Author Archives: curiouscat

The Air We Breathe by Andrea Barrett

The Air We Breathe by Andrea Barrett. Review by, Andrea Barrett:

Andrea Barrett is a lyrical novelist of the American past, giving life to pioneers in science with such resonance that even readers who wrestled mightily with chemistry come away entranced by her evocative accounts of discovery.

The winner of a MacArthur fellowship and the National Book Award (for the 1996 short-story collection Ship Fever) and a Pulitzer finalist (for the 2003 Servants of the Map), Barrett is taken with an earlier time, when the country was much smaller and exploration – pushing boundaries in science, geography and knowledge – mattered far more than it does today. Science moved the country forward and outward, and into the greater world.
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In this age, and in Barrett’s writings, scientists are holding the lamp to lead Americans out of the darkness, and patients away from death. (Curiously, this is the second novel in a year to refer to the diminutive electrical pioneer Charles Steinmetz, a major figure in Starling Lawrence’s The Lightning Keeper, an equally romantic, though less taut and accomplished, novel.)

Popular Mechanics 2007 Breakthrough Award: the Windbelt

Shawn Frayne’s Windbelt Wins Popular Mechanics 2007 Breakthrough Award

Frayne’s device consists of a flat, taut membrane that flutters within its housing as air passes through it. At each end of the membrane are magnets that oscillate between metal coils as the band flutters, effectively creating an electric charge. According to the 28-year-old Frayne, prototypes of the Windbelt have generated 40 milliwatts in 10-mph slivers of wind, making his device 10 to 30 times as efficient as the best microturbines.
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Frayne, now based in Mountain View, Calif., gathered a variety of lessons while studying at MIT, especially under the tutelage of Amy Smith (a 2004 MacArthur fellow) in her “D-Lab” class. In this design lab, Frayne learned the politics of delivering technology to poor nations, as well as the technical aspects of mechanical engineering.

I blogged on Amy Smith another blog awhile back: Engineering a Better World (which includes a great web video). Read about 9 more Breakthrough awards.

2007 Solar Decathlon of Homes

Solar Home on National Mall

The National Mall in Washington DC is hosting the 2007 Solar Decathlon of Homes. The link show many photos of homes and interesting information. The event opened to the public today.

The Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon is a international competition in which 20 university-led teams compete to design, build, and operate the most attractive, effective, and energy-efficient solar-powered house. Every college or university interested in participating wrote a proposal describing how they would organize a team, design and build a house, and raise the funds necessary to have a successful entry. The 20 best proposals were selected and awarded $100,000 dollars from the United States Department of Energy.

The photo shows the Kansas Project Solar House (Kansas State University and University of Kansas) and the Washington Monument in the background.

via: Solar Decathlon Heats Up

New Hearing Mechanism

MIT finds new hearing mechanism

MIT researchers have discovered a hearing mechanism that fundamentally changes the current understanding of inner ear function. This new mechanism could help explain the ear’s remarkable ability to sense and discriminate sounds. Its discovery could eventually lead to improved systems for restoring hearing.
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t has been known for over half a century that inside the cochlea sound waves are translated into up-and-down waves that travel along a structure called the basilar membrane. But the team has now found that a different kind of wave, a traveling wave that moves from side to side, can also carry sound energy. This wave moves along the tectorial membrane, which is situated directly above the sensory hair cells that transmit sounds to the brain. This second wave mechanism is poised to play a crucial role in delivering sound signals to these hair cells.

Related: Solar Powered Hearing Aid

UC-Berkeley Course Videos now on YouTube

About a year ago I posted that UC-Berkeley Course Videos were available on Google Video. Well now the
Berkeley YouTube site includes even more videos of Berkeley lectures. They include those listed on Google Video that I mentioned last year such as Physics for Future Presidents and Search Engines (by Sergey Brin) and more.

They currently have 201 videos posted. Hopefully they will add many more.

Does anyone else have the annoying delay on pages with YouTube videos? My entire browser locks up for probably 15 seconds on average now for any page that has an embedded YouTube video (not always but very often now). I find this very annoying.

Science and Engineering Fellowship Applications Open Now

Some of the science and engineering fellowship applications that are currently open:

2007 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2007

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2007 is awarded for groundbreaking studies in surface chemistry. This science is important for the chemical industry and can help us to understand such varied processes as why iron rusts, how fuel cells function and how the catalysts in our cars work. Chemical reactions on catalytic surfaces play a vital role in many industrial operations, such as the production of artificial fertilizers. Surface chemistry can even explain the destruction of the ozone layer, as vital steps in the reaction actually take place on the surfaces of small crystals of ice in the stratosphere. The semiconductor industry is yet another area that depends on knowledge of surface chemistry.

It was thanks to processes developed in the semiconductor industry that the modern science of surface chemistry began to emerge in the 1960s. Gerhard Ertl was one of the first to see the potential of these new techniques. Step by step he has created a methodology for surface chemistry by demonstrating how different experimental procedures can be used to provide a complete picture of a surface reaction. This science requires advanced high-vacuum experimental equipment as the aim is to observe how individual layers of atoms and molecules behave on the extremely pure surface of a metal, for instance.

2007 Nobel Prize in Physics

Nobel Prize in Physics 2007

This year’s physics prize is awarded for the technology that is used to read data on hard disks. It is thanks to this technology that it has been possible to miniaturize hard disks so radically in recent years. Sensitive read-out heads are needed to be able to read data from the compact hard disks used in laptops and some music players, for instance.

In 1988 the Frenchman Albert Fert and the German Peter GrÃ¼nberg each independently discovered a totally new physical effect – Giant Magnetoresistance or GMR. Very weak magnetic changes give rise to major differences in electrical resistance in a GMR system. A system of this kind is the perfect tool for reading data from hard disks when information registered magnetically has to be converted to electric current. Soon researchers and engineers began work to enable use of the effect in read-out heads. In 1997 the first read-out head based on the GMR effect was launched and this soon became the standard technology. Even the most recent read-out techniques of today are further developments of GMR.

UW Concrete Canoe Team Victorious in the Netherlands

Concrete Canoe Team victorious in the Netherlands

The University of Wisconsin-Madison Concrete Canoe Team dominated the 30th annual Dutch Concrete Canoe Challenge Sept. 7–9 in the Netherlands. The team took first place overall, with victories in five out of the six race categories. The team’s 20-foot, 176-pound canoe, Descendent, also won the construction and innovation categories for its design and use of environmentally sound concrete.

Eight members of the UW-Madison team and their advisor, Civil and Environmental Engineering Associate Professor Chin H. Wu, traveled to Amsterdam for the competition, also known as the Beton Kano Race. The team was invited to compete after winning the U.S. national championship for the fifth consecutive time in June. The UW-Madison team was one of 12 participating teams, most of which hailed from the Netherlands or Germany.

The IT Job Market

The CS/IT job market quotes 3 articles from looking at the IT and computer science job markets in the USA, United Kingdom and Canada. IT Job Prospects and Salaries on the Rise (USA):

CRA reported that computer science graduates were among the highest paid of any major – an average offer of $53,051, which is about a 4.5 percent increase over 2007.
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Network World released a survey… The data shows that pay raises and bonuses for 2006 showed an 11.6% jump on average. Further, the average base salary grew by 5.6% to $86,700. Interestingly the survey noted that experts in security, storage and networking are wanted but hard to find.

See more posts on science and engineering careers and: What Graduates Should Know About an IT Career – Programming Grads Meet a Skills Gap in the Real World – High Pay for Computer Science Graduates (2007) – A Career in Computer Programming – S&P 500 CEOs – Again Engineering Graduates Lead – Science, Engineering and Technology Graduates Paid Well (Ireland)