Author Archives: curiouscat

2004 National Medal of Science and Technology

Dr. Borlaug receives National Medal of Science

The United States National Medals of Science and Technology were presented today at the White House. The photo shows Dr. Norman E. Borlaug, Texas A&M, receiving the National Medal of Science from President Bush. Eight National Medals of Science were presented (Dr. Dennis P. Sullivan, City Univ. of NY; Dr. Phillip A. Sharp, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Dr. Robert N. Clayton, The University of Chicago; Dr. Stephen J. Lippard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Dr. Kenneth J. Arrow, Stanford University; Dr. Norman E. Borlaug, Texas A&M University; Dr. Edwin N. Lightfoot, University of Wisconsin – Madison; Dr. Thomas E. Starzl, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine). George Lucas, of Star Wars fame, received a National Medal of Technology awarded to his company: Industrial Light & Magic.

UW’s Lightfoot to get major science award:

Developers of heart-lung machines, kidney dialysis equipment and pressure chambers to simulate the deepest oceans have used Edwin N. Lightfoot’s research.

The 80-year-old UW-Madison chemical and biological engineering professor is to receive the National Medal of Science today from President Bush at the White House.

“Ed’s work formed the foundation for a great deal of the work in chemical and biomedical engineering,” said Tom Kuech, 51, chairman of the UW Chemical and Biological Engineering Department.

“What’s even more remarkable is that he can run circles around most people. He’s a very sought-after speaker for his views on changes in engineering education.”

National Technology Medals were awarded to: Roger L. Easton, Ralph H. Baer, Motorola, IBM, Gen-Probe Inc., Industrial Light and Magic and PACCAR Inc.

Concentrating Solar Collector wins UW-Madison Engineering Innovation Award

Solar Collector

An inexpensive, modular solar-energy technology that could be used to heat water and generate electricity (see photo) won $12,500 and took first place in both the Schoofs Prize for Creativity and Tong Prototype Prize competitions, held Feb. 9 and 10 during Innovation Days on the UW-Madison College of Engineering campus.

In a package about the size of a small computer desk, the winning system uses a flat Fresnel lens to collect the sun’s energy and focus it onto a copper block. Then a unique spray system removes the energy from the copper block and converts it into steam, says inventor Angie Franzke, an engineering mechanics and astronautics senior from Omro, Wisconsin. The steam either heats water for household use or powers a turbine to generate electricity.

Other 2006 Schoofs Prize for Creativity winners include:

* Second place and $7,000 — William Gregory Knowles, for the OmniPresent Community-Based Response Network, a personal, business or industrial security system that draws on networked users and devices to more efficiently verify burglar alarms, fire alarms or medical emergencies.
* Third place and $4,000 — Garret Fitzpatrick, Jon Oiler, Angie Franzke, Peter Kohlhepp and Greg Hoell for the Self-Leveling Wheelchair Tray, a stowable working surface for wheelchairs that self-levels, even when the wheelchair is tilted or reclined up to a 45-degree angle.

Read more about the 2006 competition

MIT Energy Storage Using Carbon Nanotubes

Images of different types of carbon nanotubes

MIT Researchers Fired up Over New Battery

Image / Michael Ströck, Images of different types of carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes are key to MIT researchers’ efforts to improve on an energy storage device called an ultracapacitor. Larger image

Work at MIT’s Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems (LEES) holds out the promise of the first technologically significant and economically viable alternative to conventional batteries in more than 200 years.
…
The LEES ultracapacitor has the capacity to overcome this energy limitation by using vertically aligned, single-wall carbon nanotubes — one thirty-thousandth the diameter of a human hair and 100,000 times as long as they are wide. How does it work? Storage capacity in an ultracapacitor is proportional to the surface area of the electrodes. Today’s ultracapacitors use electrodes made of activated carbon, which is extremely porous and therefore has a very large surface area. However, the pores in the carbon are irregular in size and shape, which reduces efficiency. The vertically aligned nanotubes in the LEES ultracapacitor have a regular shape, and a size that is only several atomic diameters in width. The result is a significantly more effective surface area, which equates to significantly increased storage capacity.

Evolution of Antibiotic Resistance

Inhibition of Mutation and Combating the Evolution of Antibiotic Resistance from the Public Library of Science Biology Journal:

The emergence of drug-resistant bacteria poses a serious threat to human health. In the case of several antibiotics, including those of the quinolone and rifamycin classes, bacteria rapidly acquire resistance through mutation of chromosomal genes during therapy. In this work, we show that preventing induction of the SOS response by interfering with the activity of the protease LexA renders pathogenic Escherichia coli unable to evolve resistance in vivo to ciprofloxacin or rifampicin, important quinolone and rifamycin antibiotics. We show in vitro that LexA cleavage is induced during RecBC-mediated repair of ciprofloxacin-mediated DNA damage and that this results in the derepression of the SOS-regulated polymerases Pol II, Pol IV and Pol V, which collaborate to induce resistance-conferring mutations. Our findings indicate that the inhibition of mutation could serve as a novel therapeutic strategy to combat the evolution of antibiotic resistance.

Neutrino Detector Searching for String Theory Evidence

Excellent 10 minute podcast presents details on search for evidence of string theory via Project IceCube.

Main IceCube web site – “IceCube is a one-cubic-kilometer international high-energy neutrino observatory being built and installed in the clear deep ice below the South Pole Station.”

South Pole Neutrino Detector Could Yield Evidences of String Theory:

Researchers at Northeastern University and the University of California, Irvine say that scientists might soon have evidence for extra dimensions and other exotic predictions of string theory. Early results from a neutrino detector at the South Pole, called AMANDA, show that ghostlike particles from space could serve as probes to a world beyond our familiar three dimensions, the research team says.

Toyota k-12 Science Grants

Sponsored by Toyota and administered by National Science Teachers Association, Toyota TAPESTRY is the largest K-12 science teacher grant program in the nation, providing 50 grants of up to $10,000 each to K-12 science teachers, as well as a minimum of 20 mini-grants of up to $2,500 each for projects smaller in scope. These grants are awarded for creative, innovative classroom projects in the fields of environmental education, physical science, and literacy and science education.

Over the past 14 years, TAPESTRY has awarded more than $6 million in grants to 673 teams of teachers from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Saipan who have created innovative science projects that can be implemented in their school or school districts.

2005 Grants include:

  • Our 5th and 6th graders will be teaming with biologists from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to study water quality and salmon health throughout the Kenai River. Over the past few years the young salmon have shown an alarming decrease in size, and the students will be involved in an actual research project to determine if this trend is happening throughout the entire watershed, and what might be some of the contributing variables. Grant funds will be used to purchase dissecting microscopes for macroinvertebrate identification, equipment for the collection of specimens, and probeware for the field analysis of water samples using handheld computers. Several field trips are planned throughout the year, each designed to explore a different of segment of the river ecosystem from its source in Kenai Lake, to the spawning grounds in Skilak Lake, to its outlet into Cook Inlet.
  • Our project will give 10th grade students a hands-on opportunity for an inquiry-based investigative experience similar to the scientific research conducted at the prestigious Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. The students will develop a critical understanding of cancer cells by investigating and performing state-of-the-art techniques and translate their comprehension of the academic language of molecular biology.

Their web site includes abstracts and contact details for present and past grant winners.

Magnetic Misfit Bacteria

Magnetic Misfits: South Seeking Bacteria in the Northern Hemisphere

Magnetotactic bacteria contain chains of magnetic iron minerals that allow them to orient in the earth’s magnetic field much like living compass needles. These bacteria have long been observed to respond to high oxygen levels in the lab by swimming towards geomagnetic north in the Northern Hemisphere and geomagnetic south in the Southern Hemisphere. In either hemisphere, this behavior would also lead them downward in the water column into areas with their preferred oxygen level. But an unusual bacterium in New England has been found doing just the opposite, a magnetic misfit of sorts.
…
Simmons, a graduate student in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography and Applied Ocean Science and Engineering, received some additional support for her study from a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship. Edwards is her advisor.

Solar Powered Hearing Aid

Solar Hearing Aid
African-Made, Solar-Powered Hearing Aid

The SolarAid is a hearing aid designed and built by Godisa Technologies, a Botswana company founded to make low-cost hearing aids for the developing world. The SolarAid system combines a small hearing aid and a lightweight solar charger; Godisa developed the first No. 13 rechargeable button battery for the system. Godisa is Africa’s only hearing aid manufacturer, and the only one in the world making hearing aids specifically for the sub-Saharan Africa environment.

Innovation through creating effective solutions using technology solutions that have existed in other contexts can have huge impacts. Appropriate technology solutions offer the opportunity for great gains for humanity.

Related posts:

Santa Fe Institute High School Internship

The Santa Fe Institute, located in Santa Fe New Mexico, has devoted itself to the creation of a new kind of scientific research community pursuing emerging syntheses in science.

The institute offers High School Internships:

The Santa Fe Institute Summer Internship/Mentorship (SIM) Program gives high school students the opportunity to come to SFI to actively participate in its research-based curriculum, enjoy stimulating guest lectures, and contribute to a scientific effort as part of a multi-generational research team. This six week “SIM experience” broadens students’ scientific horizons, and accelerates academic and personal development by immersing them in a supportive community of scholars. At the conclusion of the summer internship, students will present their work and, if appropriate, develop a plan for continuation throughout the school year. Students completing the summer program will receive a modest stipend.

Applications must be postmarked no later than Friday, April 15.

Diversity in Science and Engineering

Diversity in Science & Engineering: Reflecting on the Summers Hypothesis by David Keyes. More discussion of possible causes for the under-representation of certain demographic groups in science and engineering community and possible changes that could improve the situation should be encouraged.

China graduates about 600,000 bachelor’s-level engineers per year, compared to 70,000 for the US, and it costs about one-fifth as much to employ an engineer in China. India graduates 350,000 engineers per year, and employs them for one-eleventh as much. In the past, the US counted on importing the best of foreign trained engineering bachelor’s holders, who now make up 65 percent of the doctoral degree candidates in engineering at US universities. Today, fewer foreign-born US Ph.D. holders can be expected to remain in the US, now that their native infrastructures for S&E research and education are improving.

I encourage people to explore Framing the Engineering Outsourcing Debate by Dr. Gary Gereffi and Vivek Wadhwa. I find the report compelling. Still, I would like some confirmation (or compelling arguments detailing what is wrong with the study) that the numbers in Duke’s report are more relevant than those quoted above, and elsewhere.

Also, in this context wouldn’t looking at the diversity of the engineers in China and India be interesting?

There are many ways of slicing demographic data, but by any metric, the US is failing to train a competitive number of domestic scientists and engineers. It produces only about 5.5 S&E bachelor’s degrees per 100 24-year-olds overall, according to 2004 NSF data. Raising the participation of women in S&E in their 24-year-old cohort (currently 4.5 per 100) to that of men (currently 7 per 100 in theirs) is one strategy. Raising the participation of African Americans (currently 3 per 100) and Hispanics (currently 2.5 per 100) is another, particularly as the latter population base grows relative to Caucasians (with 6 per 100). Meanwhile, Asians and Pacific Islanders in the US account for 14.5 S&E bachelor’s degrees per 100 24-year-olds in their cohort.

I believe there is no one cause for the current demographic makeup of various slices of the science and engineering community and there will be no one change that will bring dramatic results. Many good things have been done and progress has been made. There is still room for many more improvements, but I think the future will be made better by hundreds and thousands of relatively small incremental improvements.

Women in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon has several papers online discussing some of the discoveries made while improving female representation at the University.


Transforming the Culture of Computing at Carnegie Mellon, by Lenore Blum:

In 1995, the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) began an effort to bring more women into its undergraduate computer science (CS) program.
At that time, just 7% (7 out of 96) of entering freshman computer science majors at
Carnegie Mellon were women. Five years later, in 1999, the percentage of women in the
entering class had increased fivefold to about 38% (50 out of 130).

Related posts: