"The Map" has been a part of Keika Ventures and Eduwhere since day one. It was originally a map glued onto foam board with pins stuck on the countries where we had clients. The pins kept falling out, and it was difficult to put on the website. It was replaced long ago by the new improved map shown here. We love our map. We love our clients. I think it's neat that we have all these connections all around the world.

This time, we've added Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Sierra Leone, Bangladesh, Yemen, and Bahamas, which brings us up to 94 flags on the map. Humbling, as always.

And for the record, our definition of a "country" is if they are recognized by the United Nations or FIFA (that's soccer for our U.S. clients).

We got the thumbs up signal from Proterm in Concepción, Chile that they are OPEN for business after the 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck on February 27, 2010. Who better to diagnose the boilers, dryers, and ovens located in Bío Bío than this fine team of engineers in Concepción.

And just now we've learned Chile has been hit with another earthquake this morning... 7.2 magnitude. We're hoping for another thumbs up signal.

Usually out "en el campo" collecting fruit or water samples, it is rare that the Tecnosoluciones' team is in their San Jose, Costa Rica office all at the same time. They thought they would capture the moment in a picture!

Tecnosoluciones Integrales S.A. works one-on-one with the Central American agricultural sector to ultimately make sure they are bringing to market produce that is acceptable for export to the US and Europe. Towards this end, they are very involved in the growing process, usually getting down and dirty with the growers to not only make sure they have a quality product, but also with time and patience, gaining the respect from the growers to add value in other areas such as environmental monitoring and preservation.

Eduwhere is now an Approved Sponsor of Professional Development Hours (PDH) for North Carolina. Thanks to all the Professional Engineers who took advantage of our free PDH opportunities at the end of the year.

If you need compliance training *and* PDH, take a look at our courses with PDH credit to kill two birds with one stone.

We've received our ABIH course approval numbers for 2010. If you're an industrial hygienist and need compliance training, you might was well get certification maintenance points at the same time.

You can view our ABIH Certification Maintenance Points page to see all of our courses that qualify for CM Points.

Our IATA Dangerous Goods course has been updated for 2010 (51st Ed. of the DGR). If you've completed the course within the past 6 months, you can log back in to review the significant changes.

IATA Dangerous Goods

A new course for the new year! Linda has developed this new battery course to cover both the new and existing requirements for shipping by batteries. And she covers shipping both by ground and by air... it's the proverbial killing of two birds with one stone.

Shipping Batteries (IATA and DOT)

From your friends at Keika and Eduwhere, we wish you the warmest holiday wishes and a happy and safe New Year!

You've heard of Hot Fresh Now... we have Hot Free Now! We've lowered the price of our Fire Safety course to $0. As in free. No strings attached. It's a compliance check box for some folks, an insurance-lowering mechanism for others. And it comes with a free Professional Development Hour (PDH).

Fire Safey

Dr. Alessandro Saccà with the Dipartimento di Biologia Animale ed Ecologia Marina at Università degli Studi di Messina was nice enough to describe his research in Lake Faro, Messina, Italy. Alessandro is using some unusual Teflon bags, not Tedlar, fitted with two different types of valves and two grommits (yes, we do lots of custom bag orders). They are using Teflon as it is more permeable than Tedlar or other films. They are running experiments with the aquatic microbial critters, so the bags must be permeable so small molecules of gas can permeate out. Here's Alessandro's description of his work:

"My study focuses on the microbial food web in anoxic aquatic ecosystems, that is to say how much a microbe eats another microbe and who eats who in an aquatic environment deprived of oxygen. Some aquatic ecosystems are not completely anoxic, but only in their bottom water layer. One of these stratified environments is the Black Sea, which is also the largest of its kind. I am studying what happens in a small version of the Black Sea, a coastal pond in Sicily, Italy, named Lake Faro."

"For doing this I use the Teflon bags as incubation chambers to be kept in situ for an incubation time of typically 24 hours. The bags are first filled with water (and microorganisms therein) from the anoxic layer of the lake, taking care that no contact with atmospheric air occurs. Then they are lowered at the same depth the water was withdrawn from (that is what in situ means) and after a given time their content is studied under the microscope in order to understand and quantify the trophic interactions that took place."

"Teflon bags have a low permeability to gases and they are flat when emptied: no air is inside. I can then connect directly my water sampling instrument to them and fill them avoiding any contact with air, that would be lethal to anaerobic microorganisms. Two bags are generally used, one containing the entire microbial community, including predators which are supposed to be larger than preys, and the other which has been previously screened so as to exclude the larger organisms and thus containing only preys. The difference between what I find in the two bags is accounted for by predation."

Post-doc work on a lake in beautiful Messina, Italy... sounds like a pretty sweet gig to us!

Way back when, in the pre-EPA days, somewhere around 1968, people were just starting to use Tedlar bags to collect automotive emissions samples. The details are a bit foggy...it was still the 60's afterall... But, the first generation bags were sealed with double-sided tape. At some point, one of his off-shore customers decided that he had had enough with the problems posed by the double-sided sticky tape bags and requested that Bill sort out a way to actually heat seal the bags. So, Bill embarked on a mission to come up with the correct 'recipe' for heat sealing this material. After several modifications and tweaks to existing equipment, Bill found the method. And in true engineer form, all the testing was done in his basement with the neighbors quite curious why his lights would dim when he was tinkering downstairs.

Testing the integrity of the bags lead to other ingenious, and curious, experiments: Filling the bags with water and hanging them from the clothesline and filling the bags with air and putting textbooks on top of them to be sure that nothing leaked out. And we wonder why Bill was never invited to the neighborhood 4th of July party?!?

So, today, we have Bill to thank for his hard work and persistence in figuring out how to handle Tedlar. He is currently working with his vendors and customers to fully test and optimize Tedlar's replacement material, Kynar.

Here's a shot of the team in front of their car, Apogee. They're down under for the World Solar Challenge. Wired.com ran a great article with lots of photos on the Apogee and the team. It's a wickedly cool car, and we think it's neat that our pump helped form it.

We've added Italy, Belgium, and Austria to our client map. The wide reach of our small company never ceases to amaze me. This brings us up to 88 flags on the map, and that is truly humbling.

And for the record, our definition of a "country" is if they are recognized by the United Nations or FIFA (that's soccer for our U.S. clients).

We're offering up our newest course for free! It's hard to beat the price, and it's a great way to take our training for a test drive (and pick up PDH credit if you're an engineer). The course isn't meant to be a complete hazardous materials shipping course, but it may help you fill a training gap for you or your personnel.

Link: DOT Security Awareness Training.

Our Tedlar bags are widely traveled. We've sent bags in all shapes and sizes and types of fittings to the far ends of the earth. Here's a client in New Zealand with a slightly different use for our bags:

"We sometimes use them for clean gases, but have mainly used them for incubation of soil, root and soil core samples to collected respired CO2. Evacuating the bags with soil or roots inside is a pretty harsh thing to do to a gas bag. Thankfully the valves and seals have stood up to this abuse."

The Solar Car team at Stanford was nice enough to give us a tour of their shop and even gave me a turn behind the wheel (actually, there's no wheel). All I can say is "Wow!" They have designated the 2005 car as the demo car for dignitaries, sponsors, and other people who can't drive, like me. I was struck by how quiet it was, how well it handled, how fun it was, and how unbelievably uncomfortable and awkward it was :)

Our Rocker pumps made it to the Stanford Solar Car shop in Palo Alto. Sasha emailed us to let us know the vacuum pumps are making life in the shop happier for air breathing mammals:

"We just used the smaller of the two pumps for the first time this weekend. We used it to pull vacuum on a carbon fiber sandwich panel. Everything worked out very nicely, and the shop was indeed smoke free. In general it was a vastly more pleasant experience than our previous pump."

The SSCP team uses the pumps for vacuum forming lots of car parts, from instrumentation panels to the body of the car (top and bottom).

We're super-excited to announce we're sponsoring the Stanford Solar Car Project. The team's president, Sasha Zbrozek, emailed us to say they were in need of Rocker oil-free vacuum pumps and it just so happens we offer Rocker oil-free vacuum pumps. Not only is this great alternative energy research but our Chief Instructional Officer, Linda Reinders Taylor is a Stanford graduate (Civil Engineering, Class of '88).



Website: Stanford Solar Car Project.

Good luck to the SSCP team!