Once again I have created a group on the ESPN NCAA Basketball Tournament Challenge for curiouscat basketball fans. To participate, go to the curiouscat ESPN group and make your picks.
Go Badgers and Go Davidson,
Category Archives: Education
Surfing a Wave for 12 km
via: Pororoca: Surfing the Amazon
Twice a year, between the months of February and March, the Atlantic Ocean waters roll up the Amazon river, in Brazil, generating the longest wave on the Earth. The phenomenon, known as the Pororoca, is caused by the tides of the Atlantic Ocean which meet the mouth of the river. This tidal bore generates waves up to 12 feet high which can last for over half an hour.
A Career in Computer Programming
Why a Career in Computer Programming Doesn’t Suck (A Response)
Programmers need to be lifelong learners. I’m not sure what else to tell you. Lots of people change their professions. It’s not too late for you. Alternatively, you could find a job using a stable technology that you enjoy. Maybe you should find somewhere that will let you use C or C++, both of which are unlikely to disappear anytime soon.
To the readers, pick a field that’s compatible with your own nature. You’ll be much happier. If you find that you’ve chosen the wrong field, change it. It’s just a job. Find something you actually enjoy, even if it means a massive career change. It’s better to be poorly-paid and happy than highly-paid and miserable.
Related: Hiring Software Developers – Want to be a Computer Game Programmer? – Engineering Graduates Get Top Salary Offers (CS is close)
Attacking Bacterial Walls
Bacterial Walls Come Tumbling Down:
Penicillin and many newer antibiotics work by blocking a piece of the machinery bacteria use to construct their durable outer walls. Without these tough, protective coatings, bacteria die. The enzymatic machinery (known as PBP2) studied by Strynadka’s group has two main parts: One end assembles long sugar fibers; the other end stitches them together with bits of protein to form a sturdy interlocking mesh shell.
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“This enzyme is an awesome target for antibiotics,” said Strynadka. “We have a totally new understanding of how the enzyme works and how a very good animal antibiotic inhibits the enzyme.” Although moenomycin is poorly absorbed by the human body, the new understanding of exactly how it interferes with bacterial enzyme function should help scientists design modified versions that are more suitable for use in people.
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“This enzyme is an awesome target for antibiotics,” said Strynadka. “We have a totally new understanding of how the enzyme works and how a very good animal antibiotic inhibits the enzyme.” Although moenomycin is poorly absorbed by the human body, the new understanding of exactly how it interferes with bacterial enzyme function should help scientists design modified versions that are more suitable for use in people.
Understanding the structure of this enzyme should also speed up screening and design of new antibiotics, which are in constant demand as microbes continually evolve new ways to evade the drugs that researchers design to thwart them. The time it takes for bacteria to develop resistance to new antibiotics has been as short as one year for penicillin V and as long as 30 years for vancomycin.
Related: How do antibiotics kill bacteria? – Structure-Based Antibiotic Discovery on the Bacterial Membrane by Natalie C.J. Strynadka – Anti-microbial ‘paint’ – Skin Bacteria
Invasive Plants: Tamarisk
To Save the West, Kill a Plant by Josh McDaniel:
The tamarisk, an invasive species introduced to the United States from Eurasia, is a deep-rooted plant that aggressively obtains water from the soil and groundwater. A single mature tree can produce up to 500,000 seeds per year, crowding out native plants along rivers and creeks and reducing wildlife habitat. The species now infests all the major rivers, springs, ditches, and wetlands in ten states—including Texas, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and California—and is rapidly expanding into others.
In the delicately dry ecosystems of the southwestern United States, that is a serious problem, adding up to over 800 billion gallons of lost water per year across the parched region. “That is equal to the water needs of 20 million people or one million acres of irrigated farmland,” said Tim Carlson, an environmental engineer and director of the Tamarisk Coalition, which aims to control the plant.
Living systems include risks for those that attempt to engineer improvement. The past is littered with examples of attempts to intervene that go wrong.
“One night, after I gave a presentation on tamarisk, an older gentleman came up to me and told me that he had earned his Eagle Scout rank by planting tamarisk to prevent soil erosion after the Dust Bowl era in the 1930s,” Carlson recalled. “He said he would gladly earn it again by helping me remove it.”
I don’t think there is a simple answer. We are going to have intentional and unintentional consequences results from our actions. To me the lesson is to learn from our past that we often have unintended consequences that are worse than we envisioned and we need to be careful. We can’t assume there are no risks that we don’t know about. There are risks we can’t predict.
Related: Invassive Plants articles – More Nutritious Wheat
Non-Newtonian Fluid Demo
via: A pool filled with non-newtonian fluid:
They filled a pool with a mix of cornstarch and water made on a concrete mixer truck. It becomes a non-newtonian fluid. When stress is applied to the liquid it exhibits properties of a solid. Video was recorded at Barcelona, Spain. A non-Newtonian fluid is a fluid in which the viscosity changes with the applied strain rate. As a result, non-Newtonian fluids may not have a well-defined viscosity.
Related: Gareth McKinley’s Non-Newtonian Fluid Dynamics Research Group – Non-Newtonian Fluid Dynamics And Applications In Geophysics – Institute of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics
USA Science and Engineering Degree Data – 2007
A huge amount of interesting data can be found in NSF’s report on the USA: Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering (pdf)
Since 2000 women have received more science and engineering bachelors degrees than men. Men still receive more master’s and doctoral degrees in science and engineering.
| 2004 bachelor’s degrees | Female | Male |
|---|---|---|
| Engineering | 13,257 | 51,418 |
| Computer Science | 14,406 | 42,999 |
| Psychology | 64,208 | 18,302 |
| Science and engineering | 227,813 | 224,525 |
| Total non-S&E | 583,004 | 371,667 |
200,000 more for bachelor’s degrees for women – wow. This is just a continuation of a trend but still is fairly amazing.
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Some more interesting data: 90% of Asian, 60% of Native Hawaiian/other Pacific Islander 40% of Hispanic doctoral S&E faculty were born outside the United States. Over 80 % of white, American Indian/Alaska Native, and multiple race doctoral S&E faculty were born in the United States.
Related: Worldwide Science and Engineering Doctoral Degree Data – USA Under-counting Engineering Graduates – Best Research Universities Globally – Diplomacy and Science Research
Robo-Salamander
Novel salamander robot crawls its way up the evolutionary ladder:
A group of European researchers has developed a spinal cord model of the salamander and implemented it in a novel amphibious salamander-like robot. The robot changes its speed and gait in response to simple electrical signals, suggesting that the distributed neural system in the spinal cord holds the key to vertebrates’ complex locomotor capabilities.
In a paper appearing in the March 9, 2007 issue of the journal Science, scientists from the EPFL in Switzerland and the INSERM research center/University of Bordeaux in France introduce their robot, Salamandra Robotica. This four-legged yellow creature reveals a great deal about the evolution of vertebrate locomotion. It’s also a vivid demonstration that robots can be used to test and verify biological concepts, and that very often nature herself offers ideal solutions for robotics design.
The researchers used a numerical model of the salamander’s spinal cord to explore three fundamental issues related to this vertebrate’s movement: what were the changes in the spinal cord that made it possible to evolve from aquatic to terrestrial locomotion? How are the limb and axial movements coordinated? And how is a simple electrical signal from the brain stem translated by the spinal cord into a change in gait?
Related: Robo-Salamander – an approach for the benefit of both robotics and biology, 2002 – Swimming Robot Aids Researchers – Micro-robots to ‘swim’ Through Veins
$15 Million for San Jose State College of Engineering
San José State Receives $15 Million Gift for College of Engineering:
The $15 million gift for the College of Engineering will be used to create endowments to support initiatives and programs in the areas of student and faculty development, leading-edge engineering, innovation and globalization. SJSU will request to officially name the college – the Charles W. Davidson College of Engineering – at the California State University Board of Trustees meeting in March.
“Engineering education has driven the success of Silicon Valley, and San José State University has been at the center of this success,” said Belle Wei, dean of the College of Engineering. “Chuck Davidson believes in the college’s mission to enable diverse and promising students to receive a quality, holistic engineering education. His gift will transform the college and help us achieve a new level of excellence in preparing our students to thrive in today’s dynamic and competitive world.”
Related: $40 Million for Engineering Education in Boston – $35 million to the USC School of Engineering – $25 Million for Marquette College of Engineering – Edinburgh University $115 Million Stem Cell Center
Use the Force
What geek wouldn’t want to be a Jedi?
Behold Project Epoc, a wireless headset developed by Australian start-up Emotiv Systems. The electrodes embedded in the set read your brain waves, figure out what you’re thinking and, yes, allow you to bend objects on the screen to your omnipotent will.
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Let’s be clear, though: Epoc isn’t anywhere near as easy as picking up a control pad and learning to play a game. The software uses adaptive learning to figure out what your brains’ electrical signals look like when you’re thinking about lifting, pushing, or rotating objects. That takes time (which is why Dave used the headset and not me).
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Let’s be clear, though: Epoc isn’t anywhere near as easy as picking up a control pad and learning to play a game. The software uses adaptive learning to figure out what your brains’ electrical signals look like when you’re thinking about lifting, pushing, or rotating objects. That takes time (which is why Dave used the headset and not me).
Still, I think I’d be willing to sacrifice an hour of my life for a taste of the Jedi’s power. The effect is amazing, after all – c’mon, this is mind-control people!
Ok, this is not yet available and needs quite a bit more to make consumers demand them – but if it can do what they say that is interesting start. Project Epoc