pIEEEdmont Potential

A PUBLICATION OF THE PIEDMONT SECTION OF THE IEEE

May, 2004

Piedmont Section
South Carolina Council
Today’s Engineer
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Articles:
Next Meeting : Unemployment Rate for Electrical Engineers and Computer Scientists Jumps in the First Quarter : Full-text Searching and Reference Links in IEEE Computer Society Publications Added to IEEE Xplore® : *IEEE-USA TODAY'S ENGINEER* : U.S. IEEE MEMBER VOLUNTEERS INVITED TO PARTICIPATE IN IEEE-USA's CAREERS FLY-IN ON 18-19 MAY : Creator of Ctrl+Alt+Delete Reboots His Career : Member Survey Response Spurs Societies to Act : A Ruling in Our Favor : Conference Spotlights Sister Technologies : Plant Tour Ideas

ETAP 5.0 1-Day Training Seminar

Report Released On Causes Of August 2003 Northeast Blackout : Question the IEEE Presidential Candidates : Marketplace of Ideas: Undergrad Numbers Fall : Officers

This month we’re having our annual non-technical meeting. Donn Griffith with the Oconee County School District will come out and talk to us about what the FIRST Lego League is and how almost anyone can get a team started. Here’s a brief paragraph from Don:

All kinds of groups can form teams: schools, churches, civic groups, neighborhoods, anyone. It just takes up to 10 kids, ages 9-14, and at least one adult. Register and order supplies May 3, 2004 until Sept. 30, 2004 (or until all slots are filled, whichever comes first). Kids spend about eight weeks (Oct.-Nov.) conducting scientific research, preparing presentations, and designing, building, and testing a fully autonomous robot. FLL teams go on to participate in local tournaments and the South Carolina FLL State Tournament held in January each year at the University of South Carolina. The approximate cost for registration and materials is up to $600 for new teams and up to $250 for returning teams. I have attached the following web site link for additional information about FLL:

http://www.firstlegoleague.org

Where: La Quinta Inn at Pelham Road and Haywood Road, Greenville

When: Thursday, May 20, 2004

• 6:30pm Social 1/2 Hour
• 7:00pm Dinner Served
• 7:30pm Meeting begins

Dinner is $5 for all IEEE members and guests. Student dinners will be $3 (please bring change). Please RSVP by Tuesday, May 18, 2004 to Rob Scruggs if you plan to attend and especially if you plan to eat. Rob’s email address is scruggsr@squared.com. For directions to the Inn, please call (864) 233-8018. I will likely provide a carpool leaving from my house in Clemson (please contact me (m.stokes@ieee.org) if you want to ride). I plan to leave at or around 5:45pm.

WASHINGTON (4 May 2004) - The number of employed U.S. electrical and electronics engineers (EEs) continues to decline, according to first-quarter data compiled by the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

BLS reported 327,000 employed EEs in the first quarter of 2004 vs. 386,000 in the second quarter last year, a decline of 59,000. The figure was 349,000 in the fourth quarter.

The EE unemployment rate increased from 4.5 percent in the final quarter of 2003 to 5.3 percent in the first quarter of 2004, an increase of 17.8 percent. The average for 2003 was a record 6.2 percent, compared to the more typical 1.3 in 2000 and 2.0 in 2001.

Full article:
http://ieeeusa.org/releases/2004/050404pr.html

5 May – Reference links in more than 20 IEEE Computer Society publications and a full-text search prototype have been added to IEEE Xplore®. The search prototype allows users to search metadata fields and the associated full-text in papers from 1996 forward. This represents more than 10 percent of the content in the IEEE Xplore database. The remaining material will be included in the full-text search function by the end of 2004. In addition, approximately 7,500 Abstract Plus records have been updated to include a collection of references from IEEE Computer Society publications. With these references, users can link to other content in IEEE Xplore and other publishers via CrossRef, a collaborative reference linking service that allows the user to click on a citation and be taken directly to the target content. Reference linking is now available within most IEEE periodicals dating back to 1995 or 1996. For more information, visit IEEE Xplore.

Webzine covers US science and engineering careers outlook, hybrid vehicles, connecting the engineering world. Also, for a "Backscatter" column on the Collyers and the Web, a "World Bytes" column on being smart in any language, and an "Engineering and Pop Culture" feature on Galvani and the story of Frank

Are you concerned about your career and issues affecting U.S. engineers? At IEEE-USA's Careers Fly-in, you can share your concerns with your legislators in Congress. The 2004 Careers Fly-In will focus on the current and future impacts of offshore outsourcing, and H-1B and L-1 visas, on engineering careers and US competitiveness.
To find out more about the fly-in, go to: http://www.ieeeusa.org/policy/Careerflyin/index.html

Hardly anyone is aware that the programming behind the PC's clever reboot function, Ctrl+Alt+Delete, is credited to a single person – IEEE Member David J. Bradley. But that's not the only contribution Bradley has made to PC development. Find out more at http://www.theinstitute.ieee.org/portal/index.jsp?pageID=institute_level1_article&TheCat=1016&article=tionline/legacy/inst2004/apr04/4w.profile.xml

When IEEE societies surveyed their members last year to ask if they were satisfied with the services and products they received, they learned that members liked their access to technical information but there was room for improvement. Find out what improvements some societies are making at:
http://www.theinstitute.ieee.org/portal/index.jsp?pageID=institute_level1_article&TheCat=2201&article=tionline/legacy/inst2004/apr04/4w.featureresearch.xml

In early April, the IEEE received good news. The Office of Foreign Assets Control at the U.S. Department of the Treasury ruled that the peer review, editing, and publication of manuscripts submitted to the IEEE by authors in U.S.-embargoed countries, including Cuba, Iran, Libya, and Sudan, can be conducted free of U.S. government restrictions. Read what President Arthur Winston had to say about the ruling at http://www.theinstitute.ieee.org/portal/index.jsp?pageID=institute_level1_article&TheCat=1009&article=tionline/legacy/inst2004/may04/5w.featurepresident.xml

Are you feeling fuzzy about fuzzy logic or nervous when it comes to neural networks? Credit card companies and doctors analyzing data from X-rays are using the two technologies every day. Find out what new applications are in store for these fields at joint conferences being held in July in Budapest, Hungary at http://www.theinstitute.ieee.org/portal/index.jsp?pageID=institute_level1_article&TheCat=2203&article=tionline/legacy/inst2004/may04/5w.conference.xml

We are still looking for good opportunities for our annual September plant tour. We have had many successful tours of various facilities around the Upstate in the past. Mostly suggested by the membership. So, if you have a place you’d like to tour, please contact Rob Scruggs now to discuss possible plant tour locations. Or, host the IEEE at your facility! If you’ve suggested something in the past and we didn’t make it, please suggest it again!

The U.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force's final report on the August 2003 Northeast Blackout, issued on 5 April, calls for mandatory and enforceable electricity reliability standards that IEEE-USA proposed in a November 2002 position statement.

To read the related news release, go to http://www.ieeeusa.org/releases/2004/040804pr.html.

The IEEE Philadelphia Section will host a debate among candidates for IEEE President-Elect on 22 June in Philadelphia, USA. Make your voice heard. Submit questions to The Institute's editor that you would like her to ask Michael Lightner, James Tien, and Levent Onural. Time will not allow her to ask every question, but she will select a representative sample. Send them to institute@ieee.org.

The Computing Research Association's annual survey of more than 200 universities in the United States and Canada showed that the number of undergraduates enrolled in computer science and computer engineering was down 23 percent in 2003 from the year before. Why are fewer students choosing these fields for their careers? What can be done to reverse this trend? Weigh in at institute@ieee.org.

Officer List:

CHAIRMAN Mark Stokes (864) 647-2065 m.stokes@ieee.org
VICE-CHAIRMAN Rob Scruggs  (864) 886 1348 scruggsr@squared.com
TREASURER Wayne Cockrell: (864)223-2888x1452 j.w.cockrell@ieee.org
SECRETARY Jerry Clark  (864) 918-2535 jclark89@hotmail.com
MEMBERSHIP DEVELOPMENT Lee Stogner (864) 281-8276 l.stogner@ieee.org
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES Adib Chebli (864) 241-6583 a.chebli@ieee.org
STUDENT ACTIVITIES Dr. John Komo (864) 656-5916 john.komo@ces.clemson.edu
EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES Lee Stogner (864) 281-8276 l.stogner@ieee.org
NEWSLETTER EDITOR Mark Stokes (864) 647-2065 m.stokes@ieee.org
AWARDS Dr. Randy Collins (864)656-5920 randy.collins@ces.clemson.edu

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The Piedmont section of the IEEE is still offering sections of its newsletter for advertising space. If you are interested in supporting this effort, please contact one of the officers listed above.

-Mark