Author Archives: curiouscat

Engineers and the Making of the 20th Century

Dr. Billington

Photo: David P. Billington explains the mechanics of a suspension bridge with the help of a model.

An innovator in engineering education, Billington connects disciplines:

Billington’s latest project is a book that provides an accessible account of eight breakthrough innovations that transformed American life from 1876 to 1939. He and his son, historian David P. Billington Jr., collaborated to write “Power, Speed and Form: Engineers and the Making of the 20th Century,” published this month by Princeton University Press. The authors provide short narrative accounts of each breakthrough to explain the engineering behind the innovation and to describe how its innovators thought.

Related: Science and Engineering Books

Civil Engineering Challenges

I received the following interesting comment. Do any of you have suggestions? Please leave a comment:

I know that in mathematics there are famous problems that have never been solved, and mathematicians are constantly trying to solve them. Occasionally, someone will claim to have solved one of these problems, and sometimes they have. Either way, the announcement makes big news.

Is there the equivalent in engineering? Something like the 10 Toughest Civil Engineering Problems in the Universe? 10 (As Yet) Impossible Engineering Challenges. Maybe something like the perpetual motion machine or the like.

I’m looking for “something” that will tickle the imagination of a civil engineer. Amuse him. Intrigue him. Something that might fit in a smallish, mailable box, but isn’t very costly. Something he or she can play with.

Medical Buckyballs

Secret’s in the stuffing – Researchers fill ‘buckyballs’ with metals in hopes they’ll have medical applications

Virginia Tech has been stuffing hollow buckyballs, or fullerenes, with metals in hopes they could someday be used as contrast agents for imaging or tracing cancer cells.

Nobel laureate and co-discoverer Harold Kroto of Florida State University, who worked out the structural rule that the buckyegg violates, learned of Virginia Tech’s pursuit of buckyballs for pharmaceutical and medical applications during a visit to Blacksburg this month.

“It’s very exciting,” he said, joking that he’d been about ready to give back his Nobel because no one had found humanitarian uses for buckyballs until now.

The buckyegg is the latest from Virginia Tech, where in 1999 Harry Dorn and a team of chemists created the first buckyballs made with a shell of 80 carbon atoms and three metal atoms stuffed inside.

How Many Engineers?

Brian Hollar comments on the comments of MIT President, Charles Vest in Wither the Engineers?:

I fully agree with all of this. Some of the best counsel I got when I was co-oping at DuPont during my junior year of college was when one of the other engineers told me: “Every engineer is good at math. What will set you apart is your ability to communicate — both written and spoken.” This has indeed been absolutely true in my own career.
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My guess is that there are a roughly optimal number of Americans entering the engineering profession to meet industry demand. Unfortunately, that number is not as high as deans of engineering schools or university presidents would like it to be.

A good read. I believe there is a difference between equilibrium for the individuals who choose to be engineers (or something else) and the equilibrium that is best for the economy of the country. The many advantages that having a strong engineering workforce is a huge part of why China, Singapore, Korea, India, USA, China, Mexico and many others are investing in that area.

This is how I want those investing in our economy to think: if we want a strong economy with good jobs we need to invest in a strong engineering workforce, a supporting legal system and effective capital markets. All of us living in America benefit from this now.

Energy Efficiency of Digestion

Why is Fecal Matter Brown?

The complex digestion process ensures that almost no useful energy goes unused. The average bowel movement is three parts water to one part solid matter. Bacteria make up 30 percent of the solid stuff. The same goes for indigestible foods like cellulose and extra fiber. The remaining 40 percent contains various inorganic wastes, fats and used-up body substances like red blood cells

Scientists Examine 100 Trillion Microbes in Human Feces:

Aiding the large intestine in this task are trillions of microbes that reside in the gut, where they help digest foods we would otherwise have to avoid. In this way the bugs contribute to our overall health.

Some of these tiny settlers are with us from birth, imparted from our mothers, while others gradually colonize our bodies as we grow. This microbial community is as diverse as any found in Earth’s seas or soils, numbering up to 100 trillion individuals and representing more than 1,000 different species.

Virus may be eating your brain

Forgetful? Virus may be eating your brain

Viruses that cause a range of ills from the common cold to polio may be able to infect the brain and cause steady damage, a team at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota reports.

“Our study suggests that virus-induced memory loss could accumulate over the lifetime of an individual and eventually lead to clinical cognitive memory deficits,” says Dr Charles Howe, who reports the findings in the latest issue of the journal Neurobiology of Disease.

The viruses are called picornaviruses and infect more than 1 billion people worldwide each year.

They include the virus that causes polio, as well as colds and diarrhoea. People contract an average of two or three such infections a year.

Related: Viruses as Nanomachines (webcast) (excellent, John) – What Are Viruses? – More info on Picornaviruses from Tulane – Microbes

SMART Fellowships

The Science, Mathematics, And Research for Transformation Defense Scholarship for Service Program (SMART) is administrated by ASEE. As I have stated before – while I work for ASEE this blog is my own and is not associated with ASEE.

Program highlights include:

Starting salary/stipend ranging from $22,500 for undergraduates to $38,000 for doctoral students
Full tuition and related education fees and a book allowance of $1,000
Paid summer internships
Career opportunities after graduation

Read more about the program and apply online – the deadline is 5 February 2007. Article on the SMART program from ASEE’s magazine: PRISM.

The deadline from the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship is as early as tomorrow for some applications and as late as November 13th for others.

Bacteria in Food Increasingly Dangerous

Food-borne bacteria evolving, becoming more dangerous by Elizabeth Weise:

The evolution of ultra-dangerous versions of common food pathogens with which humans have coexisted for millennia. E. coli lives in the guts of most mammals. Almost all forms are harmless; some are actually necessary for health. It wasn’t until the 1970s that a deadly version — O157:H7 — emerged that causes kidney damage and death.

Two forms of the salmonella bacteria,Salmonella typhimurium and Salmonella newport, have evolved to resist most of the antibiotics that doctors are comfortable giving to children, says Patricia Griffin, who studies food-borne and diarrheal illnesses at the CDC.

Both are most common in cattle and other farm animals but are also turning up in fresh produce.

MRSA Vaccine Shows Promise

Superbug vaccine ‘shows promise’

A vaccine to guard against hospital superbug MRSA is a step closer, according to scientists. US researchers have developed a vaccine that protected mice from four potentially deadly strains of MRSA.
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The team looked for a vaccine using a technique called “reverse vaccinology”, which builds on recent genetics advances.

It involved sifting through the genome of Staphylococcus aureus to hunt for proteins on the microbe that might spark the body’s immune system into action, producing protection against the bacteria.

The team identified four proteins that prompted a strong immune response, making them good targets for vaccines.

More information on MRSA is available from the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Satellite Tracker from NASA

Cool satelite tracker from NASA that uses Java (if you don’t have Java you can see some other links they provide but they really are not that great). You can use your mouse to spin the globe around and see satellites. You can also select specific satellites and see their orbits. A nice fun quick visit.