World Futures Fall 2021

Treasury's just-released Climate Action Plan establishes five priority actions to strengthen and build upon Treasury's climate resilience and adaptive capabilities: (1) rebuilding programs and capabilities that may have atrophied or stagnated in recent years; (2) addressing climate change impacts and vulnerabilities across the range of Departmental operations, including administrative, manufacturing, and law enforcement activities; (3) ensuring a climate-focused approach to managing Treasury's real property portfolio footprint; (4) enabling procurement management to fully consider climate change realities; and (5) providing, measuring, and accounting for a financial investment approach appropriate to the Department's climate objectives.

The Corrosion Engineering Laboratory is a multiuser facility that serves NASA Centers, various DoD and Government Agencies, private companies, and educational institutions. The KSC Beachside Atmospheric Exposure Test Site is unique within the government, making it a valuable resource that is available to customers outside NASA. Kennedy Space Center's launch facilities are located within 1000 feet of the Atlantic Ocean. Salt from the ocean combined with the heavy lift launch vehicles' acidic rocket exhaust make corrosion protection a high priority. For these reasons, KSC maintains state-of-the-art corrosion protection capabilities. Our Atmospheric Corrosion Test Site has been documented as having higher atmospheric corrosion rates than other known test sites in the United States.

The natural marine environment at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) is one of the most corrosive in the continental United States. Corrosion control at KSC involves the flight hardware, ground support equipment, and facilities. A description is given of the space launch vehicles' environment and the process of materials selection for this environment. The corrosion control necessary for the Space Shuttle Orbiter and its ground support equipment is described. There is also a brief history of orbiter corrosion.

IoT uses electronic sensors connected directly to assets to gather and report critical information to remote locations. This permits continuous, real-time and accurate monitoring of pipelines, vessels and tank farms.

he global corrosion protection coatings market size is projected to grow from USD 6.9 billion in 2020 to USD 8.9 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 5.3%.The global corrosion protection coatings market is growing due to the end-use industries such as marine, oil & gas, petrochemical, infrastructure, power generation, and water treatment. Hence, the rapid growth of these industries is expected to contribute to the growth of the corrosion protection coatings market. However, the market is expected to decline in 2020 due to the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Indeed, the era of big data and data analytics has arrived and is already underway in many places (medicine, materials, and elsewhere).16-19 Schools of data science have emerged at many universities.20 Past knowledge and existing data allow us to use algorithms in order to attempt to recognize patterns identifying future corrosion performance. The hope is that these approaches are helpful for predicting not only corrosion performance but failures, too.4 Such approaches are logical as long as existing data cover a wide range of possibilities and there are no required extrapolations into sparsely populated data spaces.

usted iron pipes can react with residual disinfectants in drinking water distribution systems to produce carcinogenic hexavalent chromium in drinking water, reports a study by engineers at UC Riverside. Chromium is a metal that occurs naturally in the soil and groundwater.

"Work together to harmonize standards and practices around the world and to communicate and share corrosion mitigation technologies. Now is the time to make a major impact to protect the environment, preserve resources, and protect our fellow human beings."

Engineers Demographic changing:women and racial and ethnic minorities increasingly have been choosing a wider range of degrees and occupations.Political representation needed. The number of women in S&E occupations or with S&E degrees has doubled over the past two decade. In 2017, women constituted 29% of workers in S&E occupations-up from 23% in 1993-relative to over half (52%) of the college-educated workforce overall. Among S&E degree holders, women represented 40% of employed individuals-up from 34% in 1993-with a highest degree in S&E Women make up over 34% of all scientists (engineers excluded), although representation varies across the broad fields. Women account for approximately 48% and 59% of life scientists and social scientists, respectively, and nearly 30% of physical scientists and computer and mathematical scientists (Figure 3-19; Table S3-12). Notably, while 59% of social scientists are female, occupations within social sciences varied widely: women accounted for 21% of economists and 69% of psychologists. About 16% of engineers are women, ranging from about 7% of mechanical engineers to 25% of chemical engineers (Figure 3-19; Table S3-12).

Autonomous technology will not only transform how fleets operate, but it also will offer huge efficiency and productivity boosts for shippers as well.

"An interdisciplinary approach is needed to find new solutions to a problem that costs the US economy $276 billion per year. What's already happening in one industry could be the solution to another's problem. A great example of this is the use of NASA's analytical methods to examine bacteria in spacecraft in a breast cancer study looking at the links between the disease and bacteria."

An autonomous future doesn't necessarily mean a future without truck drivers

"Through the framework of Collaborative Innovation Groups (CIGs), the Ocean Power Innovation Network (OPIN) offers support to SMEs to collaborate with other organisations, to solve problems which are barriers to the deployment of ocean energy. CIGs focus on challenges which cannot or have not been solved by one SME alone. The OPIN Team have supported a Collaborative Innovation Group (CIG) focussing on creating awareness on the impact of corrosion on offshore renewable projects and how corrosion monitoring can improve corrosion management."

Fully autonomous cars, trucks, and buses, able to operate across wide geographical areas with no drivers necessary, would revolutionize ground transportation. The number of accidents and fatalities could drop significantly.

Kodiak's fourth-generation truck features a modular and discreet sensor suite in just three locations: a slim profile "center pod" on the front roofline of the truck, and pods integrated into both of the side mirrors. This well-integrated and low profile sensor placement vastly simplifies sensor installation and maintenance, and increases safety. The new generation of Kodiak self-driving trucks will improve the robustness of the autonomous system. It was designed with greater fleet uptime, manufacturing, and serviceability in mind--all of which are critical to scale quickly, safely and efficiently.

Cross-collaboration amidst governments and departments are key to promote innovation "These matrices generally corresponded to a few categories: collaboration between governments, collaboration between governments and businesses, and collaboration between governments and citizens. Through these types of innovative efforts, governments at all levels are recognising the significant transformative potential of building matrixed governments that respect, recognise and enable different ecosystems to collaborate in order to make key contributions to society."

Supply chain and fleet management solutions company Ryder is partnering with yet another autonomous trucking company. On Thursday, Ryder announced its plans to help Embark launch a nationwide network of up to 100 transfer points that will be owned and operated by the autonomous trucking developer.

The hub in South Dallas will be Waymo's "primary operations center" in the state for its fleet of autonomous trucks. The hub will be built to accommodate "hundreds of trucks and personnel" as the company gets closer to launching a full-scale freight-hauling operation using its fully autonomous vehicles - though Waymo has yet to say exactly when that will be.

The engineering profession won't be exempt from COVID-19 job fallout, but the effects will be temporary. More engineers will be needed than ever before when the world returns to a semblance of normalcy, said Andy Moss, president and owner of M Force Staffing, a Knoxville, Tenn., technical recruiting firm specializing in engineering and manufacturing job placement. "There was already a lack of technical talent before we went into this," Moss says. "This is a horrible situation, but when we come back from it we're going to ramp right back up into the problems we had before. We're not producing enough technical talent to fill the jobs we have." The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment growth for engineers, with nearly 140,000 new jobs expected for engineers from 2016 to 2026. Mechanical engineers were second only to civil engineers in terms of projected new jobs over that time period: civil engineers with 32,200 additional jobs projected and mechanical with 25,300. Industrial, with 25,100 jobs, and electrical, with 16,200, followed behind.

As artificial intelligence tools become more specialized, Moss has one big warning to today's students: stay away from any job AI can take. That doesn't include engineering, though, where there will probably be more jobs created due to the growth of AI, he says. "You'll still have things in engineering design and other aspects of technical work and engineering that a computer just can't do, even if they can think faster than a human."

"Formation of a surface layer, whether it is based on an oxide, carbonate, sulfate, or any other compound, is a major factor in corrosion resistance, particularly if the layer effectively isolates the metal substratum from the environment. Such a naturally formed coating must be diffusion- and moisture-resistant to be effective. Ordinary iron does not naturally form an effective barrier; its rust permits oxygen and moisture to penetrate and continue rusting. Thus, unless precautions are taken, such as applying a protective coating over the surface, failure will eventually occur."