The first race in the ten-race electric Formula E series ended with a crash this past Saturday in Beijing. e.dams-Renault driver Nico Prost held the lead toward the end of the race, but as he approached the final lap, Venturi driver Nick Heidfeld passed Prost on the inside. Prost bumped Heidfeld, sending the Venturi car into a crash barrier and into the air. After landing upside down, Heidfeld scrambled out of the car and accosted Prost. Audi Sport ABT driver Lucas di Grassi passed the pair and took first place. Continue reading Formula E Opens With A Crash
Category Archives: IEEE Spectrum
Mexico Opens Its Grid to Competition
As part of a wider reform of its energy market, Mexico is privatizing its energy regulator and will begin allowing private companies to sell energy to, and add capacity to, its electricity grid. The country’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, enacted the laws (English summaries) on Monday, August 11th (Spanish pdf). Petroleum and electricity have been state monopolies in law since the 1917 constitution and in practice since the late 1930s, when Mexico succeeded in expropriating foreign energy firms’ holdings.
What Do Women in Engineering Want?
For years, psychologist Nadya A. Fouad of the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee has been asking women in engineering what they want. She and organizational psychologist Romila Singh, also at U-W Milwaukee, conducted a National Science Foundation-supported survey asking over 5,000 female engineers their reasons for leaving—or staying—in the field. On Saturday, 9 August, at the American Psychological Association annual meeting in Washington, D.C., Fouad presented their latest analysis of that data. Those who leave, she reports, turn out to be just as confident and successful as those who stay. They may, however, be more likely to have encountered belittling or undermining from colleagues and a lack of support from their supervisors.
“I really want the narrative to not just be: ‘Women don’t have confidence, women need to lean in,'” Fouad says. “With all the will in the world, if the climate doesn’t change, women can lean in, but they will still get pushed back.”
Google Explains How It Forgets
Google can forget, but unlike the rest of us, the process is not automatic.
Yesterday Google told a European government data protection working party how it handles requests for search result link removals. The removals began in June after a May European court ruling (see our coverage) upholding a Spanish man’s right to be forgotten.
Continue reading Google Explains How It Forgets