All posts by LL

Acoustic Energy Harvesters Gaining Volume

Where some people hear noise, Jeong Ho You hears energy. “Acoustic energy is everywhere,” he says. And with the help of a tiny resonating chamber, he wants to trap some of that energy and convert it into a low-amperage current for use in small electronic devices. You, a mechanical engineer at Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, will be presenting the results of a computer simulation of a resonating chamber design at next month’s Acoustical Society of America meeting in Seattle. He then plans to build a device to see how his idea holds up in the lab. Continue reading Acoustic Energy Harvesters Gaining Volume

Great European Roadtrip: Going home for the last time…

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Well, I hope it wasn’t my last visit to Madrid, but next time I’ll have little claim to calling it home. After returning our van to the agency I still had a set of keys to a rented flat and a half-used metrocard in my pocket. Next time I visit I’ll have a return ticket to Zurich, instead.

With little to do except wait for our flights out, George and I indulged in tourism. He showed me a used bookstore on c/Lope de Vega and I guided us through a culinary tour that ended at the same champagne bar where we’d toasted the start of our trip. Maybe it was good practice for future visits, when I’ll go back to exploring the city as a guest. Now, in addition to my extensive and welcoming family here, I’ve also got a growing network of friends and colleagues in the city. Living in Madrid this last year just gave me more reasons to visit.

Great European Roadtrip: An error

It was only minutes before I was due to board my flight to Switzerland that I discovered that my flight did not go to Switzerland. The so-called Basel airport is actually located just west of the border with France. Getting to Zurich from there will require another overland border crossing into Switzerland, though this time I’m hoping to avoid the close scrutiny of Swiss border control we experienced outside Geneva last week.

How much jamon serrano am I allowed to bring in, anyway?

Great European Roadtrip: Going home for the first time

As the sun threatened to dip below the hills to the west Saturday afternoon, George and I bade Ximena goodbye and sped east out of Lausanne. We found a French-language DJ on the radio who played creative mashups of pop song vocals with other pop songs’ beats. By the time that radio station petered out, we realized that we were in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. That really brought home for me that for the first time I’ll be living in a place where I don’t speak the language.

Normally when you move house you leave one home and you go to your new home in a one-way journey. This was a little different. I was visiting my new home temporarily and then going back to my old home to return the car. In anticipation of both living here and leaving here we spent our rest day in Zürich engaged in both domestic and touristic activities.

In the morning George and I ventured out in search of ground coffee to use at home and, with the guidance of a helpful local, found the only supermarket within walking distance that opens on Sundays. “Zürich is not very cosmopolitan, though we like to think it is,” shrugged our guide, before dropping us at the entrance. Its people can be hospitable, though, if she was typical. On our return I unpacked my things and Molly took on the laundry, a bit like the first day back home from any other trip.

20110405-074615.jpgIn the afternoon the three of us became tourists and went down to the lakefront promenade to soak up the sun and slurp down some beer. My college buddy Jon, a cosmologist who spends part of his year in Zürich, met us by the lake. Another old friend in a new place. Jon introduced me to Molly when we all lived in Cambridge, so it’s fun that he’s also the first person to show us around our new home.

We celebrated our arrival later that night with an international supper of a Spanish potato omelette and a French garlic-and-rosemary-infused baked Mont d’Or cheese. I believe we toasted in German. Here’s to our new life in Zürich.