Category Archives: Education

The man who saved geometry

The man who saved geometry by Siobhan Roberts:

Coxeter’s legacy is the powerful push he gave the visual geometric method, and the resulting change in perspective that transformed the way mathematicians and scientists create and investigate. “Coxeter’s perspective and ideas are in the air we breathe,” said Ravi Vakil, at Stanford. “It’s not that his ideas are used to solve problems, it’s that the fundamental problems grow out of his ideas. He’s the soil.”

MIT’s molecular sieve advances protein research

Separating proteins from complex biological fluids such as blood is becoming increasingly important for understanding diseases and developing new treatments. The molecular sieve developed by MIT engineers is more precise than conventional methods and has the potential to be much faster.
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The key to the molecular sieve, which is made using microfabrication technology, is the uniform size of the nanopores through which proteins are separated from biological fluids. Millions of pores can be spread across a microchip the size of a thumbnail.
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Juhwan Yoo, a Caltech undergraduate, also participated in the research as a summer visiting student. Funding came from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Singapore-MIT Alliance.

NSF: The Art of Engineering

The Art of Engineering:

On the campus of the University of South Florida, one engineering professor (Professor Arthur David Snider ) responsible for teaching classes about differential equations and electromagnetism has created a popular course that merges his research world with the world of fine art.

Clean Water Filter

Clean water project hit by funding drought

Charities estimate that more than a billion people do not have access to safe drinking water. In some parts of Africa, water-borne diseases such as cholera, dysentery and viral diarrhoea claim the lives of one in four children.
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The Newcastle project began after a group of postgraduate civil engineering students visited Ghana, Kenya and Malaysia and recognised the huge benefits that sustainable water filtration could have on health. One of the students, Matt Simpson, decided to devote his doctoral research project to this topic.
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At these temperatures the crop residue decomposes, releasing carbon dioxide gas which forms microscopic pores in the ceramic material exactly the right size to trap bacteria and viruses but allow water to pass through.

They are looking for funding to expand the adoption of this effort.

Bringing Eye Care to Thousands in India

New wireless networking system brings eye care to thousands in India

With high-speed links to the hospital, three of the clinics, also known as vision centers, screen about 1,500 patients each month. (Numbers are not yet available for the two other centers, which came online in May 2006.) Centers are run by a nurse trained in eye care. Patients first see the nurse, then spend about five minutes on a web camera consulting with an Aravind doctor. If the doctor determines that a closer examination or an operation is necessary, the patient is given a hospital appointment.

Another great example of applying technology to improve people’s lives. More on appropriate technology projects. It is great to see the focus on improving people’s lives, and using technology to do so.

Millennium Technology Prize to Dr. Shuji Nakamura

Photo of Dr. Shuji Nakamura (from UC Santa Barbara)

The Millennium Technology Prize is a bi-annual award recognizing technology innovators created by a public private partnership in Finland. Finland understands the importance of technology advances for economic gains. Winners receive 1 million Euros. Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the web, received the first prize in 2004. The 2006 prize was awarded to Dr. Shuji Nakamura:

According to Professor Nakamura, we have only just begun to explore the vast number of opportunities presented by applications using LEDs and lasers. ”I hope the award of this prize will help people to understand that this invention makes it possible to improve quality of life for many millions of people. This is not just a source of light that makes enormous energy savings possible, it is also an innovation that can be used in the sterilisation of drinking water and for storing data in much more efficient ways.”

As LEDs can be powered by solar panels, lighting can be provided in remote areas of developing countries. In his speech, Professor Nakamura said that he will be donating part of the prize money to organizations that promote the use of LED lighting in such locations.

Bacteria Power Tiny Motor

Wheel of Life: Bacteria provide horsepower for tiny motor by Peter Weiss:

To make the motors, Hiratsuka’s team, led by Taro Q.P. Uyeda of the National Institute for Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba, Japan, borrowed fabrication techniques from the microelectronics industry.

The machinery of each motor consists of two parts: a ring-shaped groove etched into a silicon surface, and a star-shaped, six-armed rotor fabricated from silicon dioxide that’s placed on top of the circular groove. Tabs beneath the rotor arms fit loosely into the groove.

To prepare the bacterial-propulsion units, the team used a strain of the fast-crawling bacterium Mycoplasma mobile that was genetically engineered to crawl only on a carpet of certain proteins, including one called fetuin. The researchers laid down fetuin within the circular groove and coated the rotor with a protein called streptavidin.

Student Design and Engineering Web Community

Autodesk has launched the Student Design and Engineering Community for architecture, design, civil and mechanical engineering university students. Students will be able to learn, collaborate and communicate with their peers on campuses around the world.

Students and educators from accredited colleges and universities can download free student editions of professional Autodesk software, discuss projects, ask and answer questions about projects, share work, find jobs, network with personal profiles, learn from experts and use tutorials.

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How Bacteria Nearly Destroyed All Life

How Bacteria Nearly Destroyed All Life by Alan Bellows:

About two and one-half billion years ago…
Once the oceans’ supply of iron was exhausted, oxygen began to seep from the sea into the air. With very little competition for resources, cyanobacteria continued to proliferate and pollute. The free oxygen they produced reacted with the air, gradually breaking down the methane which kept the Earth’s atmosphere warm and accommodating. It took at least a hundred thousand years– a short duration in geological terms– but the Earth was eventually stripped of her methane, and with it her ability to store the heat from the sun. Temperatures fell well below freezing worldwide, and a thick layer of ice began to encase the oxygen-saturated planet.

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Young Innovators Under 35

2006 – 35 Young Innovators Under 35 from MIT’s Technology Review:

Includes: Apostolos Argyris, disguising data as noise; Jeffrey Bode, Peptide “Legos” to make new drugs; Christopher Voigt, A vision in bacteria; Michael Wong, Cleaning up with nanoparticles

With some 300,000 hazardous-waste sites scattered across the United States, cleaning up contaminated soil and groundwater is a daunting challenge. Chemical engineer Michael Wong is taking on toxic waste with tiny particles that can break down organic pollutants more quickly, and perhaps less expensively, than existing technologies.