Saturday, December 28, 2019

4 Ways to Protect Yourself From a Layoff

4 Ways to Protect Yourself From a Layoff4 Ways to Protect Yourself From a Layoff Whether because of mergers, downsizing, or organizational shifts, each year, countless workers inevitably find themselves losing their jobs through no fault of their own. It happens to the most seasoned and dedicated among us, and thats perhaps the scariest thing about getting laid off - no one is immune. That said, there are certain steps you can take to minimize your chances of getting laid off, and reduce your anxiety along the way.Though soft skills - those that apply to virtually any position - are always a good thing to work on, at the end of the day, youre probably notlage going to get to keep your job in a round of layoffs by virtue of your solid time-management ability alone. Thats why it pays to work on honing one particular skill you know your company absolutely needs. If youre an IT professional, maybe its a complex software thats needed to keep the workflow going. If your e a designer, maybe its that cutting-edge graphics program thats been giving your company its competitive edge. No matter what skill youre best suited to focus on, if you set yourself apart as the one person whos an expert in that arena, your company might hesitate to give you the boot.Maybe youre the best copy director your company has ever seen. But if your knowledge base is limited to effective sales pitches, and youre not well-versed in market research, finances, or analytics, then you might still find yourself out of a job if your company is forced to slash positions. On the other hand, if you make an effort to educate yourself on all aspects of the business, your company will have a much harder time letting you go.How do you get there? Sit in on other teams meetings, and ask to collaborate with various groups on recurring projects. The more exposure you get to different areas of your company and how they work, the more your management team might end up fighting to keep you.Its no secret that networking has been proved to help countless searchers land jobs, but many people find themselves networking defensively - that is, they only start reconnecting with contacts once theyre out of a job and need help. But if you make a point to stay in solid touch with your associates regularly, youll protect yourself in the face of layoffs in two ways.First, if you network extensively within your company, youll have more people around to speak highly of you, which might spare you from getting the ax. Second, if you have associates you contact regularly, you wont come across as taking advantage by reaching out for help if you are indeed let go. Or to put it another way, its a lot easier to ask a favor of someone youre in touch with regularly than to sneak up as a blast from the past wanting assistance.Having more money in the bank wont do a thing to help you avoid losing your job. What it will do, however, is buy you some peace of mind that if you are let go, you wont have to immediately resort to credit card debt just to keep up with your finances. Having that stress removed might, in turn, help you focus better at work, thus reducing your chances of landing on the chopping block. Plus, if you are laid off, youll be less pressured into taking the first job you find because youre desperate for money.Though layoffs are sometimes inevitable, there are things you can do to lower your odds when your company is going through them. If anything, working on the above suggestions will give you someplace to focus your energy so youre not utterly fixated on the thought of losing your job.This article was originally published on The Motley Fool . It is reprinted with permission.

Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Two New ASME Journal Editors Named

Two New ASME Journal Editors Named Two New ASME Journal Editors Named Two New ASME Journal Editors NamedKenneth C. HallKenneth C. Hall, Ph.D., and Wilson K.S. Chiu, Ph.D., were recently named as the editors of the ASME Journal of Turbomachinery and the ASME Journal of Fuel Cell Science and Technology, respectively. They each began their five-year terms as journal editors on July 1.Dr. Hall, an ASME Fellow, is the Julian Francis Abele Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science in the Edmund T. Pratt Jr. School of Engineering at Duke University. He is a recognized expert in computational unsteady aerodynamics and aeromechanics of turbomachinery, with additional research interests in helicopter aerodynamics, flapping flight, and dynamics. A former vice president and treasurer for the ASME International Gas Turbine Institute (IGTI), Hall has served as a reviewer for a number of journals, including the ASME Journal of Turbomachinery, the AIAA Journal, the Journal of Fluid a nd Structures, and the Journal of Computational Physics.The Journal of Turbomachinery publishes archival-quality, peer-reviewed technical papers that advance the state-of-the-art of turbomachinery technology related to gas turbine engines. The broad scope of subjects covered in the journal includes the fluid dynamics, heat transfer and aeromechanics technology associated with the design, analysis, modeling, testing and performance of turbomachinery, with an emphasis on gas-path technologies associated with axial compressors, centrifugal compressors and turbines. Wilson K.S. ChiuDr. Chiu, also an ASME Fellow, is a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Connecticut, where he has been a faculty member since 1999. His research, supported by government agencies and industry, focuses on heat and mass transfer with chemical reactions, with applications to materials for sustainable energy applications (fuel cell, battery, CO2 gas separation membrane, electrolyzer and sola r cell), carbon nano-materials, photonics, and semiconductors. An active ASME volunteer, Chiu is a past chair of the ASME Advanced Energy Systems Division, a member of the Edward F. Obert Award and Soichiro Honda Medal Committees, and the 2006 recipient of the ASME Bergles-Rohsenow Young Investigator Award in Heat Transfer.The Journal of Fuel Cell Science and Technology publishes peer-reviewed archival scholarly articles, research papers, technical briefs and feature articles addressing all aspects of the science, engineering, implementation, and manufacturing of fuel cells of all types, as well as fuel cell case studies involving examples of real-life systems.For more information on the ASME Journal program, visit the ASME Digital Collection at http//asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/journals.aspx.

Thursday, December 19, 2019

Switching to electric vehicles could save the US billions, but timing is everything

Switching to electric vehicles could save the US billions, but timing is everythingSwitching to electric vehicles could save the US billions, but timing is everythingF. Todd Davidson, University of Texas at Austin Dave Tuttle, University of Texas at Austin Joshua D. Rhodes, University of Texas at Austin, and Kazunori Nagasawa, National Renewable Energy LaboratoryToday, less than 2 percent of the vehicles Americans buy are electric. But within the next three decades, some automotive industry experts expect electric vehicles could make up the majority of U.S. and global car sales.All told, American drivers log about 3 trillion miles per year, consuming more than 170 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel in the process. Converting all those road miles to electricity would place new demands on the nations system for producing and delivering electricity.As part of a major energy infrastructure study, we are seeking to understand how an increase in electric vehicles (EVs) might change how energy is supplied and consumed. So far, we have figured out the impact of electric vehicles will depend on where you live and when they are charged.Estimating how much electricity EVs will demandUsing a similar technique featured in our recent paper on hydrogen vehicles, we developed a state-by-state assessment of the amount of electricity that would be needed to charge an electrified fleet of personal cars, trucks and SUVs.We started by estimating the amount of gasoline every county consumes today. We then converted vehicle miles traveled into electricity requirements based on the efficiency of todays EVs.Admittedly, these methods have limitations. The number of miles traveled could change significantly if autonomous vehicles become commonplace and more people rely on Uber, Lyft and other vehicle sharing services, for example. However, we believe our approach provides a good starting point for estimating future electricity demand if EVs become the norm.Regional impactsThe U.S. el ectric grid has continually evolved to accommodate new demands throughout the last century. But if the nations vehicles were to rapidly become electric, the grid would need to change faster. Depending on local driving habits and the grid infrastructure thats already in place, our analysis shows that EVs will have different impacts in different regions.Since Texas and California consume more electricity than any other states, they provide a good snapshot of what a future filled with electric vehicles might look like. In both cases, an increase in EVs would drive consumption higher, with the potential to strain local infrastructure.If virtually all passenger cars in Texas were electrified today, the state would need approximately 110 more terawatt-hours of electricity per year the average annual electricity consumption of 11 million homes. The added electricity demand would result in a 30 percent increase over current consumption in Texas.By comparison, because of a more temperate cl imate, California might require nearly 50 percent more electricity than it currently consumes if passenger vehicles in the state were fully electrified. That means California would need to generate an additional 120 terawatt-hours of electricity per year.A tale of two gridsA look at the two states grids demonstrates how reliance on EVs for mobility could vary from place to place.On hot summer afternoons, Texas uses about half of the electricity it generates to power air conditioning to keep buildings cool. The large seasonal variations in electricity demand due to air conditioning means the state has power plants that sit idle throughout many hours of the year. The spare capacity during off-peak hours could make it easier for Texas to meet future electricity demands of EVs.Californias more temperate climate means the state needs less electricity on summer days, and less demand variability on the grid overall. As a result, California has less generation capacity available than Texas to meet future charging demands from electric vehicles.In 2018, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the organization that manages most of Texass electric grid, hit a new peak demand of roughly 73 gigawatts on July 19. Looking at the off-peak hours for July 19, 2018, we found the ERCOT grid had spare capacity to provide more than 350 gigawatt-hours of additional electricity if idled power plants continued to operate throughout the day, not just during peak demand.Based on our estimates, the charging requirements for a fully electrified fleet of personal cars in Texas would be about 290 gigawatt-hours per day, less than the available surplus of generation capacity. In other words, the Texas grid could theoretically charge a fully electrified vehicle fleet today if vehicles were charged during off-peak hours.When we did the same analysis for California, however, we found that if EVs become the norm, it could push the total demand for electricity beyond the existing capacity of t he Golden States grid.Timing is everythingPerhaps even more important than how much electricity EVs would consume is the question of when it would be consumed.We based the above estimates on optimal, off-peak charging patterns. If instead most EVs were to be charged in the afternoon, the electricity grid would need more generation capacity to avoid outages.To meet that demand, California and Texas would need to build new power plants or buy more electricity from neighboring states than they already do. The states might also need additional transmission and distribution infrastructure to accommodate new automotive charging infrastructure.All told, the transition to EVs from internal combustion engine vehicles could potentially cost tens of billions of dollars in Texas and even more in California to install new electricity infrastructure if many vehicles were to be charged during peak hours.Incentives could reduce what it will cost to equip the grid for lots of electric vehicles. For example, utilities could charge different rates for electricity during different times of day and on different days of the week. Known as time-of-use pricing, this practice can encourage vehicle charging when electricity is more abundant during off-peak hours and therefore cheaper to supply.California and other areas, including Austin, Texas, have already begun to use different strategies for implementing time-of-use rates. Other regions might want to watch closely, and adopt the lessons learned in those places as the number of electric vehicles on the road rises.The road aheadWhile EVs might increase the amount of electricity the U.S. consumes, the investment required to accommodate them may be smaller than it appears. Many regions already have sufficient generation capacity if vehicles are charged during off-peak hours. The energy storage on board EVs could provide the flexibility needed to shift charging times and help grid operators better manage the supply and demand of electri city.Whats more, based on our calculations, the money Americans would save in fuel costs alone could offset these investments.For example, had most of Californias vehicles been electric by 2017, we estimate that its drivers would have saved around US$25 billion that year in fuel costs based on the average prices for electricity and gasoline.In addition to fuel savings, some market analysts expect electric cars to be cheaper than conventional vehicles by 2026, another potential economic benefit.While its challenging to predict the future prices for gasoline, electricity and vehicles, we believe it is likely that the widespread use of EVs would reduce the overall costs of transportation in California and elsewhere. These savings are even greater if the environmental benefits, especially lower carbon emissions, are taken into account.F. Todd Davidson, Research Associate, Energy Institute, University of Texas at Austin Dave Tuttle, Research Fellow, The Energy Institute, University of T exas at Austin Joshua D. Rhodes, Research Fellow of Energy, University of Texas at Austin, and Kazunori Nagasawa, Postdoctoral Researcher, National Renewable Energy LaboratoryThis article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.You might also enjoyNew neuroscience reveals 4 rituals that will make you happyStrangers know your social class in the first seven words you say, study finds10 lessons from Benjamin Franklins daily schedule that will double your productivityThe worst mistakes you can make in an interview, according to 12 CEOs10 habits of mentally strong people

Saturday, December 14, 2019

The Benefits of Dog-Walking Jobs for Kids

The Benefits of Dog-Walking Jobs for KidsThe Benefits of Dog-Walking Jobs for KidsAny child who loves pets and wants to make some pocket money might be excited to take on a dog-walking job, and its a great option to consider since childrenunder 14 havelimitedemployment opportunities. That dog-walking youngster may one day become a veterinarian, open up a grooming business, run an animal shelter, or take on some other related business or career. But just as pet-sitting jobshave their pros and cons, sodo dog-walking jobs. The Pros Dog walking often pays more money than pet sitting and can become a regular jobfor your child if she bonds with the right four-legged client. Because dogs are very common household pets, your child may easily find families in need of a dog walker. Another advantage is that dog walking makes a great job both in the summer and as anafter-school job. Its a fun way for kids and dogs to stay fit, plus it wonttake up a large parte of the day either, leaving tim e for kidsto do their schoolwork or extracurricular activities. Dog walking is also attractive because it doesnt require a lot of money to get started, though it would be wise to purchase a spare leash or harness, a good supply of plastic poop bags, and a water bottle and portable bowl to keep the pups hydrated. Finally, dog walking is available to kids of various ages- and older kids can take on two different clients at once, doubling their income. In addition to these benefits, the job itself offers valuable lessons and helps develop skills such as reliability (by showing up every day), maintaining a schedule, organization (managing clients), responsibility, learning to negotiate pay rates with clients, budgeting, and buying supplies. The Cons Its not all fun and play, however, and there are some downsides- and even dangers- worth considering. Children should walk dogs in well-lit and well-populated areas that they know well, keeping an eye out for aggressive dogs, fast-moving bicycles, and cars. When your child lands a new client, check to see whether the dogs size works for your child. A strong or heavy dog that can pull harder than your child can handle might create a problem when a squirrel, scooter, or skateboarder whizzes by. A child who walks dogs daily cant just call in sick. Fido will still need to get his walk in. Make sure your child has a friend or sibling lined up for emergencies, or you might be stuck walking the dog. Youll also need to make sure your child knows that cleaning up after the dog is part of the job. Yourchild should always carry plastic bags to pick up dog poop and walk routes where theres at least one trash can in which to deposit the waste. Children should also understand how to keep dogs cool to prevent overheating in hot weather, prevent dogs from running into the street, and give other dogs and their owners a wide berth until they know both dogs are friendly. Dogs may also need to be walked in when its cold, snowing, or r aining. Its therefore a good idea for kids to know some basic first aid for dogs, such as how to treat a dog that gets a cut on its paw. Getting Paid You can help your child start researching by directing them to the website Care.com, which can give them the going rate for dog walkers by zip code. Theyll likely earn less than professional or certified dog walkers though, who charge anywhere from $15 or $30 an hour up to $50 an hour. Your child can also call around and get quotes from others who offer the service to determine the going rate in your area.

Monday, December 9, 2019

The Ugly Side of Rsums

The Ugly Side of Rsums The One Thing to Do for Rsums When youre prepared to put in an application for a new position for a shift leader, its essential to be sure your resume is as snazzy as possible. Many times, the claims are true, but they could be exaggerations. If youve got strong customer service abilities and you love leading teams, a position for a Subway shift leader could be ideal for you. Over the last few decades, there have been many precedents of men and women in senior roles stripped of their titles, jobs, reputation and remunerations as a consequence of offering false details on their resumes. Use these seven simple actions to create a resume to continue to keep yours current and prepared to send if you receive a call from a recruiter, or find work that youd really like to get hired for and wish to apply for it immediately. Individuals are definitely the most important asset an organization has and insight into a prospective candidates history and background is e ssential to finding the most suitable hire. While its too early to choose a frontrunner, the lobbying has begun. It supplies the hiring manager a summary of the qualifications youve got for the job for which youre applying. Mike has lots of experience doing it, she explained. Youve got to create the calls. Think about a woman whos a customer-service rep, a person who answers incoming calls and aids customers with problems. Actually, get aelendher buddy to read it. Its nearly not possible to determine potential when everyone only promotes whatever is needed by the position. No matter your approach, your target is going to be to generate a chronological collection of experience thats related to the jobs youre applying to. Rogers said Evans brings plenty of experience to the hard work both concerning gardening practices and helping youth develop their potential. Once employers know your work objective and certification, theyll want to learn your educational background. Refer rals help cut the expenses involved with the recruitment procedure and are largely more dependable. A Career Objective is valuable if youre applying to a specific position and ready to tailor your objective particularly for that function. Identify Target Employers Before you look for a job, understand your variety of alternatives. Dense blocks of text are hard to read and boost the time hiring managers wish to spend reviewing rsums. With half of HR managers saying they spend, typically, under a minute reviewing each application, that may be a sensible move occasionally. Throughout the summertime, theres a steady stream of music job positions published in several sources, finally abfluging to taper off in September. Your resume is among the most significant parts of your job application. Hamilton county criminal records If you dont get a favorable background check, simply let them know that theyre not accepted. Since you can see from the aforementioned examples, South Carolin a public records arent likely to contain any personal information thats a crystal clear privacy violation. Then maybe some day an auto, and perhaps even his own home. The Good, the Bad and Rsums This vague information isnt enough to decide. This sort of wording can suggest that the applicant might not have the true experience he claims or that his experience is more limited than you will need. Whichever resume format you pick, stay true to your specific nature and work experience for the best outcomes. These roles require an exact technical background and specific skill set, therefore its crucial to highlight your expertise and capabilities at the start of the resume. In many instances, your resume is the very first document a hiring manager will examine when reviewing your program, and therefore is an actual first impression. An expert screening service provider can bring to light information a candidate may not volunteer, which makes it critical to the recruitment practice. Utilizing pre-employment assessments to locate the hidden potential that you cant see in the conventional hiring procedure is crucial. Whatever They Told You About Rsums Is Dead Wrong...And Heres Why Your book gave me the secret to a door to the world which I had been staring at my whole life, but I didnt understand how to open. If you wish to locate your own direction or only require the motivation to move forward, Richies book can provide help. Otherwise, you might want to find extra help with your rsum writing. Regardless of the kind of resume you opt for, aim to tailor your resume to the job which you are applying to. Thus, youve got to look at your functions signature to fix the issue. A tiny work beforehand can help the procedure go more smoothly and to your benefit. Do your research and know the sort of job interview youre going to be encountering.

Wednesday, December 4, 2019

New Ideas Into Write! Never Before Revealed

New Ideas Into Write Never Before Revealed Write about what it is that youre excited about, because the ideal writing tends to reveal a bit of yourself anyway. A superb strategy for making a strong thesis is to prove that the topic is controversial. If you would like to be seen, you probably need to file your work to a publication. The free version is good. The One Thing to Do for Write Most people today believe that there has to be some type of trick to it. Youre searching for keywords that a whole lot of people are searching for, but not ones that absolutely everybody is writing about. Just keep in mind that you will need to do what works for you You must be the goofy awkward guy that everybody falls in love with. It is possible to either scroll down or pick a URL to a particular topic. You are able to find one which you want, click the small hyperlink icon, and grab the GIF connection. A follow-up email isnt a cold email. You may be taken aback at how frequently st udents obtain their professors name wrong. What You Should Do to Find Out About Write Before Youre Left Behind The world wide web is full of some typical knowledge information that folks swear by. When thinking of a short article, think about something that numerous individuals search for in searches. Everyone would like to understand how they can receive their articles noticed in the endless expanse thats the web. Youre able to write about whatever you want, but do make sure its a superior article. The Truth About Write You want to compose the data puddle out to S3 for straightforward access. Spark will optimize the range of partitions dependent on the range of clusters as soon as the data is read. Importing your content is remarkably straightforward. The Good, the Bad and Write The repartition method may be used to improve the range of partitions also. If youre employing a keyword tool, Id recommend that you wish to remain in the center of the street. It is possib le to also make individual bequests of particular parts of property or cash amounts to individuals besides your named heirs. Writers dont look a particular way. Readers have to be able to realize that your paper has one principal point. They will be interested in reading the rest of the essay to see how you support your point. Your reader wont be in a position to distinguish the point of the statement, and will most likely quit reading.