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At some point in your career, you will probably be asked to provide a recommendation for someone seeking a job.  In today’s tightly contested job market, the personal recommendation is important.  Recruiters receive many applications from equally very qualified candidates.  Reference recommendations from a past employer or a personal contact play a critical role in the decision of who is offered the job.

Read more: Writing Effective and Responsible Job Reference Recommendations

The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which traverses hundreds of miles of some of the most inhospitable terrain on Earth, must be monitored almost constantly for potential problems like corrosion or cracking. Humans do some of this work — surveying the pipeline from the air and inspecting it more closely in the areas that can be easily accessed by roads — but the bulk of it is done by mechanical “pigs,” sensor-laden robots that travel inside the pipeline looking for flaws.

Read more: Power from motion and vibrations

Harvesting electricity from small temperature differences could enable a new generation of electronic devices that don’t need batteries

It can be inconvenient to replace batteries in devices that need to work over long periods of time. Doctors might have to get beneath a patient’s skin to replace batteries for implanted biomedical monitoring or treatment systems. Batteries used in devices that monitor machinery, infrastructure or industrial installations may be crammed into hard-to-reach nooks or distributed over wide areas that are often difficult to access.

Read more: Self-powered sensors