Author Archives: curiouscat

Electric Cars

The March NSF Cafe Scientifique meeting was about Electric Cars. The presenters were from the Electric Vehicle Association of DC (that site has quite a few links on this topic). In the talk the presenters mentioned Ford had produced electric cars in the 1920’s. PBS on Timeline on Electric Car History:

1893 – A handful of different makes and models of electric cars are exhibited in Chicago.
1897 – The first electric taxis hit the streets of New York City early in the year. The Pope Manufacturing Company of Connecticut becomes the first large-scale American electric automobile manufacturer.
1899 – Believing that electricity will run autos in the future, Thomas Alva Edison begins his mission to create a long-lasting, powerful battery for commercial automobiles. Though his research yields some improvements to the alkaline battery, he ultimately abandons his quest a decade later.
1900 – The electric automobile is in its heyday. Of the 4,192 cars produced in the United States 28 percent are powered by electricity, and electric autos represent about one-third of all cars found on the roads of New York City, Boston, and Chicago.

1893 was the famous Chicago World’s fair where the first Ferris Wheel was constructed and the American Society for Engineering Education was formed (I work for ASEE now). Photo by John Hunter shows a partial view of the meeting space, which is held inside the NSF headquarters.

Use the Force

What geek wouldn’t want to be a Jedi?

Behold Project Epoc, a wireless headset developed by Australian start-up Emotiv Systems. The electrodes embedded in the set read your brain waves, figure out what you’re thinking and, yes, allow you to bend objects on the screen to your omnipotent will.
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Let’s be clear, though: Epoc isn’t anywhere near as easy as picking up a control pad and learning to play a game. The software uses adaptive learning to figure out what your brains’ electrical signals look like when you’re thinking about lifting, pushing, or rotating objects. That takes time (which is why Dave used the headset and not me).

Still, I think I’d be willing to sacrifice an hour of my life for a taste of the Jedi’s power. The effect is amazing, after all – c’mon, this is mind-control people!

Ok, this is not yet available and needs quite a bit more to make consumers demand them – but if it can do what they say that is interesting start. Project Epoc

When Galaxies Collide

When Galaxies Collide by Kathleen M. Wong:

When two galaxies collide, what transpires is very different from, say, one billiard ball smacking into another. Instead of ricocheting away in opposite directions, galaxies are much more likely to meld together. After all, Ma points out, “Galaxies are mostly empty, so the stars and dark matter mostly just pass each other by. The chances of two stars hitting each other is tiny.” In fact, only one percent of the masses of these galaxies consists of matter we can see, such as stars and gases. The rest consists of dark matter-material we can’t see but astronomers have inferred from many observations must exist.

Actual galaxy mergers are hard to find and even harder to view. So Ma is doing the next best thing – simulating galaxy collisions using computer models. This way, she can specify the types of mergers she wants to analyze head-ons versus glancing blows; galaxies of different masses and shapes; even the occasional threesome – and analyze their fates with mathematical precision.

Your Online Identity

Social Networking Sites: Enter At Your Own Risk by Amina Sonnie, IEE-USA Today’s Engineer:

Your Career Builders profile may be the professional face you wear online, but sites like MySpace or Facebook may be perceived as the “real” you. Many college students and entry-level employees may think that these social networking sites are not part of the adult world and forget that they are being viewed as an adult by their employer. To put a different face on the “real,” the first thing you may want to do is Google yourself. What comes up first?

Try me: John Hunter – usually my homepage or something about the another, John Hunter, the “father of modern surgery”, no relation. I found the above via: Facebook is public not private where John Dupuis added:

As an aside, when I’m on a search committee I always Google at least the short listed candidates and often many of the other applicants as well. I’ve never found anything shocking. On the other hand, I’m always surprised when I can’t find anything about a candidate. How can you be an active professional (or even an aspiring one) in this day and age and leave no impression on the web?

I agree.

As a society, we have a large bias toward punishing acts of commission – versus acts of omission. So the failure to have established a credible online presence is not normally as big a problem as creating one people object to. However, people should not become so fearful of doing something wrong that they fail to take advantage of the opportunity to enhance their career with a positive online presence: Ackoff on errors of omission.

Engineering a Better Blood Alcohol Sensor

Scott McCain - Duke Student

Scott McCain Aims for Better Blood Alcohol Sensor:

If third-year engineering graduate student Scott McCain gets his way, the fight against drunk driving may soon be waged with a new, non-invasive blood alcohol sensor that could make standard blood or breath sample tests obsolete. The St. Louis native’s interdisciplinary research – a combination of engineering, physics and computer science – aims to build a small and inexpensive optical device capable of using harmless light to pass through skin and directly determine blood alcohol concentration.

“The device uses light at wavelengths at which skin essentially becomes transparent,” McCain said. “We shine a laser through tissue where it interacts with blood. By analyzing the scattered light that comes back out, we can determine much about the blood’s chemical content.”
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Similar devices hold promise for determining other constituents of blood. For example, they could measure cholesterol or blood sugar in a matter of minutes, McCain said. Ultimately, the goal is to have a sensor that could report a medical reading in less than 10 seconds.
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“We don’t yet know if our blood alcohol sensor will really work,” said McCain. “It wouldn’t be research if we knew what it was all about.”

A Life-changing Gift

A nice human interest story, A life-changing gift:

All children have dreams. Many boys dream of growing up and becoming prime minister, a pilot, a doctor or an astronaut. For young Anusorn Pinsuwan, however, he didn’t dream that much. ”I just wanted to study. Then I could dare to dream of being something else, like an engineer or a teacher. But I didn’t think I could make my dreams come true as I didn’t have the money to study,” said Anusorn, now 25. ”But, at least, we shouldn’t sabotage our own dreams. We should give ourselves a chance.”

One of his dreams has been achieved, thanks to the support of the Bangkok Post readers, through a Bangkok Post Foundation scholarship. After excelling at Rajamangala University of Technology, Tak campus, he secured a place at King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology, North Bangkok, studying civil engineering. He graduated in 2005, and his first job offer from a private construction company followed shortly.

Engineering Quiet, Efficient Planes

Fly Silent, Fly Cheap by Jeffrey Winters, Mechanical Engineering magazine:

In all, the design changes would amount to a startling reduction in the amount of sound produced on takeoff and landing. The Cambridge-MIT team estimates that a landing SAX-40 would create less than 65 decibels of noise at the perimeter of the airport—about the same level as background noise. Transformed in this way, airplanes would be relatively neutral parts of the urban environment, rather than nuisances.

But there’s a side benefit: fuel efficiency. The same design elements that cut back on noise also reduce fuel consumption. With less energy lost to creating turbulence, more power would be devoted to moving passengers.

NSF Cafe Scientifique: Arlington, Virgina

Cafe Scientifique NSF. Where: The Front Page, 4201 Wilson Blvd, Arlington, Virginia (Ballston Metro stop). 6:30PM-8:00PM presentation, followed by Q&A: The “Shocking” Science Behind Electric Cars:

Science makes many things possible, including alternative fuels and modes of personal transportation… Goldstein and Garlow are the President and VP of the DC area Electric Vehicle Association. They will discuss the science behind electric cars, such as fuel cells and battery technology, and some of the issues surrounding their use and acceptance. And, they will bring actual cars to touch and explore, including the MIT entry into the 1994 Tour de Sol, an electric car that is solar-powered, and an all-electric Toyota RAV4.
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Cafe Scientifique flourished first in the U.K. as a way for the public and scientists to mingle and discuss science issues in an informal setting. At least 35 cafÃ©s now exist in the U.S.

I hope to make it this month.

Engineering Activities: for 9-12 Year Olds

Design Squad Activity page:

Unleash your kids’ ingenuity and get them thinking like engineers with these 10 DESIGN SQUAD challenges. Designed for 9-12 year olds, each challenge has step-by-step instructions and age-appropriate explanations of the main idea.

FDA May Make Decision That Will Speed Antibiotic Drug Resistance

FDA Rules Override Warnings About Drug:

The government is on track to approve a new antibiotic to treat a pneumonia-like disease in cattle, despite warnings from health groups and a majority of the agency’s own expert advisers that the decision will be dangerous for people. The drug, called cefquinome, belongs to a class of highly potent antibiotics that are among medicine’s last defenses against several serious human infections. No drug from that class has been approved in the United States for use in animals.

This is why it is so important for government decisions that require scientific knowledge be made by knowledgeable scientists.

But Sundlof said that under FDA rules, those decisions must be left up to veterinarians unless there is clear evidence that wider use is causing harm.

“That is our policy” is not a good excuse for endangering public health. The dangers of anti-biotic resistance are obvious, well known, we see the results of bad decisions in the past creating havoc today and still government wants to act as though the inevitable consequences of their actions are somehow out of their hands. A policy that will lead to the deaths of many people should be fought. If you want to claim this policy will not do that, then make that argument. Don’t claim some policy prohibits you from saving lives.

Democratic/Republican forms of government give politicians oversight over bureaucracy to guide decisions for the public good. When politicians don’t understand basic science (in this day and age – when decisions require that understanding) that can lead to very dangerous policies. You would think that adults would be able to understand that just because consequences will be delayed a few years that doesn’t mean you should allow special interests to get what they want today. But the deficit (nearly $8,800,000,000,000 for the federal government now) provides a visible sign how much they care about future consequences of their actions. Combine that with little scientific understanding and that is not a prescription for good decisions.
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