ASTM Membership Brochure

The benefits of being a member of ASTM are many—from the ability to influence standards development to the career enhancement offered by networking and educational opportunities. ASTM has a new membership brochure that describes these benefits and the three ASTM membership categories: informational, participating, and organizational. If you’re already a member of ASTM, the brochure makes it easy to show colleagues why they may want to join, too. Free brochures are available by contacting Josephine Felizzi, ASTM (fax: 610/832-9623).

New National Engineers Week Project

ZOOM into Engineering is a project designed to excite children about engineering by combining National Engineers Week’s volunteers with the engineering activities from the PBS television show ZOOM. To prepare volunteers to participate in this new initiative for National Engineers Week 2002, co-chairs DuPont and the American Society of Civil Engineers are conducting a one-day National Outreach Summit on Oct. 15 in Washington, D.C. The purpose of this train-the-trainer workshop is to provide proper materials and training to prepare engineers to effectively bring the ZOOM into Engineering outreach program to the local community. At the same time, engineering organizations will be able to build community partnerships with PBS affiliates. Participants should be willing to train their colleagues and other volunteers, as well as to take an active role in planning and implementing ZOOM Into Engineering events during EWeek (Feb. 17-23, 2002), and at other times throughout the year. Contact: Kelly Cunningham (fax: 703/548-8090).

Materials Research Society

The Materials Research Society has announced the 2001-2002 Undergraduate Materials Research Initiative. UMRI is designed to introduce undergraduates to research in materials science and engineering by providing about 40 UMRI grants for projects during the 2001 fiscal year. The deadline for proposal submission is Oct. 15. Contact: Customer Services, MRS (phone: 724/779-3003).

XML Trade Docs

The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) has launched UNeDocs, a new project that aims to integrate the latest electronic data transmission technology to enhance world trade and target the needs of small to medium sized enterprises, developing countries, and countries in transition. Through the use of extensible markup language (XML), a new technology that facilitates data transfer and storage over the Internet, UNECE reports that it has “created a global standard for [the] electronic equivalent of documents used in international trade.” UNECE believes that UNeDocs will “significantly reduce transaction costs and times” for trade documents that are currently transferred in paper format. Developed within a European framework, UNeDocs has the potential to become globally accepted as the standard in trade document transfer. UNeDocs allows traders to exchange their documents by using modern communications technologies.

Medical Design Excellence Awards

The Medical Design Excellence Awards program is now accepting entries into its fifth annual competition. This competition is the only awards program that specifically recognizes contributions to the advancement of medical technology. Entries will be accepted through Oct. 5 (Dec. 17 with late fee). The MDEA competition is open worldwide to companies and individuals involved in the design, engineering, manufacture, or distribution of finished medical devices or medical packaging. For more information on how to enter the competition and for a downloadable entry form, visit the awards Web site at or call 310/996-9497.

Better Baseball Through Research

As the baseball season winds down and pennant races heat up, those fascinated by the science of the sport will be interested in a new addition to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Web site. Titled “NIST and the American Pastime,” this NIST Centennial homepage describes the surprising connections between the federal government’s first physical science laboratory and baseball.

ICC Hires New Government Relations Director

The International Code Council has announced that Sara Yerkes, formerly the National Fire Protection Association’s government affairs director, will join ICC as government relations director. Bringing more than 19 years’ experience in government legislative and regulatory affairs and association management, Yerkes will be responsible for promoting public health safety issues on behalf of the nation’s model code development and enforcement entities primarily to the U.S. federal government. She will also be ICC’s primary liaison between Congress, federal agencies, and national private sector organizations, as well as coordinating ICC’s member organization’s state and local government affairs activities. //

Copyright 2001, ASTM