News & Events

Currently on display at the Engineering Library-

It's Freezing Out There: Engineering in Cold Regions

There is no hard and fast definition of what the boundaries of the cold regions of the world are. In North America a common definition includes areas north of 40 degrees north latitude. For engineers it usually means any area where engineering systems, structures and machines must be designed to take into account cold temperatures. By either definition this includes all of Michigan. Anyone who has lived in Michigan has probably experienced our potholed roads, icy road conditions, a car that did not start on a very cold morning and large heating bills. In areas further north, engineers must deal with building roads and structures on ground that may remain frozen most of the year (permafrost) and machinery that does not function well in the cold. In spite of the difficulties caused by cold temperatures engineers have found ways to help people live and work in the cold regions of the world.

Currently on display at the Engineering Library-

MSU Imagined: Designs for Campus Structures Proposed by MSU Engineering Students But Never Built

In the past undergraduate and graduate engineering students sometimes submitted a design for a campus building or other structure as their thesis. These included proposals such as a design for a men’s dormitory submitted by a student in 1932 and a design for an “electric display fountain” submitted by a student in 1938. Some of these designs were very comprehensive and included detailed drawings of the proposed project, a location, and cost estimates. None of these designs actually resulted in the construction of a building or other structure but in one case, a thesis included in this exhibit described a proposal submitted in 1943 for a railroad bridge to be built over Farm Lane that is in the same area as the railroad bridge over Farm Lane that was completed several years ago. This exhibit highlights the work of five engineering students: Wylie Albert Bowmaster, Donald William Brice, Leo Vaughn Nothstine, Walter Winston Pressley, and Milton Elywn Reeder.

The Engineering Library will be closed on the following Saturdays because the building will be closed during home football games.

Closed:
Saturday, 09/15/12
Saturday, 09/22/12
Saturday, 09/29/12
Saturday, 10/13/12
Saturday, 11/03/12
Saturday, 11/17/11

The Alan Mathison Turing Centenary, June 23, 1912 - June 7, 1954

Alan Turing was a noted mathematician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist. During World War II he worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, Britain’s code breaking center. He was instrumental in their solving of the German Enigma Code. Some of his earlier works in mathematics and logic provided the framework for the development of the modern digital computer. After World War II he also worked on the design of the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) being developed at the National Physical Laboratory in London. Turing is probably most well- known for the Turing Test. The test has proved to be both useful and controversial. In the last the years of his life, 1952 to 1954, he worked in the area of mathematical biology.

Books on display at the Engineering Library:

(These books will be available for checkout after August 17, 2012 when the display is changed. If you would like to borrow a copy any of these books before this date you may place an Interlibrary Loan request.)

Shieber, Stuart M., The Turing test : verbal behavior as the hallmark of intelligence, Cambridge, Mass. : Mit Press, c2004. Location Main Library, Call # Q341.T874 2004
http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b4831937~S39a

Moor, James H. The Turing test : the elusive standard of artificial intelligence, Dordrecht ; Boston : Kluwer Academic Publishers, c2003. Location Main Library, Call # Q341.T87 2003
http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b4857217~S39a

Millican, P.J.R. Machines and thought / edited by P.J.R. Millican and A. Clark, Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1996 Location Engineering Library, Call# Q335,.M33 1996
http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b9351008~S39a

Winston, Patrick Henry. Artificial intelligence, Reading, Mass. : Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., c1992. Location Engineering Library, Call# Q335.W56 1992
http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b3818663~S39a

Bauer, Friedrich Ludwig, Decrypted secrets : methods and maxims of cryptology, Berlin ; New York : Springer, c2000. Location Engineering Library, Call# QA76.9.A25 B38513
http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b3675988~S39a

Budiansky, Stephen. Battle of wits : the complete story of codebreaking in World War II, New York : Free Press, c2000. Location Main Library, Call# D810.C88 B83 2000
http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b3664592~S39a

Mollin, Richard A., Codes : the guide to secrecy from ancient to modern times. Publisher Boca Raton : Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2005. Location Engineering Library, Call# QA76.9.A25 M67 2005
http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b4991690~S39a

Stamp, Mark. Applied cryptanalysis : breaking ciphers in the real world, Hoboken, N.J. : Wiley-Interscience, c2007. Location Engineering Library, Call# Qa76.9.A25S687 2007
http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b5628345~S39a

Turing, Alan Mathison. The essential Turing : seminal writings in computing, logic, philosophy, artificial intelligence, and artificial life, plus the secrets of Enigma, Oxford : Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2004. Location Main Library, Call# Qa7.T772 2004
http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b5147226~S39a

Petzold, Charles. The annotated Turing : a guided tour through Alan Turing's historic paper on computability and the Turing machine, Indianapolis, IN : Wiley Pub., c2008. Location Main Library, Call# QA267.P48 2008
http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b6623627~S39a

ACM Turing Award lectures : the first twenty years, 1966 to 1985. New York : ACM Press ; Reading, Mass. : Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., c1987. Location Main Library, Call# QA76.24.A33 1987
http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b1665937~S39a

Davis, Martin. The universal computer : the road from Leibniz to Turing, New York : Norton, c2000. Location Main Library,
Call# QA 76.17.D38 2000
http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b3697033~S39a

Copeland, B. Jack. Alan Turing's automatic computing engine : the master codebreaker's struggle to build the modern computer, Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2005. Location Main Library, Call# QA75C638 2005
http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b5183120~S39a

Murdocca, Miles. Computer architecture and organization : an integrated approach, Hoboken, NJ : John Wiley & Sons, c2007, Location Engineering Library, Call# QA76.9.A73 M8585 2007.
http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b5309954~S39a

Turing, Alan Mathison. Mathematical logic, Amsterdam ; New York : Elsevier Science, 2001. Location Mathematics Library, Call# QA9.2.T87 2001.
http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b3951962~S39a

Dyson, George. Turing’s cathedral: the origin of the digital universe, New York: Pantheon Books, 2012. Location Engineering Library, Call# QA 76.17.D97 2012.
http://catalog.lib.msu.edu/record=b9370773~S39a

The MSU Libraries now has access to the SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) Digital Library and McGraw-Hill’s AccessEngineering.

The SAE Digital Library provides online access to over 13,000 technical papers published by the SAE from 1990 to the present. Using the advanced search features, the SAE Digital Library can be searched by keyword, author, and SAE paper number. Individual papers can be downloaded and printed.

AccessEngineering provides online full-text access to over 700 McGraw-Hill engineering titles including standard works such as Perry’s Chemical Engineers Handbook, Marks’ Standard Handbook for Mechanical Engineers, and the Standard Handbook for Electrical Engineers. Major engineering subject areas covered include biomedical, chemical, civil, communications, construction, electrical, energy, environmental, green/sustainable, industrial, material science, mechanical, nanotechnology, and optical. The full text of these titles is searchable.