Appropriate Technology in an Introductory Engineering Design Experience

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan W. Eberhardt ◽  
Richard J. Lesley ◽  
Tina G. Oliver ◽  
Rosalia N. Scripa
Keyword(s):  
Transfer Students ◽  
Engineering Design ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Appropriate Technology ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
University Of Alabama ◽  
Construction Techniques ◽  
Medical Facilities ◽  
The University ◽  
Target Country

EGR 200, Introduction to Engineering Design, provides transfer students at the University of Alabama at Birmingham an introductory engineering experience, including a 5-week design project. This year, the authors led a project that involved the design of crutches for use in a developing nation that featured the use of “appropriate technology” regarding materials and construction techniques. The target country was Zambia, Africa, which is one of the poorest countries in the world. In Zambia, the majority of the population lives on less than $2 USD per day [1]. Lack of medical facilities and doctors leads to many serious health issues. Infection often leads to amputation, creating a need for low cost crutches.

Senior Designs to Aid the Disabled: The UAB Experience

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan W. Eberhardt ◽  
Laura K. Vogtle ◽  
Gary Edwards
Keyword(s):  
National Science Foundation ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
University Of Alabama ◽  
Persons With Disabilities ◽  
Senior Design ◽  
National Science ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
The University

Abstract This paper presents a review of two years experience regarding senior design projects to aid persons with disabilities, for mechanical engineering students at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). The efforts are funded by the National Science Foundation and are aimed at developing alternative, low cost, custom devices to aid specific disabled individuals or targeted groups. A collaboration has been established with UAB Occupational Therapy and United Cerebral Palsy of Birmingham (UCP), who have provided projects which combine depth in both engineering and life sciences. The “UAB experience” described in the following includes project selection, development, student advising and overall significance. Completed designs are listed, along with efforts to bring the products to a marketable level.

scholarly journals Origami based ultraviolet C device for low cost portable disinfection- using a parametric approach to design.

MRS Advances ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (56) ◽  
pp. 2907-2916
Author(s):  
Samriddho Ghosh ◽  
Mainak Ghosh
Keyword(s):  
Low Cost ◽  
Hospital Environment ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Paper Folding ◽  
Medical Facilities ◽  
Japanese Art ◽  
Ultraviolet C ◽  
To Come ◽  
Healthcare Associated ◽  
The Cost

AbstractMicroorganisms can be present in common equipment of practice, which spread Healthcare-associated infections (HALs), generating major health issues, not only in the hospital environment but outside as well. Especially in this impending crisis due to SARS CoV-19 virus, disinfection (in general) turns out to be of paramount importance and portable disinfection in particular. The rampant spread of the COVID 19 virus, has pushed thinkers to come up with unique disinfection solutions that can help curb the spread of the virus in other places other than the medical facilities. The article aims to establish a design of a portable ultraviolet c disinfectant device that is based on the core principles of origami- the ancient Japanese art of paper folding. Resorting to origami has helped to make the device ultra-portable, robust and can be easily manufactured in order to be commercially produced as an inexpensive alternative to the cost portable disinfection devices in the market.

Spectraplot: A PC-based spectrum translation and display program

1988 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 918-919
Author(s):  
H. O. Colijn
Keyword(s):  
Low Cost ◽  
Transfer Program ◽  
File Transfer ◽  
Transfer Data ◽  
Error Checking ◽  
Data Files ◽  
The University

Many labs today wish to transfer data between their EDS systems and their existing PCs and minicomputers. Our lab has implemented SpectraPlot, a low- cost PC-based system to allow offline examination and plotting of spectra. We adopted this system in order to make more efficient use of our microscopes and EDS consoles, to provide hardcopy output for an older EDS system, and to allow students to access their data after leaving the university.As shown in Fig. 1, we have three EDS systems (one of which is located in another building) which can store data on 8 inch RT-11 floppy disks. We transfer data from these systems to a DEC MINC computer using “SneakerNet”, which consists of putting on a pair of sneakers and running down the hall. We then use the Hermit file transfer program to download the data files with error checking from the MINC to the PC.

The Oral History Tradition at the University of Alabama in Huntsville

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne M. Coleman ◽  
Robert L. Middleton ◽  
Charles A. Lundquist ◽  
David L. Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
University Of Alabama ◽  
The University

Tools of Transformation: Appropriate Technology in U.S. Countercultural Literature

2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-93
Author(s):  
Peter Mortensen
Keyword(s):  
Low Cost ◽  
Appropriate Technology ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Environmental Transformation ◽  
Buckminster Fuller ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Environmentally Sound ◽  
User Friendly ◽  
Second Wave

This essay takes its cue from second-wave ecocriticism and from recent scholarly interest in the “appropriate technology” movement that evolved during the 1960s and 1970s in California and elsewhere. “Appropriate technology” (or AT) refers to a loosely-knit group of writers, engineers and designers active in the years around 1970, and more generally to the counterculture’s promotion, development and application of technologies that were small-scale, low-cost, user-friendly, human-empowering and environmentally sound. Focusing on two roughly contemporary but now largely forgotten American texts Sidney Goldfarb’s lyric poem “Solar-Heated-Rhombic-Dodecahedron” (1969) and Gurney Norman’s novel Divine Right’s Trip (1971)—I consider how “hip” literary writers contributed to eco-technological discourse and argue for the 1960s counterculture’s relevance to present-day ecological concerns. Goldfarb’s and Norman’s texts interest me because they conceptualize iconic 1960s technologies—especially the Buckminster Fuller-inspired geodesic dome and the Volkswagen van—not as inherently alienating machines but as tools of profound individual, social and environmental transformation. Synthesizing antimodernist back-to-nature desires with modernist enthusiasm for (certain kinds of) machinery, these texts adumbrate a humanity- and modernity-centered post-wilderness model of environmentalism that resonates with the dilemmas that we face in our increasingly resource-impoverished, rapidly warming and densely populated world.

EXPLORING THE CONTENTS OF THE BALTIMORE AND OHIO RAILROAD ANNUAL REPORTS: 1827–1856

2000 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary John Previts ◽  
William D. Samson
Keyword(s):  
Annual Report ◽  
Annual Reports ◽  
Corporate Disclosure ◽  
University Of Alabama ◽  
Complete Collection ◽  
Archival Collection ◽  
Annual Reporting ◽  
The University ◽  
Disclosure Practice ◽  
Corporate Practice

In 1995, a nearly complete collection of the annual reports of the earliest interstate and common carrier railroad in the U. S., the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O), was rediscovered in the archival collection at the Bruno Library of the University of Alabama. Dating from the company's inception in 1827 to its acquisition by the Chessie System in 1962, the reports present a unique opportunity for the exploration, study, and analysis of early U.S. corporate disclosure practice. This paper represents a study of the annual report information made publicly available by one of America's first railroads, and one of the first modern U.S. corporations. In this paper, early annual reports of the B&O which detail its formation, construction, and operation are catalogued as to content and evaluated. Mandated in the corporate charter, the annual “statement of affairs” presented by the management and directors to stockholders is studied as a process and as a product that instigated the institutional corporate practice recognized today as “annual reporting.” Using a single company methodology for assessment of reporting follows a pattern developed by Claire [1945] in his analysis of U.S. Steel and utilized by other researchers. This study demonstrates the use of archival information to improve understanding about the origins and contents of early annual reports and, therein, related disclosure forms.

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