Forbes offers a list of 10 Things That Will Change The Way We Live. Of the items 9 of 10 seem directly related to science and engineering, such as: Fuel Cells, Gene Therapy, WiMAX. The only one that doesn’t seem directly related to science and engineering is $200 a barrel oil. But even there the effect of such an future would largely depend on science and engineering solutions that would be created in such a future.
Category Archives: Economics
Water and Electricity for All
Segway Creator Unveils His Next Act
Water and Electricity may not seem like something to wish for if you are reading this post. However for over 1 billion people that do without both it is.
Dean Kamen, the engineer who invented the Segway, is puzzling over a new equation these days. An estimated 1.1 billion people in the world don’t have access to clean drinking water, and an estimated 1.6 billion don’t have electricity. Those figures add up to a big problem for the world and an equally big opportunity for entrepreneurs.
To solve the problem, he’s invented two devices, each about the size of a washing machine that can provide much-needed power and clean water in rural villages.
“Eighty percent of all the diseases you could name would be wiped out if you just gave people clean water,” says Kamen. “The water purifier makes 1,000 liters of clean water a day, and we don’t care what goes into it. And the power generator makes a kilowatt off of anything that burns.”
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Kamen’s goal is to produce machines that cost $1,000 to $2,000 each. That’s a far cry from the $100,000 that each hand-machined prototype cost to build.
Quadir is going to try and see if the machines can be produced economically by a factory in Bangladesh. If the numbers work out, not only does he think that distributing them in a decentralized fashion will be good business — he also thinks it will be good public policy. Instead of putting up a 500-megawatt power plant in a developing country, he argues, it would be much better to place 500,000 one-kilowatt power plants in villages all over the place, because then you would create 500,000 entrepreneurs.
More products from his company, Deka Research & Development Corp, including: Hydroflexâ„¢ Irrigation Pump, IBOTâ„¢ Mobility System and Intravascular Stent.
Dean Kamen understands what engineering can do. “Today, almost 200 engineers, technicians, and machinists work in our electronics and software engineering labs, machine shop, and on CAD stations.”
DEKA’s mission, first and foremost, is to foster innovation. It is a company where the questioning of conventional thinking is encouraged and practiced by everyone—engineers and non-engineers alike—because open minds are more likely to arrive at workable solutions. This has been our formula for success since we began, and it will continue to drive our success in the future.
Dean Kamen founded For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST)
Phony Science Gap?
A Phony Science Gap? by Robert Samuelson:
And the American figures excluded computer science graduates. Adjusted for these differences, the U.S. degrees jump to 222,335. Per million people, the United States graduates slightly more engineers with four-year degrees than China and three times as many as India. The U.S. leads are greater for lesser degrees.
It is good to see more people using the data from the Duke study we have mentioned previously: USA Under-counting Engineering Graduates – Filling the Engineering Gap. However, I think he misses a big change. It seems to me that the absolute number of graduates each year is the bigger story than that the United States has not lost the percentage of population rate of science and engineering graduates yet. China significantly exceeds the US and that India is close to the US currently in science and engineering graduates. And the trend is dramatically in favor of those countries.
There has been a Science gap between the United States and the rest of the world. That gap has been between the USA, in the lead, and the rest. That gap has been shrinking for at least 10 years and most likely closer to 20. The rate of the decline in that gap has been increasing and seems likely to continue in that direction.
Despite an eroding manufacturing base and the threat of “offshoring” of some technical services, there’s a rising demand for science and engineering skills. That may explain higher enrollments and why this “crisis” — like the missile gap — may be phony.
I wonder what eroding manufacturing base he is referring to? The United States is the world’s largest manufacturer. The United States continues to increase its share of the world manufacturing and increase, incrementally year over year. Yes manufacturing employment has been declining (though manufacturing employment has declined far less in the United States than in China). Granted China has been growing tremendously quickly, but they are still far behind the United States in manufacturing output.
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Spray-On Solar-Power Cells
Spray-On Solar-Power Cells Are True Breakthrough by Stefan Lovgren for National Geographic News:
The plastic material uses nanotechnology and contains the first solar cells able to harness the sun’s invisible, infrared rays. The breakthrough has led theorists to predict that plastic solar cells could one day become five times more efficient than current solar cell technology.
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At a current cost of 25 to 50 cents per kilowatt-hour, solar power is significantly more expensive than conventional electrical power for residences. Average U.S. residential power prices are less than ten cents per kilowatt-hour, according to experts.
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At a current cost of 25 to 50 cents per kilowatt-hour, solar power is significantly more expensive than conventional electrical power for residences. Average U.S. residential power prices are less than ten cents per kilowatt-hour, according to experts.
But that could change with the new material.
“Flexible, roller-processed solar cells have the potential to turn the sun’s power into a clean, green, convenient source of energy,” said John Wolfe, a nanotechnology venture capital investor at Lux Capital in New York City.
Taiwan as Technology Innovator
Taiwan towers as tech innovator by John Boudreau, Mercury News (pointy haired bosses broke the link so I removed it):
Taiwanese companies produce three-quarters of the world’s notebook computers, two-thirds of its personal digital assistants and nearly 70 percent of its liquid crystal display monitors, according to Taiwan government statistics.
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`Innovation is the key to survival,” said Yen-Shiang Shih, a deputy minister with Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs.
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`Innovation is the key to survival,” said Yen-Shiang Shih, a deputy minister with Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs.
GPS – Science Economy
Many cool products result from scientific and engineering research and development. One class of such products are the global positioning system devices. One example of those devices is the Garmin Nuvi 350 Pocket or Vehicle GPS Navigator Viewer (buy from Amazon) – in photo.
Europe, is exploring putting their own GPS satellite system in orbit to remove their current dependence of the system using United States military satellites. Sat-nav looks to smart ideas:
Analysts believe the value of the Galileo-enhanced business – equipment and services – could be worth well in excess of 10 billion euros a year by 2020, as sat-nav functionality wheedles its way into every corner of modern life.
Some applications are obvious: consumer mobiles which not only allow you to phone ahead and book that pizza restaurant but also show you on-screen how to get there and tell you where the nearest cashpoint is located.
Other applications will stretch the imagination and ingenuity of Europe’s smartest technologists.
Math in the “Real World”
Math Will Rock Your World cover story in Business Week:
From fledglings like Inform to tech powerhouses such as IBM (IBM ), companies are hitching mathematics to business in ways that would have seemed fanciful even a few years ago. In the past decade, a sizable chunk of humanity has moved its work, play, chat, and shopping online. We feed networks gobs of digital data that once would have languished on scraps of paper — or vanished as forgotten conversations. These slices of our lives now sit in databases, many of them in the public domain. From a business point of view, they’re just begging to be analyzed. But even with the most powerful computers and abundant, cheap storage, companies can’t sort out their swelling oceans of data, much less build businesses on them, without enlisting skilled mathematicians and computer scientists.
Filling the Engineering Gap
Filling the Engineering Gap by Vivek Wadhwa, an update on the previous post: USA Under-counting Engineering Graduates. In this article Vivek Wadhwa writes:
So what should be done? Further research is needed on a subject of such critical national importance. The Duke study was a small step toward establishing certain baseline facts and reliable statistics. As Professor Ausubel notes, if a team of engineering students can accomplish so much within a semester, why not the experts and analysts?
This is exactly right. We need better information. The Duke study was an excellent step in the right direction but more is needed.
Dynamic engineers develop renewable energy sources, solutions for purifying water, sustaining the environment, providing low-cost health care, and vaccines for infectious diseases. They also manage projects and lead innovation. Talk to any CEO, CIO, or engineering manager, and they’ll likely tell you that they’re always looking for such people.
With all the problems that need solving in the world, we probably need many more dynamic engineers. India and China need them as badly as the U.S. does. But by simply focusing on the numbers and racing to graduate more, we’re going to end up with more transactional engineers — and their jobs will likely get outsourced.
I am not convinced that this dynamic versus transactional engineering distinction is the key. I am willing to listen to more evidence. But I am not at all sure this “dynamic engineering” is the answer. I think it might be too simplistic an explanation. Still at least it is an attempt to look at the matter more deeply. I think much more effort would be helpful. And I am hoping those working on this at Duke, and others, provide us with some additional data, research, theories and proposals.
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Oregon and Arizona Technology Economies
Ore. growing into tech rival, Jane Larson, The Arizona Republic:
The “Silicon Forest,” with barely two-thirds the population of the “Silicon Desert,” surpassed Arizona in 2003 as the nation’s third-largest state for semiconductor manufacturing jobs. The world’s biggest chip manufacturer, California-based Intel Corp., has grown from a few hundred employees at its Oregon outpost in the mid-1970s to become Oregon’s largest private employer.
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In Oregon, Intel has three chip-making plants and 15,500 employees. Its Ronler Acres campus in Hillsboro, started in 1994, has become the company’s largest and most complex site, with research into technologies still generations away; an experimental factory dedicated to developing the company’s new manufacturing processes; and a more traditional high-volume manufacturing plant.
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In Oregon, Intel has three chip-making plants and 15,500 employees. Its Ronler Acres campus in Hillsboro, started in 1994, has become the company’s largest and most complex site, with research into technologies still generations away; an experimental factory dedicated to developing the company’s new manufacturing processes; and a more traditional high-volume manufacturing plant.
The site is so cutting edge that, of the 14 Intel manufacturing plants worldwide, Oregon is where new manufacturing technologies are developed and rolled out to Arizona, New Mexico and other locations…
Mixing researchers, developers and manufacturing technicians in one location has proved powerful. Skywalks connect Ronler Acres’ research lab to its development factory and high-volume plant. That enables the various groups and Intel vendors to work side by side, screening new ideas, ramping them to the point where Intel knows it can produce good yields and then transferring the process to the high-volume factories.
“It’s one of the most amazing facilities anywhere in the world, and the leading research, development and manufacturing site of any semiconductor company,” Bob Baker, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Technology and Manufacturing Group, told the summit. “It brings together the unique aspects of our path-finding, our research and development and our volume manufacturing capacity.”
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Both states still worry about shoring up their kindergarten-through-12th-grade education systems. Arizona, though, has the edge when it comes to engineering schools, the graduates of which feed the industry in both states.
Florida State lures Applied Superconductivity Center from Wisconsin
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.