Author Archives: curiouscat

Mistake Driven Engineering

Book Cover graphic - Success Through Failure

Engineering a Safer, More Beautiful World, One Failure at a Time by Cornelia Dean:

Success masks failure. The more a thing operates successfully, the more confidence we have in it. So we dismiss little failures — like the repeated loss of a space shuttle’s insulating tiles launchings — as trivial annoyances rather than preludes to catastrophe.

Success through Failure: The Paradox of Design by Henry Petroski – read a sample chapter (from Princeton University Press):

Sometimes, as when a part breaks in two, the focal point for the improvement is obvious. Other times, such as when a complex system runs disappointingly slowly, the way to speed it up may be far from clear. In all cases, however, the beginnings of a solution lay in isolating the cause of the failure and in focusing on how to avoid, obviate, remove, or circumvent it. Inventors, engineers, designers, and common users take up such problems all the time.

Related:

Wallaby Milk Cure

Fighting Superbugs with Milk

Cocks has found that the mother’s milk contains a molecule that is 100 times more effective against Gram-negative bacteria such as E. coli than the most potent form of penicillin. The molecule, called AGG01, also kills four types of Gram-positive bacteria and one type of fungus. The work was presented at the US Biotechnology Industry Organization 2006 meeting in Chicago last week.

Center for Innovation in Engineering Education at Princeton

The Center for Innovation in Engineering Education at Princeton University was created in February 2005 with the purpose of setting a new standard for engineering education emphasizing interdisciplinary areas, societal context, and leadership.

“Our plan is to set a new standard for engineering education,” said H. Vincent Poor, the director of the center and Princeton’s George Van Ness Lothrop Professor in Engineering. “We want to inject more engineering into the liberal arts and inject more of the liberal arts into engineering.”

Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching

President George W. Bush has announced that 100 educators will receive the annual Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching for 2005. The award was established in 1983. This year, the White House recognizes the best of the Nation’s 7th – 12th grade mathematics and science teachers.

A national panel of distinguished scientists, mathematicians, and educators recommends teachers to receive the Presidential Awards which are administered by the National Science Foundation.

Awardees receive a $10,000 educational grant for their schools and a trip to Washington, D.C., to accept a certificate. The teachers will be in the Nation’s capital from May 1-6, 2006, to receive the award and participate in a variety of educational and celebratory events.

During the week the teachers will tour the White House and be honored in an awards ceremony hosted by Dr. John H. Marburger III, Science Advisor to the President and Director, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. They will also meet with members of Congress and the Administration to discuss the latest issues in mathematics and science teaching.

For a complete listing of the 2005 awardees visit the Presidential Awardees for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching web site.

Study on Minority Degrees in STEM fields

The American Council on Education has published a study: Increasing the Success of Minority Students in Science and Technology.

Key Findings:

  • In the 1995-96 academic year, 18.6 percent of African-American students and 22.7 percent of Hispanic students began college interested in majoring in STEM fields compared with 18 percent of white students and 26.4 percent of Asian-American students.
  • By the spring of 2001, 62.5 percent of African Americans and Hispanics majoring in STEM fields attained a bachelor’s degree compared with 94.8 percent of Asian Americans and 86.7 percent of whites.

Students who graduated in STEM fields (by spring 2001) were:

  • better prepared for postsecondary education because a larger percentage took a highly rigorous high school curriculum.
  • nearly all were younger than 19 when they entered college in 1995-96
  • more likely to have at least one parent with a bachelor’s degree or higher.
  • came from families with higher incomes.
  • more likely to work 15 hours or more a week.

Full press release on the study.

Antibiotic Discovery Stagnates

Bad Bugs, No Drugs As Antibiotic Discovery Stagnates . . . A Public Health Crisis Brews by the Infectious Diseases Society of America. The site includes a 37 page white paper.

A multi-pronged approach is needed to limit the impact of antibiotic resistance on patients and the public. These efforts include educating physicians, patients, and parents about the appropriate use of antibiotics, developing and applying infection control and immunization policies and practices to prevent transmission, surveying clinical and prescription data, and developing safer alternatives to antibiotic uses in agriculture.

The purpose of this document, however, is to call attention to a frightening twist in the antibiotic resistance problem that has not received adequate attention from federal policymakers: The pharmaceutical pipeline for new antibiotics is drying up.

Facts About Antibiotic Resistance:

The total cost of antimicrobial resistance to U.S. society is nearly $5 billion annually, according to the Institute of Medicine (IOM). Treating resistant pathogens often requires more expensive drugs and extended hospital stays.

More on the overuse of antibiotics – which creates drug resistance
Previous posts on antibiotics

What’s so Exciting About Engineering?

What’s so exciting about engineering? by Leigh M. Chowdhary:

“I thought it was really great,” says Hannah M., an 8th grader at Sacred Heart Middle School. “I liked the experiments.”

A crew of 150 girls age 10 to 14 from four Chicago area schools were scientists for a day. Some kids used static electricity from balloons to move sticks through a racecourse. Others watched videos of female inventors–who created things such as smear-proof lipstick and Kevlar (a substance used in bullet-proof vests).

This article discusses a Wow! That’s Engineering event.

Previous post on Science for Kids – learning through action.

Women in engineering change the world around us for the better every day! Tell us in 100 words or less about a promotion that you would create to make the world a better place and you could win one of these prizes. Deadline is April 19th!

Feynman on Discovery

The pleasure of finding things out a video interview with Richard P Feynman (Google Video broke the link so I removed it).

A great mind expands upon our recent post: Science for Kids. He provides some good insight into learning.

Related book: Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character packaged with an hour-long audio CD of the 1978 “Los Alamos from Below” lecture.

Solar Eruption

photo of Solar Prominence

A Solar Prominence from SOHO – NASA photo of the day.

How can gas float above the Sun? Twisted magnetic fields arching from the solar surface can trap ionized gas, suspending it in huge looping structures. These majestic plasma arches are seen as prominences above the solar limb. In September 1999, this dramatic and detailed image was recorded by the EIT experiment on board the space-based SOHO observatory in the light emitted by ionized Helium.

It shows hot plasma escaping into space as a fiery prominence breaks free from magnetic confinement a hundred thousand kilometers above the Sun. These awesome events bear watching as they can affect communications and power systems over 100 million kilometers away on Planet Earth.

Previous post on solar storms and the affect on communications and power systems