Author Archives: curiouscat

Florida State lures Applied Superconductivity Center from Wisconsin

Ching-Jen “Marty” Chen, dean of the College of Engineering, and Chiang Shih, chairman of the college’s department of mechanical engineering, also were heavily involved in negotiations to bring ASC to FSU.

“The College of Engineering joins the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in welcoming the move of the Applied Superconductivity Center to Tallahassee,” Chen said.

“This is an excellent example of multidisciplinary collaboration between the sciences and engineering. The affiliation of ASC with the College of Engineering amplifies many ongoing efforts in material engineering research in the college and the magnet lab.”

Four top ASC researchers, including Director David C. Larbalestier, will begin relocating by January 2006. They will be followed over the next six months by eight post-doctoral researchers, several highly skilled machinists and a few graduate students. In all, ASC may bring as many as 30 researchers to Tallahassee, along with some $2 million in research grants and another $2.5 million worth of precision laboratory equipment.

Larbalestier is viewed by many of his peers as the leading researcher in the United States, and possibly the world, in the basic research of practical superconducting materials for magnets and power applications. Over a 35-year career, he has profoundly influenced the development of high-field magnets for high-energy physics and other applications, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), that have evolved from them. Among the highlights of his career is his election in 2003 to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering.

“The Economic Development Council of Tallahassee/Leon County (EDC) is excited with this impressive level of investment and ongoing million-dollar payroll that will leave a lasting and positive influence on our regional economy,” said Brad Day, executive director of the ECD. “With the recruitment of research and development activities like this, our community continues to earn its reputation as a technology-rich economy.”

On the ASC site, hosted at Madison, they don’t spin the story quite the same way – Breaking News: ASC will be teaming up with NHMFL in Tallahassee, FL in 2006. Still that headline links directly to the FSU news release.

2006 Draper Prize for Engineering

Draper Prize for Engineering Medal

2006 Charles Stark Draper Prize Won by Inventors of Charge-coupled Devices

The 2006 Charles Stark Draper Prize will be presented by the National Academy of Engineering to the inventors of charge-coupled devices (CCDs), Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, on Feb. 21 in Washington , D.C. Boyle and Smith will share the $500,000 prize for inventing CCDs, which are imaging sensors or optical elements that convert light to digital data. CCDs are widely used in consumer products, such as camcorders and cell phone cameras, as well as in advanced electronic imaging tools, such as telescopes and imaging satellites.

CCDs are the first practical solid-state imaging devices. They were invented in 1969 by Boyle and Smith while working at Bell Laboratories. Because CCDs are silicon-based devices, they are fairly inexpensive to produce, compact, and fairly rugged, making them suitable for commercial product use. Their high sensitivity, excellent stability, and lack of distortion make CCDs attractive for use in scientific research imaging systems. CCDs are capable of imaging a variety of sources, including optical, x-ray, ultraviolet, and infrared emissions.

Administered by the National Academy of Engineering, the Draper Prize is endowed by The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc., and was established in 1988. The Prize is awarded for outstanding achievement, particularly innovation and reduction to practice, in engineering and technology contributing to the advancement of the welfare and freedom of humanity. The Prize honors the memory of Draper Laboratory’s founder, Dr. Charles Stark Draper, who pioneered inertial navigation. It is intended to increase public understanding of the contributions of engineering and technology. Originally biennial, the Prize is now awarded annually.

Previous years awards include:
2002: Dr. Robert S. Langer for extraordinary contributions to the bioengineering of revolutionary medical drug delivery systems
2001: Drs. Vinton Cerf, Robert Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, and Lawrence Roberts for the invention of the Internet

China’s Economic Science Experiment

The Great Chinese Experiment, Horace Freeland Judson, MIT Technology Review. China is betting its economic health on becoming a world leader in the sciences. But will it succeed? This long detailed article provides insight into the challenges, practices and potential for China’s economy and scientific innovation going forward.

“The major scientific program running right now in China is this one, called 97-3 Program,” Professor Cao said. “A major huge program to catch up with the scientific development of the whole world. Started in 1997, March. This program is for basic research. According to the needs of the nation.” Technological applications? Or basic science? “Both,” she said with a sharp nod. The goal is split in two? “Yes,” she said. “I think that the major scientific program is the whole-world program. Not just for China. The second is the urgent requirement for our country’s social and economic development.”

The 97-3 Program concentrates research in six areas, agricultural biotechnology, energy, informatics, natural resources and the environment, population and health, and materials science. Cao’s own concern is with population and health. In this area the research is divided into 20 fields. She took me through them with the aid of a 33-page position paper she had put together in anticipation of my visit. The list is diverse, the projects ambitious. Yet even the most basic research — in stem cells, for example — has been defined in terms of immediate applications.

Information on the China 973 basic research program from the Chinese government’s web site:

Stipulation and implementation of the 973 Program is an important decision of our country to carry out the two development strategies of ” Rejuvenating the country through science and technology ” and ” sustainable development”, as well as to further reinforce basic research and science and technology work. It is an important measure of our country to achieve the great objectives of China’s economic, scientific & technology, and social development by 2010-2050 , to upgrade the sustainable S & T innovative capabilities and to meet the challenges of the new century.

While the engineering credentials of China’s leadership is noted often, it is still interesting to note that China’s 9 senior government officials are all engineers. A Technocrat Riding a Wild Tiger:

When China’s leaders meet with Hu each week in Beijing’s government district, Zhongnanhai, they could spend hours discussing cables, switches, tool-making machines and control devices. That’s because every one of them has a degree in engineering. The president himself, the son of a tea merchant from Jiangsu Province, trained to build hydroelectric power stations, while the others hold degrees in electrical engineering, metallurgy and geology.

Indian Institute of Technology – Female Students

Women at IIT an endangered species, Anjali Joseph, Times of India:

Women students in IIT Mumbai are a tiny percentage. “There are 34 girls and over 500 boys in our year,” says first year civil engineering student Vidushi Jain.

‘Women engineers are on increase’, Express India:

There is a ‘spectacular’ increase in the number of girls entering engineering courses in the country for the last three and a half decades but the northern India has still to catch up, Prof S P Sukhatme, former chairman, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, said.
…
From a mere one girl student, who was admitted at the University Department of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, in early 1970s, the number of girls joining engineering colleges has steadily increased and in 2005 it stands at 15 per cent of the total admission, Sukhatme said.

The women engineers were mostly specialised in electrical civil, computer and information technology, it added.

The revolution in women joining engineering courses was witnessed mostly in the southern states starting with Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, ‘the northern India with an exception of Delhi, has to improve its position’.

Indian Institute of Technology – Bombay

Online Math Tutors

Indian math teachers to teach American kids real time

Online tutoring has made it possible for a learner in the US to log on to a tutoring site in India and get connected to an Indian mathematics tutor. Both can discuss the problems that the student is facing by chatting or “writing” over a WhiteBoard.
…
the US Federal government for supplemental services to improve student performance in the lowest performing schools. Schools are themselves barred from providing these services which instead must be provided by third party commercial companies.

The US market has a ‘K12’ (Kindergarten to Class 12) content spend of over $10.2 billion, an assessment market of $ 2 billion and an online tutoring market of over $4 billion.

Self-Assembling Cubes Could Deliver Medicine

Nanocubes photos

Tiny Self-Assembling Cubes Could Carry Medicine, Cell Therapy – News Release from Johns Hopkins (pdf format)

Details of photos: “Scanning electron microscopy images of image of (A) a hollow, open surfaced, biocontainer, and (B) a device loaded with glass microbeads. (C) Fluorescence microscopy images of a biocontainer loaded with cell-ECM-agarose with the cell viability stain, Calcein-AM. (D) Release of viable cells from the biocontainer.”

Johns Hopkins researchers have devised a self- assembling cube-shaped perforated container, no larger than a dust speck, that could serve as a delivery system for medications and cell therapy.

When the process is completed, they form a perforated cube. When the solution is cooled, the solder hardens again, and the containers remain in their box-like shape.

“To make sure it folds itself exactly into a cube, we have to engineer the hinges very precisely,” Gracias said. “The self-assembly technique allows us to make a large number of these microcontainers at the same time and at a relatively low cost.”

Gracias and his colleagues used micropipettes to insert into the cubes a suspension containing microbeads that are commonly used in cell therapy. The lab team showed that these beads could be released from the cubes through agitation. The researchers also inserted human cells, similar to the type used in medical therapy, into the cubes. A positive stain test showed that these cells remained alive in the microcontainers and could easily be released.

And they are “always on the lookout for exceptional and highly creative undergraduate, graduate students and post-doctoral candidates” – maybe you.

Computer Science Education

The Perils of JavaSchools by Joel Spolsky:

Therein lies the debate. Years of whinging by lazy CS undergrads like me, combined with complaints from industry about how few CS majors are graduating from American universities, have taken a toll, and in the last decade a large number of otherwise perfectly good schools have gone 100% Java. It’s hip, the recruiters who use “grep” to evaluate resumes seem to like it, and, best of all, there’s nothing hard enough about Java to really weed out the programmers without the part of the brain that does pointers or recursion, so the drop-out rates are lower, and the computer science departments have more students, and bigger budgets, and all is well.

Except.

I wish they hadn’t listened.

As usually Joel wraps intelligent thought within great writing. For those interested in computer science his blog is a great resource. Also, don’t miss Paul Graham’s essays or his book: Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age. Joel’s writing is also available as a book: Joel on Software. Joel has also collected relating writing: The Best Software Writing I.

Overuse of Antibiotics

Stomach Bug Mutates Into Medical Mystery – Antibiotics, Heartburn Drugs Suspected

Shultz is one of a growing number of young, otherwise healthy Americans who are being stricken by the bacterial infection known as Clostridium difficile — or C. diff — which appears to be spreading rapidly around the country and causing unusually severe, sometimes fatal illness.
…
“It’s a new phenomenon. It’s just emerging,” said L. Clifford McDonald of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. “We’re very concerned. We know it’s happening, but we’re really not sure why it’s happening or where this is going.”

It may, however, be the latest example of a common, relatively benign bug that has mutated because of the overuse of antibiotics.

Articles on the overuse of anti-biotics are available via the Curious Cat directory. From the US Center for Disease Control – Antibiotic / Antimicrobial Resistance section:

Antibiotic use promotes development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria change in some way that reduces or eliminates the effectiveness of drugs, chemicals, or other agents designed to cure or prevent infections. The bacteria survive and continue to multiply causing more harm. Widespread use of antibiotics promotes the spread of antibiotic resistance. While antibiotics should be used to treat bacterial infections, they are not effective against viral infections like the common cold, most sore throats, and the flu.

Unfortunately the continued overuse of antibiotics is increasing the danger of deadly antibiotic resistant bacteria. This problem is a significant challenge not only due to the scope of the consequences (which are huge) but due to the nature of the problem. Many thousands, hundreds of thousands maybe even millions of poor use of antibiotics incrementally put everyone at risks. But each of those individual steps of poor use of antibiotics is by itself not likely to be deadly.

Due to the way we tend to think about problems (searching for one simple cause or thing to blame and fixing that one thing), the cause of antibiotic resistance provides an opportunity for the millions of bad actions to go unchecked. Only after catastrophic consequences are recognized, and put in the proper context, are we likely to give this issue the attention it deserves. Thankfully CDC and others are trying to get us to take this issues seriously now. However, the risks are huge and each person (doctors, patients, consumers [use of antibiotics on animals used as food is a huge part of the problem], government regulators…) taking small actions that make the situation worse often don’t see any need to take more responsibility.

National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship

The deadline for applying for the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship is January 6, 2006. Some details:

The US Department of Defense will pay the fellow’s full tuition and required fees (not to include room and board). In addition, fellows receive (if in school 12 months):

Period	First Year	Second Year	Third Year
Amount	$30,500	$31,000	$31,500

The above amounts are based on a 12-month academic year. If the fellow is not enrolled in an institutionally approved academic study and/or research activity during the summer months, financial support will be paid only while enrolled.

From 2003 to 2005, 466 awards were granted out of 8,679 applications – see more details.

“You are required to enroll in a full-time graduate program at a U.S. institution offering doctoral degrees in your discipline of study. Fellowships are awarded to applicants who intend to pursue a doctoral degree. You do not have to be accepted into a program at the time your application is submitted. However, should you be selected, the award is contingent upon your admission to a suitable program.”

“NDSEG Fellowships are intended for students at or near the beginning of their graduate studies in science or engineering. Applicants must have received or be on track to receive their bachelor’s degrees by Fall 2006. Fellows selected in Spring 2006 must begin their fellowship tenure in Fall 2006.”

To apply and for more details see the NDSEG web site.

Awards provided to applicants who will pursue a doctoral degree in, or closely related to, an area of DoD interest within one of the following disciplines:

* Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering
* Biosciences
* Chemical Engineering
* Chemistry
* Civil Engineering
* Cognitive, Neural, and Behavioral Sciences
* Computer and Computational Sciences
* Electrical Engineering
* Geosciences
* Materials Science and Engineering
* Mathematics
* Mechanical Engineering
* Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
* Oceanography
* Physics

Wasps Used to Detect Explosives

Wasps Used to Detect Explosives, podcast from NPR:

The “Wasp Hound” is a device that utilizes trained wasps to detect explosives and other odors. Joe Lewis, research entomologist with the USDA Agriculture Research Service and the Wasp Hound’s lead inventor, discusses the device.

Wasps could replace bomb, drug dogs, USA Today:

Scientists say a species of non-stinging wasps can be trained in only five minutes and are just as sensitive to odors as man’s best friend, which can require up to six months of training at a cost of about $15,000 per dog.
…
“There’s a tremendous need for a very flexible and mobile chemical detector,” said U.S. Department of Agriculture entomologist Joe Lewis, who has been studying wasps since the 1960s.

Parasitic Wasps Learn and Report Diverse Chemicals with Unique Conditionable Behaviors by Olson, D.M., Rains, G.C., Meiners, T., Takasu, K., Tertuliano, M., Tumlinson, J.H., Wackers, F.L., Lewis, W.J. 2003. Chemical Senses. 28:545-549.