Author Archives: curiouscat

Contour-Surface Drawings

Although the lecturer said he knew a great deal about this function from the point of view of calculus and linear algebra, he regretted that he could not visualize its geometric shape. I thought our graphics team could help him out. I telephoned my sophomore assistant, Ed Chang ’91, who rendered the surface on a computer using a contour-surface algorithm developed by Steve Ritter ’85 and Kevin Pickhardt ’85 in Professor Andries van Dam’s computer-graphics course. Thanks to overnight mail and one-hour film developing, we had slides of the surface in Berkeley in time for Professor Hirzebruch’s next lecture. He was delighted, and he has used our computer-graphics illustrations in his lectures and publications ever since.
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This is not only the best freshman math homework I have ever received. I contend it is the best overnight homework any teacher has ever received in any course at any level at any place in any subject at any time, ever, ever, ever. That is an extreme claim, but I’m still waiting for another teacher to produce a worthy challenger.

Nanotech Engine Research

Tiny engine boosts nanotech hopes:

Scientists at the University of Edinburgh have created a tiny engine powered by light that can be made to sort molecules. The device may one day find a role in nano-scale machines. It emerged from research into similar tiny machines in nature that power well known processes such as photosynthesis.
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“We have a new motor mechanism for a nanomachine,” said Prof Leigh. “It is a machine mechanism that is going to take molecular machines a step forward to the realisation of the future world of nanotechnology,” he said. Because the rotaxane can be made to do useful work in a predictable fashion, ie sort particles, it could become a key component for anyone designing nano-scale device.

LEGO Sumo Robotic Championship

Lego Sumo Robotic Championship photo

DivX LEGO Sumo Robotic Championship – Round 2

DivX is a proprietary video player which can be downloaded for free. The quality of the videos is great which is offset by the annoyance of having to download another plugin to view the videos. The improved quality is quite nice though it does seem a bit buggy still. See more such videos via their No Screwdriver Needed channel.

via: Big Wheel Spikey – Lego Sumo Robotic Championship

Engineering a Start-up

Engineering a start-up at University of California at San Diego:

Fifteen von Liebig-supported projects have been converted into startup companies. In the past two years alone, start-up companies that received von Liebig support have raised more than $10 million in capital. And even more discoveries have been licensed to telecommunications, biotechnology and other industry companies that are using the UCSD science to make new products or make their existing products better.

The center, started with a $10 million grant, has awarded a total of $2.4 million to 56 projects. An additional 25 projects have benefited from the center’s advisers. The return on investment has climbed steadily. The revenue UCSD received from the commercialization of discoveries out of the Jacobs School of Engineering has grown from $57,563 in 1999 to $602,713 in 2004, the most recent year for which figures were available.

Great stuff – this is the kind of thing that allows the ingenuity of engineers to benefit the economy and the engineers. Small focused efforts like this can have a huge long term impact, I believe. For those interested in building economic advantage through engineering education creating an entrepreneurial environment is a very important factor.

Leah Jamieson on the Future of Engineering Education

Leah Jamieson’s address, 2007 IEEE President and dean of the Purdue Engineering school, to DesignCon 2007. (link broken by DesignCon, so removed. How are organizations that seek to have people come to them to learn how to adopt good engineering practices still failing to basic things like keeping urls live forever?).

The future of engineering education: More questions than answers by Michael Santarini:

In addition, many academics estimate that the half-life of engineering knowledge is between two to seven years, Jamieson said. “I can tell you for us at the universities, if it’s less than five or certainly less than four [years] we’re going to get scared because it means students come in as freshmen and by the time they are done, half of what we’ve done for those first couple of years may or may not be relevant?” she said. “It’s a frightening thought, and so it means we have to keep asking ourselves, what are the parts that stay relevant, so that in fact the education is current after the students graduate or at least current on the day they do graduate.”

2007 Grainger Challenge Prize for Sustainability

2007 Grainger Challenge Prize for Sustainability:

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) announced today the winners of the 2007 Grainger Challenge Prize for Sustainability. The contest sought innovative solutions for removing arsenic from drinking water that is slowly poisoning tens of millions of people in developing countries. Three prizes will be awarded from a field of more than 70 entries.
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The Gold Award-winning SONO filter is a point-of-use method for removing arsenic from drinking water. A top bucket is filled with locally available coarse river sand and a composite iron matrix (CIM). The sand filters coarse particles and imparts mechanical stability, while the CIM removes inorganic arsenic. The water then flows into a second bucket where it again filters through coarse river sand, then wood charcoal to remove organics, and finally through fine river sand and wet brick chips to remove fine particles and stabilize water flow. The SONO filter is now manufactured and used in Bangladesh.

The system developed by the Silver Award-winning team is applied at a community’s well head. Each arsenic removal unit serves about 300 households. Water is hand-pumped into a fixed-bed column, where it passes through activated alumina or hybrid anion exchanger (HAIX) to remove the arsenic. After passing through a chamber of graded gravel to remove particulates, the water is ready to drink. This system has been used in 160 locations in West Bengal, India. The water treatment units, including the activated alumina sorbent, are being manufactured in India, and villagers are responsible for their upkeep and day-to-day operation. The active media are regenerated for re-use, and arsenic-laden sludge is contained in an environmentally safe manner with minimum leaching.

Biocomputing with Martyn Amos

The Jan 30th This Week in Science Podcast covers various topics including:

Today’s interview with Biocomputing expert, Martyn Amos, was a fascinating journey into the future of technology. What we consider computers today won’t be the computers of tomorrow, and computers will likely be integrated into all aspects of life using the miniaturization potential of DNA. While we are still far away from the realization of many aspects of biocomputing, it has come a long way from its humble beginnings.

NSF’s K-12 Math and Science Partnerships

NSF’s Math and Science Partnerships Demonstrate Continued Increases in Student Proficiency:

NSF’s MSP program supports partnerships among higher education, local K-12 school systems, and supporting stakeholders, such as businesses or informal science-education organizations. At a minimum, each partnership must contain one institution of higher education and one K-12 school system. The program’s portfolio includes 52 partnerships and more than 30 other projects engaged in the development of tools, research and capacity building for evaluation to support the work of the partnerships.
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An analysis of 123 schools participating in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Math and Science Partnership (MSP) program shows improvements in student proficiency in mathematics and science at the elementary, middle- and high-school levels over a 3-year period.

Cancer Cure – Not so Fast

Follow up on Cheap, Safe Cancer Drug?: In which my words will be misinterpreted as “proof” that I am a “pharma shill”:

This drug has only been tested in cell culture and rats. Yes, the results were promising there, but that does not–I repeat, does not– mean the results will translate to humans. In fact, most likely, they will not. Those of us who’ve been in the cancer field a while know that all too common are drugs that kill tumors in the Petrie dish and in mice or rats but fail to be nearly as impressive when tested in humans.

Perhaps the blog post I quote above just resonates with me (see: confirmation bias). To me,it supports my contention in my “Cheap, Safe Cancer Drug?” post, though much more effectively and with supporting evidence. But this is my blog so I get to quote whoever I want, and it isn’t surprising I find those that share my thoughts to be the most compelling 🙂 Anyway the post I quote is definitely worth reading.

‘Hobbit’ human is a new species

‘Hobbit’ human ‘is a new species’:

Archaeologists had found sophisticated tools and evidence of a fire near the remains of the 1m-tall adult female. “People refused to believe that someone with that small of a brain could make the tools,” said Professor Falk. She said the Hobbit brain was nothing like that of a microcephalic and was advanced in a way that is different from living humans.

A previous study of LB1’s endocast revealed that large parts of the frontal lobe and other anatomical features were consistent with higher cognitive processes. “LB1 has a highly evolved brain,” said Professor Falk. “It didn’t get bigger, it got rewired and reorganised, and that’s very interesting.”