GE & NASA to Test Hybrid Jet Engine

Craig Rubens on October 25, 2008

GE Aviation (s GE) and NASA are teaming up to test an “open rotor” jet engine design that puts the fan blades on the outside of the engine, which they say could reduce jet fuel consumption by more than 30 percent. GE and NASA actually designed the engine and developed it into a product — the GE36 — in the 80s, but say they never commercially released it because of falling oil prices.
In the face of high fuel costs this year they have decided to revive the engine design and plan to start wind-tunnel tests in early 2009 at NASA’s Glenn Research Center where the original testing of the GE36 took place. Initial testing of the open rotor design will focus on fan configuration performance and acoustics. GE and NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate are jointly funding the program.
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Rohati Launches Security Appliance for Compliance

Stacey Higginbotham on May 19, 2008

Today, a new data center appliance launches from San Jose, Calif. startup Rohati Systems. The appliance monitors the flow of traffic in the network and uses information gleaned from the data packets to enforce various entitlement and authorization limits for a company, such as allowing only certain employees to access HR data or others to get a hold of financial information.

There are other ways to attack this problem, such as ensuring compliance for each one of hundreds of programs, but Rohati does it more efficiently, and according to CEO Shane Buckley, without adding a lot of lag time. Since this type of compliance is a big deal in a post-Sarbanes-Oxley world, Rohati’s appliance could find a place in the corporate data center, competing against the likes of Securent, Bayshore Networks and Jericho Systems. Read More about Rohati Launches Security Appliance for Compliance