Author Archives: curiouscat

Higher Education Worldwide

The U.S. Edge In Education by Richard H. Brodhead, president of Duke University:

This will inevitably mean improving in areas where Asia is strong: building stronger foundational skills in early grades, making sure more students persist in so-called STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and math), supplying more good math and science teachers, and other steps.
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In particular, we need to promote everything in our system that breeds initiative, independence, resourcefulness and collaboration. One of these is the liberal arts model of education. The schooling that trains students in many different disciplines makes them more flexible at shifting among a range of challenges and approaches. It also equips them to bring different sets of tools to bear on complex problems, allowing them to improvise new solutions by making new connections.

Open Course Ware from Japan

Soccer Robots from Osaka University

A number of Japanese Universities are creating open courseware, in cooperation with MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative (which has spawned the OCW Consortium).

Osaka University OpenCourseWare offers courses in English including: Theory in Materials Science | Fluid-Solid Multiphase Flow

Kyoto University OpenCourseWare aims to:

share information in consideration of the fact that sixty percent of visitors to MIT’s OCW project come from Asia. We will make active use of Japanese in building OpenCourseWare, to recruit talented students from all over Asia as well as to promote the Kyoto University education, with Kyoto’s culture and traditions, to the world at large.

Many of the courses are available in Japanese, some are available in English, including: Applied Pharmacology

Tokyo Tech OpenCourseWare courses include: Advanced Signal Processing – Guided Wave Circuit Theory and Mixed Signal systems and Integrated Circuits.

The Nagoya University OpenCourseWare brings free courseware to the Internet. Currently several courses are available in English including, Basics of Bioagricultural Sciences. They aim to post 25 courses initially.
Continue reading →

Great Nanotechnology Overview

Reporting Risk Assessment of Nanotechnology: A reporter’s guide to sources and research issues (pdf) by Trudy E. Bell:

The article discusses how reporters should investigate the risks with nanotechnology, and in doing so provides a good introduction to concepts in nanotechnology:

If engineered nanomaterials have physical properties different from their bulk counterparts, might they also pose new risks to human health in their manufacture, use, and disposal?

As yet, no one knows. Current data basically suggest “it depends.” But researchers both in government and private
industry are keen to find out.

The potential for nanotechnology is amazing but as we have said before the risks presented by nanotechnology also need careful study.

At the nanoscale, fundamental mechanical, electronic, optical, chemical, biological, and other properties may differ significantly from properties of micrometer-sized particles or bulk materials.

One reason is surface area. Surface area counts because most chemical reactions involving solids happen at the surfaces, where chemical bonds are incomplete. The surface area of a cubic centimeter of a solid material is 6 square centimeters—about the same as one side of half a stick of gum. But the surface area of a cubic centimeter of 1-nm particles in an ultrafine powder is 6,000 square meters—literally a third larger than a football field.

Engineering Student Contest Winners Design Artificial Limb

St. Joseph's College of Engineering students

St. Joseph’s engineering college students win design contest, India:

Three students of St. Joseph’s College of Engineering received a cash award of Rs.50,000 for their prototype of an artificial limb, presented in the `National Level Engineering Students Design Contest’.

The contest, organised by the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA), was aimed at encouraging engineering students to design innovative products.

Organising secretary K. Chandrasekaran said the event was held to address the gap between education and industry, promoting design education and take students to the logical end of working prototypes.

Nobel Laureates Speaking to High School in Japan

Nobel laureates aiming to spur creativity / Shirakawa, Tanaka to give students lecture

Shirakawa became interested in science journalism, and even sat in during lectures offered by the Japan Association of Science and Technology Journalists. He is now enthusiastic about giving lectures to, and teaching, young scientists.

Research is important for scientists, but it is also important that they share their knowledge with the public, and people to better understand the subject, he said.

Shirakawa graduated from the Science and Engineering Department of Tokyo Institute of Technology, where he obtained a doctorate in engineering in 1966.

In 2000, he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of conductive polymers.

Our previous post, Scientists and Students, discussed having practicing scientists address students. Scientist say they are too busy and do not get credit for such efforts – hopefully these Nobel prize winners can help show how important such direct contact can be.

Oliver Sacks podcast

Oliver Sacks is a neurologist and author of interesting and entertaining books including: The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales. He is most known for explaining the remarkable case histories of extreme brain trauma, and how those instances allow us to learn about the brain.

Listen to webcast of his interview on NPR’s Science Friday. More blog posts on science and engineering podcasts

The Fully Immersive Mind of Oliver Sacks, Wired
Another Science Friday interview with Oliver Sacks from 1997.

Electrical Engineering Future

The future of electrical engineering

The article discusses many of the explanations for the lack of growth in engineering graduates in the USA and reasons for studying engineering. Some related posts from our blog: Top degree for S&P 500 CEOs? Engineering – Lucrative college degrees – USA Engineering Jobs – Global Share of Engineering Work – Engineers in the Workplace

Indeed, a degree in electrical engineering can open many doors, in part because electrical engineering is so broad. Electrical engineers have taken on many tasks that you might expect people with other technical degrees to do. Semiconductor processing, for example, is highly populated by electrical engineers, but its basis is in physics and chemistry. Other areas include optics (as applied to communications), aerospace engineering, and even life sciences. “A lot of people don’t realize that a lot of biomedical devices are actually electrical devices,” noted Georgia Tech’s May.

Engineered Immune Cells Shrink Tumors

Tumors Shrunk by Engineered Immune Cells, Scientists Say by Stefan Lovgren, on an extermintal treatment with 17 patients so far:

“This is the first example of an effective gene therapy that works in cancer patients,” said Steven Rosenberg, chief of surgery at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, and leader of the research team.

The therapy has so far been applied only to melanoma patients. But the researchers are optimistic that their treatment can be used for many other types of cancer.

The team has already engineered similar immune cells for more common tumors, such as breast, lung, and liver cancers.
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His team focused on T (thymus) cells, a type of specialized immune cell that can learn to recognize and attack specific “foreign” objects, such as the cancer cells that make up tumors.

In the new study, researchers created tumor-fighting cells by harvesting normal T cells from melanoma patients and genetically engineering these cells to carry receptor proteins on their surfaces that recognize cancer markers.

Excercize and Learning

Increasingly, researchers are finding that brain activity and brain development are enhanced by physical exercise. It now appears that exercise can help kids learn at school.

Listen to the podcast from NPR today
Exercise Improves Learning and Memory, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, 1999.

Ocean Power Plant

Interest in ocean power resurges by Dennis Camire via A new wave of interest in ocean power:

Ocean thermal power plants, which generate electricity from the temperature difference between the tropics’ warm surface water and deep cold water, could be built on land in several hundred areas around the globe’s equatorial zones and also could be constructed as floating plants.
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A recent Electric Power Research Institute study found sites in Maine, Alaska, California and Washington that had good potential for tidal power generation with production costs ranging from 4.2 cents per kilowatt hour to 10.8 cents. By comparison, the average retail cost of electricity to U.S. consumers in May was 8.64 cents per kilowatt hour.