Last night I caught part of a documentary about over servicing in healthcare. The ordering of unnecessary and sometimes invasive tests. Performance of surgeries and other procedures which aren’t required or which are not scientifically proven to be helpful. And this issue is more or less universal across healthcare in developed countries. It’s a very costly one too. Not just … Read more

Many years ago during my relatively short career moonlighting as an oilfield diver, I was on a salvage job off the North West coast of Western Australia. While operating in shallow water, a 2,500 ton support vessel managed to strike an abandoned oil well. The well head pierced the hull of the ship and opened it up like a sardine … Read more

One of many on-the-drawing-board dilemmas for hydraulic system designers is whether to install a more expensive ball valve in the pump inlet line, a cheaper butterfly valve, or no valve at all.

At the root of this dilemma is the negative effect of turbulence in the pump intake line. The argument for using a ball valve as an intake line … Read more