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New Zealand Engineering 1999 March Letters Can public
research! John Raine suggests "...NZ universities strongly encourage a creative mentality in students and the application of their design ideas and research findings in the solution of real-world problems". Currently the creative activity for most university and government researchers is getting government handouts. The nature of the funding and management of universities and government research organisations leads to a confusion about outputs. The standard measurable but meaningless output is publications. The output the provider - ie. the taxpayer who is primarily New Zealand’s non-governmental industries - requires is economic benefit. The bulk of New Zealand’s research money, which is provided to university and government research organisations, goes into creating publications. These have no economic benefit and give no return to the provider. In spite of expenditure of billions of dollars of taxpayer funds on research by government organisations and universities in the past 25 years, the economic benefits to New Zealand have been negligible. The only significant progress has been from private research. The other problem was summarised by the well-known British medical researcher, Professor David Horrobin, who wrote (Lancet 1996; 348: 1293-95) "History suggests a near universal rule - that innovation comes from an unexpected direction, and that it is usually opposed by leading authorities in the field. ...Examples include ... the prevention and treatment of facial eczema in sheep with zinc [in New Zealand] ... All these projects were characterised by expert opposition." It is not surprising that the opposing experts are inevitably government and university scientists. Although PR specialists are engaged to proclaim the converse, government and university science is in reality a powerful brake on progress, as well as a great sink for the taxpayer’s money. The solution is to get the taxpayer out of funding research. Researchers need to fend for themselves, not be dependent on taxpayer funding. The competent will develop economic benefits and the creative will have to find something useful to do. We have the potential to innovate in New Zealand. Let’s be honest about where innovation comes from. Let’s stop our public organisations from wasting vast amounts of taxpayers’ funds. EL Bydder, Hamilton I would like to reply to the comments made by John Raine in his letter in the February issue of NZ Engineering referring to the article about Power Beat International and more specifically the comments he makes about the Alu-X engine that I am working on. His letter deserves my response in that it unfairly brings Power Beat into a dispute that I am having with the University of Waikato. In the original article in the November 1998 issue of NZ Engineering it stated that while I was studying for a PhD at the University of Waikato I had "packed it in". This is not entirely correct so I will explain. Due to the University of Waikato dismissing my doctoral supervisor in September 1997 I have been unable to continue my studies towards a PhD. This is entirely due to the University of Waikato failing to reappoint another supervisor to allow me to continue. In the past 18 months I have been battling with the University in an attempt to find a way of continuing and to avoid losing the last two years of research that I have already completed towards my qualification. In one attempt at finding a solution, I proposed to the University to bring in a supervisor from another university on a contract basis to allow me to finish. During my attempt to find a suitable replacement supervisor, John Raine at the University of Canterbury seemed to express interest. Communication was made with John discussing possible areas of continuing the project. However, when it became apparent that the project was out of his area of expertise, he withdrew his support. When withdrawing his support John made various unsubstantiated comments regarding me and the Alu-X engine. In all the communications with John he has never seen any design details of the engine, nor has he seen the working prototype. He appears to be critical of my design without even seeing it. I therefore feel that John’s comments in NZ Engineering are more politically biased than scientifically based. I hope that this explains the situation and removes any further negative comments about Power Beat International. While Power Beat is having some problems at present it is still one of the most innovative companies and has filed the largest number of patents in New Zealand. Peter Savage, Hamilton "When I was approached to assist with supervision of Peter Savage's PhD project I advised that, while this was in fact within my area of expertise, it would be unlikely that other commitments would allow me time to get involved. I later met Peter Savage and Professor Richard Price at Waikato University to discuss how the project might proceed, and visited the Power Beat factory where I viewed prototype extruded and machined Alu-X engine components at close quarters with Peter Savage. He appears to have forgotten this. My concerns mostly related to shaping an appropriate PhD project in engine design and development for a student whose undergraduate degree was not in mechanical engineering. My comments on Power Beat's laudable efforts with an innovative engine related to questions of structural stress, vibration, areas of detail design integrity, emissions, and to the need to verify the reduction in manufacturing cost that the extrusion process is intended to achieve. These comments were impartial, scientifically based, and drew on my own experience in engine design. My comments here and in New Zealand Engineering, February 1999, have largely been in response to being incorrectly reported. I have at no point specifically expressed support for, or withdrawn my support from, this project. I am, however, withdrawing from this correspondence and simply wish Peter Savage and Power Beat success with the Alu-X engine. John Raine, Professor and Head of Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Canterbury This correspondence is now closed - Editor Choice
for whom? Whilst not the prime focus of the article, the reader is lead to believe that, from 1 April, domestic electricity customers will be freely able to choose between different retail companies. Unfortunately this is not the case, and for many domestic customers, this may not be the case for quite some time. A major problem lies with electricity meters, or more specifically, the owner of electricity meters. Many network companies have sold, along with their retail and generation activities, their revenue meters, creating new incumbent retailers. For domestic customers in this situation, to change retailers, the new retailer will have to either rent/buy the existing meter(s) from the incumbent or install a replacement meter(s).Quite obviously incumbents will ensure that such meter rentals/sales are priced to protect their existing customers. However, installing a new meter(s) is not much better. At around $200 a meter (installed), retailers will be hard pushed to recover this sort of money from the average domestic customer inside 2-3 years, in which time the customer may decide to change retailer anyway! Perhaps Max Bradford could regulate meter owners as they appear to have "a natural monopoly"!?! Paul Vaughan,Westland In reply to Andy Buchanan’s article April 99, I wish to put another view and reason why we designers "take pride in designing to the limit". In particular I refer to earthquake design. Consider how many millions of dollars have been expended in NZ on design against almost nonexistent earthquakes. If we as professional engineers have a concern about public safety, injury or loss of life, or loss of property, should we instead be focusing our efforts where daily losses are real and massive? Would a better target be our public road system? I suggest that, even after the "big one", which may be an excuse rather than a future event, the cumulative losses from road accidents may still far outweigh the losses from earthquakes. Would not the excess design effort and construction costs to "earthquake proof" buildings and facilities be better spent on divided highways, grade separated intersections, safe sight distances, super-elevated corners. (positive not negative super-elevation as we have in some recently designed arterial roads)? Then we could look at the safety of vehicles. We could look at bull bars and rigid structural steel vehicle attachments that negate the crumple zone safety design features of vehicles. As building designers, we have Codes and Standards that require compliance to resist events that very few of us or our generations of ancestors in this country have ever experienced. Yet the events of daily occurrence on our roads are seemingly without meaningful or effective regulations. Our roading and traffic engineers probably have sophisticated methods to decide where a white line becomes yellow and where the yellow line becomes double. We all know how effective these road markings are to reduce the occurrences or effects of head-on encounters. Perhaps we could paint coloured lines on our buildings to limit the intrusion of seismic forces. Who could argue that this procedure would not be much more cost effective than the present design requirements. The above comments are not intended to be entirely tongue in cheek. Peter Kennedy, Auckland |
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