Category Archives: Materials Science

Project Planning: Stay out of the (San Francisco) Mud

Posted on August 29, 2016 by

San Francisco’s $350 MM Millennium Tower is sinking into the mud beneath it.  Finished in 2009, some now believe that it could sink as much as 3 feet – greater than initial estimates of ‘possibly an inch in the event … Continue reading →

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Fraud in Industrial Technologies

Posted on May 4, 2014 by

GigaOm’s article on green energy snake oil highlights the challenges faced by investors in any industrial technology.  We’re not investors, but over the past six years of applying our process and equipment in this industrial technology space, we have certainly seen many unusual … Continue reading →

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Seven Red Lines (aka “The Expert”): The Transcript

Posted on May 3, 2014 by

Cast: CUSTOMER C1 (“Customer 1st speaker”) – The customer lead, Justine’s boss Justine – Design specialist at the customer VENDOR V1 (“Vendor 1st speaker”) – The vendor lead, Walter and Anderson the Expert’s boss. Walter – Reports to V1, serves … Continue reading →

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Define the Mission, then the Vehicle

Posted on March 12, 2014 by

Pat Duggins’ book Final Countdown, which documents NASA’s move to shutdown the Space Shuttle Program repeats an important aviation and aerospace maxim: The mission should define the vehicle, not the vehicle define the mission. Apollo’s mission was to put a … Continue reading →

Posted in Aerospace, History, Industry, Innovation, Invention, Marketing, Materials Science, Theory, VC | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Superbowl Post: Playing a Different Game

Posted on February 2, 2014 by

In 1906 the rules were modified to allow the forward pass American Football (aka “Gridiron”), defining the schism between football and rugby and enabling those teams that made use of the play to dominate their opponents.  If you had the … Continue reading →

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Google’s “Create a Filter” – Pure Torture If You Make Real Filters

Posted on October 21, 2013 by

Specialized software programs are unusual in the filtration industry – Excel and Minitab are used for data analysis, there are lots of .pdfs circulated with marketing materials and those are often originally crafted in PowerPoint, Word or other commonly used … Continue reading →

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Filtration in the Popular Media: Ultrafine Particles and 3D Printing

Posted on October 19, 2013 by

Dr. Brent Stephens and his co-authors at the Illinois Institute of Technology attracted a good deal of popular press attention (TechCrunch Article) with their recent publication of, “Ultrafine paticle emissions from desktop 3-D Printers” in the journal of Atmospheric Environment. … Continue reading →

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