Category Archives: Education

Robot Espionage

Robot tech on ground zero makes Lucknow, India lad a hero – Shadab Ahmed Ansari has developed a robot that

is capable of traversing any terrain and it can even be used for aerial reconnaissance as well as for submarine explorations. It consists of three parts – a military suit, an espionage robot and a base camp computer.
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The military suit is to be worn by soldiers in the battlefield and will control the movement of the espionage robot. The espionage robot has a robotic arm capable of mimicking the hand movement of the soldier. It is capable of transmitting audio-visual data to the soldier as well as to the base camp computer in real-time. This helps in taking on-the-spot decisions that play a crucial part in any military operation

For more see: Leading the Charge

Science Education

The Real Issue Is Science

They warned that fewer and fewer high school students are choosing math and science classes as electives, leading to a crisis situation. They said science should not be taught as an elective course, but as a mandatory one, while the curriculum should be revised so that science and engineering majors can take more math and science classes. This warning should not be taken lightly. Since the industrial revolution, competitiveness in math and science was the decisive factor in separating the winners from the losers in global economics.

Seems like this could be said in many countries. Certainly it sounds like the kind of thing that might be said in the USA. This time it is from Korea:

Six national science and technology organizations, including the Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies, the National Council of Natural Science University Deans and the National Council of Engineering University Deans, issued a statement on Wednesday saying the quality of high school math and science classes should not be left to further deteriorate.

Applied Engineering Education

Classroom projects translate into immediate workplace gains for working professionals in engineering

In the final semester of his UW–Madison master’s degree, Bob Aloisi didn’t just earn a letter grade in his quality engineering class: He saved his company $50,000. It wasn’t the typical classroom outcome — but it wasn’t a typical classroom. As a student in “Quality Engineering and Quality Management,” Aloisi accomplished a major class project in quality improvement at his own workplace.

The project is the capstone experience in the College of Engineering’s award-winning distance-education program, the Master of Engineering in Professional Practice (MEPP). Designed for mid-career engineers who live and work all over the country, MEPP’s Internet-based curriculum strives to provide knowledge students can apply immediately at their companies.
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“Our project was a very good example of the Kaizen approach,” says Aloisi. “It wasn’t one specific thing, a home run type of thing, that we changed to make our improvements.” Instead, his team met its targets through many small steps, including adjustments to equipment settings and better training for machine operators.

Human Embryo Hybrids

Embryo hybrids are used to grow human stem cells (for a few days) in eggs from animals. Public debate on embryo hybrids

Allowing DNA from humans and animals to be mixed should be put to a public debate, a regulatory body has said.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), which oversees embryo research and fertility treatment, said the research could fall under its remit and would not be prohibited by law after a meeting of experts on Wednesday.

Door left open for creation of hybrid embryos:

Two teams of British scientists have applied for licences to create “hybrid” embryos that would be about 99.9 per cent human and 0.1 per cent animal to produce embryonic stem cells — the body’s building blocks that can grow into all other types of cells.
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They want to use stem cells to understand and develop therapies for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cystic fibrosis, motor neurone disease and Huntington’s. The hybrid embryos would be destroyed within 14 days when they were no bigger than a pinhead.

Gene Study Finds Cannibal Pattern

Deep in the recesses of the human heart, lurking guiltily beneath the threshold of consciousness, there may lie a depraved craving — for the forbidden taste of human flesh. The basis for this morbid accusation, made by a team of researchers in London, is a genetic signature, found almost worldwide, that points to a long history of cannibalism.

The signature is one that protects the bearer from infection by prions, proteins that can be transmitted in infected meat and attack the nerve cells of the brain. Prions can be acquired from eating infected animals, as in the case of the mad cow disease that in 1996 spread to people in England, but they spread even more easily through eating infected humans.
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The researchers then examined DNA from various ethnic groups around the world and found that all but one, the Japanese, carried the protective signature to some degree, and that the Japanese are protected by a different signature in the same gene.

Various genetic tests showed that the protective genes could not be there by chance, but were a result of natural selection. This implies that human populations in the past must have been exposed to some form of prion disease, the researchers say.

Want to be a Computer Game Programmer?

You need to understand math, physics and more to become a computer game programmer. Things You Need to Know before Interviewing for a Game Programming Position:

You do need to have very good linear algebra skills. If you don’t know what the formula for a dot product is (a dot b = a.x * b.x + a.y * b.y + a.z * b.z ) and what it means geometrically (|a| * |b| * cosine of the angle between a and b), then there’s no chance you can get a job. You need to know how to project a vector onto another vector (a projected onto b = ( a dot b ) / |b|^2 * b) and onto a plane. You need to know what the cross product is (a x b = [a.y * b.z – a.z * b.y, a.z * b.x – a.x * b.z, a.x * b.y – a.y * b.x]) and what it means geometrically (a vector perpendicular to the vectors with a length equal to the sine of the angle between them).
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You should be very familiar with all the projectile equations. If you can’t either derive or remember d = v0 * t + 0.5 * a * t^2, you’ll be in trouble when you interview or take a programming test. Any problem that involves a projectile with gravity should be easy for you to solve. Whether the unknown is gravity, launch angle, y velocity, xz velocity, time, distance or any combinations that are solvable, you should have no problems determining the solution. You should also be familiar with momentum and kinetic energy for elastic and inelastic collisions. Drag and friction should be concepts you understand also.

If that all looks like great fun to you, perhaps game programming is the career for you.

2006 Science Blog Anthology

SciBlog Anthology suggestions so far

Neat idea to create an anthology of great science blog posts from 2006. via: Confessions of a Science Librarian

$100 Laptop Update

Green $100 Laptop photo

Public can purchase $100 laptop. I am not sure I understand the headline – this seems a more accurate picture of situation: OLPC aims for mass production in third quarter, 2007. At this time the cost each is about $150 and you will have to pay for 2 (you buy one for yourself and one for the developing world). The aim is to reach the $100 price level, but that has not quite been achieved yet.

The first countries to sign up to buying the machine, which is officially dubbed XO, include Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan and Thailand.

The XO’s software has been designed to work specifically in an educational context. It has built-in wireless networking and video conferencing so that groups of children can work together. The project is also working to ensure that children using the laptop around the world can be in contact.

The project continues to move forward even with the bumps along the road – it is quite an ambitious plan. Take a look at this great story: What kids can learn when you just give them access to a computer.

Cheap, Superefficient Solar

Technologies collectively known as concentrating photovoltaics are starting to enjoy their day in the sun, thanks to advances in solar cells, which absorb light and convert it into electricity, and the mirror- or lens-based concentrator systems that focus light on them. The technology could soon make solar power as cheap as electricity from the grid.
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“I’d much rather make a few square miles of plastic lenses–it would cost me less–than a few square miles of silicon solar cells,” Olson says. Today solar power is still more expensive than electricity from the grid, but concentrator technology has the potential to change this. Indeed, if manufacturers can meet the challenges of ramping up production and selling, distributing, and installing the systems, their prices could easily meet prices for electricity from the grid, says solar-industry analyst Michael Rogol

Engineering A Cleaner River

I Eat Rubbish:

“I eat rubbish!”, the notice fixed to it claims that it collects 40 tons of rubbish every year; the equivalent of 800,000 plastic bottles. Called a “passive debris collector”, nine of them have been bobbing along the river for the past five years. Each captures tons of floating litter; bottles, cans, and plastic, that otherwise would have flowed out to sea and killed fish and birds. It was initiated by Thames21, an environmental charity…