Cushioning

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Package cushioning is used to help protect fragile items during shipment. It is not uncommon for a transport package to be dropped, kicked, and impacted: These events may produce potentially damaging shocks. Transportation vibration from conveyors, trucks, railroads, or aircraft can also damage some items. Shock and vibration are controlled by cushioning so that the chance of product damage is greatly reduced.

Cushioning is usually inside a shipping container such as a corrugated box. It is designed to deform or crush to help keep levels of shock and vibration below levels that which may damage the product inside the box. Depending on the specific situation, package cushioning can often be between two and three inches thick.

Internal packaging materials (sometimes the same ones used for cushioning) are also used for functions other than cushioning. Some are used just to immobilize the products in the box and to block them in place. Others are just used to fill a void and do not have a cushioning function.



Molded expanded polystyrene (Styrofoam) cushioning

Contents

1 Design factors

2 Common Types of Cushioning

3 Design for Shock Protection

4 Design for Vibration Protection

5 Evaluation of Finished Package

6 See also

7 ASTM Standards

8 Notes

9 Further reading

10 External links


//


Design factors

When designing packaging, the choice of cushioning may depend on many factors:

effective protection of product from shock and vibration

whether cushioning is resilient (performs for multiple impacts)

resistance to creep cushion deformation under static load

material costs

labor costs, productivity

effects of temperature , humidity, and air pressure on cushioning

cleanliness of cushioning (dust, insects, etc)

effect on size of external shipping container

environmental and recycling issues

sensitivity of product to static electricity.

etc

Common Types of Cushioning

Loose Fill - Some cushion products are flowable and are packed loosely around the items in the box. The box is closed to tighten the pack. This includes expanded polystyrene foam pieces (Foam peanuts), similar pieces made of starch based foams, and common Popcorn.

Paper - Paper can be manually or mechanically wadded up and used as a cushioning material. Heavier grades of paper provide more weight bearing ability than old newspapers. Creped cellulose wadding is also available.

Corrugated fiberboard pads - Multi-layer or cut-and-folded shapes of corrugated board can be used as cushions. These structures are designed to crush and deform under shock stress and provide some degree of cushioning. Honeycomb paper structures are also used for cushioning.

Foam structures - Several types of polymeric foams are used for cushioning. The most common are: Expanded Polystyrene (also Styrofoam), polypropylene, polyethylene, and polyurethane. These can be molded engineered shapes or sheets which are cut and glued into cushion structures.

Foam-in-place is another method of using polyurethane foams. These fill the box, fully encapsulating the product to immobilize it. It is also used to form engineered structures.

Inflated Products - Bubble Wrap consists of sheets of plastic film with enclosed ubbles of air. These sheets can be layered or wrapped around items to be shipped. Engineered inflated structures are also available. Note that inflated air pillows used for void-fill are not suited for cushioning.

Molded pulp -



Molded pulp cushioning

Pulp can be molded into shapes suitable for cushioning and for immobilizing products in a package. Molded pulp is made from recycled newspapers and is recyclable.

Other - Several other types of cushioning are available including suspension cushions, thermoformed end caps, and shock mounts.

Design for Shock Protection

Proper performance of cushioning is dependent on its proper design and use. It is often best to use a trained packaging engineer, reputable vendor, consultant, or independent laboratory. An engineer needs to know the severity of shock (drop height, etc) to protect against. This can be based on an existing specification, published industry standards and publications, field studies, etc.

Knowledge of the product to be packaged is critical. Field experience may indicate the types of damage previously experienced. Laboratory analysis can help quantify the fragility of the item, often reported in g-s. Engineering judgment can also be an excellent starting point. Sometimes a product can be made more rugged or can be supported to make it less susceptible to breakage.

The amount of shock transmitted by a particular cushioning material is largely dependent on the thickness of the cushion, the drop height, and the load bearing area of...(and so on)
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United We Stand (fanzine)

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United We Stand is a Manchester United fanzine which first appeared on the streets of Manchester in the autumn of 1989. It was started by 15-year-old fan Andy Mitten, great-nephew of the former Manchester United winger Charlie Mitten. The first issue sold 100 copies, but it developed to become one of the best selling football fanzines in Great Britain.

The fanzine is produced ten times a year during the football season. It features interviews with players or Manchester United supporting personalities and counts the The Daily Telegraph journalist Jim White as a monthly columnist. Mitten is perhaps better known as a football journalist and author, although he still edits the publication and writes in each issue.

United We Stand opposed the takeover of Manchester United in 2005 by American businessman Malcolm Glazer.

A variety of opinions are afforded space in the publication, although it has always supported the sentiments of IMUSA and MUST. United We Stand often works with the two other Manchester United fanzine Red Issue and Red News to support these groups.

Content

The fanzine's content and tone is markedly different to Red Issue and Red News. Topics covered include football, music, fashion and other forms of popular culture. Editorial policy is generally less critical of the club than the other major United fanzines, but UWS represents a broad cross-section of views on issues affecting the club, team and supporters.

The fanzine is complemented by a web site, UWSonline, hosted by the Rivals network. Launched in 2000, the web site's forum is a virtual meeting place for many contributors to the fanzine.

UWSonline regulars meet regularly at the Stoat & Helmet public house on Swan Street, Manchester.

As at 2008, United We Stand costs ?2 per copy and contains approximately 44 pages.

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Motor-generator

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Radio station motor-generator set, converting from low to the high voltage power supply. This device is also called umformer. Dendorf Museum of Military Aviation

A motor-generator (an M-G set or a dynamotor for dynamo-motor) is a device for converting electrical power to another form. In some contexts, the other form is mechanical energy; in other contexts, it is a different form of electricity. The two senses refer to different types of equipment.

The M-G set is used to convert frequency, voltage, and phase of power. They may also be used to provide complete line isolation in addition to the various types of power conversion and control. Large motor-generators were widely used to convert industrial amounts of power while smaller motor-generators (such as the one shown in the picture) were used to convert battery power to higher DC voltages.

By comparison, simple, low-powered consumer electronics devices like vacuum tube car radios did not use motor-generators. Instead, they would typically use an inverter circuit consisting of a vibrator (a self-exciting relay) and a transformer to produce the B+ voltages required for the vacuum tubes.

A motor-generator is physically different from a normal electric motor attached to a separate generator, in that both rotor coils of the motor and the generator are wound around a single rotor, and both coils share the same outer field coils or magnets. Typically the motor coils are driven from a commutator on one end of the shaft, when the generator coils output to another commutator on the other end of the shaft. The entire rotor and shaft assembly is only slightly larger in size than in a normal electric motor, and may not have any exposed drive shafts.

Contents

1 Conversion to/from mechanical energy

2 Electrical power handling

3 Conversions

4 Motor-generators used to increase Ride-Through

5 The motor-generator today

6 See also


//


Conversion to/from mechanical energy

In the context of hybrid vehicles and other lightweight power systems, a motor-generator is used to describe a single power transducer that can be used as either an electric motor or a generator, converting between electrical power and mechanical power. In principle, any electrical generator can also serve as an electric motor, or vice versa. A device that is specifically designed for use in either mode may be called a "motor-generator"; the literature distributed by Toyota to describe the Hybrid Synergy Drive is an example of this newer usage.

Electrical power handling

In the context of electric power generation and large fixed electrical power systems, a motor-generator consists of an electric motor mechanically coupled to an electric generator (or alternator). The motor runs on the electrical input current while the generator creates the electrical output current, with power flowing between the two machines as a mechanical torque; this provides electrical isolation and some buffering of the power between the two electrical systems. One use of this type of motor-generator is to eliminate spikes and variations in "dirty power" or to provide phase matching between different electrical system; another is to buffer extreme loads on the power system. For example, tokamak fusion devices impose very large peak loads, but relatively low average loads, on the electrical grid. The DIII-D and Princeton Large Torus (PLT) tokamaks used a large flywheel on multiple motor-generator rigs to level the load imposed on the electrical system: the motor side slowly accelerated a large flywheel to store energy, which was consumed rapidly during a fusion experiment as the generator side acted as a brake on the flywheel. Similarly, the next generation U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) will use a flywheel motor-generator rig to supply power instantaneously for aircraft launches at greater than the ship's installed generator capacity.

Conversions

Motor-generators may be used for various conversions including:

Alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC)

DC to AC

DC at one voltage to DC at another voltage

AC at one frequency to AC at another harmonically-related frequency

Motor-generators used to increase Ride-Through

Motor-generators have even been used where the input and output currents are essentially the same. In this case, the mechanical inertia of the M-G set is used to filter out transients in the input power. The resulting output power can be (electrically) very clean (noise free) and will be able to ride-through brief blackouts and switching transients on the input power. This may enable, for example, the flawless cut-over from mains power to AC power provided by a diesel generator set.

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Kurt Frederick Ludwig

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Kurt Frederick Ludwig

Kurt Frederick Ludwig (1903-?) was a German spy and the head of the "Joe K" spy ring in the United States in 1940-41.

The ring was known as Joe K because it was the signature used in letters sent to Berlin addresses giving information on Allied shipping in New York Harbor. Ludwig also used the code name Fouzie and at least 50 to 60 other aliases, both male and female.

Contents

1 Early life and career

2 Setting up the ring

3 The search for the spy ring

4 An accident in Times Square

5 Investigation

6 Surveillance

7 Associates

8 Flight and capture

9 Trial and conviction

10 External links


//


Early life and career

Born in Fremont, Ohio, Ludwig was taken to Germany as a child, and there he grew up and married. He visited the United States several times in the 1920s and 1930s. He was arrested in Austria for espionage in February 1938 just prior to the Anschluss after police had noticed that he had been photographing bridges in the border between Germany and Austria; however, his case was delayed and when time came to act upon his case, the Nazis had taken over Austria the following month. Ludwig then returned to Germany and stayed there until March 1940, when he was ordered to return to the United States to establish a spy ring there.

Setting up the ring

Upon arrival Ludwig went to a boarding house located in Ridgewood, Queens. He set himself up as a leather-goods salesman and proceeded to recruit agents and couriers from various German-American Bund groups in the New York/Brooklyn area in preparation for his espionage activity: he recruited six men and two women for this purpose, several of whom had little practical experience in espionage. One of the two women was Lucy Boehmler, a pretty 18-year old high school graduate from Maspeth, Queens, who joined up because she thought it might be fun.

Money used to fund his operations were paid through the German Consulate in New York.

Ludwig made a practice of visiting docks in New York Harbor and along the New Jersey coast where, from his observations, he could report information to Germany on the identities of the ships and their cargoes. He also visited various U.S. Army posts, and reported on the identities of the individual units of each, as well as their organization and equipment which he felt would be of interest to his superiors. By December, Ludwig had also included information regarding aircraft manufacturing and performance based on his surveillance of aircraft plants in the Long Island area (notably Grumman, to which he assigned the codename "Grace").

Information that the ring had gleaned were sent to Germany, as well as to accommodation addresses in neutral Spain and Portugal through letters containing messages written in invisible ink. Letters of the highest priority were bound for Heinrich Himmler, who was assigned the alias "Manuel Alonzo"; Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the RSHA was "Lothar Frederick". Other recipients were assigned similar codenames.

The search for the spy ring

Authorities in both the U.S. and the United Kingdom were by that time aware that a spy ring was operating out of New York City. The first break came when British Imperial Censorship in Bermuda, run by the British Security Coordination (BSC) actually a cover for the Secret Intelligence Service intercepted a letter written to "Lothar Frederick" and signed by a "Joe K". As it was known that "Lothar" was an alias used by Heydrich, a watch was set for any letter with the Joe K signature. Subsequent letters from Joe K were intercepted, their contents read and recorded, and the envelopes so carefully resealed that their recipients would not detect any evidence of tampering.

Joe K had shown up as the signature on many letters sent to accommodation addresses. In March 1941 BSC chemists detected secret writing in a Joe K letter; the secret message referred to a duplicate letter sent to "Smith" in China. The BSC mail-intercept operation was run in coordination with the FBI even though J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the FBI, and William Stephenson, the head of the BSC, did not get along. The FBI was able to trace the Smith letter and found that it contained a plan of U.S. defenses in Pearl Harbor.

Despite this break, they were still in the dark as to who were involved in the spy ring, until an unexpected event took place that led eventually to its unravelling and downfall.

An accident in Times Square

On the night of March 18, 1941, two men were reportedly arguing about the proper way to cross an intersection in a busy section of Times Square in New York when one of them, a middle-aged man wearing horn-rimmed spectacles and carrying a brown briefcase, foolishly made the attempt to cross the street against a traffic light.

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Slacker (music service)

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Slacker





URL

http://www.slacker.com/

Commercial?

Yes

Type of site

Internet radio

Registration

Optional (Limited Plays), Free

Available language(s)

English Only

Owner

Slacker, Inc.

Launched

March 15, 2007

Slacker is a US only interactive Internet radio service. It allows users to create their own customized music stations starting with either Slacker's presets or a list of one or more artists. Slacker offers many traditional genre, specialty, and artist stations pre-programmed by professional DJs while also letting users build entire stations of specific artists. Slacker users can continue to evolve any of these stations by rating favorite songs and banning artists or songs. Stations can also be fine tuned to play older or newer music, more hits or more eclectic music. In January 2008, Slacker reported that the service had over 2 million songs, organized into over 100 professionally programmed stations, 10,000 artist stations, and an unlimited number of personally created stations .

Users can also create their own customizable radio stations and share them with anyone. The Slacker radio service is available to all Flash-enabled web browsers, and is also available in a downloadable application for computers running Windows XP SP2 or higher .

Slacker offers the experience "to go" with a portable device, the Slacker Portable Player The Player refreshes users' customized Slacker channels over available Wi-Fi connections (WEP and WPA wireless security supported) and stores those stations in the device library so that users do not need to be connected to WiFi to listen to Slacker .

Contents

1 History

2 Web Player Features

2.1 Stations

2.2 Customizing Stations

2.3 Ban and Favorite

3 Subscription Users

4 Software Player

5 Slacker Portable Radio Player

5.1 Slacker G2 Personal Radio Player

5.2 Devicescape Connect

5.3 Slacker G1 Personal Radio Player

5.4 Features

6 MySpace Widget

7 Third-Party Last.fm Audioscrobbler Hacks

8 Similar services

9 References

10 Recent Articles

11 External links


//


History

Slacker was founded in 2004.

March 15, 2007 - Slacker, Inc. is launched. The company is headed by Dennis Mudd, CEO. Mr. Mudd is the former CEO of MusicMatch, which was purchased by Yahoo Music and is now known as LAUNCHcast. Other notable executives include the president Jim Cady, former CEO of Rio, and vice president of marketing Jonathan Sasse, former president of iriver America.

September 20, 2007 - Slacker finalizes its deals with 4 Major labels; SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT, EMI, Universal, and Warner. Slacker also announced deals with thousands of Indie labels including Beggars Group, Matador Records, IRIS, Ubiquity and Sanctuary Group as well as indie aggregators IODA, IRIS, and The Orchard, which gives listeners access to millions of songs.

November 15, 2007 - Slacker begins taking pre-orders for their portable music players, to be shipped January 31, 2008 . The first generation players are available in 3 capacities: 15 stations (2GB), 25 stations (4GB), and 40 stations (8GB). The portable players can be updated from a computer via USB or WiFi.

January 9, 2008 - Slacker receives Laptop Magazine's Best of CES Portable Audio/Video Player Award for the not yet released Slacker Portable Player. .

January 31, 2008 - The Slacker Portable Radio Player begins shipping.

April 2, 2008 - Slacker announces its partnership with Devicescape, allowing Slacker to integrate Devicescape Connect into its Portable Players.

April 8, 2008 - Slacker announces agreements with top music publishers, including EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group and Warner/Chappell Music. The agreements, signed before the Slacker Portable Player launched, allow Portable Player users to listen to cached Internet radio stations and allow premium radio users to save songs for later playback.

September 16, 2008 - Slacker announces the availability of the Slacker G2 Personal Radio Player, the next generation of the world only completely portable Personal Radio player.

November 19, 2008 Sony introduced Slacker Personal Radio as the latest Sony? BRAVIA? Internet Video Link content provider. Slacker library of CD-quality music across all genres and eras ensures that music lovers can enjoy radio stations on their BRAVIA HDTV ranging from music of the golden-era classics to today hottest hits. By simply linking their BRAVIA Internet Video Link to your online Slacker account, users can easily enjoy their own...(and so on)
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Spinner (wheel)

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Spinner

A spinner is a type of hubcap that spins independently inside of a wheel itself when the vehicle is in motion, and continues to spin once the vehicle has come to a stop. Being an attachment to the car's wheel, spinners operate by using one or more roller bearings to isolate the spinner from the wheel, allowing it to turn while the wheel is at rest. The spinner's own momentum helps it overcome what little friction is transmitted through the bearing. When the car is in motion, the small amount of friction transmitted through the bearing sets the spinner in motion. Spinners are popular within the hip-hop community of the United States.

Contents

1 Invention

2 Introduction to market

3 Popularity

4 Historical

5 See also

6 References

7 External links


//


Invention

In October 1992, a United States wheel spinner patent was filed by American inventor James (J.D.) Gragg who conceived and invented the original free-spinning spinner in the late 1980s. The American Tru-Spinners Wheel Enhancer spinner patent (United States Patent #5,290,094) was issued on March 1, 1994, making it the first free-spinning wheel spinner patent of its kind with foreign patents to follow, Patent(#187,015) issued in October 1997. James (J.D.) Gragg from Tulsa, OK has over 80 inventions and his creative thinking has been considered so far utside the box that his concepts from the 1980 took till the New Millennium to be fully appreciated as can be seen by the phenomena his free-spinning wheel enhancers have created. He is known to be the leader in the field of the "Spinning Wheel Technology" with documented spin tests that stayed in motion for over 18 minutes as recorded by ABC/ESPN cameramen and also has versions with multiple-spinners that have 27 different spinning mode capabilities. The Tru-Spinner was so popular worldwide that the illegal pirating was on a massive scale and considered to be THE largest case of patent infringement in legal history. As of June 2007, American Tru-Spinners concluded and settled the first in a series of litigation against the first 12 of several illegal spinner pirating manufacturers, importers and retailers. The outcome within the United States Federal Courts of the Southern District of California were that the American Tru-Spinners patents were indeed valid and therefore validated and enforced by the Federal Courts and the plaintiffs, American Tru-Spinners, prevailed in an unprecedented 100% of its legal actions. American Tru-Spinners won Federal Summary Judgments against all 12 of the defendants for Patent Infringement and Permanent Injunctions were also issued against all the defendants. The awarded settlement amounts memorialized in suit are not to be disclosed and remain strictly confidential by Stipulation of Court Order mandated by the U.S. Federal Courts of the Southern District of California.

In 2003, Davin Wheels was issued a U.S. patent #6,554,370 for a non-adaptable spinning wheel only version called the continuous motion wheel. The invention of the spinner is generally attributed to David Fowlkes Jr., who graduated from Rufus King High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin before moving on to the Minneapolis College of Art and Design when he was 17. With a sketch and a prototype Fowlkes created the first spinner for a design project in 1990. The prototype then remained stored until 1998 when Fowlkes was working at Reebok and met his future business partners, Hank Seemore and Ian Hardman. Together the three formed Davin Wheels with a $250,000 loan from the Rhode Island Economic Development Corp.[citation needed]

In the 1995 film Batman Forever, the wheels on the Batmobile used a counter-rotating gear assembly to keep the bat-emblem hubcaps upright when the wheels were in motion.

Introduction to market

American Tru-Spinners originally introduced its patented free-spinning wheel spinner in 1994, but back then Tru-Spinners were only on an exclusive selected group of "Custom and Concept Cars", this is when Tru-Spinners were first viewed by the public and others saw the concept and then proceeded to pirate the technology. Over 1 million U.S. Patents later, Davin Wheels introduced a non-adaptable wheel only version at the Los Angeles Auto Show. When Davin Wheels was unable to obtain a booth at the Auto Show, they were invited to join another vendor at the show, NBA star Latrell Sprewell's Sprewell Racing. Coincidentally, Sprewell is a Milwaukee native. For this reason, spinners are sometimes also called "Sprewells", although Sprewell has stated that he was not the inventor of Sprewells.

The Rolls-Royce Phantom has anti-spinners the "RR" logo in the center of the hub is mounted on a spinner with an offset weight designed to ensure that the logo is always the right way up when the car is parked. This is one means of the 27 functions that Tru-Spinners had embodied within it...(and so on)
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Aster CT-80

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The very first "kit" version of the Aster CT-80 running Newdos/80. Note that the 64x16 TRS-80 mode screen uses only a small part of the monitor screen, because the letters are the same size as the 80x25 CP/M screen, this was one of the things that was soon after fixed with the redesign to a commercial product

The Aster CT-80, an early home/personal computer developed by the small Dutch company MCP (later renamed to Aster Computers), was sold in its first incarnation as a kit for hobbyists. Later it was sold ready to use. It consisted of several Eurocard PCB's and a backplane. It was the first commercially available Dutch personal/home computer. . The Aster computer could use the software written for the popular Tandy TRS-80 computer while fixing many of the problems of that computer, but it could also run CP/M software, with a big amount of free memory and a full 80x25 display, and it could be used as a Videotext terminal.

Contents

1 Models

2 Working modes

3 Sales

4 The company

5 Unreleased add ons

6 External links

7 Notes


//


Models

Three models were sold. The first model looked like the later IBM PC (which came on the market years later), a rectangular base unit with two floppy drives on the front, and a monitor on top with a separate detachable keyboard. The second incarnation was a much smaller unit the width of two 5 1/4" floppy drives stacked on top of each other, and the third incarnation looked like a flattened Apple ][ with a built-in keyboard.

All units ran much faster than the original TRS-80, at 4 MHz, (with a software selectable throttle to the original speed for compatibility purposes) and the display supported upper and lower case, hardware snow suppression (video ram bus arbitration logic), and an improved character font set. The floppy disk interface supported dual density, and disk capacities up to 800 KB, more than four times the capacity of the original TRS-80. A special version of NewDos/80, (an improved TRS-DOS compatible Disk operating system) was used to support these disk capacities when using the TRS-80 compatibility mode.

For the educational market a version of the first model was produced with a new plastic enclosure (the First Asters had an all-metal enclosure) that also had an opening on the top in which a cassette recorder could be placed. This model was used in a cluster with one Aster (with disk drives) for the teacher, and eight disk less versions for the pupils. The pupils could download software from the teachers computer through a network based on a fast serial connection, as well as sending back their work to the teachers computer. There was also hardware in place through which the teacher could see the display of each pupils screen on his own monitor.

Working modes

The Aster used 64KB of RAM memory and had the unique feature of supporting two fundamentally different internal architectures: when turned on without a boot floppy or with a TRS-DOS floppy, the Aster would be fully TRS-80 compatible, with 48KB or RAM. When the boot loader detected a CP/M floppy, the Aster would reconfigure its internal memory architecture on the fly to optimally support CP/M with 60 KB free RAM for programs and an 80 x 25 display. This dual-architecture capability only existed on one other TRS-80 clone, the LOBO Max-80.

With a special configuration tool, the CT-80 could reconfigure its floppy drivers to read and write the floppies of about 80 other CP/M systems.

A third mode was entered with a special boot floppy which turned the Aster into a Videotex terminal with a 40x25 display and a Videotex character set, The software used the built in RS232 interface of the Aster to control a modem through which it could contact a Prestel service provider.

Sales

Most Aster CT-80's (about 10 thousand of them) were sold to schools for computer education, in a project first known as the "honderd scholen project" (one hundred schools project), but which later involved many more than just one hundred schools. MCP received this order from the Dutch government because their computer met all the technical and other demands, including the demand that the computers should be of Dutch origin and should be built in the Netherlands. Another important demand was that the computers could be used in a network (Aster developed special software and hardware for that). Later however the Government turned around and gave 50% of the order to Philips and their P2000 homecomputer even though the P2000 did not meet all the technical demands, was made in Austria and did not have network hard nor software.

The company

Aster computers was based in the small town of Arkel near the town of Gorinchem. Initially Aster computer b.v. was called MCP (Music print Computer Product), because it was specialized in producing computer assisted printing of sheet music. The director...(and so on)
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