Soil Reinforcement

J&S Franklin Limited, manufacturers of DefenCell, will be exhibiting at Military Engineering 2010, and offer any of their customers a 15% discount on their Conference Registration Fee. Demonstrations of DefenCell, a multi purpose force protection system, will take place in the Display Area at Military Engineering 2010, which is due to be held at Bayerischer Hof, Munich, Germany, from the 26th to the 28th January 2010. DefenCell's cellular design, combined with the latest geotextile construction technology provides strength, versatility and simplicity.

An engineering class at an all-girls school in Bethesda, Md., is designed to make the male-dominated field more appealing to female students. "It's about taking risks and getting them over the anxiety of always having to be right all the time," said physics teacher Chris Lee. Class projects include building robots and researching bridge disasters. Learn more here.;

Can search-engine-optimized video increase your ranking in Google searches (to Page 1 rank status) by up to 53 times? Some consultants believe so. Learn more here.;

AASHTO’s National Transportation Product Evaluation Program (NTPEP) 2010 meeting will be held 10-14 May 2010 in Orlando, Florida. This marks the 17th annual meeting. Erosion control products and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) pipes are currently scheduled to be discussed in session on May 12. Geotextiles and geosynthetic reinforcement will be discussed in sessions on May 13. Learn more in the agenda (PDF). Learn more here.;

Job: Senior Sales Executive/Asst.Sales Manager. Location: Ahmedabad, Cuttack, Delhi, Mumbai. Company: Garware Wall Ropes Ltd (Geosynthetic Division). Experience: 5-to-8 years. Closing date for application: 17 January 2010. Read more and apply here. Learn more here.;

The influential American transportation organization, AASHTO, has developed a list of the top ten transportation topics that it forecasts will be part of the national conversation in 2010. Constructing safer roads, securing funding, and capacity management are just some of the issues. Read the full list in AASHTO's release.

Steel transmission pipelines going through mountain areas often face significant risks during their construction and service life. One of the biggest challenges is to protect the pipe and its external coatings against mechanical damage from impact and penetration. Vlad Popovici, writing in Pipelines International, looks at how pipes are protected, including through the use of nonwoven geotextiles. Learn more here.;

A reminder that short abstracts of up to 400 words are due by 16 January 2010 for GeoCalgary 2010, which is co-hosted by the Canadian Geotechnical Society (CGS). All abstracts and papers must be submitted electronically using the easy-to-use Online Abstract Submission feature on the GEO2010 web site: www.geo2010.ca. Corresponding authors will be notified regarding abstract acceptance by 26 February 2010. All technical papers must be submitted by 3 May 2010, accompanied by one full delegate registration. Learn more here.;

The Canadian Young Geotechnical Engineers and Geoscientists Conference is a national specialty conference held every three years and aims to create a relaxed environment where young members of the geoengineering and geoscience communities are provided a great opportunity to share technical knowledge and exchange career experiences. The 3rd cYGEGC will be held 16-18 September 2010 in Waterton Lakes National Park, Calgary. Abstracts of no more than 400 words should be submitted in English or French to the Technical Chairs, Matthew Perras and Maureen White, by 1 February 2010. Learn more here.;

Beginning in 2010 TenCate Geosynthetics will be concentrating on the market launch and sales of TenCate GeoDetect® in North America. This monitoring system, based on geotextiles equipped with optical fibers, has already been used in Europe for a few years. The launch in North America will enable the company's global marketing efforts in the field of geotechnology to be coordinated and the continued development of the system to be intensified. TenCate GeoDetect® is the world's first intelligent geotextile. Learn more.

China's Ministry of Transport may invest roughly 5 trillion yuan (USD $732 billion) in the next 5 years in transportation, ports and water conservation and conveyance. Geosynthetics will play an important role. Learn more here.;

The Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) reminds you that it has a new address: SPE Headquarters has moved to a new location. Our address is now 13 Church Hill Rd, Newtown, CT 06470, USA. Learn more here.;

While those levees don't necessarily protect all the people living in the 881 counties that have them, a study for Levees.org by geographer Ezra Boyd concludes that the levees more than pay for themselves when their cost is compared to the investment they protect. Counties with levees account for only 28 percent of the nation's counties and only 37 percent of the nation's land area. But they contain 55 percent of the nation's population, more than 156 million people, according to the study. Learn more here.;

The International Symposium on Geotechnical Engineering, Ground Improvement, and Geosynthetics for Sustainable Mitigation and Adaptation to Climate Change including Global Warming was successfully held 3-4 December 2009 Bangkok, Thailand. The event included 150 speakers, more than 400 pages of proceedings, and attendees and exhibitors from around the world. Dennes Bergado, the conference chair and president of IGS Thailand, has authored a short write up.

Current Past President D. Wayne Klotz, P.E., D.WRE, F.ASCE, the 2009 ASCE President, shares his thoughts about his year in office and what the future holds in a new Q&A with the American Academy of Water Resource Engineers. Klotz talks about the current state of civil engineering, advice for other engineers, some of the memorable moments he experienced, and what he enjoys doing for fun. Read the Wayne Klotz interview at the AAWRE site. Learn more here.;

The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Aviation Administration today announced that Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) will receive a $2.3 million grant from American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds to rehabilitate a runway critical to the airport's capacity. With this grant, all of FAA's Recovery Act dollars have been committed to 360 projects, many of which will remain under construction well into 2010. Significantly, the FAA had anticipated being able to fund 300 ARRA projects, but because of lower-than-anticipated bids, was able to fund 360 projects.

ASTM Committee D35 on Geosynthetics contact Christi Basile (formerly Sierk) has updated her email address. Please contact her at cbasile@astm.org. Learn more here.;

ASTM Committee D35 on Geosynthetics has published a work item, WK26895 "Revision of D5261-92(2009) Standard Test Method for Measuring Mass per Unit Area of Geotextiles." Learn more here.;

Updating flood maps in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, FEMA announced in 2007 that the five Metro East levees protecting the area since the 1940s were no longer adequate. Repairing the levees, county officials were told, would cost $120 million to $180 million. To meet the price tag, officials in Madison, Monroe and St. Clair counties set up an agency - the Southwestern Illinois Flood Prevention District Council - and a new sales tax to fund the project. But two years later, the estimates have soared. According to the Army Corps of Engineers, the price tag could range from $300 million to $500 million. Learn more here.;

Aalborg, Denmark-based nonwovens manufacturer sets up business in South Africa. This is a strategic initiative aimed at giving Fibertex easy access to markets which hold plans for huge future investments in, among other things, infrastructure. From the turn of the year, Fibertex will set up business with a factory in South Africa with a view to manufacturing and marketing needlepunch products -- primarily geotextiles for road works, but also products for the growing South African automotive industry.

Shri Satyaprakash Singh, a regional manager (Polymer Business unit) at Reliance Industries Ltd., delivered an address on "Geosynthetics: Opportunities Ahead" during the mid-November Texcellence 2009 event in Ahmedabad, India. His presentation from the event is available for download to registered users of India-based textile website Fibre2Fashion. Learn more here. Learn more here.;

The International Geosynthetics Society (IGS) has published its fifth edition of "Recommended Descriptions of Geosynthetics Functions, Geosynthetics Terminology, Mathematical and Graphical Symbols." The project provides IGS members and users of geosynthetics everywhere a current base of information for an ever-changing array of products, applications and terminology. Download a copy in PDF today. Learn more here.;

This will be the 10th in a series of conferences organized every four years by the Transportation Research Board (TRB) that focus on recent findings concerning low volume roads. Papers are sought which offer a pragmatic perspective that can be applied by practitioners. Case studies, best practice reviews, and experience-based reports of innovative practices that may not be research, per se, are welcome at this conference. Download the call in PDF.

Permathene's December 2009 Newsletter is now available in PDF. The issues contains a review of conferences and events in 2009, issues raised during the year (such as water infrastructure concerns), an impressive project note with gabions in Sydney, an update on the growing use of gabions in landscape architecture, and baffle curtains in New Zealand. Read the latest from Permathene today. Learn more here.;

From 8-10 June 2010, the American Public Works Association (APWA) will host a conference on sustainability in public works. The event will take place in Minneapolis, Minnesota (site of the 2005 APWA annual conference). And exhibit hall will be available at the conference hotel (the Hilton Minneapolis) and education sessions will focus on key issues such as low-impact development, measuring sustainable return on investment (ROI), selling sustainability politically, success stories, best practices, and much more. Learn more here.;