Will It Be Engineers And Scientists Who Cure Back Pain?
BBC Radio 5 had a discussion this lunchtime about back pain. The most amazing part was a statement by Brian Saunders of the School of Materials at Manchester University. He talked of how they were developing a jelly-like polymer, which could be injected into the body. Things are apparently going well!
Couple this with work, I know of at Liverpool University, where engineers have been analysing the gait of humans, dogs and horses, to get greater insight into problems and I get the feeling that over the next decades engineers and physical scientists will make great process in helping us to live longer and better. These two examples are probably just two of many similar ones.
Should We Embrace Fracking?
As an engineer, I have come to some conclusions about fracking.
There is certainly a lot of gas and possibly oil, buried in the ground, that can be accessed using advanced techniques like fracking in the UK.
Countries like the United States have certainly benefited from fracking with low gas prices and increased manufacturing activity.
There have been problems, as there were in Blackpool in the UK with fracking.
But are we throwing the resources of our great engineering universities, like Newcastle, Surrey, Southampton, Aberdeen, Manchester and Liverpool at the problem? I’ve left out universities that aren’t close to oil and gas reserves.
I doubt it!
Knowing engineering and engineers as I do, I suspect they could come up with better methods, that would benefit the UK and perhaps other countries, who have large difficult gas reserves and are nervous of using fracking and other methods.
So should the major oil and gas companies, be spending a few hundred millions investing in the future?
Don’t Have Your Operation On A Friday
This report on the BBC, about research by Paul Aylin at Imperial College, says that you are more likely to die, if you have your operation towards the end of the week.
Some years ago, my software Daisy, was used to examine the outcomes of surgery in a Regional Health Authority. They found, that the longer a patient was in hospital, the more likely there would be complications.
This data needs a lot more analysis.
More CERN Photos
There are more CERN photos uploaded here to Flickr by other visitors from our Liverpool University Alumni Relations group.
CERN Humour
Research establishments are serious places, but it doesn’t mean they are humourless ones.
CERN Humour
When I worked at ICI’s Research Establishment on Runcorn Heath, the big joke was signs using the newly discovered Dymo machine in mock German.
When I was at Liverpool University in the mid-1960s, the old cyclotron that James Chadwick had built pointed towards the mound on which the Catholic Cathedral has now been built. One wag told me, that they weren’t going to floodlight the cathedral, as it would glow in the dark.
I heard a similar remark on Saturday.
Information Management: A Proposal
This T-shirt was worn by one of our guides to CERN.
Information Management: A Proposal
When it was first proposed, it got this reaction from the author’s superior/supervisor.
The Response
So who proposed the idea and what is it now called?
LHC Fabrication
These pictures show the plant, where the various sections of the LHC were assembled.
Although, the media portrays the LHC as a circle, it is in fact a series of straight sections.
CMS – Control Room Or Bar?
I just had to enquire about the bottles amongst this array of computer screens.
Each of the empty bottles is now identified with the event, they celebrate.
CMS – Back At The Surface
Back on the surface, we had another talk from a Liverpool University-educated Civil Engineer on the problems of building the CMS and other parts of CERN and the LHC.
Civil Engineering is one of the major disciplines, that must be applied to a high level at CERN. The engineer had previously worked on tunnels under London.
CMS – Underground
The second experiment we visited at CERN was CMS. but this was no lecture, but a descent to around a hundred metres under the French countryside.
The only reasons we could do this, was because CMS was being rebuilt and the LHC was shut down.
If you have anything that could add to this post, just add comments.
Also if you would like a copy of any of the photographs, feel free to download them. I will be improving this gallery, when I sort out the editing problem between WordPress galleries and my computer.
The Anonymous Widower 