David Greenfield, Editorial Director
Articles
Engineering employment outlook
The longstanding lament among engineers for many years, especially in the U.S., has been that jobs for engineers are disappearing at an alarming rate. I have personally heard many engineers say that they would do whatever they could to discourage their children from following in their engineering footsteps.
From the core to the cutting edge
2009年是全球经济一样困难basis, it’s been fascinating to watch how businesses and professionals are adapting to the structural changes that are reshaping the economic world in which we all live. Nowhere has this been more evolutionary than in engineering. I prefer the term “evolutionary” over “revolutionary” because the changes that have oc...
What 2009 can tell us about 2010
Looking back at the top 20 articles accessed at www.globalelove.com during 2009 illuminated some clear areas of interest among our engineering audience. (See the full rundown of top 20 articles at http://tinyurl.com/ylbx9zu.) Four clear categories of article types can be seen across the top 20 articles: Educational/tutorial, cutting edge applications, green/sustainable engineering, and contests/...
Researching for insight
A few months ago, Control Engineering was contacted by Morgan Stanley about partnering on an automation industry research project. Morgan Stanley was in the process of determining whether or not to revive its investment advisory service on this sector and needed data to help determine the current and future viability of automation industry investment.
User-generated content
Much has been made over the past few years about the value of and potential for user-generated content—content created by visitors to a Web site. Much of the benefit derived so far from this type of content has been in user reviews. Numerous research projects have shown that Internet users place more credence in user reviews than in those from other so...
What kind of engineer uses Facebook?
Demographic data shows engineers using social media to be highly experienced decision makers working across a variety of industries.
Social experiment update
Last February I announced in this column the launch of Control Engineering’s first social media foray—the “Automation & Control” group on Facebook (http://budurl.com/2nfe). As we began this experiment, there were already several other such automation-related groups on Facebook hosting anywhere from several dozen to a few hundred members.
What good are economists anyway?
Yes, I borrowed that headline from BusinessWeek. But I did so with a reason. The BusinessWeek article I’m referring to focused on how wrong so many economists were recently by saying either a recession wouldn’t happen or, if it did, it would be short and mild. With that in mind, I thought I would point out one economist who called it right—Alan Beaulieu of the Institute for Tr...
Energy efficiency ready for the dustbin?
Have the industry efforts so recently begun toward achieving greater energy efficiencies already become passé? Is it already oh-so-five-minutes-ago? Listening to one industry analyst group in particular, one might think that to be the case. According to Frost & Sullivan, “Energy Efficiency was the buzzword of 2008.
在产品创新可持续性明显
Innovation is often more about developing a new use for an existing technology than it is about creating a new technology or product from scratch. Recently, I've come across two new innovations—both of which grew out of initiatives to help companies save energy and money—that really grabbed my interest.