Author Archives: curiouscat

Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2007

Top 3 students - Intel ISEF 2007

Jose Manuel Otero realized that science was his goal in 1996, when he went to ISEF with a project on filtering diesel from water using charcoal that he made from leaves and grass. Otero, the son of Spanish immigrants who never finished high school, took first place in the Connecticut state fair and went on to the internationals, winning third place in his division. “I didn’t know I wanted to be a scientist until I got to ISEF,” he says.
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Where students in previous generations built robots in their basements or sampled pond water in the local park, the majority of today’s winning projects showcase research done in a lab under the supervision of a mentor, an academic at a university or corporate research institute. Students get their own portion of the lab’s investigation. If they discover anything of significance, they might be rewarded as a co-author of a paper the professor submits to a journal, or they might share in a patent that the lab takes out on their work. One team project from Stony Brook’s summer program on detecting individual cancer cells by how hard or soft they are is up for a patent and has been submitted to the journal Science.

The top three winners of the ISEF receive a $50,000 scholarship and $4 million in cash and scholarships are awarded. Related: Intel ISEF Awards 2006 – Science Fair Project on Bacterial Growth on Packaged Salads – Amber’s Science Talent Search Blog – Science Fair Directory

USA Losing Brain Drain Benefits

US should act to curb reverse brain drain, India Times:

“Indians are among the best educated of all immigrant groups,” he says, adding that Indians founded more engineering and technology companies in the US in the decade up to 2005 than the next four groups combined-those from Britain, China, Taiwan and Japan. They accounted for 26 percent of all start-ups, about 117,000 jobs and $14 billion in revenue in 2005.

But that trend could be arrested or reversed by a growing phenomenon: Large numbers of skilled Indian immigrants are returning home. Many of them are heading back, Wadhwa says, because of the six-to-10 years it takes for their green cards – or permanent immigrant status – to arrive. “This is a double loss for the US. One is that we lose good people. The second loss is that they will become our competitors,” he notes, adding that this is true for many Chinese, Russian and European immigrants too.
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Unlike in earlier years, Wadhwa doesn’t expect the Indian government, for one, to lobby for easier green cards for its people in the US “Right now, India wants its people to come back home,” he says. “India has gone from a country which was dependent on revenues from foreign workers to one that is booming on its own. It needs all the skilled people it can get.”

I have discussed before that my belief is the USA will not continue to be able to attract as large a percentage of the highly educated and skilled scientists and engineers as they have in the last 30 years. Obviously other countries will take actions that they believe will benefit them and as times change what they seek will change – as they should. In my opinion other countries are doing a better job of encouraging investment in science and engineering excellence. The USA continues to do very well but risks having their positions deteriorate much faster than is expected (especially since some don’t seem to expect any relative deterioration) as others continue to make great strides.

The USA has taken for granted the many advantages of hosting scientific, engineering and related entrepreneurship excellence. As other locations establish centers that can draw the best minds and capital they will get the benefits the USA has grown to expect. Countries that aim to gain these benefits are doing the right thing. And the USA continues to make good progress (the biggest comparative advantage the USA has now is in entrepreneurism and the combination of technology and business) but the competitions continues to grow stronger and the level of performance to remain at the top continues to increase. And if the USA doesn’t respond with appropriate investments and action it will suffer economically.

Chocolate Every Day Will Keep the Doctor Away

We need more news like this: A Bite of Chocolate a Day May Keep Blood Pressure at Bay:

Chocolate lovers can rejoice again: More research has found that the antioxidants in dark chocolate can help slightly lower blood pressure. But the good news comes with a caveat — the chocolate portions have to be limited to 30 calories a day, which works out to slightly more than one Hershey’s Kiss.

Such small amounts of the flavanol-rich cocoa found in dark chocolate “may be a promising behavioral approach to lower blood pressure in individuals with above-optimal blood pressure,” the German researchers reported in their study. Unlimited quantities of chocolate won’t work, they added, because “the potential blood pressure reduction contributed by the flavanols could be offset by the high sugar, fat and calorie intake with the cocoa products.”

Ok, I’ll admit I am eating a bit more than that but I have cut back my Mountain Dew from 2 day a couple years ago to maybe 3 a week now so I figure I have some leeway 🙂 Remember it has to be the dark chocolate with flavanol – given the recent positive press those the packaging usually makes the point of mentioning that the good stuff is included if it is.

Home Engineering: Windmill for Electricity

photo of windmill

William Kamkwamba’s Malawi Windmill:

I built my first windmill when I was 15. Over the next few years I kept refining the design. I made many modifications to the plans i found in the book. For example, I increased the blades from three to four to provide more power output. The windmill now powers lights for 3 rooms and a light over our porch outside. I also use it to power my family’s two radios. I also can charge mobile phones that the neighbors have.
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Two weeks ago I used a computer for the first time. I learned about Google and searched for “windmill” and “solar energy.” I was amazed to learn how many entries there were for both subjects. My friends showed me how to create an email address and now I am on Gmail. Now I am practicing sending and receiving emails when I have access to a computer.
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On Sunday, my friends from National Solar and I completed the next phase of work on my electrical system. You can see a compete set of (my first) digital photos at my new site on Flickr. I had the following goals:

1. Upgrade the power generation in the windmill
2. Upgrade the battery technology and capacity, to provide more even power for more hours at a time
3. Increase the brightness of the lighting (lumens) to make it easier for my family to accomplish tasks at night, especially to read…

Photo: Back in November, the windmill was only 5 meters (15 feet) tall compared to 12 meters (36 feet) today. I raised the height because I discovered that the best wind was just over the top of the shorter windmill.

Microfinancing Entrepreneurs

From the Curious Cat Investing and Economics Blog: Microfinancing Entrepreneurs:

Kiva is another interesting organization that lets you loan directly to an entrepreneur of your choice. In fact, I have just placed $350 in loans to 5 business entrepreneurs (in Kenya, Mexico, Cameroon and Azerbaijan) – and a made a $50 donation to Kiva. Kiva provides loans through partners (operating in the countries) to the entrepreneurs. Those partners do charge the entrepreneurs interest (to fund the operations of the lending partner). Kiva pays the principle back to you but does not pay interest. And if the entrepreneur defaults then you do not get your principle paid back (in other words you lose the money you loaned). I plan to just recycle repaid loans to other entrepreneurs.

The Kiva web site does a great job of using the internet to create a direct connection between those with money to lend and those in need of money to grow a business.

Learn Physics with Free Space Flight Simulator

The free, Orbiter Space Flight Simulator, is not a typical computer game.

The emphasis is firmly on realism, and the learning curve can be steep. Be prepared to invest some time and effort to brush up on your orbital mechanics background. Good starting points are JPL’s Basics of Space Flight, and R. Braeunig’s Rocket & Space Technology.
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Improved physics: Gravity-gradient torque effects are now implemented. Vessels in low orbit will now experience torques as a result of their mass distribution. Orbiter’s model of angular motion has also been extensively overhauled.

via: Space Simulator Related: So You Want to be a Computer Game Programmer – Physics Concepts in 60 Seconds – PhysicsQuest – Non-Newtonian Fluid Demo

Single Electron on Video

Researchers Catch Motion of a Single Electron on Video

Maris and Wei Guo, a doctoral student, took advantage of the bubbles that form around electrons in supercold liquid helium. Using sound waves to expand the bubbles and a coordinated strobe light to illuminate them, Guo was able to catch their movements on a home video camera.

A free electron repels the atoms that surround it, creating a small space, or bubble, around itself. In conventional liquids, the bubble shrinks to nothing because the surface tension of the liquid works against the repulsive force. Superfluid helium has very little surface tension, so the bubble can become much larger. The two opposing forces balance when the diameter of the bubble is about 40 angstroms – still far to tiny to see.

The researchers used a planar transducer – basically, a loudspeaker that produces flat, not focused, sound waves – to pummel the whole volume of liquid helium with sound. As each wave overtook an electron bubble, it alternately increased and decreased the surrounding pressure. Under negative pressure, the bubbles expanded to about eight microns, the size of a small speck of dust, then shrank again as the next wave of high pressure washed over them. A strobe light, synchronized to the sound pulse, illuminated the bubbles without overheating the chamber.

Running a camcorder in “super night mode,” Guo and Maris were able to record the approximately 2,000 photons they estimate were scattered by the expanded bubbles, producing a series of electron-bubble images on each frame of videotape.

Pretty amazing. My pictures are of a bit larger things.

Try to Answer 6 Basic Science Questions

The Guardian newspaper (UK) asked 8 people (including 3 scientists) answer science questions such as: why does salt dissolve in water, why is the sky blue? and roughly how old is the earth?:

Q: Is a clone the same as a twin?
Will Self No.
Iain Stewart Yes, er, I think… oh God, it’s probably not. But I think it has to be, doesn’t it?
John O’Farrell No. How could it be the same? That’s not how cloning works, is it?
Susan Greenfield Yes. An identical twin.
Daisy Goodwin As an identical twin? That’s quite interesting. No. Well, I’m not sure about that. I’d say no. But maybe yes. I’m baffled.
Kirsty Wark No. But there’s two different kinds of twin. You have to give me a point for that!
Robert Winston Well, not necessarily. It’s not genetically the same actually, no. You see, it depends on the kind of twin. Do you mean an identical twin? Identical twins are different in all sorts of ways. It’s different epigenetics and there’s different mitochondrial DNA, so it’s a different organism. Actually, what we’re beginning to understand is that the epigenetic aspects of cloning are fundamentally very important. And twins are rather more dissimilar than people imagine, too. For example, they have different fingerprints from each other, so there are quite interesting and subtle differences.
Marina Warner Yes it is. Well, identical twins are clones, not non-identical twins.
Answer: Yes, up to a point (see Robert Winston’s answer).

World’s First Commercial-Scale Subsea Turbine

Artist's impression of MCT Seagen pile-mounted twin rotor tidal turbine

Earlier this month, Marine Current Turbines confirmed the installation date for its 1.2MW SeaGen tidal current system in Northern Ireland’s Strangford Lough. SeaGen consists of twin axial flow rotors, each of 16m diameter driving a generator via a gearbox much like a hydro-electric turbine or a wind turbine. The twin power units of each system are mounted on wing-like extensions either side of a tubular steel monopile 3m in diameter which is set into a hole drilled into the seabed.

SeaGen is four times as powerful as the world’s previous most powerful turbine, SeaFlow, which Marine Current Turbines has been operating off Lynmouth in Devon since 2003; SeaGen will form the basis for the commercial projects that will follow. SeaGen, which is being assembled at Harland & Wolff in Belfast, will be connected to the local electricity grid and have the capacity to generate clean and predictable power for approximately 1000 homes.

Martin Wright, Managing Director of Marine Current Turbines said: “The new investment partners and the support of our existing shareholders re-affirm the commercial potential for tidal power in the UK and overseas, and recognise our engineering achievements in developing a world-leading technology. With SeaGen set to be deployed in August, we are moving ahead with our plans for a 10MW tidal farm, to be installed within the next three years.”

Each submerged turbines range from 750 to 1500kW per unit (depending on the local flow pattern and peak velocity). And they expect to deploy 10-20 at a time – more can be added for relatively less marginal cost allowing for incremental investment in new capacity. They expect the turbines to have an excess of a 20 year operating life.

We have also added a new energy category to the blog.

Science Focus in New UK Government

Science wins champion in shake-up

Mr Brown often warned as Chancellor that Britain needed a strong scientific base to punch above its weight in an increasingly competitive global market. By including innovation and science in the higher education brief for England the new prime minister is throwing his weight behind the sector for the long term. Although Britain’s scientific research is regarded as among the best in the world, the decline in the numbers studying science has sounded alarm bells throughout academia and industry. A string of universities have closed physics or chemistry departments in recent years because of a lack of would-be students.
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This has sparked fears that the country’s science and engineering base may not be able to cope with the ever-increasing competition from nations like China and India.

As I have stated numerous times previously I believe those countries that manage to gain (or retain) centers of science and engineering excellent will gain significant economic advantage.