Engineers

Repairs to the aging Sagamore Bridge during the spring have slowed traffic leaving Cape Cod to a crawl most nights and backed it up for miles on Sundays, culminating in a Mother's Day morass when the stalled line of cars stretched past multiple exits on Route 6 and triggered all-day gridlock on nearby Route 6A. "Whoever conceived of this plan should be fired," said Anne Kilguss, a Boston social worker and psychotherapist with a second home in...

Here's a proposition for history buffs: General Motors's decision to greenlight the 1960 Corvair led to George W. Bush's victory over Al Gore. So posits Paul Ingrassia in his diverting book "Engines of Change: A History of the American Dream in Fifteen Cars. " Ingrassia is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and coauthor, with Joseph B. White, of 1994's "Comeback: The Rise and Fall of the American Automobile Industry," a look at how Ford, GM, and Chrysler rebounded from missteps in the 1980s.

I enjoyed Farah Stockman's May 8 op-ed " The Hub vs. the Big Easy: Unlike Boston, New Orleans prides itself on unabashed displays of friendliness . " I lived in other places for a long time before I finally had the revelation that strangers in other cities are not as comfortable talking to strangers as I am. However, it is important to New Orleanians that the rest of the world understand that what "brought this economy to its knees"...

The beautiful thing about test dummies, at least for the engineers testing Six Flags New England's newly installed giant roller coaster, is that they don't get sick. No cleanup necessary. The human-like figures, surrounded by sensors and wires, were strapped into seats hanging from reinforced steel girders on a cloudy afternoon earlier this month. The array soaring above them, a complex web of pipes curling and looping from the ground to a height of nearly 200 feet, looked like someone without an instruction manual had tried to assemble an oil rig in a rush.

The Golden Gate Bridge was heralded as an engineering marvel when it opened in 1937. It was the world's longest suspension span and had been built across a strait that critics said was too treacherous to be bridged. But as the iconic span approaches its 75th anniversary over Memorial Day weekend, the generations of engineers who have overseen it all these years say keeping it up and open has been something of a marvel unto itself. Crews had to install a bracing system after high winds lashed and twisted the span in the 1950s, raising fears it would collapse.

As state officials rushed to reassure drivers unnerved by yet another problem in the Big Dig tunnels and Representative Stephen F. Lynch called for a federal investigation, engineers said yesterday they found it hard to believe that thawing soil alone could have caused a sinkhole to open beneath the Interstate 90 Connector. Joseph Sopko has frozen ground for the construction of the Silver Line tunnel under Russia Wharf in Boston, a giant gold mine in Ontario, and sewage tunnels in Milwaukee.

Engineering and construction company Shaw Group Inc. says it has been awarded a contract for environmental and restoration services for the Louisville District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. A specific price was not disclosed Monday. Baton Rouge-based Shaw said it is one of five companies selected to compete for contracts with a combined value of $225 million. Shaw said the work includes hazardous, toxic and radioactive waste services supporting the agency's environmental projects.

Colonel Charles Samaris was ushered in as the new commander of the New England District of the US Army Corps of Engineers during a ceremony yesterday at Faneuil Hall. Samaris is a Methuen native who recently served as the Senior Service College Fellow in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Security Studies Program. He twice served in the Persian Gulf. Yesterday's change-of-command ceremony is part of military tradition designed to emphasize the continuity of leadership despite changes in individual authority in the six-state New England region (AP)

HOUSTON -- A group of engineers was honored yesterday for concocting a plan using plastic bags, cardboard, and duct tape to save Apollo 13's astronauts after their spacecraft was crippled by an explosion 35 years ago. Astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert would have died without the engineers' quick thinking, said John Schneiter, president of GlobalSpec, the New York company that presented the award -- a crystal globe. Sunday marked the 35th anniversary of the spacecraft's return to Earth after their aborted moon mission.

Deep in the recesses of the ear lies a feat of biology and engineering: a delicate, fluid-filled structure where cells translate the vibrations of sound, from bird songs to car horns, into electrical impulses that are sent to the brain, to be perceived as a tweet or a honk. But this intricate feat of natural neuroengineering can easily go awry, because of damage over a lifetime or because of genetic defects. The hair cells and nerve cells of the inner ear cannot regenerate, leaving limited options for those who lose their hearing.

The Golden Gate Bridge was heralded as an engineering marvel when it opened in 1937. It was the world's longest suspension span and had been built across a strait that critics said was too treacherous to be bridged. But as the iconic span approaches its 75th anniversary over Memorial Day weekend, the generations of engineers who have overseen it all these years say keeping it up and open has been something of a marvel unto itself. Crews had to install a bracing system after high winds lashed and twisted the span in the 1950s, raising fears it would collapse.

A former BP engineer charged with deleting text messages about the company's response to the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is asking for a federal judge's permission to travel freely throughout the U.S. while he is free on bond. Earlier this month, a magistrate in New Orleans ordered 50-year-old Kurt Mix, of Katy, Texas, to limit his travel to Louisiana, Texas, Massachusetts and New York after a prosecutor claimed he had intended to leave the country for a job in Australia and wouldn't return.

I enjoyed Farah Stockman's May 8 op-ed " The Hub vs. the Big Easy: Unlike Boston, New Orleans prides itself on unabashed displays of friendliness . " I lived in other places for a long time before I finally had the revelation that strangers in other cities are not as comfortable talking to strangers as I am. However, it is important to New Orleanians that the rest of the world understand that what "brought this economy to its knees"...

By Johanna Kaiser, Town Correspondent Half a dozen Bunker Hill Community College students have been recognized for their school work in science and engineering. The Society of Latino Engineers and Scientists recognized six of the college's students for their academic achievements at an awards ceremony last month. The students--Alejandra Marin, Lewis Taveras, Ana Keough, Hudson Gloria, Kamila Souza, and Luis Rodrigues--were honored along with students from MIT, Harvard University, Tufts University, Suffolk University, Boston University,...

A $670 million overhaul at California's San Onofre nuclear plant was expressly intended to avoid the types of ailments that have sidelined its twin reactors. An overriding goal for a team of engineers who worked on steam generators installed at the plant in 2009 and 2010 was minimizing wear and tear on the nearly 40,000 tubes that carry radioactive water inside the massive machines. Customized design and manufacturing promised years of reliable service for a plant that can power 1.4 million homes in Southern California.

Katherine Legge returned to America to race in the Indianapolis 500. So far, she's been watching film, studying data and bugging engineers with questions. The problem: Legge and teammate Sebastien Bourdais were still looking for engines as practice opened Saturday. Twenty-six drivers made it onto the 2.5-mile oval. Meanwhile, Dragon Racing's garage remained idle for the third straight day and will likely be following the same script Sunday afternoon when practice is scheduled to resume.

Iran's official news agency says gunmen in Syria have kidnapped five Iranian engineers building a power plant in a central region of the country roiled by political unrest. Wednesday's report quotes a statement from Iran's Embassy in Damascus as saying that the engineers were seized Tuesday morning on their way to work in the city of Homs. The statement says Iranian authorities have asked the Syrian government to identify the assailants and get the engineers released. Syria has been Iran's closest ally in the Arab world for three decades.

State contractors are boring into the ground in an effort to determine whether a sinkhole has formed under a Big Dig tunnel and if so, how to plug it. Highway officials revealed the existence of the possible sinkhole several months ago but said it posed no public safety risk. While constructing the Interstate 90 Connector Tunnel more than a decade ago, Big Dig engineers chemically froze some of the ground near the Fort Point Channel to prevent it from caving in or leaking.

BELLEVUE, Wash. - When Facebook goes public in the coming weeks, there will be a lot of winners. Among them is one of the stalwarts of the tech industry, Microsoft, which has a small stake in the company. But Microsoft has an even bigger bet on Facebook through an alliance between its Bing search engine and the social network. And that partnership is about to get even deeper. On Thursday, Microsoft introduced a set of changes to Bing that it says will improve searches by tapping into the expertise of friends on Facebook and other social networks.

Bryan Herta will try to win this year's Indianapolis 500 with the same engine that took him to Victory Lane last year — Honda. A little more than two weeks after Herta's team was released from its contract with engine-manufacturer Lotus, Bryan Herta Autosport announced it would use Honda Motor Co. engines for the rest of this season. The move comes two days before practice opens for the 500 and a little more than two weeks before the May 27 race. "My time as a Honda driver in both the IndyCar Series, as well as the time spent driving factory Acura LMP2 in the American Le Mans...