Testing Feedjit

A friend of mine recommended Feedjit as a tool to increase blog traffic. This was backed up by an article I read about Feedjit: “Webmasters report an increase of time spend, number of visited pages per visitor, number of repeat visitors.”

Personally I like the Feedjit Life Traffic Feed feature (right column, at the bottom of this page) because it gives an indication on location and time of the blog’s visitors. On the other hand, I can understand that some people might feel a bit like being part of a “Brave New World”…

Anyway, after -admittedly- not so careful consideration I decided to test the tool on this blog. I am looking forward to learning about your thoughts or reservations.

As promised: The follow-up on “Long time no see”

Finally I can deliver the promised details on the remaining points listed in my post „Long time no see” (link to article):

1. A technological research proposal

We have submitted a research proposal called “Energy efficiency in the regional Ningbo automotive industry” to the University’s Inter Campus Research Development Fund, utilising the international nature of The University of Nottingham by involving the three campuses, Malaysia, China, UK, and associated partners.

The project’s overarching vision is to reduce cost, and energy consumption in manufacturing processes, whilst increasing the fabricated parts’ quality. To proof the concept from a technological point of view, this project focuses on the analysis of energy consumption in an extrusion blow moulding process. An initial industrial case has been selected here in Ningbo to assess the influence of different part design features, and process and equipment configurations on energy consumption.

2. A delegation of the Ningbo Municipal Government

On 05/12/2008 representatives of the municipal government visited UNNC to get an overview of the science and technology research of the University and to learn about the related future plans.  The delegation was led by the Vice-Mayor of Ningbo, who was accompanied by the director of the Science and Technology Bureau, the deputy director of the Personnel Office, the assistant director of the Education Bureau, and the director of the Industry and Science Department.

We prepared a short presentation of the Engineering Division outlining our teaching portfolio (2+2 programmes in Mechanical, Civil, and Environmental Engineering), our research theme “Sustainable Manufacturing” and our planned research activities. As a direct result of this meeting the Science and Technology Bureau supported our first research seminar, inviting local companies to take part. This brings me to my next point:

3. “Research in Green Manufacturing”

I admit the invitation to this workshop has been published (in this blog) on short notice , but then again, here in China things tend to happen/work on very short notice. A summary, containing details about how the workshop went, can be found in this article, which I have written for the University news.

4. Postgraduate open day, 7 Dec 2008

Kuan Yoong gave a presentation about the engineering division, informing potential students and their parents about the advantages of being an engineer. More information about the event can be found here.

5. China mission

The NIMRC research trip has already been described on 29/12/2008.

10h/d

A very interesting approach to greener manufacturing can be found here. VirTex Assembly Services,  an electronic manufacturing services company in Austin, USA, changed from a 5 day week to a 4 day week, increasing the daily worktime from 8 to 10 hours. The benefits have not been quantified yet, however, following gains are expected in terms of the environment:

• less fuel consumption of employees driving to work
• energy saving in the PCB assembly: no powering up of the reflow ovens, savings on airconditioning in the manufacturing area.

In addition, the company has noticed an improvement in productivity and employee morale.

Great start into the New Year

Good friends from Nottingham, UK, Ronaldo and Ann, were visiting us here in Ningbo whilst on their holiday in Shanghai. Ronaldo and I used to work together for the Precision Manufacturing Centre at the University of Nottingham (http://www.precisionmanufacturing.co.uk) whereas Ann is working on fuel cells in the Chemical Engineering Division in Nottingham.

Tianyi Pavilion Library

They arrived yesterday afternoon and I brought them along to say hello to some familiar faces from the UK now working here at UNNC. In addition, we visited the Engineering department and talked about old and new research ideas. Then we went out for a nice Szechuan style restaurant (i.e. very hot food- even for Chinese, as I learned on a few occasions by now), before finishing the evening with some more catching up at home. Today we headed to town for sightseeing, the oldest private library in China, Tianyi square, little street markets and similar, before saying goodbye later in the afternoon.