Automotive Engineering

Who would have thought taking a simple scan of your finger could save your life?

Unlikely on the face of it, perhaps, but a consortium including Cranfield Impact Centre and Nissan Technical Centre Europe, has developed a prototype bone density scanning system which could be used to improve driver and passenger restraint systems in cars.

The system would work by taking an ultrasound scan of your finger and using the data to estimate the bone strength of each passenger,

A car that can automatically alert emergency services in the event of an accident, giving its precise location and the health status of occupants would save thousands of lives each year. Thanks to the work of AIDER such a vehicle is a step closer to becoming reality.

Developed over three years by 10 partners under the European Commission’s IST programme, the AIDER system has been completely tested in the field and, from the car maker’s perspective, contributes towards meeting the

The University of Waterloo has joined 16 other top North American universities as teams of engineering students compete to design the vehicles of the future. The Waterloo team, with a fuel-cell-powered vehicle design, is the only Canadian team in the Challenge X competition being held this week in Detroit. The team is sponsored by Natural Resources Canada and Hydrogenics Corporation.

“This is an exciting opportunity for young people to be involved in designing the environmental tec

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that airbags installed in automobiles have saved some 10,000 lives as of January 2004. A just-released study by a statistician at the University of Georgia, however, casts doubt on that assertion.

In fact, said UGA statistics professor Mary C. Meyer, a new analysis of existing data indicates that, controlling for other factors, airbags are actually associated with slightly increased probability of death in a

The Moscow chemists have suggested a way to produce insulin in pills instead of injections. They have developed polymeric capsules that would protect insulin from destructive effect of digestive juices. The research has been accomplished with financial support of the Ministry of Industry, Science and Technology of Russia within the framework of international scientific cooperation.

Once insulin appeared, diabetes mellitus is no longer a verdict for the patients. However, to contro

Imagine a car engine that saves you gas money and protects the environment. That may soon be a reality. Researchers at Karstad University in Sweden, working with the Swedish company Mecel, have developed a new method to make internal combustion engines more efficient and environmentally friendly.

To be able to tune internal combustion engines optimally, information is needed from the combustion process in the engine’s cylinders. This isn’t easy, because it’s hard