vendredi 1 octobre 2010
lundi 26 juillet 2010
Reaching 720 poor children: The 180 experiment
mardi 20 juillet 2010
3 new reasons why we should switch to electric cars
Disclaimer: As I just discovered today that almost half of the readers here are engineering people, I hereby adapted my writing for both kind of people. When you see [Eng], is it only for engineering people and when you see [Normal], it is for the others.
While searching the internet for energy innovations ([Eng] just for fun; [Normal] for a school homework), I fell upon a car making company in China which was way more advanced than expected. Here is interesting facts...
In fact, there are fully electric cars available in China right now, they are ([Eng] fast; [Normal] affordable) and they are ([Eng] durable; [Normal] ecological).
First of all, BYD, a renowned brand worldwide, has a model, the “e6”, which is pretty complete. See picture here. In fact, BYD produces the most sold electric car by far in China since January this year. Way over the new Elentra. Boom, Hyundai!
Additionally, the acceleration and top speed are quite surprising: 0 to 100 km/h in 9 seconds (I don't even want to compare to Hyundai, do it yourself.) And a top speed close to 160 km/h ([Eng] 44.444444 m/s).
Finally, it lasts surprisingly very long: 300 km before having to charge. ([Eng] skip next sentence until dollar sign) Despite the fact that batteries loses its capacity over time, "$" after 2000 cycle, it only loses 80% of initial maximum charge. If you do the math ([Eng] as you calculated already), that is a lifespan over 400,000 km; way over the rest of the car parts. A frequent important question that people will ask: What about the wastes from batteries? Well according to BYD there's none! According to their theory, it is all recycle-proof. Let's see!
To conclude, in my humble opinion, I think it is time to see on our market some really interesting electric car deals.
Sent from my Blackberry, between gym reps.
Sources:
http://www.byd.com/ & http://www.byd.com/downloads/broucher/1.pdf
While searching the internet for energy innovations ([Eng] just for fun; [Normal] for a school homework), I fell upon a car making company in China which was way more advanced than expected. Here is interesting facts...
In fact, there are fully electric cars available in China right now, they are ([Eng] fast; [Normal] affordable) and they are ([Eng] durable; [Normal] ecological).
First of all, BYD, a renowned brand worldwide, has a model, the “e6”, which is pretty complete. See picture here. In fact, BYD produces the most sold electric car by far in China since January this year. Way over the new Elentra. Boom, Hyundai!
Additionally, the acceleration and top speed are quite surprising: 0 to 100 km/h in 9 seconds (I don't even want to compare to Hyundai, do it yourself.) And a top speed close to 160 km/h ([Eng] 44.444444 m/s).
Finally, it lasts surprisingly very long: 300 km before having to charge. ([Eng] skip next sentence until dollar sign) Despite the fact that batteries loses its capacity over time, "$" after 2000 cycle, it only loses 80% of initial maximum charge. If you do the math ([Eng] as you calculated already), that is a lifespan over 400,000 km; way over the rest of the car parts. A frequent important question that people will ask: What about the wastes from batteries? Well according to BYD there's none! According to their theory, it is all recycle-proof. Let's see!
To conclude, in my humble opinion, I think it is time to see on our market some really interesting electric car deals.
Sent from my Blackberry, between gym reps.
Sources:
http://www.byd.com/ & http://www.byd.com/downloads/broucher/1.pdf
mercredi 7 juillet 2010
If you hire engineering students, this could save your company
For a couple of years, many engineering students are having internship work terms between their school semesters. These students do internships for many reasons: getting the overview of a real work environment, getting technical skills and knowledge, making good contacts and understanding the business. On their side, employers have good reason too to hire interns: finding potential candidates, getting a cheap and flexible workforce and obtaining a fresh point of view on various aspects of their environment.
Having been the president of my university chemical engineering student society for two years, I had the opportunity to monitor all the internships that my colleagues did. Meanwhile, they had recurring bad comments about the glitches of the hiring process, having been assigned non formative tasks and the difficulty to communicate with their supervisor before the term starts. Along with some collaborators (department, placement center) I tried to identify the root cause of these hassles. Without accusing any work structure to be the cause for these problems, I realized that the companies the students were having the difficulties were all sharing something in common: they had human resources doing the campus recruitment. Keeping that in mind, I suggested many company recruiters who were in their human resources department to send the engineers themselves but with few exceptions the verdict was the same. Most of the time, the reason is that the workplace is too far from the universities for the engineers to be able to come to recruit and to keep a decent schedule. In summary, they knew about the idea already but their engineer did not have the time available to do it.
Few companies really understood the importance of this and are actually sending the right people to recruit: the employees that has been there recently and who knows all the basics and what to look for. At the complete opposite, a lot of companies are sending young Human Resources employees that have a list of things to scope for. It really seems like even these lists have sometimes been neglected by the engineers, too busy trying to do the best in their daily jobs. This has huge impact on the recruiting.
When a human resource employee is looking for new personnel, especially in engineering, does he or she really knows what to look for? When I was in my first year of engineering, I would have believed so. Now things have drastically changed. For reasons like sticking to useless criteria, forgetting important aspect of the job, not knowing what the supervisor is exactly looking for. I am seeing only one out of ten HR people getting the right candidate for the right job. When it is the actual employee that has been there (studied engineering too and been solicited by employers), I never seen any mismatch. It does not mean that there is no exception but the difference is still huge. Consequently, in my humble opinion, engineers in their early years should be the one recruiting future engineers and they should be aware that some job that are open for a specific field of engineering (i.e. mechanical, chemical, indus
trial) could be easily accessible for candidates in other fields (i.e. mining, geological, physics, computer).
I am convinced that companies should invest what is needed and take this huge step of forcing the young engineers back to the universities to recruit the right person for the right job. They should think about the following possible action plans: They could send the engineers that have family and friends so they could combine some recruiting and some vacation time. They could have a human resource employee specializing for engineer recruitment by sending him along engineers at the beginning, letting him learn about the specific aspects of the task.
Anyhow, some companies have serious work to do on the matter to ensure the engineers sustainability among the company. Having happy employees is critical for the long-term motivation and dedication. The payback is huge.
Having been the president of my university chemical engineering student society for two years, I had the opportunity to monitor all the internships that my colleagues did. Meanwhile, they had recurring bad comments about the glitches of the hiring process, having been assigned non formative tasks and the difficulty to communicate with their supervisor before the term starts. Along with some collaborators (department, placement center) I tried to identify the root cause of these hassles. Without accusing any work structure to be the cause for these problems, I realized that the companies the students were having the difficulties were all sharing something in common: they had human resources doing the campus recruitment. Keeping that in mind, I suggested many company recruiters who were in their human resources department to send the engineers themselves but with few exceptions the verdict was the same. Most of the time, the reason is that the workplace is too far from the universities for the engineers to be able to come to recruit and to keep a decent schedule. In summary, they knew about the idea already but their engineer did not have the time available to do it.Few companies really understood the importance of this and are actually sending the right people to recruit: the employees that has been there recently and who knows all the basics and what to look for. At the complete opposite, a lot of companies are sending young Human Resources employees that have a list of things to scope for. It really seems like even these lists have sometimes been neglected by the engineers, too busy trying to do the best in their daily jobs. This has huge impact on the recruiting.
When a human resource employee is looking for new personnel, especially in engineering, does he or she really knows what to look for? When I was in my first year of engineering, I would have believed so. Now things have drastically changed. For reasons like sticking to useless criteria, forgetting important aspect of the job, not knowing what the supervisor is exactly looking for. I am seeing only one out of ten HR people getting the right candidate for the right job. When it is the actual employee that has been there (studied engineering too and been solicited by employers), I never seen any mismatch. It does not mean that there is no exception but the difference is still huge. Consequently, in my humble opinion, engineers in their early years should be the one recruiting future engineers and they should be aware that some job that are open for a specific field of engineering (i.e. mechanical, chemical, indus
trial) could be easily accessible for candidates in other fields (i.e. mining, geological, physics, computer).I am convinced that companies should invest what is needed and take this huge step of forcing the young engineers back to the universities to recruit the right person for the right job. They should think about the following possible action plans: They could send the engineers that have family and friends so they could combine some recruiting and some vacation time. They could have a human resource employee specializing for engineer recruitment by sending him along engineers at the beginning, letting him learn about the specific aspects of the task.
Anyhow, some companies have serious work to do on the matter to ensure the engineers sustainability among the company. Having happy employees is critical for the long-term motivation and dedication. The payback is huge.
samedi 3 juillet 2010
I wanted to beat my roommate with a glass bottle
Yesterday morning, at 7, I woke up to my ethanol-hungry roommate telling me he finished my bottle of wine that was in the fridge. What he didn’t knew was that it was delicious a French 30-40$ range bottle unavailable in Canada for import. I had it given by a friendly French wine maker at the “Tour des Vins de France 2010” last week. Instead of going out of my mind and doing what I had in mind at the moment (see title), I decided to summarize my newly discovered wine benefits because right now there are no popular detailed sources on the science behind this.
It has been proven for a while that Mediterranean diet was associated with lower number of cancer and heart diseases. At some point it became obvious that red wine was one of the cause of this since it contained many polyphenols (if asked in comments, I will explain further). A team of scientists from well renown universities found out that particular polyphenols were able to protect the heart and vessels. (from endothelin-1) [...]. They outlined that the best type of grape for this was “Cabernet Sauvignon”. Good to know for my French wine-maker friends!
Bottom line, I firmly believe that 1 glass of wine before bed can definitely provide health benefit and pleasure. I suggest everyone that likes it to get themselves a few bottles from the nearest wine store. Don’t forget to get Cabernet Sauvignon! In order to find yourself something that fits your taste as a good price, just check http://www.fidelesdebacchus.com/. It is a free easy access webpage where the writer tastes everything that is available in Montreal. More than 50,000 readers are already following this nice newsletter.
I wish everyone a good week-end! Keep your angst away by being productive like this. =)
Update: the bottle was #3 of the 1200 bottles of 2007 Cuvée les Antonins from Domaine de l'Obrieu located in Visan, France.
It has been proven for a while that Mediterranean diet was associated with lower number of cancer and heart diseases. At some point it became obvious that red wine was one of the cause of this since it contained many polyphenols (if asked in comments, I will explain further). A team of scientists from well renown universities found out that particular polyphenols were able to protect the heart and vessels. (from endothelin-1) [...]. They outlined that the best type of grape for this was “Cabernet Sauvignon”. Good to know for my French wine-maker friends!
Bottom line, I firmly believe that 1 glass of wine before bed can definitely provide health benefit and pleasure. I suggest everyone that likes it to get themselves a few bottles from the nearest wine store. Don’t forget to get Cabernet Sauvignon! In order to find yourself something that fits your taste as a good price, just check http://www.fidelesdebacchus.com/. It is a free easy access webpage where the writer tastes everything that is available in Montreal. More than 50,000 readers are already following this nice newsletter.
I wish everyone a good week-end! Keep your angst away by being productive like this. =)
Update: the bottle was #3 of the 1200 bottles of 2007 Cuvée les Antonins from Domaine de l'Obrieu located in Visan, France.
mardi 29 juin 2010
3 dairy products to get rid of your ugly belly
Eggs, cheese and yogurt. Shocking isn't it? Well it is a little more complicated than that.
In order to reduce fat percentage in your body you need to do 2 things: (1) you must exercise yourself on average at least 30 minutes per day, doing medium to intense physical activity (depending of your condition). (2) You must eat proper food. What Anthelme Brillat-Savarin said in 1862 is still true: "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are". Boom, that's it. Well, you might need some discipline too, as you are the one in charge. As the thousand year’s old Chinese proverb says: "your worst enemy is yourself". Pretty accurate still today. Back to our main topic: healthy food.
In quantity, you basically eat 3 things: Fat, carbohydrates and protein and the latest is the best for you. Consequently, at the grocery store, you should check on the labels and add foods that are well balanced to your diet so you won’t be starving for greasy chocolate cookie anymore. Considered yourself lucky enough as I did the research for you:
In order to reduce fat percentage in your body you need to do 2 things: (1) you must exercise yourself on average at least 30 minutes per day, doing medium to intense physical activity (depending of your condition). (2) You must eat proper food. What Anthelme Brillat-Savarin said in 1862 is still true: "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are". Boom, that's it. Well, you might need some discipline too, as you are the one in charge. As the thousand year’s old Chinese proverb says: "your worst enemy is yourself". Pretty accurate still today. Back to our main topic: healthy food.
In quantity, you basically eat 3 things: Fat, carbohydrates and protein and the latest is the best for you. Consequently, at the grocery store, you should check on the labels and add foods that are well balanced to your diet so you won’t be starving for greasy chocolate cookie anymore. Considered yourself lucky enough as I did the research for you:
- Egg white***
- 1% fat cottage cheese
- Yogurt
These might look/sound/fell not very appealing but they are very easy to turn into delicious snacks. You can add your egg white*** to your egg in the pan each morning or turn your chicken & noodle soup into a bodybuilder’s soup by adding it to the mix. For the cottage cheese, you can add fruits and the morning and a few Tabasco sauce drops for a late snack. During the evening, you can dip your chips in it the turn them healthier. Add a few fruits to your morning yogurt or simply have some between two meals.
*** Important note: the egg white contains an enzyme called “trypsin” that decreases protein digestion, which is destroyed by heat. In other words, always cook the whites.
UPDATE: For those who train at the gym, in case you do not have time to cook properly, be sure than you consume enough protein daily (around 0.8 gram of protein per pound of body mass daily. i.e.: If I weight 180 pounds, I should consume around 150g of protein per day).
I shopped a little bit and found those deals for you: Weekly Specials. These are the best prices I found on the web so far and they only have high quality protein.
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