Author Archives: curiouscat

Engineering the Future Economy

Today most nations, that have their act together, realize high tech jobs and a highly educated workforce are a huge key to economic success and they (governments often, but also companies, rich individuals and foundations) are taking action to position their country to do well. Anyone that is serious about this should read about How to cultivate Your Own Silicon Valley.

Related: The World’s Best Research Universities – Science and Engineering in Global Economics – Global Share of Engineering Work – U.S. Slipping on Science – Chinese Engineering Innovation Plan – Worldwide Science and Engineering Doctoral Degree Data

Where’d The Whiz Kids Go? by Nick Perry:
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Vitamin D Reduces Cancer Risk?

Vitamin D ‘slashes cancer risk’, BBC News:

US scientists found taking the tablets cut the risk of a disease, which has a poor prognosis in almost half of cases.
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pancreas tissue – both normal and cancerous – has been found to contain high levels of an enzyme that converts vitamin D into its active form.
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Taking the US Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) of vitamin D (400 IU/day) was found to reduce the risk of pancreatic cancer by 43%.

They said further work was necessary to determine if consuming vitamin D in the diet, or through sun exposure might have even more of an effect than taking supplements.

Do you ever wonder that we don’t seem to get rid of cancer yet we have lots of stories about cures (or methods to reduce risk…). Read: Another Paper Questions Scientific Paper Accuracy which includes links to: “Why Medical Studies Are Often Wrong” and “Contradicted and Initially Stronger Effects in Highly Cited Clinical Research.” Just a reminder that you can’t rely on headlines (the truth is usually much less clear). Plus, of course, the difficulty of turning research findings into practical solutions means there are often long delays before widespread results can be enjoyed by society.

Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology

Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology

Students may enter as individuals or as part of a team. Applications are due by 2 Oct, 2006. Up to thirty individual students and thirty teams (of 2 or 3 students) are chosen to compete at six regional competitions hosted by our partner universities MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech, Notre Dame, UT Austin and UC Berkeley.

Students who win their regional competition receive a silver medal and scholarships of $3,000 (team members receive $6,000 to be divided equally between team members) and go on to compete at the national event in New York City. The top individual and top team each receive $100,000 scholarships. Runners up receive scholarships ranging from $10,000 to $50,000.

UW- Madison Wins 4th Concrete Canoe Competition

Concrete Canoe Race

University of Wisconsin-Madison Takes First Place for 4th Straight year in 2006 National Concrete Canoe Competition:

This was no ordinary boat race. The competitors weren’t sleek sailboats riding the winds or high-powered yachts muscling their way across the finish line. These were canoes. Made of concrete. Hundreds of pounds of concrete. And the only thing propelling these water-worthy crafts was the determination of the engineering students that created them in a bid to win the ‘America’s Cup of Civil Engineering.’

Manipulating Carbon Nanotubes

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Photo: At left, the high conductance state has two molecular orbitals, shown in green. Some molecules even let the nanotube switch between highly conductive, left, and poorly conductive. MIT materials scientists tame tricky carbon nanotubes:

Now Young-Su Lee, an MIT graduate student in materials science and engineering, and Nicola Marzari, an associate professor in the same department, have identified a class of chemical molecules that preserve the metallic properties of carbon nanotubes and their near-perfect ability to conduct electricity with little resistance.

Using these molecules as handles, Marzari and Lee said, could overcome fabrication problems and lend the nanotubes new properties for a host of potential applications as detectors, sensors or components in novel optoelectronics.

Middle School Engineers

Burnsville’s budding engineers?:

The exercise is part of a pre-engineering program called Project Lead the Way, which aims to whet students’ appetites for engineering education and possibly careers.

Through a Kern Family Foundation grant, District 191 is providing PLTW in seventh grade this year, with plans to extend it to eighth grade next year and possibly to the high school level in subsequent years.
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“Problem-solving is the rest of their lives,” she said. “If they’re seeing the relevance between the math they’re learning out of a book and a project they’re doing, it sticks.”

Great stuff. Getting kids to actually apply concepts is not only fun but the best way to learn. A bunch of previous posts about k-12 engineering education and experiential learning: k-12 Engineering Education – Middle School Students in Solar Car Competition – Robots Wrestling, Students Learning – What’s so Exciting About Engineering? – Middle School Science Teacher – K-12 Engineering Outreach Programs – NSF Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 Education – Science Opportunities for Students – Why Schools Don’t Educate – Engineering is Elementary – Excellence in K-12 Mathematics and Science Teaching – Fun k-12 Science and Engineering Learning – K-12 Engineering Education Grant for Purdue – Colorado Science Teacher of the Year and on and on…

Inspiring Students to be Engineers

Celeste Baine

Celeste Baine Recognized for Exciting Students About Engineering

Celeste Baine, a biomedical engineer and director of the Engineering Education Service Center based in Eugene, Oregon, was acknowledged for her outstanding accomplishments in motivating and inspiring students to pursue careers in engineering. Winner of the 2005 Norm Augustine Award, Ms. Baine is credited for being an outstanding contributor to the nationwide efforts to increase engineering student enrollment.

A new monthly journal, Engineering Education Advocate is available from the Engineering Education Service Center.

Related:

Google Computer Science Scholarship Program

United Negro College Fund (UNCF) Google Scholarship Program:

On the strength of candidates’ academic background and demonstrated leadership, we’ll be awarding $5,000 scholarships. Students must be enrolled in their junior year of undergraduate study at a UNCF Member College or University or at a participating Historically Black College or University (HBCU), and pursuing a Computer Science or Computer Engineering major.

The application deadline is October 6th. Previous posts on fellowships and scholarships in science and technology including: NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (deadline early November) and the proposal for Graduate Scholar Awards in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math.

Engineering Jobs in Mexico

Maquila sunrise: Jobs headed back to Mexico:

What we see in Mexico today are things that have more engineering. And the reason why that is occurring is that it’s good to have your engineers in proximity to your manufacturing due to the fact that changes can be implemented much more quickly than if your center for manufacture is halfway around the world.

Today, Mexico’s pumping out more jet engines, semiconductors, and engine harnesses than its old staples like textiles and basic electronics. And that’s creating jobs for Mexican engineers inside the maquilas, like the Gulfstream Aerospace plant in Mexicali.

Read more about lean manufacturing (Toyota Production System) that values the performance improvement over short term savings on our management improvement blog. The kind of thing that allows Toyota to make a great deal of money manufacturing in the USA while Ford and GM can’t seem to do as well.
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