Page 4 - Issue 3 2023

FROM THE
EDITOR'S
DESK

More efficient coal
Why printed paper power stations
Inspecta automatic purge
remains a keystone system is a cost-effective,
ambient-air purge system
of the digital era that requires neither

compressed air nor an
additional power source to remove the fly ash build-up within the
came across an interesting story from Epson, the Inspecta pipe-sets, for leak detection in power stations.
printer people, which made the point that while digital INSTROTECH designed the successful acoustic steam leak detection
I echnology in the classroom is useful, one tool remains systems (Inspecta ASLD) and has now developed a fully automatic
t
essential for helping students get the most out of their purging system that’s easily retrofitted to existing Inspecta installations.
educational experience: the classroom printer.
Digital technology in schools has highlighted the The installation of this system eliminates routine manual purging of the
digital divide in South Africa, where 80% of children pipe-sets and maintains the leak detection system at peak performance,
cannot afford tablets and laptops to access learning without manual intervention. Read more
materials. Using print can create affordable and
interactive learning experiences that are accessible to all Solar Flares
learners, regardless of their socioeconomic status. Scientists have discovered
But more importantly, several studies have shown that small flashes in the
that reading in print improves understanding of Sun’s corona can be used to
information, memory and recall, which is why printers are predict solar flares, providing
still the ultimate school tool because of their portability a new marker to distinguish
and ability to provide materials that can be easily shared
among students and classrooms. Other studies show that which active regions are
one of the biggest advantages of printed material is that likely to flare soon and which will stay quiet. They used a newly-created
students comprehend information better and concentrate image database of the Sun’s active regions captured by SDO, combining
for longer when using them. over eight years of images taken in ultraviolet and extreme-ultraviolet
Granted, Epson obviously are protecting their market light. The research has broad implications for the study of solar flares,
but they are making an interesting point. Take a highly with the potential to develop new tools to predict them and better
technical article or research paper. It is fine to get the gist understand the physics of active regions.
of it on one of our screens but when we want to really
interrogate the content most of us will go to the printed When is ET coming
format! I am sure there are many more examples where home?
the printed version of a document is preferred. This is When pondering
one of the main reasons why we publish EngineerIT in a
PDF format in addition to an e-book. PDF It is easier to technologically advanced
read and print when a more in-depth study of an article extra-terrestrial life, the
or research paper is called for. question often arises, “if
I get Epson’s argument, but there is also a challenge! they’re out there, why
While printing technology has developed since Johannes haven’t we found them
Gutenberg printed his first book in the 1450s, there is yet?” This is due to our
still much development required to reduce the cost of limited exploration of the
printing and new technologies. I still prefer reading a real universe. Research led by
book in my hands than a kindle! an undergraduate student
Enjoy reading the articles in this edition and share from the University of
your ideas with us and your fellow readers.
Toronto, Peter Ma, and
Greetings researchers from the SETI
Institute and Breakthrough
Hans van de Groenendaal Listen, applied a deep
Editor 082 781 4631 learning technique to a previously studied dataset of nearby stars and
hansv@nowmedia.co.za uncovered eight previously unidentified signals of interest.

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