Berry College in Georgia holds the title of the world’s largest contiguous college campus at 27,000 acres (about 42 square miles), far surpassing others like West Point (~16,000 acres).
Founded in 1902 by Martha Berry as the Boys Industrial School (later expanding to include girls and becoming Berry College), it began on 83 acres she inherited from her father.
Through relentless fundraising, donations from philanthropists (including Henry Ford and others), and strategic land purchases—often farms, forests, and rural properties in northwest Georgia—the institution steadily acquired surrounding acreage.
By the 1930s, it owned thousands of acres, emphasizing self-sufficiency, work-study programs, and conservation. This gradual expansion, tied to its mission of education and stewardship, made it the largest by far.
Today at 16:00 UTC we examine the interaction among several standards catalogs of ANSI accredited, consortia and ad hoc electrotechnology standards developers with respect to governmental regulation of maternity and neonatal care at all levels.
Architectural standards for Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) are designed to create a safe, efficient, and healing environment for newborns requiring intensive medical care. These standards encompass various aspects, including layout, space requirements, environmental controls, and infection control. Here are the key architectural standards for NICUs:
1. Space Requirements
Single-Patient Rooms: Preferably, NICUs should have single-patient rooms to reduce the risk of infection and provide privacy for families. The recommended size for each room is around 150 square feet.
Open Bay Design: If single-patient rooms are not feasible, open bay designs with a minimum of 120 square feet per infant space should be considered.
Family Areas: Incorporate family zones within or adjacent to the patient care area to support family involvement in care.
2. Environmental Controls
Lighting: Use adjustable lighting to mimic natural day-night cycles. Dimmable and indirect lighting is recommended to reduce stress on infants.
Noise Control: Implement sound-absorbing materials and design to maintain noise levels below 45 decibels. Alarms and other auditory signals should be as non-disruptive as possible.
Temperature and Humidity: Maintain a controlled environment with temperatures between 72-78°F and relative humidity between 30-60% to support the infants’ thermal regulation.
3. Infection Control
Hand Hygiene Facilities: Provide sinks with touchless faucets in each patient room and strategically placed hand sanitizer dispensers.
Air Quality: Use HEPA filtration systems to maintain high air quality and reduce airborne infections. Ensure proper ventilation and air exchange rates.
Surfaces and Materials: Use easily cleanable and antimicrobial surfaces and materials to minimize the risk of infection.
4. Functional Design
Nurse Stations: Design nurse stations to have a clear line of sight to all patient areas. Centralized and decentralized stations can be used depending on the layout.
Equipment and Storage: Include adequate storage space for medical equipment and supplies within close proximity to patient care areas. Ensure equipment is easily accessible yet out of the way to prevent clutter.
Utilities and Support Spaces: Provide adequate space for utilities such as oxygen, medical gases, electrical outlets, and data ports. Support spaces should include areas for medication preparation, clean and dirty utility rooms, and staff break areas.
5. Safety and Accessibility
Emergency Access: Ensure clear and unobstructed pathways for emergency access and equipment transport.
Accessibility: Design the unit to be fully accessible to staff, patients, and families, including those with disabilities. Compliance with ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) standards is essential.
Security: Implement security measures to control access to the NICU, including electronic access control systems and surveillance cameras.
6. Aesthetic and Healing Environment
Color and Decor: Use calming colors and artwork to create a soothing environment. Avoid bright or overly stimulating colors.
Nature Integration: Where possible, incorporate natural elements such as views of nature, indoor plants, and natural light to promote a healing environment.
7. Flexibility and Future Expansion
Modular Design: Use a modular design approach to allow for easy reconfiguration and future expansion of the NICU as needed.
Scalability: Plan for scalable infrastructure to accommodate technological advancements and changing patient care needs.
These architectural standards aim to provide a safe, efficient, and supportive environment for both the infants and their families, while also meeting the operational needs of healthcare providers.
NSAI has launched the public consultation for S.R. 66:2015 +A1:202X Standard Recommendation providing guidance to wastewater treatment products in conformance with the EN 12566 series of standards.
Just about every airspeed sensor in the United States can trace its calibration back, either directly or indirectly via calibration laboratories, to a wind tunnel on NIST’s Gaithersburg, Maryland, campus.
🤝Full house for the biannual Technical Body Officers Seminar focusing on key aspects of the standardization system, this day was again a valuable opportunity to exchange experiences and best practices with peers, strengthening our collective technical leadership. #TrustStandardspic.twitter.com/K2wujDboS7
If you design or operate health care facilities, Standard 170 sets the minimum. ANSI/ASHRAE/ASHE Standard 170 defines the minimum ventilation requirements for health care facilities and is developed in partnership with FGI and ASHE for adoption by code-enforcing agencies.
100 years ago, the Supreme Court made it clear in Pierce v. Society of Sisters: raising children is the responsibility of parents, not the government.
100 years later, the Trump Administration remains committed to protecting parental rights. pic.twitter.com/yduXdLShty
— Secretary Linda McMahon (@EDSecMcMahon) June 1, 2025
“…O chestnut tree;, great rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bold? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?”
We sweep through the world’s three major time zones; updating our understanding of the literature at the technical foundation of education community safety and sustainability in those time zones 24 times per day. We generally eschew “over-coding” web pages to sustain speed, revision cadence and richness of content as peak priority. We do not provide a search facility because of copyrights of publishers and time sensitivity of almost everything we do.
Our daily colloquia are typically doing sessions; with non-USA titles receiving priority until 16:00 UTC and all other titles thereafter. We assume policy objectives are established (Safer-Simpler-Lower-Cost, Longer-Lasting). Because we necessarily get into the weeds, and because much of the content is time-sensitive and copyright protected, we usually schedule a separate time slot to hammer on technical specifics so that our response to consultations are meaningful and contribute to the goals of the standards developing organization and to the goals of stewards of education community real assets — typically the largest real asset owned by any US state and about 50 percent of its annual budget.
1. Leviathan. We track noteworthy legislative proposals in the United States 118th Congress. Not many deal specifically with education community real assets since the relevant legislation is already under administrative control of various Executive Branch Departments such as the Department of Education.
We do not advocate in legislative activity at any level. We respond to public consultations but there it ends.
We track federal legislative action because it provides a stroboscopic view of the moment — the “national conversation”– in communities that are simultaneously a business and a culture. Even though more than 90 percent of such proposals are at the mercy of the party leadership the process does enlighten the strengths and weakness of a governance system run entirely through the counties on the periphery of Washington D.C. It is impossible to solve technical problems in facilities without sensitivity to the zietgeist that has accelerated in education communities everywhere.
Michigan Great Lake Quilt
Michigan can 100% water and feed itself. Agriculture is its second-largest industry.
“In 1970, Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich published a famous book, The Population Bomb, in which he described a disastrous future for humanity:
‘The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.’
That prediction turned out to be very wrong, and in this interview American Enterprise Institute scholar Nicholas Eberstadt tells how we are in fact heading toward the opposite problem: not enough people. For decades now, many countries have been unable to sustain a #population replacement birth rate, including in Western Europe, South Korea, Japan, and, most ominously, China. The societal and social impacts of this phenomenon are vast. We discuss those with Eberstadt as well as some strategies to avoid them.”
Out take [35:22]:
“…All right this gets us right to the heart of of your essay and of the matter quoting you yet again the single best predictor for National fertility rates happens to be wanted family size as reported by women now you note there are polls that ask women how many children they’d like and you know that this doesn’t correlate perfectly with birth rates but it’s the best indicator in one sense this is a reassuring even heartening finding it highlights the agency at the very heart of our Humanity…
[“You’re talking about free will there people choosing their family size but if we permit the non-material realm of life to figure into our inquiry we may conclude that proposals to revive the American birth rate through subsidies vastly underestimate the challenge the challenge May ultimately prove to be civilizational in nature”]
okay so I look at first of all that hits like a two by four — civilizational in nature — and on the one hand I think to myself wait a minute aren’t we all supposed to be delighted that in this modern world women are in a position to participate in the workforce they’re in a position to choose more carefully more explicitly more intentionally the number of children they’d like to have aren’t we supposed to believe that that’s a wonderful thing and that releasing that many women to the workforce should increase the dynamism and growth of our [economy]…and all that…good, good, good…”
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We examine the proposals for the 2028 National Electrical Safety Code; including our own. The 2026 National Electrical Code where sit on CMP-15 overseeing health care facility electrical issues should be released any day now. We have one proposal on the agenda of the International Code Council’s Group B Committee Action Hearings in Cleveland in October. Balloting on the next IEEE Gold Book on reliability should begin.
FERC Open Meetings | (Note that these ~60 minute sessions meet Sunshine Act requirements. Our interest lies one or two levels deeper into the technicals underlying the administrivia)
Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei City, Taiwan
First Draft Proposals contain most of our proposals — and most new (original) content. We will keep the transcripts linked below but will migrate them to a new page starting 2025:
N.B. We are in the process of migrating electric power system research to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers bibliographic format.
Recap of the May meetings of the Industrial & Commercial Power Systems Conference in Las Vegas. The conference ended the day before the beginning of the 3-day Memorial Day weekend in the United States so we’re pressed for time; given all that happened.
We can use our last meeting’s agenda to refresh the status of the issues.
We typically break down our discussion into the topics listed below:
Codes & Standards:
While IAS/I&CPS has directed votes on the NEC; Mike is the only I&CPS member who is actually submitting proposals and responses to codes and standards developers to the more dominant SDO’s — International Code Council, ASHRAE International, UL, ASTM International, IEC & ISO. Mike maintains his offer to train the next generation of “code writers and vote getters”
Performance-based building premises feeder design has been proposed for the better part of ten NEC revision cycles. The objective of these proposals is to reduce material, labor and energy waste owed to the branch and feeder sizing rules that are prescriptive in Articles 210-235. Our work in service and lighting branch circuit design has been largely successful. A great deal of building interior power chain involves feeders — the network upstream from branch circuit panels but down stream from building service panel.
Our history of advocating for developing this approach, inspired by the NFPA 101 Guide to Alternative Approaches to Life Safety, and recounted in recent proposals for installing performance-based electrical feeder design into the International Building Code, appears in the link below:
Access to this draft paper for presentation at any conference that will receive it — NFPA, ICC or IEEE (or even ASHRAE) will be available for review at the link below:
NFPA 110 Definitions of Public Utility v. Merchant Utility
NFPA 72 “Definition of Dormitory Suite” and related proposals
Buildings:
Renovation economics, Smart contracts in electrical construction. UMich leadership in aluminum wiring statements in the NEC should be used to reduce wiring costs.
This paper details primary considerations in estimating the life cycle of a campus medium voltage distribution grid. Some colleges and universities are selling their entire power grid to private companies. Mike has been following these transactions but cannot do it alone.
Variable Architecture Multi-Island Microgrids
District energy:
Generator stator winding failures and implications upon insurance premiums. David Shipp and Sergio Panetta. Mike suggests more coverage of retro-fit and lapsed life cycle technicals for insurance companies setting premiums.
Reliability:
Bob Arno’s leadership in updating the Gold Book.
Mike will expand the sample set in Table 10-35, page 293 from the <75 data points in the 1975 survey to >1000 data points. Bob will set up meeting with Peyton at US Army Corps of Engineers.
Reliability of merchant utility distribution systems remains pretty much a local matter. The 2023 Edition of the NESC shows modest improvement in the vocabulary of reliability concepts. For the 2028 Edition Mike submitted several proposals to at least reference IEEE titles in the distribution reliability domain. It seems odd (at least to Mike) that the NESC committees do not even reference IEEE technical literature such as Bob’s Gold Book which has been active for decades. Mike will continue to propose changes in other standards catalogs — such as ASTM, ASHRAE and ICC — which may be more responsive to best practice assertions. Ultimately, improvements will require state public utility commission regulations — and we support increases in tariffs so that utilities can afford these improvements.
Mike needs help from IEEE Piscataway on standard WordPress theme limitations for the data collection platform.
Mike will update the campus power outage database.
Healthcare:
Giuseppe Parise’s recent work in Italian power grid to its hospitals, given its elevated earthquake risk. Mike’s review of Giuseppe’s paper:
Mike and David Shipp will prepare a position paper for the Harvard Healthcare Management Journal on reliability advantages of impedance grounding for the larger systems.
The Internet of Bodies
Forensics:
Giuseppe’s session was noteworthy for illuminating the similarity and differences between the Italian and US legal system in handling electrotechnology issues.
Mike will restock the committee’s library of lawsuits transactions.
Ports:
Giuseppe updates on the energy and security issues of international ports. Mike limits his time in this committee even though the State of Michigan has the most fresh water international ports in the world.
A PROPOSED GUIDE FOR THE ENERGY PLAN AND ELECTRICAL INFRASTRUCTURE OF A PORT
Other:
Proposals to the 2028 National Electrical Safety Code: Accepted Best Practice, exterior switchgear guarding, scope expansion into ICC and ASHRAE catalog,
Apparently both the Dot Standards and the Color Books will continue parallel development. Only the Gold Book is being updated; led by Bob Arno. Mike admitted confusion but reminded everyone that any references to IEEE best practice literature in the NFPA catalog, was installed Mike himself (who would like some backup help)
Mike assured Christel Hunter (General Cable) that his proposals for reducing the 180 VA per-outlet requirements, and the performance-base design allowance for building interior feeders do not violate the results of the Neher-McGrath calculation used for conductor sizing. All insulation and conducting material thermal limits are unaffected.
Other informal discussions centered on the rising cost of copper wiring and the implications for the global electrotechnical transformation involving the build out of quantum computing and autonomous vehicles. Few expressed optimism that government ambitions for the same could be met in any practical way.
Are students avoiding use of Chat GPT for energy conservation reasons? Mike will be breaking out this topic for a dedicated standards inquiry session:
Loudoun County, Virginia has the largest concentration of data centers in the United States, with approximately 200 operational facilities.
This significantly surpasses neighboring counties in Northern Virginia:
Prince William County: ~44 data centers
Fairfax County: ~20 data centers
Primary energy utility supplying this region (including most data centers) is Dominion Energy.
Contracted peak power (nominal, or “nameplate” power is about 6,000 MW; driven by AI hyperscalers, cloud computing and general internet traffic growth.
“Natural Bridge Virginia” 1880 David Johnson
We continue roll out of our collaboration platform for “code writers and vote-getters” begun at the University of Michigan in 1993. We are now drilling down into state and local adaptations of nationally developed codes and standards that are incorporated by reference into public safety and sustainability legislation.
Standards Michigan remains the “free” home site but state-specific sites such as Standards Virginia will be accessible to clients. Please send bella@standardsmichigan.com a request to join one of our mailing lists appropriate to your interest for #SmartCampus standards action in the great State of Virginia.
Chór Śląskiego Uniwersytetu Medycznego w Katowicach
This is a choral composition that falls within the genre of modern classical music. Ola Gjeilo is a Norwegian composer and pianist known for his engaging and atmospheric choral works; here inspired by the Aurora Borealis.
The text is the Latin Pulchra es, amica mea, from Song of Solomon:
Thou art beautiful, O my love, sweet and comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army set in array. Turn away thy eyes from me, for they have made me flee away.
New update alert! The 2022 update to the Trademark Assignment Dataset is now available online. Find 1.29 million trademark assignments, involving 2.28 million unique trademark properties issued by the USPTO between March 1952 and January 2023: https://t.co/njrDAbSpwBpic.twitter.com/GkAXrHoQ9T
