Along a track at NATCAR, applied lessons in electronic circuitry

The stats are stellar. For the fourth year in a row, Berkeley Engineering took first in the NATCAR competition held each spring at UC Davis. And, for the third year in a row, Berkeley placed in five of six top slots, effectively phasing out Davis, its toughest competitor.

In NATCAR, student teams develop small-scale electric cars that drive themselves efficiently (translation: no wandering, skidding) around a preset, wired path that curves, jogs horizontally, and loops back on itself. The fastest car wins. For Berkeley, that's meant developing cars of structural and computational brilliance.

The course behind it all is EE 192 "Mechatronics Design Lab," a capstone class taught by EECS professor Ron Fearing. "As an incoming freshman, I saw mechatronic cars at CalDay, and I thought, 'I want to make that in four years,'" says Quan Gan, an EECS senior with an ME minor, who took the class last spring. [FULL STORY]

CEE professor urges independent oversight of New Orleans levee repair at Senate hearings on Nov. 2

The following is an excerpt from CEE professor Ray Seed's prepared testimony before the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs at the U.S. Senate on November 2.

As the flood protection system is now being repaired and rebuilt, it would appear advantageous to plan crest heights in a systematic and deliberate way, so that if and when overtopping does occur, it occurs preferentially at the desired locations along any given section of levee/floodwall frontage. Similarly, the transitions between disparate levee/floodwall sections should be more robustly designed and constructed so that these transitions do not represent locations of potential weakness in otherwise contiguous perimeter flood protection system.

Areas in which piping erosion occurred, including reported instances of piping along the Mississippi River-Gulf outlet frontage, suggest that there are areas of foundation that were weakened to a state worse than "pre-Katrina" conditions. Similarly, there may be additional sections like the west bank across from the North breach on the east side of the London Avenue Canal that were distressed (but did not fully breach) and are in need of remedial work. It is important to remember to check, and to repair as necessary, levee sections that may have been damaged but that did not fail as part of the current repair operations. [FULL STORY]

Undergrad researchers show off their hard work at fall poster session

Undergraduate researchers got out of the lab and into the spotlight during the fall 2005 Engineering, Science, and Natural Resources Undergraduate Poster Session on November 16 entitled "Natural Bridges: Different Perspectives, Common Goals." Presenters answered questions about their projects for a steady stream of visitors in the Betty and Gordon Moore Lobby at Hearst Memorial Mining Building. Learn more about the URO program at www.coe.berkeley.edu/current_students/uro/index.html. [FULL STORY]

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