Since so much of what we do in standards setting is built upon a foundation of a shared understanding and agreement of the meaning of words (no less so than in technical standard setting) that time is well spent reflecting upon the origin of the nouns and verbs of that we use every day. Best practice cannot be discovered, much less promulgated, without its understanding secured with common language.
Because electrotechnology changes continually, definitions (vocabulary) in its best practice literature changes continually; not unlike any language on earth that adapts to the moment and place.
The changes reflect changes in technology or changes in how the technology works in practice; even how the manufacturers create adaptations to field conditions by combining functions. Any smart electrical component has a digital language embedded in it, for example.
Consider the 2023 National Electrical Code. Apart from many others the NEC will contain a major change to Article 100 (Definitions); the subject of elevated debate over the past three years.
When we refer “language” we must distinguish between formal language, informal language, colloquial language and dialect which may differ the language spoken, language written at the office and language used on the job site. “Terms of art”
Are these terms (or, “terms of art”) best understood in context (upstream articles in Chapters 4 through 8) — or should they be adjudicated by the 14 Principals of Code Making Panel 1? The answer will arrive in the fullness of time. Many changes to the National Electrical Code require more than one cycle to stabilize.
Code Making Panel 1 has always been the heaviest of all NEC panels. As explained n our ABOUT, the University of Michigan held a vote in CMP-1 for 20+ years (11 revision cycles) before moving to the healthcare facilities committee for the IEEE Education & Healthcare Facilities Committee. Standards Michigan continues its involvement on behalf of the US education facility industry — the second largest building construction market. There is no other pure user-interest voice on any technical committee; although in some cases consulting companies are retained for special purposes.
To serve the purpose of making NFPA 70 more “useable” we respect the Standards Council decision to make this change if it contributes to the viability of the NFPA business model. We get to say this because no other trade association comes close to having as enduring and as strong a voice: NFPA stands above all other US-based SDO’s in fairness and consideration of its constituency. The electrical safety community in the United States is a mighty tough crowd.
If the change does not work, or work well enough, nothing should prohibit reversing the trend toward “re-centralizing” — or “de-centralizing” the definitions.
Public comment on the First Draft of the 2026 Edition will be received until August 28, 2024.
Technical Committees meet during the last half of October to respond to public comment on the First Draft of the 2026 National Electrical Code.
Julia is a programming language that has gained popularity in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and scientific computing for several reasons.
High Performance: Julia is designed to be a high-performance language, often compared to languages like C and Fortran. It achieves this performance through just-in-time (JIT) compilation, allowing it to execute code at speeds close to statically compiled languages. This makes Julia well-suited for computationally intensive AI tasks such as numerical simulations and deep learning.
Ease of Use: Julia is designed with a clean and expressive syntax that is easy to read and write. It feels similar to other high-level languages like Python, making it accessible to developers with a background in Python or other scripting languages.
Multiple Dispatch: Julia’s multiple dispatch system allows functions to be specialized on the types of all their arguments, leading to more generic and efficient code. This feature is particularly useful when dealing with complex data types and polymorphic behavior, which is common in AI and scientific computing.
Rich Ecosystem: Julia has a growing ecosystem of packages and libraries for AI and scientific computing. Libraries like Flux.jl for deep learning, MLJ.jl for machine learning, and DifferentialEquations.jl for solving differential equations make it a powerful choice for AI researchers and practitioners.
Interoperability: Julia offers excellent interoperability with other languages, such as Python, C, and Fortran. This means you can leverage existing code written in these languages and seamlessly integrate it into your Julia AI projects.
Open Source: Julia is an open-source language, which means it is freely available and has an active community of developers and users. This makes it easy to find resources, documentation, and community support for your AI projects.
Parallel and Distributed Computing: Julia has built-in support for parallel and distributed computing, making it well-suited for tasks that require scaling across multiple cores or distributed computing clusters. This is beneficial for large-scale AI projects and simulations.
Interactive Development: Julia’s REPL (Read-Eval-Print Loop) and notebook support make it an excellent choice for interactive data analysis and experimentation, which are common in AI research and development.
While Julia has many advantages for AI applications, it’s important to note that its popularity and ecosystem continue to grow, so some specialized AI libraries or tools may still be more mature in other languages like Python. Therefore, the choice of programming language should also consider the specific requirements and constraints of your AI project, as well as the availability of libraries and expertise in your development team.
ABSTRACT. Many optimization problems in power transmission networks can be formulated as polynomial problems with complex variables. A polynomial optimization problem with complex variables consists in optimizing a real-valued polynomial whose variables and coefficients are complex numbers subject to some complex polynomial equality or inequality constraints. These problems are usually directly expressed with real variables. In this work, we propose a Julia module allowing the representation of polynomial problems in their original complex formulation. This module is applied to power system optimization and its generic design enables the description of several variants of power system problems. Results for the Optimal Power Flow in Alternating Current problem and for the Preventive-Security Constrained Optimal Power Flow problem are presented.
In most jurisdictions the standard of care for operation and maintenance of education facilities is discovered and promulgated by a “fabric” of consensus products developed by a kind of “shadow government” created by a network of non-profit publishers; among them the International Code Council. The ICC has one of the most dynamic catalogs in the construction industry and today we drill into the the International Property Maintenance Code which completed another revision cycle in 2021. Operation and maintenance of education facilities is the (much larger) part of #TotalCostofOwnership of the real assets of a school district, college or university. Public access to most recent revision to the IPMC is linked below:
Note the concern for swimming pools, radon, light, ventilation and occupancy limits.
The ICC Group A tranche of titles will undergo another cyclic revision starting in 2023. Since so much of the ICC catalog underlies occupancy safety for education, healthcare and nearly all other aspects of the built environment we track the action on a near-daily basis. You may join any of our daily colloquia, shown on our CALENDAR, or interact directly with the ICC with the link below:
The ICC catalog is regarded as the most authoritative for education facility management. We maintain the IPMC on the standing agenda of our Hammurabi and Interiors colloquia. See our CALENDAR for the next colloquium; open to everyone.
ISCED 2011 is an updated version of the previous classification, ISCED 1997, and provides a framework for organizing education programs according to their level of complexity and content. The classification is designed to facilitate the comparison of education systems across countries and regions, and to improve the collection, reporting, and analysis of education statistics.
ISCED 2011 introduces several changes and updates, such as the introduction of a new level of education called “early childhood education,” the expansion of the tertiary education level to include short-cycle tertiary education, and the inclusion of a separate category for vocational education at the secondary level. The classification also includes detailed descriptions of the content and characteristics of each education level, as well as guidelines for classifying educational programs that do not fit neatly into the existing categories.
ISCED 2011 is widely used by national and international organizations, including UNESCO, to collect and report education data, and it provides a common language for discussing education across borders.
Today we dwell on titles that inform management of the education industry in the United States specifically; but also more generally in global markets where the education industry is classified as a Producer and a User of human resources. It is an enormous domain; likely the largest.
Human Resources 100 covers skilled trade training in all building construction disciplines.
Human Resources 200 covers the range of skills needed to manage the real assets of educational settings — school district properties, college and university campuses
When you’re an elementary school principal, you can play at recess any time you want!
Compact Muon Solenoid / European Organization for Nuclear Research
NFPA 1078 Standard for Electrical Inspector Professional Qualifications identifies the minimum job performance requirements for electrical inspectors. Qualifications for electrical inspectors are heavily regulated by state public safety agencies. Many, if not most electrical inspectors are former electricians. This means that part of their career has been spent working as an Labor/Installer/Maintenance stakeholder, and another part of their career has been spend as an Enforcement stakeholder. (See NFPA Classification of Committee Members). This can be a sensitive condition in large research universities that have a resident full-time enforcement staff ; the subject of a separate post.
Free access to the current 2024 edition is linked below:
The 2028 revision is now open for public input. It is always enlightening to follow the transcripts of the previous revision cycles to see what ideas have been in play.
Public input on the 2028 revision will be received until June 4, 2025
We have found that passions are elevated among stakeholders whenever compliance and conformance revenue is involved — i.e. in any consensus product that covers labor (i.e. billable hours).
We include this standard on the standing agenda of our monthly Human Resource, Power and Infotech teleconferences. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting; open to everyone.
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
