3 specific areas of safety and health information, personal protective equipment, heat stress and reduction, and prevention of silica exposure are the focus of a renewed alliance between U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the American Foundry Society (AFS). OSHA made 6 other alliances in April. www.osha.gov, www.afsinc.org

9 short steps (data fields, pull-down menus, and buttons) allow users to benchmark occupational injuries, including those in manufacturing, by using the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics Incidence Rate Calculator and Comparison Tool. http://data.bls.gov/IIRC/

7 plastic forming methods are listed at the Society of the Plastics Industry site. Five are: injection molding, blow molding, thermoforming, transfer molding, and reaction injection molding. Can you guess the other two? www.plasticsindustry.org/industry/process.htm

1,400 pages are in “War and Peace” (WAP); 1 million lines of code (MLOC) stretches over 17,000 pages, or 12.14 WAPs. In comparison, Microsoft Vista Beta 2 operating system was 50 MLOC, or 607 WAP; XP is 40 MLOC (486 WAP); Red Hat Linux 7.1 distribution is 30 MLOC (364 WAP); Mac OS X 10.4 is 86 MLOC (1,044 WAP); and Debian 4.0 Linux distribution is 283 MLOC (3,436 WAP), according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_lines_of_code and www.greenhillssoftware.com.

4 areas of the “Engineer Your Life” Website encourage high school girls to look more closely at engineering careers: Why Engineering; Meet Inspiring Women; Find Your Dream Job; and Making It Happen. Just 20% of engineering undergraduates are women; 10% of the engineering workforce is female. www.engineeryourlife.org

10 business commandments from 1929 include “accuracy.” Nine other bits of advice still relevant today can be found in vol. 4, iss. 1, of “The Way We Were” at www.samgeist.com/written_quickbites.shtml

8 basic areas of occupational safety and health assistance are offered by the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Compliance Assistance Policy at www.dol.gov/compliance/laws/comp-osha.htm

57,695 total drivers were involved in U.S. fatal crashes in 1996, according to a report on young drivers updated in March 2008 from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s National Center for Statistics and Analysis. Technologies that may reduce those numbers for drivers of any age include use of sensors for stability control, safer braking, vision systems for backing up, and collision avoidance. www.nhtsa.gov

18,000 amputations, lacerations, crushing injuries, abrasions, and more than 800 deaths per year are cited by OSHA from employee exposure to unguarded or inadequately guarded machines. An OSHA *eTool focuses on recognizing and controlling common machine-related amputation hazards. www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/machineguarding

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