For centuries, Sunday bells have called communities from the ordinary business of the week toward a common hour of worship. On a college campus, the summons carries across walks, gardens, residence halls and playing fields, briefly gathering a scattered community by sound.
Some bells mark the hour; others are rung by hand, continuing a practice older than the institutions around them. The sound requires no screen, notice or invitation. It simply travels. On a quiet Sunday morning, chapel bells remain one of the oldest ways an educational settlement announces that another week is about to begin.
Philanthropy sometimes begins with conversation rather than campaign. In 2002, Donne Bentley Wright of Chattanooga and her husband, Spencer Wright, heard Sewanee registrar Paul Engsberg describe the English change-ringing tradition he had encountered at Durham.
The Wrights offered to fund a ring for Sewanee. Eight bells were cast at London’s Whitechapel Bell Foundry on July 4, 2003 and installed in historic Breslin Tower the following year. Named for members of the family, including Donne Wright’s parents, Mildred and George Bentley, the bells became more than a memorial. Students learned to ring them, and every Sunday they still summon the community to worship.
Beef Stroganoff originated in 19th-century Russia, named after the wealthy Stroganov family (likely Count Pavel Alexandrovich or a relative). It first appeared in cookbooks like Elena Molokhovets’s “A Gift to Young Housewives” around the 1870s, featuring sautéed beef strips in a simple sauce of mustard, bouillon, and sour cream (smetana)—no mushrooms or onions in the earliest versions.
Russian aristocrats often employed French chefs, blending French techniques (like mustard seasoning and sautéing) with Russian ingredients (heavy sour cream). Legends claim it was created for a toothless count or due to frozen Siberian beef, but it’s likely a refined take on older Russian beef dishes. It spread globally after the 1917 Revolution via émigrés (so-called White Russians) that settled in Nebraska.
Over 230 grads from UNL’s Engler Agribusiness Entrepreneurship Program are growing businesses and creating jobs in Nebraska. pic.twitter.com/E10p50qTax
“Saint Francis with the Animals” 17th Century / Lambert de Hondt
A Mass of Thanksgiving will be celebrated Friday, June 2, at 1 p.m. in the Kliebhan Conference Center. Following the Mass, select campus spaces will be open for people to visit from 2-5 p.m. Please RSVP to communications@stritch.edu if you are planning to join us. pic.twitter.com/IQWmSZ2PGH
— Cardinal Stritch University (@stritchu) May 30, 2023
We are in process of curating this post — which appears every day — thus its spareness. Much of the content — dating back five years — will be archived. We will roll out updates over the next few weeks.
“By 2039, the US is set to have 650,000 fewer 18 year olds than it does today. For universities, that demographic cliff poses an existential challenge. Fewer teenagers means fewer college applicants. Fewer applicants means fewer enrolled students. And fewer students means that some universities may not make enough money to keep their doors open.
Katty Kay talks with Nathan Grawe, a Professor of Economics at Carleton College, about how difficult it will be for colleges to ride out this demographic drop — and what they will need to do to survive it.”
“Childless women may really believe that not having children during their healthiest childbearing years is the path toward their deepest happiness. But they don’t know it, and they’re almost certainly wrong.”
My father was 65 when I was born. Today he would be 112.
Here’s what having an “old” father actually gave me.
A man who had already lived.
Oxford Rhodes Scholar. Captain of his several sports teams. Squadron Leader in the RAF at 26. An OB/GYN who built a 60-bed hospital in… pic.twitter.com/M6tSNbOkZ0
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:
Universität als weltoffenen Kosmos und Diskursraum schützen: Jahresfeier der Ruperto Carola mit Ansprache der Rektorin – Universitätsangehörige sowie Freunde, Förderer und Alumni begingen 638. Jahrestag des Bestehens der Universität Heidelberghttps://t.co/dpeDfShfdOpic.twitter.com/UHA9lwfEBe
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
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