Category Archives: Education

Nobel Laureates Speaking to High School in Japan

Nobel laureates aiming to spur creativity / Shirakawa, Tanaka to give students lecture

Shirakawa became interested in science journalism, and even sat in during lectures offered by the Japan Association of Science and Technology Journalists. He is now enthusiastic about giving lectures to, and teaching, young scientists.

Research is important for scientists, but it is also important that they share their knowledge with the public, and people to better understand the subject, he said.

Shirakawa graduated from the Science and Engineering Department of Tokyo Institute of Technology, where he obtained a doctorate in engineering in 1966.

In 2000, he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of conductive polymers.

Our previous post, Scientists and Students, discussed having practicing scientists address students. Scientist say they are too busy and do not get credit for such efforts – hopefully these Nobel prize winners can help show how important such direct contact can be.

Oliver Sacks podcast

Oliver Sacks is a neurologist and author of interesting and entertaining books including: The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales. He is most known for explaining the remarkable case histories of extreme brain trauma, and how those instances allow us to learn about the brain.

Listen to webcast of his interview on NPR’s Science Friday. More blog posts on science and engineering podcasts

The Fully Immersive Mind of Oliver Sacks, Wired
Another Science Friday interview with Oliver Sacks from 1997.

Electrical Engineering Future

The future of electrical engineering

The article discusses many of the explanations for the lack of growth in engineering graduates in the USA and reasons for studying engineering. Some related posts from our blog: Top degree for S&P 500 CEOs? Engineering – Lucrative college degrees – USA Engineering Jobs – Global Share of Engineering Work – Engineers in the Workplace

Indeed, a degree in electrical engineering can open many doors, in part because electrical engineering is so broad. Electrical engineers have taken on many tasks that you might expect people with other technical degrees to do. Semiconductor processing, for example, is highly populated by electrical engineers, but its basis is in physics and chemistry. Other areas include optics (as applied to communications), aerospace engineering, and even life sciences. “A lot of people don’t realize that a lot of biomedical devices are actually electrical devices,” noted Georgia Tech’s May.

Engineered Immune Cells Shrink Tumors

Tumors Shrunk by Engineered Immune Cells, Scientists Say by Stefan Lovgren, on an extermintal treatment with 17 patients so far:

“This is the first example of an effective gene therapy that works in cancer patients,” said Steven Rosenberg, chief of surgery at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, and leader of the research team.

The therapy has so far been applied only to melanoma patients. But the researchers are optimistic that their treatment can be used for many other types of cancer.

The team has already engineered similar immune cells for more common tumors, such as breast, lung, and liver cancers.
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His team focused on T (thymus) cells, a type of specialized immune cell that can learn to recognize and attack specific “foreign” objects, such as the cancer cells that make up tumors.

In the new study, researchers created tumor-fighting cells by harvesting normal T cells from melanoma patients and genetically engineering these cells to carry receptor proteins on their surfaces that recognize cancer markers.

Excercize and Learning

Increasingly, researchers are finding that brain activity and brain development are enhanced by physical exercise. It now appears that exercise can help kids learn at school.

Listen to the podcast from NPR today
Exercise Improves Learning and Memory, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, 1999.

Ocean Power Plant

Interest in ocean power resurges by Dennis Camire via A new wave of interest in ocean power:

Ocean thermal power plants, which generate electricity from the temperature difference between the tropics’ warm surface water and deep cold water, could be built on land in several hundred areas around the globe’s equatorial zones and also could be constructed as floating plants.
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A recent Electric Power Research Institute study found sites in Maine, Alaska, California and Washington that had good potential for tidal power generation with production costs ranging from 4.2 cents per kilowatt hour to 10.8 cents. By comparison, the average retail cost of electricity to U.S. consumers in May was 8.64 cents per kilowatt hour.

Wakamaru Robot

Another human like robot from Japan (by Mitsubishi): Wakamaru

Unlike conventional robots operated by human instructions, “wakamaru” acts spontaneously, based on his own and his owner’s daily life schedules that he stores. His autonomous behavior is composed of time, place, and behavior, three elements. He uses to approach people and move around according to the time of day, thereby blending in with its owners’ lifestyles.

Read more about the technology behind the robot.

Proton Treatment Could Replace x-ray

MIT proton treatment could replace x-ray use in radiation therapy:

Scientists at MIT, collaborating with an industrial team, are creating a proton-shooting system that could revolutionize radiation therapy for cancer. The goal is to get the system installed at major hospitals to supplement, or even replace, the conventional radiation therapy now based on x-rays.

The fundamental idea is to harness the cell-killing power of protons — the naked nuclei of hydrogen atoms — to knock off cancer cells before the cells kill the patient. Worldwide, the use of radiation treatment now depends mostly on beams of x-rays, which do kill cancer cells but can also harm many normal cells that are in the way.

IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Program

IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Program (IBM broke link – how hard it is to just keep links alive?)

IBM Ph.D. Fellowships are awarded worldwide. IBM Ph.D. Fellows are awarded tuition, fees, and a stipend of $17,500 (US) for one academic year. IBM Ph.D. Fellowships are awarded annually but may compete annually to be renewed for up to three years, based on the Award Recipient’s continued exceptional academic standing, progress and achievement, and sustained interaction with IBM’s technical community. All Award Recipient’s wishing for an award renewal must be renominated to compete for an award renewal.

Students must be nominated by a faculty member. They must be enrolled full-time in a college or university Ph.D. program, and they should have completed at least one year of study in their doctoral program at the time of their nomination.

Open for nominations approximately September 19 through October 31, 2006.

Update this link seem to work now (hopefully they will have less pointy haired bosses in charge from now on but who knows…).

Science of the High Jump

Science of the sporting life:

high jumper seems to translate the horizontal velocity of the run-up into vertical motion over the bar, but what actually happens is more related to springs, Dapena says. “The fast run-up makes the muscles of the takeoff leg stretch very quickly after the takeoff foot is planted on the ground, and this stimulates those muscles, which can then make larger forces.”

To get the fastest vertical acceleration, your foot must push against the ground for as long as possible. And that requires the runner to, as Dapena says, run with “the butt scraping the ground.” Still, there’s a tradeoff — if you run too low, your overly flexed knees will create a puny push-off.