For more than 30 years, the oil, gas and chemical process industries have successfully used virtual design and construction to ensure engineering and procurement specifications are in order, and all clashes are resolved before construction begins on the enormous, complex and expensive facilities the industry requires. But VDC, as a planning and construction management tool made necessary by the high stakes and great risks involved in the creation of the plants, turns out to be not enough. Plants are undergoing constant maintenance, refurbishment and change. Keeping on top of the activity and associated data is of vital importance to keep

For more than 50 years, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has extended the frontiers of human experience, with audacious landings on the moon, the research of Skylab, the far-seeing eye of Hubble and the reduction of space travel to something so routine a successful space-shuttle launch rates little more than a minute of the evening news. Now, NASA is exploring a frontier it has never encountered before: possible budget shortfalls. When NASA shuts down the shuttle program next year, astronauts wanting to do their part on the International Space Station will have to hitch a ride on a Russian

No one has misplaced Guantanamo Bay, but the half-century-old U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba has made the Communist-ruled island nation “terra incognita” on the world’s telecommunications map. The White House’s new policy of opening the door to travel and telecommunications links with Cuba could soon sketch in the country. Branching units on cables will permit connection to Cuba. “I think there’s a tremendous potential opportunity there,” says Tom Soja, Boston-based vice president of Ocean Specialists Inc., an engineer and contractor for subsea cables. Fiber-optic cables snake all around and through the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. But

Researchers in Blacksburg, Va., are testing snakelike robots that may prevent slips and falls. The Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory at Virginia Tech unveiled them last spring and has been racking up awards since, most recently last month at a Korea design fair where the 3-ft-long critters took the grand prize. Photo: Virginia Tech Robot that crawls, twists and rolls is designed to work at heights. “These are really wicked cool robots,” says Dennis Hong, lab director, adding that the robots are designed to climb scaffolds, buildings and other high places that might pose risks to construction workers. Using built-in sensors