Author Archives: curiouscat

How to Win a Graduate Fellowship

How to Win a Graduate Fellowship by Michael Kiparsky

The odds may seem against you, but this is a worthwhile exercise. A month before submitting my NSF proposal, I was deeply distressed. Everyone else applying seemed so much more in control, confident, and focused. I came pretty close to chucking the whole thing. I’m glad I didn’t.

The reason I stuck with it was that I shifted my attitude from an all-or-nothing, win-or-lose mentality. I relaxed, accepted that my chances were slim (everybody’s are!), and approached the process as an opportunity to explore an idea that I actually wanted to pursue, without attachment to the notion of a big payoff.

The article provides some good advice. You must commit the time to do a good job, the competition is steep. At the same time the payoff is large and the process is a learning experience. He lists many fellowships, another one is the Science, Mathematics and Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship.
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Psychology Experiment

Not Your Average Summer Camp by Marisa Brook

They would be pitted against each other in a lengthy tournament of sports and other challenges; the winner would be awarded a medal and a pocketknife. The psychologists’ aim was to prompt each team to see the other as an ‘enemy’ of sorts, and test the second part of the hypothesis.
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Overall, the experiment was seen as a success. Not only had both aspects of Sherif’s hypothesis been verified, but several further conclusions had been reached.

Scientists and Students

Scientists ‘too busy’ for pupils BBC News:

The pressure to publish research means many scientists do not have time to go into schools to encourage pupils to take up sciences, a study suggests.

Obviously research is important. But, as the article points out, it is also important for primary school teachers and students to interact with practicing scientists. The benefits of those interactions are most likely going to pay dividends over the long term.
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The Future is Engineering

Do Great Engineering Schools Beget Entrepreneurism? by Brent Edwards provides two great links.

How to Kick Silicon Valley’s Butt by Guy Kawasaki:

Focus on educating engineers. The most important thing you can do is establish a world-class school of engineering. Engineering schools beget engineers. Engineers beget ideas. And ideas beget companies. End of discussion.

If I had to point to the single biggest reason for Silicon Valley’s existence, it would be Stanford University—specifically, the School of Engineering. Business schools are not of primary importance because MBAs seldom sit around discussing how to change the world with great products.

Why Startups Condense in America:

You need a great university to seed a silicon valley, and so far there are few outside the US. I asked a handful of American computer science professors which universities in Europe were most admired, and they all basically said “Cambridge” followed by a long pause while they tried to think of others. There don’t seem to be many universities elsewhere that compare with the best in America, at least in technology.

Both essays make many excellent points – read them! Continue reading →

Global Share of Engineering Work

Keeping U.S Leadership In Engineering by Pradeep Kholsa

Interesting statistic:

A decade ago, close to 40 percent of total engineering work hours were based in the U.S. Current predictions are that by 2010, only about 10 percent of those work hours will be in the U.S.

I would like to see more supporting evidence for those figures. I am confident the projected direction is correct I just wonder about the supporting evidence for the actual percentages. I do not believe the engineering graduate statistics quoted in the next sentence:
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Ants on Stilts for Science

Ant on stilts

When Ants Go Marching, They Count Their Steps by Bjorn Carey

One is that they do it like honeybees and remember visual cues, but experiments revealed ants can navigate in the dark and even blindfolded. Another disproved hypothesis was that because ants scurry at a steady pace, they could time how long it took them to get to and fro. Other studies have shown that once ants find a good source of food, they teach other ants how to find it.

The ant “pedometer” technique was first proposed in 1904, but it remained untested until now.

Scientists trained desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis, to walk along a straight path from their nest entrance to a feeder 30 feet away. If the nest or feeder was moved, the ants would break from their straight path after reaching the anticipated spot and search for their goal.

A simple example of the scientific process (another one posted yesterday about birds and global warming).
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Reforming Engineering Education by NAE

Reforming Engineering Education – National Academy of Engineering (NAE). The Summer 2006 issue of the The Bridge includes the following articles:

The “Value-Added” Approach to Engineering Education: An Industry Perspective by Theodore C. Kennedy

When I hire someone today, I look for different skills than I did 10 years ago. Today, it is not unusual for good candidates to have global references and experience on projects and assignments around the world. I think we must prepare our graduates for that type of career, because they aren’t likely to spend their careers working in one company, or even in one country. And they must become advisors, consultants, managers, and conceptual planners much more quickly than they did a few years back.

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Birds Fly Early

Spring Is Early, and So Are the Birds, NPR webcast

This is short real life example of the scientific method. Spring is coming earlier to Europe, thanks to global warming. Scientists figured migrating birds in southern Europe would be able to adjust to the change and leave early (because the early warming would also be obvious where they wintered). But the scientists expected that birds from Africa would not be able to tell that they should leave early.

However, they studied what actual took place and found that the migrating birds from Africa were actually arriving early while those in southern Europe were not. So now they are revising their theories and will do more study to try and determine what is happening and why (for example, how are the birds in Africa deciding to leave early?).

Tour the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Lab

Robert Scoble videotaped his visit to the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Lab and posted the video to Microsoft’s channel 9 – which has quite a few interesting videos.

They have some of the coolest people I’ve ever met and the robotics might surprise you (two of the students were building soccer-playing robots on top of Segways, other students were building surgery tools, really great stuff).

More robotics webcasts from Channel 9.

Swimming Robot Aids Researchers

Swimming Robot

Swimming Robot Tests Theories About Locomotion in Existing and Extinct Animals

An underwater robot is helping scientists understand why four-flippered animals such as penguins, sea turtles and seals use only two of their limbs for propulsion, whereas their long-extinct ancestors seemed to have used all four.

Don’t miss the video of the robot swimming and an informative interview with professor, John H. Long, Jr., Ph.D., who is researching with the robot.