression ignition combustion, but in recent years, we have seen increasing interest in a continuous range of GCI combustion modes spanning fully homogeneous HCCI to partial fuel stratification modes to full stratification modes which are diesel-like in execution. These technologies have also led to a strong interest in reactivity controlled compression ignition combustion (RCCI), which makes use of the differences in reactivity of two fuels to manage the combustion process for maximum efficiency with lowest possible emissions. Understanding the potential of these combustion modes- as well as understand ing emissions and emissions control challenges and fuel technologies opportunities- forms the foundation of much of the fuels, engines, and emissions research at ORNL and builds upon more than two decades of experience in these areas. This research also includes a detailed comparison of the landscape of GCI and RCCI combustion modes to better understand the challenges and opportunities from efficiency, emissions, noise, and controllability perspectives. Simultaneously, other national laboratories are performing complementary and synergistic research providing new insight into areas such as combustion fundamentals, advanced engine technologies, spray atomization, and simulation. Stability and control have been major roadblocks to the implementation of many advanced combustion modes. Many low-temperature combustion modes such as GCI and RCCI operate on the edge of stability- in other words, at conditions under which very small variations in engine boundary conditions (such as intake t emperature) may result in unintended excursions that result in undesirable emissions, reduced efficiency, and the potential to destroy the engine or emissions control system. One can imagine the challenge of these types of combustion modes under ever-changing conditions of a real-world drive cycle where a single unintended excursion could be catastrophic. Meeting that challenge requires a control system which is predictive for avoidance rather than reactive after the occurrence of a potentially damaging event. ORNL has a long history in improving the understanding and control of these combustion instabilities to push the operating window and benefits of advanced combustion modes. That research and approach has a foundation in deterministic chaos theory and has evolved over the years from high-dilution spark-ignited combustion to include GCI and RCCI combustion in more recent years.ORNL research has shown that for those combustion modes, the cyclic dispersion is made up of stochastic , or random, processes driven by in-cylinder fuel-air mixing and deterministic, or non-random, processes driven by the previous combustion event through residual gases. The resulting high level of instability is further amplified by cylinder-to-cylinder variations. While the high level of instability is a challenge, the existence of deterministic structure- non-random behavior- enables the potential for short-term prediction and control and ultimately to force stabilization of inherently unstable combustion modes. That sort of prediction and control would have been inconceivable with production-viable technologies even 10 years ago. With the recent significant advances in low-cost sensors, fast actuators, and onboard computers, however, that level of control will be possible on production vehicles in the very near future.While significant advances in engine control technologies, sensors, and onboard computers are leading to unprecedented opportunity, that work is also leading to an ever-expanding and unmanageable parameter space in modern engines. Current trends are showing an exponential increase in the parameter space which is expected to continue to grow for the foreseeable future. The inability to efficiently and effectively optimize this parameter space is leading to sub-optimal engines in the market and pushing the need for new approaches to engine design and optimization. custompagebreakModel-based and self-learning controls will be important for more robust and optimal calibration as well as for accelerating the calibration process. Current approaches to engine calibration depend primarily on reference tables, experimentally derived algorithms for parameter interactions, and manual optimization of calibration vehicles. Model-based controls will reduce the amount of experiments while better representing the complex interactions of engine hardware. Self-learning controls will take this one step further to enable autonomous anspruchsvoll systems which wil l have the ability to learn, adapt, and manipulate engine controls to maximize efficiency and minimize emissions under ever-changing vehicle demands. Self-learning controls will also be a critical component to the development of connected and autonomous vehicles that make use of vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure information for the further optimization of engine and vehicle fuel efficiency.Faster and more predictive simulation will be important to the design and optimization of the next generation of internal combustion engines. This will be important to critical knowledge discovery, managing the ever-expanding parameter space, and the development of reduced order models amenable to real-time control implementations. The continuing increase in computational speed and affordability of high-performance computing is leading to a new frontier in engine and vehicle development, including the ability to solve problems that were once deemed unsolvable.Using neutrons to penet rate the internal structure of the engine part, researchers are studying cavitation, the physical event that leads to bubble formation inside the body of a gasoline fuel injector. Image ORNLTrends in the cost of high-performance computing indicate that petascale computers (and beyond) will be affordable to industry within a decade. For reference, a petaflop is one quadrillion floating point operations per second. The ORNL Titan supercomputer has a theoretical peak performance exceeding 27 petaflops. (To put this in perspective, 28 petaflops is equivalent to all 7 billion people in the world simultaneously performing 4 million calculations per second.) The affordability and availability of these types of resources to industry will be revolutionary to the design and calibration of engines as well as vehicles.The supercomputers at the national laboratories are currently being used in support of DOE and in collaboration with industry for improved simulation of sprays, advanced combustio n, and engine design. ORNL has ongoing projects which make use of these resources for furthering the understanding of combustion instabilities, accelerating injector design optimization, and even bridging high-fidelity combustion and structural codes for material property prediction.ORNL recently led an industry stakeholder meeting with several other national laboratories to explore next steps in leveraging the massive power of high-performance computing for vehicle design. More specifically, the meeting focused on the potential of high-performance computing and industry interest in the development of an integrated software environment for bridging multiple technologies for multi-physics full 3-D high-fidelity vehicle simulation to make use of the power of the next generation of advanced computing architectures. The new simulation environment would be developed specifically for vehicles, based on recent experience developing similar environments for nuclear reactors and batteries. A s an example, consider the integralrechnung of 3-D high-fidelity models for the integrated design of thermal management, aerodynamics, and structure this approach not only has the potential to greatly accelerate the design process, but also to reveal synergistic opportunities beyond what could be identified with more conventional approaches.Most of the discussion up to now has focused on knowledge discovery and the development of better engine technologies- all areas within the control of automobile and engine manufacturers. There is now an ambitious program at the DOE and the national laboratories which is addressing the co-optimization of fuel and engine technologies for maximum performance with minimum greenhouse gas emissions, in other words removing the constraint that current fuels impose on engine design. custompagebreakThe Optima program bridges the broad expertise and resources of the Vehicle Technologies Office and the Bioenergy Technologies Office at the DOE. The overall plan includes a near-term l which builds upon current engine technologies with a goal of new fuel and vehicle technologies in the marketplace by 2025, together with a longer-term- and arguably more ambitious- phase focused on kinetically controlled combustion processes and fuel technologies with impact expected in the 2030 timeframe. The Optima team is working closely with a broad range of stakeholders representing vehicle and engine manufacturers, energy companies, biofuel producers, fuel distributors and retailers as well as identifying and addressing potential deployment issues to ensure maximum success.One way to cut engine emissions is to reduce the workload on the vehicle. Supercomputer simulations conducted at Oak Ridge modeled a system that could reduce drag and increase freight efficiency in long-haul trucks. Image Michael Matheson, ORNLThe combination of new regulations, consumer expectations, and the changing role of internal combustion engines with advanced vehicle arc hitectures is increasing the demands on the next generation of engines and driving technology development at a rapid pace. An automotive executive recently said that the engine has changed more in the past 10 years than in the previous 100 years. I completely agree and believe the next 10 years will bring even more rapid change with advances which were well beyond the realm of imagination just a few years ago. I encourage members of ASME to explore the extensive research supported by DOE and under way at many of the national laboratories. The national laboratories are in a unique position to bridge large one-of-a-kind science resources with application and drive solutions to the energy challenges of the future. MERobert M. Wagner is the director of the Fuels, Engines, and Emissions Research Center and a distinguished member of the technical staff at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. He is also a Fellow of the Society of Automotive Engineers and a Professor with the Bredese n Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is technical chair of the 2015 ASME-ICEF conference in Houston.Advances are enabling new concepts that blend the best characteristics of both spark-ignition and compression-ignition engines.

Could Google predict your next sick day

Could Google predict your next sick dayCould Google predict your next sick dayYour next sick day could come from a cold, or stress, or allergies, or anything. The unpredictability of being derailed is what makes sick days stressful.You wont know what will hit you, necessarily. Thanks to Googles technology, however, we might have a shot at predicting when it will be.According to CNBC, the Google Brain team is teaming up with hospitals to sort through millions ofmedical records using machine learning, looking for clusters of reasons and times that people get sick. The institutions reportedly removed personal information from the files, making it impossibleto pinpoint patients identities from the documents.Googles technology just might make it easier to tell when illness is coming your way in the future, which would already be a huge advance in knowledge.But where Googles machine learning could come in handy as well is help employers and employees understand the eternal problem of sick days.Sick days have a significant impact on the U.S. economy. The U.S. Integrated Benefits Institute reportedin 2012 that bad health sets the US economy back $576 billion, and that 39% ($227 billion) of the money lost is due to a decline in productivity people being out of work because of sickness or lowered performance.That is, with a few catches.How itsgoing so farKatherine Chou, the head of product at Google Brain, told CNBC more about the technology in an interview, only promised that the technology can improve predictions, not that it will be all-knowing.Just in case youre scrambling to see when this technology will be readily available, you might want to pump the brakes for a bit.CNBC added that until the data is officially sifted through, the outcomes wont be revealed.Workers avoid taking sick daysAnother catch fruchtwein people who get sick enough to stay home from work arent actually sick enough to go to the hospital. So Googles technology may be limited in its usefulness f or employees and employers.In fact, people are more likely not to stay home at all. Its common for people to work through their illness at work in the office.A 2016 survey by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health provided data on how many people work through their sickness instead of not showing up for work.Researchers interviewed 1,601 employees in the U.S. who work 20 or more hours per week.The study found that adults in low-paying jobs are more likely to say they go to work when sick, adding that 65% of participants reported going in always or most of the time when battling the flu. Fifty-five percent of participants with jobs with average salaries reported doing so, and 48% with high salaries did.But it looks like people in specific positions that are heavy on face-to-face interactions also come to work sick anyway.Half of restaurant workers and more than half of workers in medical jobs say they still go to work always or most of t he time when they have a cold or the flu. Many workers have also had experiences in caring for family members who were seriously ill, injured, or disabled while working at their current job, the report said.That could be for a variety of reasons because employees are afraid of losing pay, since companies can already skimp on the sick days they allow employees. There are no federal legal requirements for paid sick leavein the U.S.Whether come in sick or would rather stay home, Google Brains technology might be an option for thinking about your health concerns someday.