Category Archives: Education

Water From Air

Amazing. A gizmo which sucks the air in, then sucks the water out of the air, and then spews out clean fresh water. 500 Gallons of it – a day.

Pretty cool. Getting clean water is a large problem throughout the world. Unfortunately this is not the solution yet – each machine costs $500,000. still for the right situations this is useful. FEMA bought 2.

Its precise workings aren’t public, but they use a chemical process similar to the one that causes salt to absorb moisture from the air (and clump up your saltshaker). The water-harvesting technology was originally the brainchild of the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which sought ways to ensure sustainable water supplies for U.S. combat troops deployed in arid regions like Iraq.

Darpa gave millions to research companies like LexCarb and Sciperio to create a contraption that could capture water in the Mesopotamian desert. But it was Aqua Sciences, that was first to put a product on the market that can operate in harsh climates.

Helium-3 Fusion Reactor

Future In Fusion? by John Lasker:

Nevertheless, UW fusion researchers believe their plan could get civilization off fossil fuels. That’s if crews could return to the moon to mine for helium-3, super-heat it out of the lunar soil to process the gas, and return it to the Earth.
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But scientists and investors have taken notice. Nearly all of UW fusion research is privately funded. And meanwhile, with China, India, the European Space Agency and at least one Russian corporation all pursuing plans for a manned lunar base in the coming decades, there is increasing talk of a race to control this fuel, one shuttle load of which could theoretically power the United States for a year.
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Aftergood doesn’t believe a race with China for lunar helium-3 has begun. Yet a race to the moon against China — whether real or superficial — may be in NASA’s best interest, he said. “There are some who wish this would be the case — this race with China. They believe it would recapture the dynamic of the United States’ and Russia’s race to the moon,” he said.

This sounds pretty incredible to me and I find the claims of using fuel from the Moon economically to power our needs on Earth. Still it is interesting and just because it sounds fantastic does not mean it can’t be true. But I am skeptical.

Hispanic Engineering Students

A Future Engineer:

While they are the largest minority group in the United States at 14.5 percent of the population, only 4 percent of engineers in the workforce in this country are Hispanic. Just 7 percent of the bachelor’s degrees in engineering, 5 percent of master’s degrees and even fewer doctoral degrees are awarded to Hispanics
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To this end, several universities host summer camps to expose young Hispanics and other minorities to STEM subjects. New Mexico State University’s College of Engineering, for instance, brings 180 middle and high school students to campus each summer for intense math and science workshops. “We target demographics that we really want to push engineering on,” says Castillo, who became interested in engineering himself at a summer camp at rival University of New Mexico. “It’s been an extremely successful program for us.”

Edinburgh University $115 Million Stem Cell Center

Stem cell centre plan confirmed

Additional Scottish Executive funding of Â£24m will allow Edinburgh University to develop the Â£59m centre in collaboration with Scottish Enterprise. The Scottish Centre for Regenerative Medicine (SCRM) is thought to be equalled only one in Kobe, Japan. Prof Ian Wilmut, formerly of the Roslin Institute, will be the director.

The state-of -the-art facilities are expected to house 220 academic researchers and will include a centre for “scale-up” development and manufacture of cells. Space will also be made available for commercial regenerative medicine. It is hoped that the SCRM, which will be part of the new Centre for Biomedical Research at Edinburgh’s Little France, will create about 560 jobs and generate Â£18.2m per year for the Scottish economy.

via: Univ. of Edinburgh Launches $115 Million Dollar Stem Cell Research Center

Concrete Houses 1919 and 2007

Robo-builder threatens the brickie [the broken link was removed]

Is the writing on the wall for the brickie? Engineers are racing to unveil the world’s first robot capable of building a house at the touch of a button. The first prototype — a watertight shell of a two-storey house built in 24 hours without a single builder on site — will be erected in California before April.

Brickie?: a search seems to indicate that is a bricklayer.

By building almost an entire house from just two materials – concrete and gypsum – the robots will eliminate the need for dozens of traditional components, including floorboards, wooden window frames and possibly even wallpaper. It may eventually be possible to use specially treated gypsum instead of glass window panes. Engineers on both projects say the robots will not only cut costs and avoid human delays but liberate the normal family homes from the conventional designs of pitched roofs, right-angled walls and rectangular windows.

Edison patented a process for constructing concrete buildings in 1908 (1917 issued). Photo is of a concrete Edison house being constructed in one day in Union, NJ on October 9th, 1919. See more photos of concrete houses and much more at the great National Park Service Edison photo gallery [sadly the NPA broke the link and it has been removed].

Harvard Plans Life Sciences Campus

Harvard Unveils Plans for 250 Acre Stem Cell and Life Sciences Campus:

During the first 20 years of the expansion, Harvard would build 4 million to 5 million square feet of buildings and create at least 5,000 jobs, university officials said. Construction in Allston could begin this summer when Harvard hopes to break ground on a 500,000-square-foot (46,450-square-metre) science complex that will house the school’s stem-cell researchers and other institutes. The science complex, university officials said, would be the nucleus for new interdisciplinary research and is expected to go a long way toward boosting Boston’s economy by encouraging partnerships with biotechnology firms that may displace the region’s long-fading manufacturing base.

5,000 jobs is a huge number (even looking out 20 years). Manufacturing is still a huge economic factor (for the USA and the world) but investing in creating science and engineering centers of excellence is critical in determining where strong economies and good jobs will be 30+ years from now. They don’t explain what those 5,000 jobs are, but it seems that thousands could be for science and engineering graduates. The value of that to Boston’s economy is huge.

Evolved for Cancer?

Evolved for Cancer? by Carl Zimmer:

In cancer, cells play the role of organisms. Cancer- causing changes to DNA cause some cells to reproduce more effectively than ordinary ones. And even within a single tumor, more adapted cells may outcompete less successful ones.
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Tumor suppressor proteins are among the most effective defenses against cancer. Studies suggest that some of these proteins prevent cancer by monitoring how a cell reproduces. If the cell multiplies in an abnormal way, the proteins induce it to die or to slip into senescence, a kind of early retirement. The cell survives, but it can no longer divide. Tumor suppressor proteins play a vital role in our survival, but scientists have recently discovered something strange about them: in some respects, we would be better off without them.

Scientists discover new class of RNA

These new RNAs are named after their distinctive features: Each molecule contains 21 chemical building blocks (or nucleotides), and each begins with the chemical uridine, represented by the letter U (the only RNA nucleotide not also found on DNA). In addition, each of the 5,000 different 21U-RNA molecules comes from one of two chromosomal regions.

Further, “we can predict where additional 21U-RNA genes might reside,” says Bartel, who is also a member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. “Combining these predictions with the 5,000 (21U-RNAs) that we experimentally identified, we suspect that there are more than 12,000 different 21U-RNA genes in the genome.” Because each gene typically produces a unique 21U-RNA, a very large diversity of molecules is made.

RNA description from the Nobel Prize site:

When an organism needs to use the data stored in the genome, e.g. to build components of a new cell, a copy of the required DNA part is made. This copy is called RNA and is almost identical to DNA. Just like DNA, RNA is an abbreviated form of a chemical name which in the case of RNA is ribonucleic acid. Unlike the double stranded DNA, RNA is only made up of a single strand. Furthermore, the base T, thymine, is replaced by U, uracil in RNA. This RNA string is used by the organism as a template when it builds protein molecules, sometimes called the building blocks of the body. For example, your muscles and hair are mostly made up of proteins.

Related: DNA-RNA-Protein Introduction

Can Brain Exercises Prevent Mental Decline?

Last month we posted about: Short Mental Workouts May Slow Decline of Aging Minds. Now here is another article on the same topic: Little proof that brain exercises can prevent mental decline by Alice Dembner

Richard Suzman, who oversees behavioral and social research at the National Institute on Aging, said the downside of using the programs include “harm to the wallet or false hope,” or health setbacks if people spend time brain-training instead of getting physical exercise. But others say, despite the lack of evidence, that the programs may be worth trying, particularly in conjunction with other activities that may help with brain health such as a healthy diet, exercise, managing stress, and keeping up social contacts.
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And only last month did the first rigorous study suggest that brain training could positively affect daily-life activities and might delay age-related declines in everyday functioning. Even in that large, government-funded study, the evidence was far from conclusive.

In the original post we mentioned: “Another Paper Questions Scientific Paper Accuracy (just a reminder that the conclusions of many studies are not confirmed in future studies).” That is always important to keep in mind, even though we don’t post that reminder every time.

Attracting Women to Engineering

Colleges focusing on attracting women to engineering

Mahera Philobos, director of Georgia Tech’s Women in Engineering program and a civil and environmental engineering professor, said she’s had success getting women to enroll in some areas of engineering, like biomedical and industrial. Both are perceived by women as fields that make contributions to the world, she said.

While frustrated by the stagnant enrollment, Philobos knows change happens slowly. She said the key is reaching the girls when they’re in middle and high school to encourage them to take rigorous math and science courses.
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That does not translate into a national trend. Women received 18 percent of the 78,200 engineering degrees given out in 2003-04, the latest data available from the U.S. Department of Education. That’s the same percentage as in 1998 and only slightly more than the 16 percent in 1996.