MIPS Technologies

MIPS Technologies, Inc., formerly MIPS Computer Systems, Inc., was an American fabless semiconductor design company that is most widely known for developing the MIPS architecture and a series of RISC CPU chips based on it. MIPS provides processor architectures and cores for digital home, networking, embedded, Internet of things and mobile applications.
MIPS was founded in 1984 to commercialize the work being carried out at Stanford University on the MIPS architecture, a pioneering RISC design. The company generated intense interest in the late 1980s, seeing design wins with Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and Silicon Graphics (SGI), among others. By the early 1990s the market was crowded with new RISC designs and further design wins were limited. The company was purchased by SGI in 1992, by that time its only major customer, and won several new designs in the game console space. In 1998, SGI announced they would be transitioning off MIPS and spun off the company.
After several years operating as an independent design house, in 2013 the company was purchased by Imagination Technologies, best known for their PowerVR graphics processor family. They were sold to Tallwood Venture Capital in 2017 and then purchased soon after by Wave Computing in 2018. Wave declared bankruptcy in 2020, emerging in 2021 as MIPS and announcing that the MIPS architecture was being abandoned in favor of RISC-V designs.
History.
MIPS Computer Systems Inc. was founded in 1984 by a group of researchers from Stanford University that included John L. Hennessy and Chris Rowen. These researchers had worked on a project called MIPS (for "Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages"), one of the projects that pioneered the RISC concept. Other principal founders were Skip Stritter, formerly a Motorola technologist, and John Moussouris, formerly of IBM.
The initial CEO was Vaemond Crane, formerly President and CEO of Computer Consoles Inc., who arrived in February 1985 and departed in June 1989. He was replaced by Bob Miller, a former senior IBM and Data General executive. Miller ran the company through its IPO and subsequent sale to Silicon Graphics.
In 1988, MIPS Computer Systems designs were noticed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) and the company adopted the MIPS architecture for its computers. A year later, in December 1989, MIPS held its first IPO. That year, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) released a Unix workstation based on the MIPS design.
After developing the R2000 and R3000 microprocessors, a management change brought along the larger dreams of being a computer vendor. The company found itself unable to compete in the computer market against much larger companies and was struggling to support the costs of developing both the chips and the systems (MIPS Magnum). To secure the supply of future generations of MIPS microprocessors (the 64-bit R4000), SGI acquired the company in 1992 for $333 million and renamed it as MIPS Technologies Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of SGI.
During SGI's ownership of MIPS, the company introduced the R8000 in 1994 and the R10000 in 1996 and a follow up the R12000 in 1997. During this time, two future microprocessors code-named "The Beast" and "Capitan" were in development; these were cancelled after SGI decided to migrate to the Itanium architecture in 1998. As a result, MIPS was spun out as an intellectual property licensing company, offering licences to the MIPS architecture as well as microprocessor core designs.
On June 30, 1998, MIPS held an IPO after raising about $16.3 million with an offering price of $14 a share. In 1999, SGI announced it would overhaul its operations; it planned to continue introducing new MIPS processors until 2002, but its server business would include Intel's processor architectures as well. SGI spun MIPS out completely on June 20, 2000 by distributing all its interest as stock dividend to the stockholders.
In early 2008 MIPS laid-off 28 employees from its processor business group. On August 13, 2008, MIPS announced a loss of $108.5 million for their fiscal fourth-quarter and that they would lay-off another 15% of their workforce. At the time MIPS had 512 employees. In May 2018, according to the company's presence on LinkedIn, there may be less than 50 employees.
Some notable people who worked in MIPS: James Billmaier, Steve Blank, Joseph DiNucci, John L. Hennessy, David Hitz, Earl Killian, Dan Levin, John Mashey, John P. McCaskey, Bob Miller, Stratton Sclavos. and Skip Stritter. Board members included: Bill Davidow.
In 2010, Sandeep Vij was named CEO of MIPS Technologies. Vij studied under Dr. John Hennessy as a Stanford University grad student. Prior to taking over at MIPS, Vij was an executive at Cavium Networks, Xilinx and Altera.
EE Times reported that MIPS had 150 employees as of November 1, 2010. If the August 14, 2008 EDN article was accurate about MIPS having over 500 employees at the time, then MIPS reduced their total workforce by 70% between 2008 and 2010.
In addition to its main R&D centre in Sunnyvale, California, MIPS has engineering facilities in Shanghai, China, Beaverton, Oregon, Bristol and Kings Langley, both in England. It also has offices in Hsin-chu, Taiwan; Tokyo, Japan; Remscheid, Germany and Haifa, Israel.
During the first quarter of 2013, 498 out of 580 of MIPS patents were sold to Bridge Crossing which was created by Allied Security Trust, with all processor-specific patents and the other parts of the company sold to Imagination Technologies Group. Imagination had outbid Ceva Inc to buy MIPS with an offer of $100 million, and was investing to develop the architecture for the embedded processor market.
Products.
MIPS Technologies created the processor architecture that is licensed to chip makers. Before the acquisition, the company had 125+ licensees who ship more than 500 million MIPS-based processors each year.
MIPS processor architectures and cores are used in home entertainment, networking and communications products. The company licensed its 32- and 64-bit architectures as well as 32-bit cores.
The MIPS32 architecture is a high-performance 32-bit instruction set architecture (ISA) that is used in applications such as 32-bit microcontrollers, home entertainment, home networking devices and mobile designs. MIPS customers license the architecture to develop their own processors or license off-the-shelf cores from MIPS that are based on the architecture.
The MIPS64 architecture is a high performance 64-bit instruction set architecture that is widely used in networking infrastructure equipment through MIPS licensees such as Cavium Networks and Broadcom.
SmartCE (Connected Entertainment) is a reference platform that integrates Android, Adobe Flash platform for TV, Skype, the Home Jinni ConnecTV application and other applications. SmartCE lets OEM customers create integrated products more quickly.
MIPS processor core families.
The MIPS processor cores are divided by Imagination into three major families:
Licensees.
MIPS Technologies had a strong customer licensee base in home electronics and portable media players; for example, 75 percent of Blu-ray Disc players were running on MIPS Technologies processors. In the digital home, the company's processors were predominantly found in digital TVs and set-top boxes. The Sony PlayStation Portable used two processors based on the MIPS32 4K processor.
Within the networking segment, licensees include Cavium Networks and Broadcom. Cavium has used up to 48 MIPS cores for its OCTEON family network reference designs. Broadcom ships Linux-ready MIPS64-based XLP, XLR, and XLS multicore, multithreaded processors. Licensees using MIPS to build smartphones and tablets include Actions Semiconductor and Ingenic Semiconductor. Tablets based on MIPS include the Cruz tablets from Velocity Micro. TCL Corporation is using MIPS processors for the development of smartphones.
Companies can also obtain an MIPS "architectural licence" for designing their own CPU cores using the MIPS architecture. Distinct MIPS architecture implementations by licensees include Broadcom's BRCM 5000.
Other licensees include Broadcom, which has developed MIPS-based CPUs for over a decade, Microchip Technology, which leverages MIPS processors for its 32-bit PIC32 microcontrollers, Qualcomm Atheros, MediaTek and Mobileye, whose EyeQ chips are based on cores licensed from MIPS.
Operating systems.
MIPS is widely supported by Unix-like systems, including Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD.
Google's processor-agnostic Android operating system is built on the Linux kernel. MIPS originally ported Android to its architecture for embedded products beyond the mobile handset, where it was originally targeted by Google but MIPS support was dropped in 2018. In 2010, MIPS and its licensee Sigma Designs announced the world's first Android set-top boxes. By porting to Android, MIPS processors power smartphones and tablets running on the Android operating system.
OpenWrt is an embedded operating system based on the Linux kernel.
While it currently runs on a variety of processor architectures,
it was originally developed for the Linksys WRT54G, which used a 32-bit MIPS processor from Broadcom.
The OpenWrt Table of Hardware now includes MIPS-based devices from
Atheros, Broadcom, Cavium, Lantiq, MediaTek, etc.
Real-time operating systems that run on MIPS include CMX Systems, eCosCentric's eCos, ENEA OSE, Express Logic's ThreadX, FreeRTOS, Green Hills Software's Integrity, LynuxWorks' LynxOS, Mentor Graphics, Micrium's Micro-Controller Operating Systems (µC/OS), QNX Software Systems' QNX, Quadros Systems Inc.'s RTXC™ Quadros RTOS, Segger's embOS and Wind River's VxWorks.


White Bluff Power Plant

White Bluff Power Plant is a base load coal-fired power station in Redfield, Arkansas with a nameplate capacity of 1,800 MW and a net summer capacity of 1,638 MW. The plant is owned and operated by Entergy and has one of the tallest chimneys in the world at , built in 1980.
In 2018, Entergy announced it will close the plant by 2028.
Emissions.
In 2013, Environment America ranked the plant 42 on its list of the 100 dirtiest coal-fired power stations in the U.S., reporting that its 2011 emissions were equivalent to 2.16 million passenger vehicles.
The plant released 10,250,228 metric tons of greenhouse gases in 2012 according to the EPA. The emissions in metric tons comprised:


General Instrument

General Instrument (GI) was an American electronics manufacturer based in Horsham, Pennsylvania, specializing in semiconductors and cable television equipment. The company was active until 1997, when it split into General Semiconductor (power semiconductors, which was later acquired by Vishay Intertechnology in November 2001), CommScope and NextLevel Systems.
NextLevel Systems, the former GI cable and satellite TV division, took over the General Instrument name in February 1998. The new (post-split) GI Corporation was acquired by Motorola in January 2000 for $17 billion and became the new Broadband Communication Sector (BCS) along with an acquisition of Zenith Network Systems a few months later. After being called Connected Home Solutions, it was renamed Home and Networks Mobility in 2007. When Motorola split on January 4, 2011, this division became part of Motorola Mobility. On December 19, 2012, ARRIS announced that it would acquire Motorola Mobility's Home unit (the former General Instrument company) from Google for $2.35 billion in cash and stock. The acquisition was completed on April 17, 2013. On November 8, 2018, CommScope announced that it would acquire ARRIS in a cash deal valued at $7.4 billion including the repayment of debt. This acquisition brings back together two of the former General Instrument companies from the 1997 split.
Moses Shapiro, father of former Monsanto head Robert B. Shapiro, was Chairman from 1969 to 1975. Frank G. Hickey served as chief executive officer from 1975 to 1990, as did Donald Rumsfeld from 1990 to 1993.
VideoCipher Division.
General Instrument produced receivers for old C and Ku band satellites. They also produced Videocipher units as well as digital equipment. 4DTV was a system for picking up free and encrypted analog and digital satellite subscription channels. It also included an interactive guide. The product line included:
American Totalisator Corporation/AmTote.
American Totalisator was a division of General Instrument Corp. It manufactured tote boards for the horse racing industry. It is now owned by horse-track operator Magna Entertainment Corporation.
Underseas Lab (Harris ASW).
Underseas Lab, a division of General Instrument Corp., located in Westwood, Massachusetts. It invented and manufactured multibeam sonars used in ocean floor mapping. It was acquired by Channel Technologies and is now owned by L-3 Communications.
Jerrold.
Jerrold was GI's original cable TV brand, active from 1948 into the early 1990s. Around 1993, GI dropped the Jerrold name from their product lines. The Jerrold brand was prominent on both addressable and non-addressable cable TV converter boxes that were used on non-cable ready sets and cable-ready sets with premium pay services. "Jerrold" is the middle name of the company's founder, Milton Jerrold Shapp, who became Pennsylvania's 40th governor in 1971. Shapp's given name was Milton Shapiro.
GI Microelectronics.
GI Microelectronics was a manufacturer of LSI circuits and a pioneer in MOS technology and Electrically Alterable ROM (EAROM), with both off-the-shelf and custom circuits. GI spun the division off as Microchip Technology in 1987.
In 1980, their product catalog included:
Other products included the famous AY-3-8910/11/12/14 series of sound chips, the AY-3-85xx, 86xx, 87xx series of game chips and a single-chip speech synthesizer, the SP0256 Narrator. A version of the SP0256 appeared in Mattel's Intellivoice. The popular SP0256-AL2 variant came with a set of allophones built in.
In 1965, Frank Wanlass moved to General Instrument Microelectronics Division in New York.
Wanlass and other GI engineers promoted four-phase logic throughout the industry.
J. L. Seely, manager of MOS Operations at General Instrument Microelectronics Division, also wrote about four-phase logic in late 1967.


Stoke EfW

Stoke EfW is a large incineration plant in the Sideway area of Stoke-on-Trent, England. It burns municipal waste and in the process produces electricity for the National Grid.
It was originally built in 1989 and is operated by Hanford Waste Services Ltd. The original plant was found to release 300 times the standard level of dioxins, so was replaced with a new facility, opening in October 1998. The plant is dominated by a 76 metre-tall chimney stack and has a total installed generating capacity of 15.4 megawatts.


Saltus-Werk Max Forst GmbH

SALTUS Industrial Technique GmbH, or SALTUS, located in Solingen/Germany is a part of the Swedish Atlas Copco Group with main office in Stockholm/Sweden. Saltus is integrated in the Group since 2013 as product company with focus of engineering and production of torque wrenches as well as sockets, bits and special, customized sockets.
Today.
Around 90 employees are working at Saltus mainly in engineering and production.
History.
The production facility, as of 2018, is in Tierp, Sweden.


Jalaun Solar Power Project

Jalaun Solar Power Project is a solar photo-voltaic power generating station spanning two villages of Kuhana and Shajahanpur in Jalaun district of Uttar Pradesh. The plant has been developed by Essel Infraprojects Limited, an arm of Essel Group. The plant is spread on a 250-acre land and is expected to generate 85 million units per year and connected to 132 KV Sarsela-Kalpi substations.
The plant was inaugurated by U.P. chief minister Akhilesh Yadav on 27 January 2016 under the Uttar Pradesh Solar Power Policy 2013. A Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) between U.P. Government and Essel Infraprojects Limited has been signed which is valid for 25 years.


Skilsaw

SKILSAW Power Tools (since 1924) is a manufacturer of cutting technology serving the professional construction market.
History.
SKILSAW Power Tools was founded in 1924, by Edmond Michel. With the invention of its flagship tool, the SKILSAW Model E, equipped with a 8”-inch blade. It was The world’s first portable circular saw. This saw's invention also spurred the use of worm drive gearing, Dual-Field motor and die-cast aluminum motor housing. In 1937, its successor, the SKILSAW Model 77 became the benchmark of portable saws, along with the SKILSAW Model 87 circular saws and continues to be used on jobsites across the United States.
During the post-war era, the company expanded and began producing bench top tools and tools for a do-it-yourself audience. The company name was changed from SKILSAW Inc. to SKIL Corporation in 1952. Then, in November 2014, SKIL rebranded, making SKILSAW the brand serving the professional construction market and SKIL the brand serving the consumer do-it-yourself market.
Since rebranding, SKILSAW introduced a variety of new professional-grade saws not only for wood cutting, but for cutting new materials used on jobsites. The initial product lineup following the rebrand featured pro grade Sidewinder circular saws, and the first 10-1/4-inch worm drive saw. The following year brought three new metal cutting saws, including the first 8-inch worm drive optimized for metal, a 12-inch dry cut saw and a 14-inch abrasive chop saw. In addition to metal cutting, SKILSAW also announced a saw for fiber cement in 2015 and the first worm drive saw for concrete in 2016. Both of these saws were developed to meet new OSHA guidelines that protect workers from respirable silica dust. The company also expanded beyond traditional circular saws with the first worm drive table saw in 2016 and two reciprocating saws in 2017.
Products.
SKILSAW’s product lineup includes worm drive saws, SIDEWINDER-branded circular saws and benchtop saws for various materials including wood, metal, fiber cement and concrete. In 2017, SKILSAW expanded its product offering from circular to linear cutting with its first reciprocating saws since rebranding.
Ownership history.
In 1991, the Emerson Electric Company and Robert Bosch GmbH entered into a joint venture by combining their power tool subsidiaries. In 1992, the new venture came to fruition as S-B Power Tool Co. In 1996, after four years of the partnership, Robert Bosch GmbH took over complete ownership of Skil.
On August 23, 2016, Chervon (HK) Ltd., a global power tool manufacturer agreed to acquire the SKILSAW brand from Robert Bosch Tool Corporation, which gave them control over the SKIL businesses in both North America and the European market.


Lists of bodies of water

Lists of bodies of water include:
Fresh water bodies.
Lakes.
List of lakes


Telangana Super Thermal Power Project

Telangana Super Thermal Power Project(TSTPP) is in Telangana, India. The power plant is under construction with power capacity of 1600 MW (2x800 MW) in first phase and in total planned capacity of 4000 MW. It is the coal based power plant of National Thermal Power Corporation. It is being built near Ramagundam village in Karimnagar District.
Capacity.
The first unit of 800MW is expected to be completed by May 2020 and the next would follow in six months.


Barry Power Station

Barry Power Station was a 230 MWe gas-fired power station on "Sully Moors Road" in Sully in the Vale of Glamorgan, Wales. It was eight miles west of Cardiff and was situated next to a large Ineos Vinyls chemicals works that makes PVC and a Hexion Chemicals plant.
History.
Construction began in January 1997 and it was opened on 7 September 1998, being owned by the AES Corporation but trading as AES Barry Ltd. Until 2000 it ran as a base load station. It was bought by Centrica on 24 July 2003 for £39.7m. AES sold the plant because of the low price of electricity at that time.
The closure of the plant was proposed in Centrica's accounts in February 2012, but the following month a contract was signed to use it to supply peak power. This required a reconfiguration to allow full load to be reached more quickly, and redundancy for a third of the workforce. It was then run in an open-cycle mode, halving operating costs, with the option of switching to combined-cycle mode after an hour.
The plant ceased generation on 31 March 2019 and closed on 10 May 2019 with demolition proposed to commence in summer 2019.
It was observed that demolition was well underway by July 2019 and by September 2019, the grey steel chimney had been removed, thus a previously well-defined landmark had disappeared.
Specification.
It was a CCGT-type power station. There was one 160 MWe Siemens V94.2 gas turbine (built by Ansaldo Energia in Genoa and now called the SGT5-2000E) that fed exhaust gas at 544 °C to a heat recovery steam generator. Steam from this entered a 75 MWe steam turbine running, like the gas turbine, at 3000 rpm. Exhaust steam was passed through an air-cooled condenser and returned to the system as de-aerated feedwater for the HRSG. It connected to the Western Power Distribution section of the National Grid via a substation at 132 kV. The generator on the gas turbine was rated at 180 MVA and had a terminal voltage of 15 kV; the steam turbine's was 11 kV.
The plant was 44% thermally efficient. The chimney was 60 m high.


Microsystems International

Microsystems International Limited (MIL) was a telecommunications microelectronics company based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, founded in 1969. MIL was an early attempt to create a merchant semiconductor house by Nortel Networks (then Northern Electric). MIL was purchased and folded into Nortel's research arm Bell-Northern Research in 1974.
MIL is historically important as the producers of one of the world's earliest microprocessors, the MIL MF7114, which was based on the design of the Intel 4004. MIL also produced a series of early microcomputers using this chip, including the MIL CPS-1, which may be the earliest example of a microcomputer system that was shipped in completed form, as opposed to a kit that had to be assembled. Several other upgraded models followed.
History.
Electronic manufacturers were at that time forced to create custom integrated circuits due to the lack of industry standard ICs. MIL was an attempt to create a merchant company that could supply such standard devices as well as custom devices for Northern Electric products. Northern Electric entered the field partly at the urging of the Canadian federal government even though it has strong doubts of the viability of the company.
MIL manufactured both bipolar and MOS semiconductor devices, including standard TTL digital logic components and linear products such as operational amplifiers, as well as a variety of memory components. In 1971, MIL became a second source for the Intel 1103 DRAM IC. The licensing fee paid by MIL to Intel meant that Intel could show a profit in 1971 for the first time in its history.
MIL was never able to show a profit and losses were exacerbated by the semiconductor market downturn in 1974. It was purchased and folded into Nortel's research arm Bell-Northern Research and later merged into Nortel. The MIL fabrication facility continued to operate as the largest semiconductor fab in Canada until Nortel's bankruptcy in 2009.
Spinoffs.
MIL's most lasting contribution is that it was the meeting place for the entrepreneurs Terry Matthews and Michael Cowpland. The pair left the company to found much of the high tech industry in Kanata, Ontario, Canada. They started Mitel together. Cowpland later started Corel. Matthews later started Newbridge Networks. Cowpland's boss at MIL cautioned him against leaving the security of a large company just a few months before MIL was wound up.
Another partnership formed at MIL was that of Dick Foss and Bob Harland who, on their return from the 1975 ISSCC conference where they had presented their paper on MIL's 4k DRAM, found that they were no longer employed. They started MOSAID initially as a memory design house and branched out into other related areas such as reverse engineering, EDA software, and memory test equipment manufacturing. The reverse engineering business was spun off in 1989 as Semiconductor Insights, now TechInsights.


Everspin Technologies

Everspin Technologies is a public semiconductor company headquartered in Chandler, Arizona, United States. It develops and manufactures discrete magnetoresistive RAM or magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM) products, including Toggle MRAM and Spin-Transfer Torque MRAM (STT-MRAM) product families. It also licenses its technology for use in embedded MRAM (eMRAM) applications, magnetic sensor applications as well as performs backend foundry services for eMRAM.
MRAM has the performance characteristics close to static random-access memory (SRAM) while also having the persistence of non-volatile memory, meaning that it will not lose its charge or data if power is removed from the system. This characteristic makes MRAM suitable for a large number of applications where persistence, performance, endurance and reliability are critical.
History.
The path to MRAM began in 1984 when the GMR effect was discovered by Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg. Twelve years later, in 1996, spin-transfer torque is proposed, enabling a magnetic tunnel junction or spin valve to be modified with a spin-polarized current. At this point, Motorola began their MRAM research, which led to their first MTJ in 1998. A year later, in 1999, Motorola developed a 256Kb MRAM Test Chip that enabled work to begin on productizing MRAM technology, which was followed by a patent for Toggle being granted to Motorola in 2002. The industry's first MRAM (4Mb) product became commercially available in 2006.
Much of the early MRAM work was done by Motorola, who spun off their semiconductor business in 2004, creating Freescale Semiconductor in 2008, which eventually spun out the MRAM business as Everspin Technologies.
In 2008, Everspin announced BGA packages for their MRAM product family that would support densities from 256Kb to 4Mb. The following year, in 2009, Everspin released their first generation SPI MRAM product family and began shipping the first embedded MRAM samples in conjunction with GlobalFoundries. By 2010, Everspin had begun ramping production and sold its first million MRAMs. That same year qualification had completed on the industry's first embedded MRAM and 16Mb densities had been released.
With production ramping, Everspin shipped its four millionth stand-alone MRAM and its two millionth embedded MRAM by 2011. The 64Mb ST-MRAM, which was produced on a 90 nm process occurred in 2012.
In 2014 Everspin partnered with GlobalFoundries for production of in-plane and perpendicular MTJ ST-MRAM on 300mm wafers, utilizing 40 nm and 28 nm node processes.
By 2016, Everspin had announced it was shipping samples of the industry's first 256Mb ST-MRAM to customers, GlobalFoundries announced 22 nm embedded MRAM in conjunction with Everspin, and Everspin went public in an IPO later in the year on October 7.
In 2017, Everspin expanded support for MRAM to FPGAs by bringing DDR3 and DDR4 compatibility to its ST-MRAM products, making it compatible with Xilinx's UltraScale FPGA memory controller. On September 1, 2017, Kevin Conley was named Everspin CEO and President. Conley was the former CTO of SanDisk and brings enterprise storage expertise to the company.
In 2018, Everspin ramped production volumes of its 256Mb STT-MRAM and in December shipped its first customer samples of the 1Gb STT-MRAM.
In 2019, Everspin began pre-production of its 1Gb STT-MRAM in June and announced the expansion of the design-in ecosystem to enable system designers to implement the 1Gb ST-DDR4 product in their designs.
Technology.
MRAM uses the magnetism of electron spin to provide fast and enduring non-volatile memory. MRAM stores information in magnetic material that is integrated with silicon circuitry to deliver the speed of RAM with the non-volatility of Flash.
Headquartered in Chandler, Arizona, Everspin owns and operates a manufacturing line for its magnetic back-end-of-line wafer processing, using standard CMOS wafers from foundries. Everspin's current MRAM products are based on 180-nm, 130-nm, 40-nm, and 28-nm process technology nodes and industry standard packages.
Products.
Toggle MRAM.
Toggle MRAM memory utilizes the magnetism of electron spin, enabling the storage of data without volatility or wear-out. Toggle MRAM utilizes a single transistor and a single MTJ cell in order to provide a durable, high-density memory. Because of the non-volatility of Toggle MRAM, data that is held in this memory is accessible for 20 years, at temperature (from -40c to 150c). The MTJ is composed of a fixed magnetic layer, a thin dielectric tunnel barrier, and a free magnetic layer. When a bias is applied to the Spin Toggle's MTJ, electrons that are spin polarized by the magnetic layers "tunnel" across the dielectric barrier. The MTJ device has a low resistance when the magnetic moment of the free layer is parallel to the fixed layer and a high resistance when the free layer moment is oriented anti-parallel to the fixed layer moment.
Production densities include 128Kb to 16Mb; available in Parallel and SPI interfaces; DFN, SOIC, BGA, and TSOP2 packages
Spin-transfer torque MRAM.
Spin-transfer torque is a type of MRAM memory (STT-MRAM) built with a perpendicular MTJ that uses the spin-transfer torque property (the manipulation of the spin of electrons with a polarizing current) to manipulate the magnetic state of the free layer to program, or write, the bits in the memory array. Everspin's Perpendicular MTJ stack designs with high perpendicular magnetic anisotropy bring long data retention, small cell size, high density, high endurance, and low power. STT-MRAM has lower switching energy compared to Toggle MRAM, and can reach higher densities. STT-MRAM products from Everspin are compatible with JEDEC standard interfaces for DDR3 and DDR4 (with some modifications needed for MRAM technology). In this mode, the DDR3 product can act like a persistent (non-volatile) DRAM and require no refresh, while the DDR4 product has self-refresh mode under idle state conditions. The DDR4 compatible STT-MRAM devices, with a 1Gb density, began early sampling to customers in early August 2017. In June 2019, the 1Gb STT-MRAM entered pilot production.
nvNITRO Storage Accelerators.
Everspin developed nvNITRO products to address storage requirements that are typically being served by NVMe products. There are two different form factors, HHHL (PCIe Gen3 x8), and U.2. These devices can store up to 1GB in data today, with greater capacities planned as MRAM densities scale up over time. nvNITRO products can handle both NVMe 1.1 and block storage requirements. Because these products are built on MRAM, they do not require the battery backup of typical magnetic storage products in order to protect data in flight. Everspin officially launched the first version of the nvNITRO in August 2017, based on 256Mb ST-MRAM (1GB and 2GB capacities). Future versions will be based on the upcoming 1Gb ST-MRAM densities which recently began sampling to customers. SMART Modular Technologies has signed up as an nvNITRO technology partner and will sell nvNITRO storage accelerators under their brand name.
Embedded MRAM.
Everspin has partnered with GlobalFoundries to integrate MRAM into standard CMOS technology, enabling it to be integrated, non-destructively, into CMOS logic designs. The embedded MRAM can replace embedded flash, DRAM or SRAM in any CMOS design, delivering similar capacities of memory with non-volatility. Embedded MRAM can be integrated into 65 nm, 40 nm, 28 nm and now in GlobalFoundries 22FDX process which is 22 nm and utilizes fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI).


Weeden Manufacturing

Weeden Manufacturing was a toy company best known for producing Model steam engines and electric motors. They started making toy steam engines in October 1884 to sell via Magazine, and went on to make 100 different styles. Weeden made its own tooling for all the engines they made. From 1890 to 1912 Weeden made a steam powered toy train. In the 1920s Weeden ventured into children's banks and electric stoves. In 1942 they were purchased by National Playthings, the last steam engine being made 10 years later.


Grand Falls Generating Station

The Grand Falls Generating Station is a hydroelectric dam built on the Saint John River in Grand Falls in the Canadian province of New Brunswick and is operated by NB Power corporation. It was built in 1931 and its power house has a capacity of 66 megawatts with its 4 turbines.


Baglan Bay power station

Baglan Bay power station is a 525MWe gas-fired power station situated on Baglan Moors just west of Port Talbot in Wales.
History.
The power station was built on the site of the former Isopropanol BP chemicals plant in September 2003, costing £300m. At the time of its development, it was considered the most advanced CCGT (Combined-cycle gas turbine) facility of its kind. It was built by the GE Energy division of General Electric, who are its current operators. It was sold by GE in October 2012 to a group of financial investors, led by Macquarie.
Specification.
It is a CCGT-type power station that runs on natural gas. It has one General Electric H system (9H) gas turbine with a heat recovery steam generator and a GE steam turbine. It has black start capability, using a 33MWe GE LM2500 gas turbine. It connects to the National Grid at 275kV. It is 60% thermally efficient.


Thomas Mycroft

Thomas Mycroft (28 March 1848 — 31 August 1911) was an English cricketer who played for Derbyshire and MCC between 1877 and 1887.
Mycroft was born in Brimington, Derbyshire, the son of George Mycroft and his second wife Elizabeth Lowcock. His father was an ironstone and coal miner who kept the Red Lion public house at Brimington. Mycroft became an iron moulder. He was playing cricket for Chesterfield in 1871. His first-class career started in the 1877 season, when he made his debut for Derbyshire as wicket-keeper against Kent, scoring eight runs. He played one more match that season. In the 1878 season he played one game for Derbyshire against the All England XI but started playing predominantly for MCC. Derbyshire over the period was well served by their regular wicket-keepers Alfort Smith and James Disney. Mycroft played a large number of non-status matches for MCC against local clubs until 1883 and one or two first-class matches for MCC each year. In 1882 against Hampshire he took a rare bowling stint of 7 overs without gaining a wicket but scored 11 and 10 in his two innings.
In the 1884 season Mycroft played ten county matches for Derbyshire, and played two games for MCC. In 1885 he played a single MCC V Derbyshire match in which he had a small bowling spell for Derbyshire. In 1887 he played for South against North and his final match was for MCC against Oxford University. Mycroft was wicket keeper in all but two first-class games when he bowled in all 44 balls without a wicket. He was a left-handed batsman and played 46 innings in 24 first-class matches with a top score of 24 not out and an average of 7.78.
Mycroft returned to the game as an umpire, from 1897 to 1905, standing in two Test Matches.
Mycroft died in Mickleover at the age of 63. His half-brother, William, was a Derbyshire cricketer between 1873 and 1885.


Capacity factor

The net capacity factor is the unitless ratio of an actual electrical energy output over a given period of time to the maximum possible electrical energy output over that period. The capacity factor is defined for any electricity producing installation, such as a fuel consuming power plant or one using renewable energy, such as wind or the sun. The average capacity factor can also be defined for any class of such installations, and can be used to compare different types of electricity production.
The maximum possible energy output of a given installation assumes its continuous operation at full nameplate capacity over the relevant period. The actual energy output during that period and the capacity factor vary greatly depending on a range of factors. The capacity factor can never exceed the availability factor, or uptime during the period. Uptime can be reduced due to, for example, reliability issues and maintenance, scheduled or unscheduled. Other factors include the design of the installation, its location, the type of electricity production and with it either the fuel being used or, for renewable energy, the local weather conditions. Additionally, the capacity factor can be subject to regulatory constraints and market forces, potentially affecting both its fuel purchase and its electricity sale.
The capacity factor is often computed over a timescale of a year, averaging out most temporal fluctuations. However, it can also be computed for a month to gain insight into seasonal fluctuations. Alternatively, it can be computed over the lifetime of the power source, both while operational and after decommissioning.
Sample calculations.
Nuclear power plant.
Nuclear power plants are at the high end of the range of capacity factors, ideally reduced only by the availability factor, i.e. maintenance and refueling. The largest nuclear plant in the US, Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station has between its three reactors a nameplate capacity of 3,942 MW. In 2010 its annual generation was 31,200,000 MWh, leading to a capacity factor of:
Each of Palo Verde’s three reactors is refueled every 18 months, with one refueling every spring and fall. In 2014, a refueling was completed in a record 28 days, compared to the 35 days of downtime that the 2010 capacity factor corresponds to.
In 2019, Prairie Island 1 was the best US unit and actually reached 104.4%.
Wind farm.
The Danish offshore wind farm Horns Rev 2 has a nameplate capacity of 209.3 MW.
 it has produced 6416 GWh since its commissioning 7 years ago, i.e. an average annual production of 875 GWh/year and a capacity factor of:
Sites with lower capacity factors may be deemed feasible for wind farms, for example the onshore 1 GW Fosen Vind which is under construction in Norway has a projected capacity factor of 39%. Feasibility calculations may be affected by seasonality. For example in Finland, capacity factor during the cold winter months is more than double compared to July. While the annual average in Finland is 29.5%, the high demand for heating energy correlates with the higher capacity factor during the winter.
Certain onshore wind farms can reach capacity factors of over 60%, for example the 44 MW Eolo plant in Nicaragua had a net generation of 232.132 GWh in 2015, equivalent to a capacity factor of 60.2%, while United States annual capacity factors from 2013 through 2016 range from 32.2% to 34.7%.
Since the capacity factor of a wind turbine measures actual production relative to possible production, it is unrelated to Betz's coefficient of 16/27 formula_3 59.3%, which limits production vs. energy available in the wind.
Hydroelectric dam.
 the Three Gorges Dam in China is, with its nameplate capacity of 22,500 MW, the largest power generating station in the world by installed capacity.
In 2015 it generated 87 TWh, for a capacity factor of:
Hoover Dam has a nameplate capacity of 2080 MW and an annual generation averaging 4.2 TW·h. (The annual generation has varied between a high of 10.348 TW·h in 1984, and a low of 2.648 TW·h in 1956.).
Taking the average figure for annual generation gives a capacity factor of:
Photovoltaic power station.
At the low range of capacity factors is the photovoltaic power station, which supplies power to the electricity grid from a large-scale photovoltaic system (PV system).
An inherent limit to its capacity factor comes from its requirement of daylight, preferably with a sun unobstructed by clouds, smoke or smog, shade from trees and building structures.
Since the amount of sunlight varies both with the time of the day and the seasons of the year, the capacity factor is typically computed on an annual basis.
The amount of available sunlight is mostly determined by the latitude of the installation and the local cloud cover.
The actual production is also influenced by local factors such as dust and ambient temperature, which ideally should be low. As for any power station, the maximum possible power production is the nameplate capacity times the number of hours in a year, while the actual production is the amount of electricity delivered annually to the grid.
For example, Agua Caliente Solar Project, located in Arizona near the 33rd parallel and awarded for its excellence in renewable energy has a nameplate capacity of 290 MW and an actual average annual production of 740 GWh/year.
Its capacity factor is thus:
A significantly lower capacity factor is achieved by Lauingen Energy Park located in Bavaria, near the 49th parallel. With a nameplate capacity of 25.7 MW and an actual average annual production of 26.98 GWh/year it has a capacity factor of 12.0%.
Determinants of a plant capacity factor.
There are several reasons why a plant would have a capacity factor lower than 100%. These include technical constraints, such as availability of the plant, economic reasons, and availability of the energy resource.
A plant can be out of service or operating at reduced output for part of the time due to equipment failures or routine maintenance.
This accounts for most of the unused capacity of base load power plants. Base load plants usually have low costs per unit of electricity because they are designed for maximum efficiency and are operated continuously at high output.
Geothermal power plants, nuclear power plants, coal-fired plants and bioenergy plants that burn solid material are almost always operated as base load plants, as they can be difficult to adjust to suit demand.
A plant can also have its output curtailed or intentionally left idle because the electricity is not needed or because the price of electricity is too low to make production economical.
This accounts for most of the unused capacity of peaking power plants and load following power plants.
Peaking plants may operate for only a few hours per year or up to several hours per day.
Many other power plants operate only at certain times of the day or year because of variation in loads and electricity prices.
If a plant is only needed during the day, for example, even if it operates at full power output from 8 am to 8 pm every day (12 hours) all year long, it would only have a 50% capacity factor.
Due to low capacity factors, electricity from peaking power plants is relatively expensive because the limited generation has to cover the plant fixed costs.
A third reason is that a plant may not have the fuel available to operate all of the time.
This can apply to fossil generating stations with restricted fuels supplies, but most notably applies to intermittent renewable resources.
Solar PV and wind turbines have a capacity factor limited by the availability of their "fuel", sunshine and wind respectively.
A hydroelectricity plant may have a capacity factor lower than 100% due to restriction or scarcity of water, or its output may be regulated to match the current power need, conserving its stored water for later usage.
Other reasons that a power plant may not have a capacity factor of 100% include restrictions or limitations on air permits and limitations on transmission that force the plant to curtail output.
Capacity factor of renewable energy.
For renewable energy sources such as solar power, wind power and hydroelectricity, the main reason for reduced capacity factor is generally the availability of the energy source.
The plant may be capable of producing electricity, but its "fuel" (wind, sunlight or water) may not be available.
A hydroelectric plant's production may also be affected by requirements to keep the water level from getting too high or low and to provide water for fish downstream.
However, solar, wind and hydroelectric plants do have high availability factors, so when they have fuel available, they are almost always able to produce electricity.
When hydroelectric plants have water available, they are also useful for load following, because of their high "dispatchability". A typical hydroelectric plant's operators can bring it from a stopped condition to full power in just a few minutes.
Wind farms are variable, due to the natural variability of the wind.
For a wind farm, the capacity factor is determined by the availability of wind, the swept area of the turbine and the size of the generator.
Transmission line capacity and electricity demand also affect the capacity factor.
Typical capacity factors of current wind farms are between 25 and 45%. In the United Kingdom during the five year period from 2011 to 2019 the annual capacity factor for wind was over 30%.
Solar energy is variable because of the daily rotation of the earth, seasonal changes, and because of cloud cover.
For example, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District observed a 15% capacity factor in 2005.
However, according to the SolarPACES programme of the International Energy Agency (IEA), solar power plants designed for solar-only generation are well matched to summer noon peak loads in areas with significant cooling demands, such as Spain or the south-western United States, although in some locations solar PV does not reduce the need for generation of network upgrades given that air conditioner peak demand often occurs in the late afternoon or early evening when solar output is reduced.
SolarPACES states that by using thermal energy storage systems the operating periods of solar thermal power (CSP) stations can be extended to become dispatchable (load following).
Geothermal has a higher capacity factor than many other power sources, and geothermal resources are generally available all the time.
Capacity factors by energy source.
United States.
According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), from 2013 to 2017 the capacity factors of utility-scale generators were as follows:
! colspan="8"| Non-fossil fuels !! Coal !! colspan="4" | Natural Gas !! colspan="3" | Petroleum Liquids
!Nuclear !! Hydro !!Wind !!Solar PV !!Solar CSP !!Landfill Gas and !!Other Biomass including Wood !! Geothermal !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !!
However, these values often vary significantly by month.
United Kingdom.
The following figures were collected by the Department of Energy and Climate Change on the capacity factors for various types of plants in UK grid:


Infineum

Infineum International Limited is a joint venture between the additive product lines of ExxonMobil Chemical Company and Royal Dutch Shell Chemicals. Its headquarters are located in Abingdon, England and it has operating centers throughout the United Kingdom, United States, France, China, and Singapore.
Background.
Infineum is a formulator, manufacturer and marketer of petroleum additives for the fuel and lubricant industries. Their products are classified into five distinct groups: driveline additives, engine oil additives, fuel additives, marine additives and industrial products. Their products include small engine, passenger car motor, heavy-duty engine, gas engine, and marine oils along with fuels, transmission fluids, viscosity modifiers, and pour point depressants.
They first created pour point depressants in the 1930s.
In 2001, Texaco purchased Infineum's blending facility in Ghent, Belgium. Under the agreement between Texaco and Infineum, Texaco would continue manufacture of Infineum's Viscosity Modifier products at the plant. In March 2007, Infineum and Chevron Fuel & Marine Marketing entered into an agreement concerning the global supply of fuel additives to the marine industry. In 2011, the company announced that it would be collaborating with Nano Terra, a Boston-based nanotechnology company, to research the development of a "new class of materials".
In 2012, Infineum began construction of a calcium salicylate plant on Jurong Island in Singapore. Calcium salicylate is used as a detergent in Infineum's engine oil formulations.
In February 2017, Infineum announced that Logility Voyager Solutions, a cloud-based business planning platform, had been selected to optimize the company's supply chain with regard to inventory and shipments.
China.
In 2001, the company signed a letter of intent to form a joint venture with Sinopec Shanghai Gao Qiao Petrochemical. The joint venture, called Shanghai High-Lube Additives, built a lubricant blending plant in Pudong, Shanghai. In 2013 Infineum opened Infineum (Shanghai) Additives Co, and in 2014 they opened the China Business & Technology Center. In 2016, the company opened an additive blending plant in China's Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu province. The Zhangjiagang plant is Infineum's first wholly owned blending plant in China and it can produce up to 100,000 tonnes of lubricant additive a year.


Laran Bronze

Laran Bronze is a fine art foundry in Chester, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1984 by Larry and Randy Welker in facilities built for the city's once-booming shipbuilding industry, the foundry has cast many monumental and significant sculptures, including many of the bronze components of the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. In 1985 or 1986, the foundry cast replicas of the hands of painter Andrew Wyeth; in 2019, one of these replicas sold at auction, along with a Wyeth painting, for $490,230.
The components cast at Laran for the WWII Memorial include four 18-foot columns, eight eagles with 10- to 12-foot wingspans, two 10-foot wreaths, and 24 plaques.
Other works cast at Laran Bronze include:


Mark Beaufoy

Colonel Mark Beaufoy FRS (1764–1827) was an English astronomer and physicist, mountaineer, explorer and British Army officer. His father, Mark Beaufoy (1718–1782), who was originally from Evesham, established a vinegar factory in Lambeth, London. According to the family tree on Ancestry.com, he was born 1764 March 4, died 1827 May 4.
He was the first-known English climber to make an ascent of a high mountain in the Alps. In 1787, he made an ascent (the fourth) of Mont Blanc. This mountain was an attraction to his fellow countrymen, such as J. D. Forbes (1809–1868), A. T. Malkin (1803–1888), John Ball (1818–1889) and Sir Alfred Wills (1828–1912). He describes his ascent of Mont Blanc:
He devoted much of his life to naval experiments at the Greenland Dock with James Scott and Captain John Luard of the "Society for the Improvement in Naval Architecture". He published the results of his work in one of the leading scientific journals of the day, "The Annals of Philosophy". In 1815 he described a recording tide meter, and in the same article went on to describe the power of the wind on square sails and the resistance to motion both in air and water of different shapes. The paper moved from ship sails to considering the best angle for windmill sails to be set. He supplied Astronomical and Magnetic observations from Hackney Wick (51°32‘40“N, 6.82“W) for many issues. Charles Hutton's 1815 list of England's most notable private observatories included Colonel Beaufoy's.
In 1816 Beaufoy published another extensive article based on his experimental work. "On the Stability of Vessels" was based on 23 different hull forms tested for their resistance to rolling. The article includes an illustration of his apparatus showing a hull form being subjected to a controlled heeling force with a plumb bob and scale to measure the inclination. The various tables of results show the metacentre. The dichotomy between resistance to rolling and sea keeping is discussed.
A volume "Nautical and Hydraulic Experiments with Numerous Scientific Miscellanies" was published posthumously by his son Henry in 1834 (one volume only, called Volume I). Beaufoy also made astronomical observations and advocated other ideas like rifles in the militia and schemes for reaching the North Pole. This volume challenged the existing orthodoxy that the resistance to motion of a vessel was in proportion to her displacement. Chapman had challenged this earlier (1775), but Beaufoy's work was taken up by Isambard Kingdom Brunel as the "square-cube" law. Simply put, if a vessel is doubled in size the resistance to motion quadruples, but the size of engines and the carrying capacity (fuel, cargo) increase eight-fold.
He married his cousin Margaretta Beaufoy (died 1800) in a 1784 "runaway" marriage, after which they had a "long sojurn" in Switzerland. They had three sons (Henry, Mark and George) and a daughter; Margaretta took the infant girl Henriette to watch Mark ascend Mont Blanc. She assisted him with mathematical and astronomical calculations.
Beaufoy was commissioned Captain of the Hackney Volunteer Company in 1794 and Colonel of the 1st Regiment of Tower Hamlets Militia in 1797. However, in October 1813 he was court-martialled for the "vexatious and frivolous" disciplining of a junior officer and was relieved of his command in January 1814.
His grandson, Mark Hanbury Beaufoy, was an English vinegar manufacturer and politician. The family firm is now called British Vinegars Limited.


Eldon B. Tunstall Farm

Eldon B. Tunstall Farm is a historic tobacco farm complex and national historic district located near Bullock, Granville County, North Carolina. The farmhouse was built about 1907, and is a two-story, three bay, frame I-house, with a one-story full facade porch. Also on the property are the contributing dairy, smokehouse, well house, log corn crib, log horse and mule barn, packhouse, striphouse, ordering house, garage, shop, chicken house, three V-notched log tobacco barns, and a former store.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.


NNG (company)

NNG, formerly known as Nav N Go () is a company which provides navigation software for the automotive, enterprise, wireless and personal navigation industries. In 2016, NNG had nearly 1000 employees, 12 offices and 4 auxiliary offices on 6 continents. NNG's products are based on the iGO Navigation Engine, which consists of the navigation software, user interfaces, and related content and services, which it sells to device manufacturers, auto makers, network operators, and transport specialist companies.
History.
NNG was established in Budapest, Hungary in 2004. It was founded by GPS&More Ltd., Navi-Gate Kft, Pdamill Kft. and Attila Kátai. Its first product, "iGO My way" was introduced at the CeBIT trade fair in Hanover, Germany in 2006. It fit on a 1GB SD-card. At CeBIT 2008, "iGO 8", with 3D visualization software (iGO 8), was introduced. Also in 2008, Naviextras.com, NNG’s map and content update portal was launched.
"iGO amigo" was introduced at CeBIT 2009 for first-time navigation users. Later in 2009 "iGO My way for Mobile" was launched, running on various mobile platforms including iPhone.
At CeBIT 2010 the company's new navigation product "iGO primo" was introduced.
In December 2010 the company was renamed from Nav N Go to NNG. At CeBIT Hannover, in 2011, NNG introduced its upgraded software for iPhone, the iGO primo app, which has continued to be the company's main iGO Navigation product.
At about that time, the 2012 version of Ford’s Territory automobile went into production with NNG’s navigation on board.
In December 2011 NNG opened its new office in China. In July, 2012 NNG and Vodafone signed a global agreement allowing NNG to deliver connectivity products to its OEM partners with Vodafone’s machine to machine (M2M) SIM card along with its software licenses. Also NNG introduced version 2.0 of iGO primo.
IN 2012 NNG released version six of its iGO software. By 2012 NNG had sold about 20 million licenses to line-fit OEM partners, and in NNG reached employed about 400 people.
At Telematics Detroit 2013 NNG introduced NavFusion, a product which integrated smartphone technology to cars. The company provided navigation equipment for automobile manufacturers, dealers and aftermarket retailers, for traditional, hybrid and electric vehicles.
In 2014, the majority of NNG’s business came from the automotive industry, mainly for infotainment systems and navigation components as Software Development Kits (SDK) to its customers.
Currently NNG works together with numerous hardware Tier1s and automotive OEMs to improve the core driving experience and in-car connectivity. Their focus is to maximizing the potential of the car-phone-human ecosystem. According to their website, their solutions are currently used in more than 30 car brands, and we have partnerships with 7 out of the top 10 car manufacturers around the world.
NNG has co-operations with 26 automotive brands. in 46 languages and for over 130 countries. The company provides navigation solutions for PNDs and for mobile handsets, and also develops and sells location-aware services for developers of Fleet Management and Mobile Resource Management Systems – integrating applications with iGO Navigation and communication features. Another product, Naviextras.com, provides map updates and extra features for devices running on iGO 8, iGO amigo and iGO primo.


EM Microelectronic

EM Microelectronic, based in Marin, La Tène near Neuchâtel in Switzerland, is a developer and semiconductor manufacturer specialized in the design and production of ultra low power, low voltage integrated circuits for battery-operated and field-powered applications in consumer, automotive and industrial areas. EM Microelectronic SA is a subsidiary of The Swatch Group.
Subsidiaries.
EM Microelectronic has a design center at its headquarters in Marin, in the French speaking part of Switzerland near the city
of Neuchâtel.
Company he
EM has subsidiaries and additional design centers:
Technology.
EM Microelectronic specialises in the design and production of ultra low power, low voltage integrated circuits for battery-operated and field-powered applications in consumer, automotive and industrial products. It has in-house semiconductor fabrication facilities and also uses external foundries.
Products.
EM Microelectronic's products include RFID circuits, smart cards ICs, ultra-low power microcontrollers, energy harvesting, power management, LCD drivers and displays, optical sensors and sensor interface ICs.
EM manufactures not only standard circuits and ASICs, but also systems and modules for applications such as access control, radio frequency identification, mobile phones, mass-market consumer appliances, alarm and security systems, utility and heating meters, sensor signal processing, controlling, car immobilization, electronic automotive subsystems and many more.
BLE and 2.4 GHz wireless.
EM Microelectronic designs and develops Bluetooth Low Energy products such as the EM9304, aimed at smallest footprint and lowest power consumption applications.
EM is an associate member of the Bluetooth SIG and is contributing through several working group to improve global specification and expertise in ultra-low power design for Bluetooth low energy wireless technology.
EM Micro has also a proprietary link family of products with 1Mbits, 2Mbit/s and Long range solutions.
RFID.
EM started its RFID activity in the 1980s, and its portfolio includes passive, semi-active and active RFID products, in frequency ranges including LF, HF and UHF.
The popularity of EM Microelectronic's range of ~125 kHz RFID devices has led to product from other manufacturers being advertised as "EM4100 compatible" although this may simply mean that the active device embedded in the RFID tag/card is an EM Microelectronic product.
EM Microelectronic developed UHF RFID ICs in the early 1990s and launched the first mass retail deployment in 2003, with Marks & Spencer.
By 2008, EM had shipped 250 million UHF ICs to into the Marks & Spencer project.
In 2015, EM Microelectronic released em|echo, a range of chips combining UHF and HF RFID communication, or RAIN RFID and NFC, a combination it calls “RAINFC”.
This concept allows using the same RFID tag for the logistics and the consumer interaction with a product.
In 2020, EM launched the second generation of this family, em|echo-V, awarded “Best New Product” by RFID Journal


Rice Tobacco Factory

The Rice Tobacco Factory is a historic tobacco factory located at 112 N. Cherry St. in Greenville, Kentucky. The factory was built in 1922 by S.E. Rice, whose S.E. Rice Company was founded in 1904. Tobacco had been Muhlenberg County's largest cash crop throughout the 19th century, and the region became known for its variety, called "Greenville Tobacco". The Rice factory, however, was the last building built in Greenville for tobacco production. It is now the only surviving commercial building connected to the city's tobacco industry. The property was acquired in March, 2018, and the new owner is in the process of a historic rehabilitation of the building.
The factory was added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 15, 1985.


Wilkes Power Plant

Frank M. Wilkes Power Plant is an 879 megawatt (MW), natural gas power plant located northwest of Jefferson, Texas in Marion County, Texas. The plant began operations in 1964.
All three units use natural gas shipped via pipeline. The power plant is named after former Southwestern Electric Power Company (SWEPCO) president Frank M. Wilkes.


Shadiwal Hydropower Plant

Shadiwal Hydropower Plant (SHPP) is a small, low-head hydroelectric generation station of 13.5 megawatt generation capacity (two units of 6.75 MW each), located near Gujrat city at Shadiwal 100 kilometer North-West of Lahore, Punjab province of Pakistan, on the flows of Upper Jhelum Canal. It is a small hydropower generating plant constructed and put in commercial operation on June 1961 with the Average Annual generating capacity of 42.67 million units of least expensive electricity.


European Automobile Manufacturers Association

The European Automobile Manufacturers Association (; abbreviated ACEA) is the main lobbying and standards group of the automobile industry in the European Union. As of February 1991 it is the successor of the CCMC manufacturers committee () which was founded in October 1972.
Its members include: BMW, DAF, Daimler AG, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Ford Europe, Ferrari, Honda, Hyundai Europe, Iveco, Jaguar Land Rover, Opel Group, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Renault, Toyota Europe, Volkswagen Group, Volvo Cars and Volvo Group.
One major area of ACEA work including its predecessor associations has been in performance quality classifications for 4-stroke engine oils. That history goes back to 1919 (Bureau Permanent International des Constructeurs d'Automobile - BPICA) that was renamed in 1985 (Organisation Internationale des Constructeurs d'Automobiles - OICA). The ACEA has its predessor in the CCMC (Comité des Constructeurs du Marché Commun) founded in October 1972 by French (Citroën, Peugeot, Renault), German (Mercedes, Volkswagen), Italian (Fiat) and British (BLMC) manufacturers.
The ACEA is studying electric vehicle charging stations and expects that Type 2 Mode 3 connectors also to be used for home charging in the second phase after 2017 while still allowing Mode 2 charging with established plug types that are already available in home environments
European automakers to raise awareness of safety tech to further reduce road deaths
Presidents.
The presidency had been rotated among French, Italian and German automobile manufacturers.


Vortex Bladeless

Vortex Bladeless Ltd. is a Spanish technology startup company that is developing a type of wind power generator which extracts energy from wind with no rotation, blades, shafts, gears, or lubricants, unlike wind turbines. It is based on the phenomena of aeroelasticity and resonance, termed "aeroelastic resonance", harnessing energy from the wind on the emission of Theodore von Kármán's vortexes. This process is called "vortex shedding" or "Kármán vortex street", and is a common problem for aeronautics and some architecture. This phenomenon allows the Vortex generator to oscillate with small movements.
This technology has some traits which are more similar to solar power than to wind turbines, such as being better suited to autonomous operation and distributed generation of energy off the grid, for and on low-power systems.
Technology.
Vortex Bladeless is a vortex-induced vibration resonant wind generator, in contrast to horizontal-axis wind turbines (HAWT) and vertical axis wind turbines (VAWT) that work by rotation. Vortex's innovation comes from its unusual shape and way of harnessing energy by oscillation, where a fiberglass and carbon fiber reinforced polymer mast oscillates in the wind taking advantage of the emission of Von Karman's vortexes when a fluid passes over a slender structure. At the bottom of the mast, a carbon fiber rod moves an alternator that generates electricity with no moving parts in contact. Vortex devices don't rotate. Thus, they cannot be technically termed "turbines".
The Vortex technology seeks to overcome issues related to rotary wind turbines such as maintenance, amortization, noise, birds and environmental impact, logistics, and visual aspects. According to the firm, Vortex generators have a small carbon footprint and use a low amount of raw materials compared to rotary wind turbines of the same height. It is expected to have a low centre of gravity that allows for small foundation dimensions and a very low "wake turbulence", so several Vortex generators can fit in the same area as one rotary turbine, possibly improving on the lower energy density per hectare that wind turbines usually achieve. However, the goal of the firm is not to compete with the wind turbine industry but to offer a small wind turbine alternative for the end-consumer market and for low-power systems, markets served poorly or not at all by larger scale wind power.
Vortex is a vertical, slender, cylinder-shaped device. It is composed of two main parts: a fixed "base" where the device is attached to an anchoring, and a flexible "mast" which, acting as a cantilever, interacts more freely with the fluid in an oscillating movement. It has no gears or moving parts in contact, so it needs no oils or lubricants as do rotary machines. The device's operation barely requires maintenance and operating costs. All these features make them closer to solar power's features and make them more useful for distributed energy. A linear alternator transforms mechanical energy into electricity. It counts with neodymium magnets and its stator is located inside of the moving part of the device.
While converting mechanical energy into electricity, the alternator cushions the induced oscillation movement and simultaneously can modify the natural oscillation frequency of the moving structure. Thus, the "lock-in range" is increased while maintaining the resonance frequency in higher wind speeds. The firm patented a mechanism called "tuning system" for this task, based in magnetic repulsion. Unlike rotary wind turbines, this phenomenon is able to modify the apparent elasticity constant of the structure which depends on the oscillation amplitude, allowing it to grow as long as the wind speed grows. Despite its simplicity, 6 families of registered patents protect the design and technology worldwide.
Bladeless wind devices.
Vortex Bladeless is currently working in two future products that are expected to be commercially available in 2021. The specified goals for each model are:
On Vortex technology, the amount of energy harnessed grows exponentially squared by height and cubed by wind speed. Thus, bigger Vortex devices are desirable since production costs grow more slowly than power generation with height, giving as a result more profitable and efficient devices able to work with higher winds. , because of their small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) status, the firm is only working on these small wind turbine alternative devices.
Story and biography.
"Vortex Bladeless Ltd." is a wind energy Spanish startup company that was formalised in 2012 by David Yáñez, David Suriol, and Raúl Martín. In 2014, they officially founded the firm and could be exclusively dedicated to the development of Vortex. The original idea emerged in 2002 when David Yáñez, the inventor, saw a video of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (1940) disaster and led him to the idea that there is a lot of energy contained on the physical principle that collapsed the bridge, and it could be harnessed as a new way to generate energy from wind. His idea was kept in a drawer for years until 2012, when they began to look for investors and funding to start the project.
In early 2014, Vortex obtained public funding from the Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI) and began to collaborate with Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) and their huge computing resources for the simulations on vortex-induced vibrations (VIV), magnetic field interactions, and finite element method magnetics (FEMM) researches needed for their development. The proof of concept was validated and the story of Vortex began winning the South Summit Award 2014 in the category of Energy and Industry.
In 2015, the firm began collaborating with representatives from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University. In the United States, the project reached the company Altair Engineering who offered their advanced simulation software to Vortex for their investigation on their fluid dynamics concept. Also, NGOs and other environmental entities like BirdLife International have shown interest in this system and offered to collaborate, since Vortex may have a lower impact on nature and birds, especially as bigger wind power devices are built in the future. Thanks to the support from these public administration and research centers, in 2015, Vortex launched in June a successful crowdfunding campaign to fund the first supply agreements, and hire engineers needed to advance the project.
In late 2016, and after validating the technology on computer simulations and technology demonstrators, the company reached the prototype stage with a geometry that can harness a useful amount of energy from the wind with this principle. At this stage, Vortex was able to apply for funding from the Horizon 2020 for research and innovation programme of the European Commission. Being the most funding that the company had, Vortex built a big wind tunnel, the tallest in Spain, for testing their systems, and began the development of their patented concept of an oscillating alternator with tuning system. On this phase, the company won the "Seal of Excellence" of the H2020 programme.
During 2017, the firm kept developing their alternator and tuning system. Since this technology is considered as new in many aspects intervening (geometry, movement, energy conversion system), it has been a harder development than the firm expected. The collaboration on this stage of the Microgravity Institute of the Technical University of Madrid and the European University of Madrid, alongside CDTI, Altair, Birdlife and Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) were the key to obtain a feasible technology that can harness energy from the wind on this particular way. In this year the company obtained the "Innovation SME" seal of the Spanish government.
In 2018, the firm began to plan to industrialize their aerogenerators. At this point, the firm faced many problems due to the lack of feasible industrial production processes to mass-produce some of the pieces that use Vortex technology. The geometry and the materials were almost finalized at this stage, so the firm began a certification process for their current prototypes and obtained the ISO 9001. This certification is a regular process for every wind turbine in the European and American market. The standard is written for bladed and rotary turbines, and may need to be rewritten to certify Vortex devices as wind generators.
The goals of the firm for the future are to obtain the certification needed to start selling, and to set up a feasible method of production and logistics of shipping so they can start commercializing the first Vortex turbines for 2020.
Awards, strategic partners.
Most relevant strategic partners for Vortex Bladeless are the Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (EASME), the Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI), Altair Engineering, and the Council of Castile and León in Spain. The awards won by the company or their team are all related to energy, innovation, and entrepreneurship, listed by date:


Northwood Halt railway station

Northwood Halt is an unstaffed request stop on the Severn Valley Railway in Worcestershire, situated a little to the north of Bewdley on the outskirts of the Wyre Forest at the north end of North Wood. There is an ungated level crossing just to the south of the single platform. It is the only surviving original halt on the line.
History.
The halt first opened in June 1935 and was in use until the end of British Railways passenger services north of Bewdley in 1963. Although thought by some people to have been closed as part of the Beeching axe in 1963 its planned closure pre-dated his report. It was well used by fishermen, ramblers and tourists, and was reopened immediately after the SVR's southerly extension of services in 1974. Northwood Halt is not included in the public timetable.
The level crossing is now protected by light signals and an audible warning; this system replaced hand-operated gates, the scene of two serious accidents in 1947 and 1964.
Upon reopening the only shelter for passengers awaiting trains was a wooden shed. This was subsequently replaced with a GWR style pagoda that was constructed by volunteers at Kidderminster.


Solar River Project

Solar River Project is a proposed photovoltaic power station planned to be built near Robertstown in South Australia. It received development approval from the government of South Australia in June 2018 and was expected to start construction early in 2019. The company developing it is based at the University of Adelaide's venture incubator, ThincLab. The project has the support of the Ngadjuri people and the Regional Council of Goyder.
Stage 1 is proposed to include 200 MW of solar photovoltaic electricity generation and a 120 MW·h lithium ion battery system and was proposed to start construction early in 2019, generating its first generation before the end of the same year. Stage 2 is proposed to provide another 200 MW of generation and a 150 MW·h battery. Stage 1 will consist of one hundred single-axis tracker arrays each generating 2 MW and approximately for a total area of . The land is north of Goyder's Line and north of the Goyder Highway on crown land unsuitable for cropping due to the low rainfall.
Downer Group was engaged in January 2019 for early contractor involvement, with construction expected to commence in July 2019 and stage 1 to take two years to build. The project had provision for three more stages, depending on market and network conditions. In July, the project's website said that construction would start in Q4 2019. By November 2019, this had slipped to Q1 2020.
Alinta Energy has committed to buy 75% of the solar farm's output for 15 years.
The grid-connected battery will be supplied by GE Renewable Energy. It is expected to be 100MW/300MWh, larger than any grid-connected batteries in the world at the time of its announcement in 2019.


Vensys Energy

Vensys Energy AG (stylized as VENSYS) is a German gearless wind turbine manufacturer which is majority-owned by Chinese turbine manufacturer Goldwind.
Vensys licenses its products to several non-European manufacturers of wind turbines. In addition, Vensys itself manufactures plants on a small scale at its headquarters in Neunkirchen, Saarland.
The Vensys group includes Vensys Elektrotechnik GmbH in Diepholz , which manufactures the electrical components, and NEVEN Windenergie GmbH in Trier, which is involved in project development.
The Goldwind Wind Energy GmbH based in Hamburg has been the company's largest single shareholder since 2008 with a 70% stake.


Repowering

Repowering is the process of replacing older power stations with newer ones that either have a greater nameplate capacity or more efficiency which results in a net increase of power generated. Repowering can happen in several different ways. It can be as small as switching out and replacing a boiler, to as large as replacing the entire system to create a more powerful system entirely. There are many upsides to repowering.
The simple act of refurbishing the old with the new is in itself beneficial alongside the cost reduction for keeping the plant running. With less costs and a higher energy output, the process is excessively beneficial.
Examples.
Wind power.
Repowering a wind farm means replacing older, generally smaller, wind turbines with newer, generally larger, and more efficient designs. New innovations in wind power technology have dramatically increased the power output of new turbines compared with older designs. By repowering old wind turbines with new upgrades, the increased size and efficiency of the new turbines will increase the amount of energy that can be generated from a given wind farm. In the United States in 2017, 2131 MW of wind plant repowering was completed.
According to a study in California the potential benefits of repowering wind plants by replacing old turbines are:
Countries like Germany and Denmark that have a large number of wind turbines installed relative to their total land size have resorted to repowering older turbines in order to increase wind power capacity and generation. The power as well as use of wind farms has grown since the 1990s.
California has many aging wind turbines that would be effective to repower, but there seems to be a lack of economic incentive to repower many sites. Many smaller turbines in California were built in the 1980s with a nameplate capacity of 50-100 kW, which is 10-40x smaller than the nameplate capacity of an average modern wind turbine. Although many barriers continue to hinder rapid wind‐project repowering, a primary barrier is simply that many existing, aging wind facilities are more profitable, in the near term, in continued operations than they might be if they pursue repowering with new wind turbines.
By 2007, California had repowered 365 MW of wind plants, which is only 20% of the potential 1,640 MW wind capacity that could be upgraded.
Coal-fired Power Plant to Gas.
With new environmental regulation in the United States, coal-fired power plants are becoming obsolete. As many as three-fourths of coal-fired power plants are being shut down. Short-term options include retiring the plant or quick conversion to direct firing of the boiler with natural gas. Repowering these old coal burning power plants into gas burning boilers. It's estimated that as much as 30 gigawatts (GW) of existing U.S. power generation capacity could be lost through plant closings due to new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations. There could be a saving of 20 percent of the capital cost instead of building brand new power plants founded by EPRI studied.
The configuration of these plants involves replacing the old coal boiler with gas-fired turbine (GT). The gas-fired outputs exhaust heat to a heat recovery steam generator (HRSG). From the output of the heat recovery steam generator it is run into a steam turbine which increases electricity production and the overall efficiency of the plant.
The gas-fired turbine (GT) and the heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) technology has been in utilize in many repowering projects over the past 20 years in the United States alone. With increasing environmental regulations of the United States Government and the lower fuel prices made the usage of GT/HRSG an option in utilizing to renew many old coal heating power plants. This modern gas turbines operate with higher efficiencies and adding a heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) raises overall plant efficiency to 40 percent to 50 percent (HHV) above the range of most coal-fired plants, reducing fuel consumption and lowering plant emissions.
Siemens Corporation are also using this technology by combining the gas turbine (GT) in conjunction with the heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) with the steam turbine (ST) and the combined cycle power plants to produce the most efficient power generation facilities. Existing direct-fired plants can utilize this advanced cycle concept by adding a GT and a HRSG. This so-called repowering scheme makes the existing power generation facility equally efficient as modern combined cycle power plant.
Siemens Corporation developed two ways in powering these old coal plants. The first one is called a Full Powering and the second is called Parallel Powering. Full Powering is only used with old plants because the boilers has reached the life of its usage. Full powering replaces the original boiler and gas-turbine (GT) and heat recovery steam generator are added (HRSG). While compared to the full repowering concept, this repowering scheme achieves slightly lower efficiency. Due to the two independent steam sources for the steam turbine, this concept provides a higher fuel flexibility and also greater flexibility in respect to load variations.
An example of a repowering project is of Fluor updating the Seward plant.The plant was a 521-MW coal-fired power plant. The plant burns waste coal. The project was to take three existing pulverized coal-fired boilers out and install two new Clean Coal Technology CFB boilers with major changes such as installing two Alstom CFB boilers along with an Alstom steam turbine generator. This plant is now the largest waste coal generator in the world with a capacity of 521-MW of capacity. It runs on 11,000 tons of waste coal per day.


Biojoule Thermal Power Station

Biojoule Thermal Power Station is a biogas-fired thermal power station in Kenya, the largest economy in East African Community.
Location.
The power station is located in Naivasha, Nakuru County, approximately , by road, northwest of Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, and the largest city in that country. The approximate coordinates of the power plant are:0°41'37.0"S, 36°25'55.0"E (Latitude:-0.693611; Longitude:36.431944).
Overview.
The power station, which is expected to come online in March 2015, has a generating capacity of 2.4 Megawatts. Construction was completed in January 2015. Biojoule Kenya Limited, the company that owns he power station, signed a 20-year power purchasing agreement with Kenya Power and Lighting Company, to supply 2MW to the national electricity grid. Once operational, the power station will be the first biogas-fired power plant to sell power to the national grid. Power is generated using plant waste generated on the "Gorge Farm", near Lake Naivasha, owned by "VP Group", an investor in the power project. The plant material is allowed to decompose anaerobically, generating gases, including methane. The gases are burnt, generating heat, which is used to heat water, generating steam. The steam is then used to run electricity generators. Some of the heat is used to warm greenhouses on the arm. The power generated will be evacuated via a substation within nearby Naivasha Town.
Developers and financing.
Biojoule Power Station was constructed at a cost of KSh591 million (US$6.5 million). The power station is 50% owned by the family that owns VP Group. The remaining 50% is owned by unnamed investors from the United Kingdom. CfC Stanbic Bank provided a loan of US$3.25 million, while the owners raised the remaining US$3.25. The power remaining over after sale to Kenya Power will be sold to the VP Group and some will be used internally by the power station.
Other considerations.
In addition to producing electricity and heat, the plant will produce an estimated 35,000 tonnes of fertilizer annually, from the remnants of anaerobic digestion. In addition to the plant material generated at "Gorge Farm Energy Park", more raw material will be sourced from the neighboring "Van den Berg Roses Farm".


Morden Hall Park

Morden Hall Park is a National Trust park on the banks of the Wandle in Morden, south London. Its several buildings and associated parking included, it is of predominantly parkland. Hinting at the former mill leats the river here splits into channels, generally, through it spanned by numerous footbridges. The estate contains Morden Hall itself, Morden Cottage, two well-preserved snuff watermills, a restored stableyard, a dog-friendly café, exhibition space and second-hand bookshop. A western part, separately accessed, hosts the National Trust's only Garden Centre.
History.
The estate land was originally owned by Westminster Abbey.
There is evidence of an earlier manor-house originally built by the Garth family where Morden Lodge now stands. The Hall dates back to the 1770s and contains a variety of natural landscapes, including the parkland of the "Deer Park", meadow and wetland. A number of historic buildings are located in the park, including the Hall itself and preserved watermills where tobacco was once ground into snuff.
The land was occupied by the Garth family for generations before the estate was split in two and Morden Hall was built.
The Hall was occupied, as a school, for young gentlemen about 1840, until it was sold by Sir Richard Garth to a tobacco merchant Gilliat Hatfeild (1827–1906) in the 1870s.
The Hall was a military hospital during the First World War and later a Women and Children's hospital. Gilliat Edward Hatfeild lived at the nearby Morden Cottage.
Gilliat Hatfeild's son, Gilliat Edward Hatfeild (1864–9 February 1941), left the core of the estate (including the house) to the National Trust, when he died.
Several Sunday Pictorial garden parties were hosted on the land in this time in aid of the NSPCC with famous British actors such as Richard Attenborough, Alec Guinness and Patricia Roc in attendance.
Access.
The main entrance to the park is a short walk from Morden town centre, and car parking is available in the Garden Centre car park. The Snuff Mills and Pottingshed Café are near to the main entrance.
The Tramlink light rail line from Wimbledon to Croydon, Elmers End and New Addington runs through the northern part of the park, and Phipps Bridge and Morden Road tram stops give access to the park. They are respectively and walk through the park to the Snuff Mill and Riverside Café. Morden tube station (Northern line) and Morden South railway station (Thameslink) are respectively and walk through the town centre from the main entrance.
The Livinggreen Project.
Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the EU's Interreg series of programmes, the Living Green Project was conceived as an exemplar to show how historic assets could be maintained to a highly sustainable standard. Architects Cowper Griffiths were appointed by The National Trust along with engineers Crofton Consulting in 2009 to undertake the design with construction work commencing in 2010. Receiving a BREEAM Excellent rating the project won the RICS award for Design and Innovation in 2012 and features as a case study in the BREEAM briefing paper Sustainable Refurbishment of Heritage Buildings - How BREEAM helps to deliver.


Archibald Ross

Sir Archibald Ross KBE (1867 - 19 March 1931) was a pioneering marine engineer.
He was 18 years of age when he became a pupil of Messrs. R & W Hawthorn at their St.Peters Works, Newcastle upon Tyne in England and all his working life was spent with this well-known engineering and shipbuilding company. During Sir Archibald's regime turbines and boilers for some of the heaviest units in the Royal Navy were built. He attended the National Labor Conference at Washington, USA in 1910 as an employers' representative. His work on the Merchant Shipbuilding Advisory Committee and on the Admiralty Shipbuilding Council was recognized officially in June 1921, when he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, this following the CBE that he had been awarded three years previously.
He served two terms as President of the North-East Coast Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders, and was a director of Messrs. Ruston-Bucyrus Ltd, specialists in excavating machinery which incorporated the old established firms of Ruston and Hornsby Ltd. of Lincoln and the Bucyrus-Erie Co. of South Milwaukee USA.
He was also a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, on the Council of the Institution of Naval Architects, and a member of the Institute of Metals.
He was a great lover of music and president of the North of England Musical Tournament.
He married in 1896 and had four sons, three of whom served in the War, in the Royal Navy.
One son, George Campbell Ross, Lieutenant Commander was Chief Engineering Officer of the battleship HMS "Rodney" and later Admiral of the Royal Navy. On 16 September 1929 he married Alice Behrens, daughter of the banker Paul Behrens (of Bank Salomon & Oppenheim) in Berlin, the first German women to marry an Englishman after World War I.


China Electronics Corporation

China Electronics Corporation (CEC) is a People's Republic of China's state-owned company and one of the largest producers of telecom equipment in China for both civilian and military purposes. CEC has four main semiconductor divisions: computer software/hardware & system integration, telecommunication network & terminals and digital home appliances.
History.
CEC acquired the mobile phone division of Philips in 2007. At the time, the Philips division had an annual revenue of 400 million euros and 240 employees. CEC received the right to sell mobile phones under Philips license.
Philips already moved its mobile phones production in China in 2001, when the production, research and development of mobile phones was taken by a joint-venture of Philips and China Electronics Corporation.
U.S. investment prohibition.
In August, 2020, the United States Department of Defense published the names of companies with links to the People's Liberation Army operating directly or indirectly in the United States. CEC was included on the list. In November 2020, Donald Trump issued an executive order prohibiting any American company or individual from owning shares in companies that the U.S. Department of Defense has listed as having links to the People's Liberation Army, which included CEC.
CEC in Romania.
Romania is the first country in the European Union where Philips mobile phones were sold since 2013, until then the phones were available only in the BRIC states (Brazil, Russia, India and China).


Sukleji Dam

Sukleji Dam is a proposed dam, to be located across Sukleji River in Kachhi District of Balochistan Province, in southwestern Pakistan.
Specifications.
The zoned earth-filled dam will be used for irrigation and hydro power generation and will have an installed capacity of 0.16 MW. The dam will have gross storage of and a command area of .
See also.
List of dams and reservoirs in Pakistan


List of traction engine manufacturers

This is a list of the more notable companies that manufactured traction engines of any kind, including steam tractors, portable engines, and steam rollers.
Great Britain.
There were a large number of manufacturers in Great Britain. Most started life as agricultural engineers, and many exported engines all over the world. Some of the manufacturers are listed below:
North America.
Key: '~' indicates a manufacturer for whom no known products survive.


Bungala Solar Power Project

The Bungala Solar Power Project is a solar power farm in Emeroo and Wami Kata near Port Augusta in South Australia. Stage One was connected to the grid in May 2018. The second and final stage was connected to the grid in early November 2018. The project gradually reached full power in 2020.
History.
It was expected to be completed and the two stages together able to deliver 220MW of electric power to the national grid from November 2018. It is being developed on of land which was previously used as an ostrich farm, sheep and cattle station and is owned by the Bungala Aboriginal Corporation, a community employment and social services organisation. The completed project could contribute 220MW to the electricity grid from 275MWdc generation and expects to produce 570 GWh per year.
A professional training project is being set up to provide new skills and experience to 70 Aboriginal job seekers as part of the project. It will train them in operations and maintenance for stage 1 and construction of phase 2 of the project.
Construction.
The project is being built in stages. Stages 1 and 2 will produce a combined 220MW of electricity. They were developed by Reach Energy and sold to a joint venture of Enel Green Power and Dutch Infrastructure Fund. The builder was Elecnor. Stage 3 is not scheduled to be built at this stage, but would include another 80MW of generation, and battery storage. Stage 3 was to be built if the company won a contract to supply electricity to the state government, however this contract was won by Aurora Solar Thermal Power Project. The entire output of stages 1 and 2 will be bought by Origin Energy.
Reach Energy was advised by PwC throughout the development of the project. PwC claims to have operated as a partner, taking on a share of the financial risk, rather than being paid fees for services provided. The development is on a 19th-century ostrich farm, later used for grazing sheep and cattle, and spans the boundary between the localities of Emeroo and Wami Kata. Civil engineering and construction on site was managed by Catcon. The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union accused the construction company of unsafe work practices when a construction worker was crushed by equipment on site in February 2018.
Solar panels and some of the construction materials were delivered to the site by Bowmans Rail who established a new intermodal rail terminal adjacent to the construction site on the former Leigh Creek railway line.
As the site is from the state capital of Adelaide where planning approval is granted, there had been some local issues that were not well understood in Adelaide. These related to dust during construction and ongoing contributions into the local economy once construction is complete. The state Planning Commission visited the site in July 2018.
The first supply of electricity from one section of 45MW was connected to the National Electricity Market in late May 2018. The entire first phase of the project was commissioned in September and the second phase of the Bungala Solar Project started feeding electricity into the grid at the end of October 2018. Technical issues delayed the project finish until 2020.


Centurion Reactor

The term "Centurion Reactor" refers to a future class of commercial nuclear power reactors designed for, and licensed to operate for periods of time of one hundred years or longer - thus the term "centurion". There currently are no Centurion Reactors operating in the world. This article provides a brief overview of the Centurion Reactor concept, the technical challenges associated with achieving such longevity, and some of the business and societal issues surrounding deployment of Centurion Reactors.
Existing licenses.
Commercial nuclear power plants in the United States are currently licensed, as stipulated by the Atomic Energy Act, for operating lifetimes of no more forty years. In October, 2009, ninety-three of the 104 operating nuclear power plants in the U.S. had either been issued, had applied for, or had indicated they would apply for operating license extensions of twenty years. Thus the majority of the U.S. commercial nuclear power fleet will operate for sixty years or possibly longer.
Demand for longevity.
Weinberg noted the "trend toward nuclear reactor immortality", and advocated that "longevity" be a critical design criterion in future nuclear power plants. More recently, Greene has elaborated on the challenges of simply extending plant lifetimes to 100 years. The limits to nuclear power plant lifetime will be determined by both technical and economic considerations, and achieving such extended lifetimes will require innovative business and financial arrangement.
Advantages of longevity.
Current-generation commercial nuclear power plants (so-called "Gen III" plants) typically produce electricity at a busbar cost of 2-3 cents per kilowatt-hr after the initial capital cost of the plant is amortized. The typical amortization period for a commercial nuclear power plant is twenty years. Thus a Centurion Reactor could theoretically produce electricity at a cost of a few cents per kilowatt-hr for eighty years or longer after the initial plant investment is recovered. The press to extend the operating lifetime of commercial power plants is driven by fundamental investment economics, land use considerations, and social justice considerations.
Investment economics.
From the investment economics perspective, the allure of an 80-year profit stream to the plant owner/operator is a great attraction. Land-use considerations are also a motivating factor.
Land use.
A qualified and licensed nuclear power plant site is an extremely valuable asset due to the limited number of such sites available to energy produces. The value of a site is directly related to the amount of energy that can be produced on that site. Other considerations aside, the value of a specific site is directly related to the operating lifetime of the power plants on that site.
Social justice.
Finally, inter-generational justice considerations motivate for maximizing the value "bequeathed" to following generations in exchange for the responsibilities associated with long-term protection and management of legacy nuclear wastes and spent nuclear fuel.
Technical challenges.
The technical challenges associated with achieving Centurion Reactors lie principally in the realm of materials science. Current Gen-III nuclear plant operating lifetimes appear to be limited primarily by long-term radiation-induced ageing phenomena in the reactor pressure vessel, primary coolant system piping, concrete containment structures, and cabling (particularly medium-voltage power cables). In-situ replacement of all of these components and structures is problematic - the reactor pressure vessel being of particular significance in this regard. Thus it is anticipated that substantial materials research and development will be required to open the door to this new class of nuclear power reactors.
In 2018, Rosatom began field testing a pressure vessel annealing process in the hopes of extending the longevity of this neutron embrittled and frequently fatigued part, suggesting that it could potentially extend the lifetime of a reactor 30 years.