Our family watched the movie “Johnny English” last weekend, and it had some funny moments. One of the better ones was when English, a bumbling wannabe spy played by Rowan Atkinson, picks up a gold pen from a secretary’s desk and starts fiddling with it. Suddenly the pen “goes off,” as it’s actually a gun, and the secretary falls down. English skulks off to his next misadventure, leaving the EMTs to tend to the secretary.
Played for laughs (with a nod to similar devices in the James Bond films), but transforming a ballpoint pen into a firearm struck me as an interesting transfer of technology.
If you haven’t already, check out our feature, “Higher Efficiency and Lower Emissions” in the July issue of (mt), by Jean de Kat and Thomas Eefsen. The authors, both with Maersk Maritime Technology, share the technologies being developed and implemented by the A.P. Moller-Maersk Group—technologies aimed at reducing the company’s environmental footprint in a number of areas.
One of the initiatives is being conducted with Maersk partners UltaAqua and DESMI A/S, and targets ballast water treatment. The system they’ve developed treats ballast water using a combination of ozone (generated aboard ship) and ultraviolet radiation, and Eefsen and de Kat say the process doesn’t require the use of any toxic chemicals. Testing is expected to be completed by the middle of 2011, and it’s anticipated the system will exceed the standards laid out by the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) Ballast Water Convention, which specifies ongoing compliance dates based on vessel capacity.
The feature can be found in the Digital Issues section (July issue) here on the (mt) page of sname.org. And you can learn more about the IMO’s ballast water standards at www.imo.org/conventions/mainframe.asp?topic_id=867
And we roll into technology transfer in a big way with our upcoming October issue of (mt). We’re working on a cover story with the forward-thinking people at Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding, who are giving us a look inside the shipyard’s use of 3D immersive design tools. Called rapidly operational virtual reality, these tools enable designers, engineers, suppliers, and other stakeholders to share information and transfer technology in an eye-opening way. One of the cooler tools they use involves the use of an avatar—a virtual being that’s an extension of a member of Penn State’s Applied Research Lab—who walks through and “examines” the designed spaces of a ship before construction even begins.
That’s really just the tip of the iceberg with our October issue and its focus on technology transfer. Let me know what grabs you, and what doesn’t, with these technologies—you can add a comment at the bottom of this post, or send me an e-mail at dkelly@sname.org.