Category Archives: Education

Solar Powered Hearing Aid

Solar Hearing Aid
African-Made, Solar-Powered Hearing Aid

The SolarAid is a hearing aid designed and built by Godisa Technologies, a Botswana company founded to make low-cost hearing aids for the developing world. The SolarAid system combines a small hearing aid and a lightweight solar charger; Godisa developed the first No. 13 rechargeable button battery for the system. Godisa is Africa’s only hearing aid manufacturer, and the only one in the world making hearing aids specifically for the sub-Saharan Africa environment.

Innovation through creating effective solutions using technology solutions that have existed in other contexts can have huge impacts. Appropriate technology solutions offer the opportunity for great gains for humanity.

Related posts:

Santa Fe Institute High School Internship

The Santa Fe Institute, located in Santa Fe New Mexico, has devoted itself to the creation of a new kind of scientific research community pursuing emerging syntheses in science.

The institute offers High School Internships:

The Santa Fe Institute Summer Internship/Mentorship (SIM) Program gives high school students the opportunity to come to SFI to actively participate in its research-based curriculum, enjoy stimulating guest lectures, and contribute to a scientific effort as part of a multi-generational research team. This six week “SIM experience” broadens students’ scientific horizons, and accelerates academic and personal development by immersing them in a supportive community of scholars. At the conclusion of the summer internship, students will present their work and, if appropriate, develop a plan for continuation throughout the school year. Students completing the summer program will receive a modest stipend.

Applications must be postmarked no later than Friday, April 15.

Diversity in Science and Engineering

Diversity in Science & Engineering: Reflecting on the Summers Hypothesis by David Keyes. More discussion of possible causes for the under-representation of certain demographic groups in science and engineering community and possible changes that could improve the situation should be encouraged.

China graduates about 600,000 bachelor’s-level engineers per year, compared to 70,000 for the US, and it costs about one-fifth as much to employ an engineer in China. India graduates 350,000 engineers per year, and employs them for one-eleventh as much. In the past, the US counted on importing the best of foreign trained engineering bachelor’s holders, who now make up 65 percent of the doctoral degree candidates in engineering at US universities. Today, fewer foreign-born US Ph.D. holders can be expected to remain in the US, now that their native infrastructures for S&E research and education are improving.

I encourage people to explore Framing the Engineering Outsourcing Debate by Dr. Gary Gereffi and Vivek Wadhwa. I find the report compelling. Still, I would like some confirmation (or compelling arguments detailing what is wrong with the study) that the numbers in Duke’s report are more relevant than those quoted above, and elsewhere.

Also, in this context wouldn’t looking at the diversity of the engineers in China and India be interesting?

There are many ways of slicing demographic data, but by any metric, the US is failing to train a competitive number of domestic scientists and engineers. It produces only about 5.5 S&E bachelor’s degrees per 100 24-year-olds overall, according to 2004 NSF data. Raising the participation of women in S&E in their 24-year-old cohort (currently 4.5 per 100) to that of men (currently 7 per 100 in theirs) is one strategy. Raising the participation of African Americans (currently 3 per 100) and Hispanics (currently 2.5 per 100) is another, particularly as the latter population base grows relative to Caucasians (with 6 per 100). Meanwhile, Asians and Pacific Islanders in the US account for 14.5 S&E bachelor’s degrees per 100 24-year-olds in their cohort.

I believe there is no one cause for the current demographic makeup of various slices of the science and engineering community and there will be no one change that will bring dramatic results. Many good things have been done and progress has been made. There is still room for many more improvements, but I think the future will be made better by hundreds and thousands of relatively small incremental improvements.

Women in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon has several papers online discussing some of the discoveries made while improving female representation at the University.


Transforming the Culture of Computing at Carnegie Mellon, by Lenore Blum:

In 1995, the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) began an effort to bring more women into its undergraduate computer science (CS) program.
At that time, just 7% (7 out of 96) of entering freshman computer science majors at
Carnegie Mellon were women. Five years later, in 1999, the percentage of women in the
entering class had increased fivefold to about 38% (50 out of 130).

Related posts:

Soil Could Shed Light on Antibiotic Resistance

Soil Could Shed Light on Antibiotic Resistance, Science Friday podcast (7 minutes) from NPR. The podcast is an interview with Gerry Wright, McMaster University, Canada.

“New research points to drug resistance in soil-dwelling bacteria. Scientists say studying bacteria in the soil can help in understanding how the bacteria in humans develop resistance.”

Posts relating to antibiotics
Overuse of anitbiotics articles
Curious Cat McMaster University Alumni Connections

Children’s view of Scientists in England

Science ‘not for normal people’, BBC News

The Science Learning Centre in London asked 11,000 pupils for their views on science and scientists.

Around 70% of the 11-15 year olds questioned said they did not picture scientists as “normal young and attractive men and women”.

For those, like me, that believe our future will be better with more scientists and engineers some of the findings are less than ideal:

Among those who said they would not like to be scientists, reasons included: “Because you would constantly be depressed and tired and not have time for family”, and “because they all wear big glasses and white coats and I am female”.

Some of the findings were positive:

They found around 80% of pupils thought scientists did “very important work” and 70% thought they worked “creatively and imaginatively”.

A related article from BBC News provides another look at the views of students: Science seen under the right conditions by Dr Daniel Glaser.

Another article on the BBC site talks about one way to encourage more student interest in science, Science ‘must teach experiments’. To interest students in learning about science it is important to have them engaged in physical experiments. We also need to continue to show the connection between science and engineering and the students lives. Providing examples of scientists and engineer that the student relate to (and can see as a friend or a future self) would also help.

The Naval Research Enterprise Intern Program

The Naval Research Enterprise Intern Program (NREIP), provides students the opportunity to participate in research at a Department of Navy (DoN) laboratory during summer breaks. Apply for NREIP online; the application deadline is 17 February 2006.

The goals of the NREIP are to encourage participating students to pursue science and engineering careers, to further education via mentoring by laboratory personnel and their participation in research, and to make them aware of DoN research and technology efforts, which can lead to employment within the DoN.

NREIP provides competitive research internships to approximately 230 college students (175 undergraduate students and 55 graduate students) each year. Participating students typically spend ten weeks during the summer doing research at approximately 12 DoN laboratories. To participate, a student must be enrolled at an eligible college/university (comprising approximately 160 institutions; eligibility is determined by the Office of Naval Research) and have completed at least their sophomore year before beginning the internship.

Related Posts:

Microbes

photo of T4 bacteriophage

Photo: T4 bacteriophage, middle, is a virus that invades bacterial cells. Courtesy of the MicrobeLibrary.org

The MicrobeWorld web site includes an introduction to microbes – Microbes: what they are and what they do:

Microbes are single-cell organisms so tiny that millions can fit into the eye of a needle.

They are the oldest form of life on earth. Microbe fossils date back more than 3.5 billion years to a time when the Earth was covered with oceans that regularly reached the boiling point, hundreds of millions of years before dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Microbes types:

Archaea
These bacteria look-alikes are living fossils that are providing clues to the earliest forms of life on Earth.

Bacteria
Often dismissed as “germs” that cause illness, bacteria help us do an amazing array of useful things, like make vitamins, break down some types of garbage, and maintain our atmosphere.

Fungi
From a single-celled yeast to a 3.5-mile-wide mushroom, fungi do everything from helping to bake bread to recycling to decomposing waste.

Protista
Plant-like algae produce much of the oxygen we breathe; animal-like protozoa (including the famous amoeba) help maintain the balance of microbial life.

Viruses
Unable to do much of anything on their own, viruses go into host cells to reproduce, often wreaking havoc and causing disease. Their ability to move genetic information from one cell to another makes them useful for cloning DNA and could provide a way to deliver gene therapy.

Benjamin Franklin 300

Benjamin Franklin portrait

Benjamin Franklin was born 300 years ago today. In his life he took on many rolls: scientist, politician, businessman, publisher, author and diplomat. He was one of only two to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.

Scientist, Diplomat And Wit: Franklin’s Birth Merits a Toast by Hillel Italie, Washington Post:

Herschbach, a Harvard University professor who has lectured frequently on Franklin, says: “Franklin’s scientific curiosity extended far beyond his adventures with electricity. He made important discoveries and observations concerning the motion of storms, heat conduction, the path of the Gulf Stream, bioluminescence, the spreading of oil films, and also advanced prescient ideas about conservation of matter and the wave nature of light.”

A look at what made Franklin tick by Polly Ross Hughes, Houston Chronicle:

Franklin actually benefited from having so little formal schooling. He had to educate himself. For precisely this reason, he didn’t know what he didn’t have to know, so he assumed he needed to know everything. He was incessantly curious. He simply wanted to know how the world works. He was formulating questions in his own mind about natural phenomena like lightning, like waves in the ocean or the Gulf Stream. I don’t know if most people know that Franklin was responsible for the lightning rod. Franklin’s bifocals have made life a lot easier for all sorts of people of middle age and older.

Benjamin Franklin and Lightning Rods by E. Philip Krider, Physics Today:

Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.

Benjamin Franklin was truly an amazing individual.

Gordon Engineering Education Prize

Jens E. Jorgensen, John S. Lamancusa, Lueny Morell, Allen L. Soyster, and José Zayas-Castro will receive the Bernard M. Gordon Prize “for creating the Learning Factory, where multidisciplinary student teams develop engineering leadership skills by working with industry to solve real-world problems.” The Gordon Prize is an annual award from the National Academy of Engineering that recognizes innovation in engineering and technology education: the award includes a $500,000 payment.

The Gordon Prize was established in 2001 as a prize recognizing new modalities and experiments in education that develop effective engineering leaders. Recognizing the potential to spur a revolution in engineering education.

The Learning Factory was developed to produce engineering graduates who could easily translate engineering theory into practice and manage projects independently. In this innovative undergraduate program, students tackle real problems from industry, such as designing a collapsible crutch, turning coal ash into a pavement, and making the mechanism that adjusts the position of car seatbacks safer. Multidisciplinary teams of students define and characterize the problem, build a solution prototype, write a business proposal, and make presentations about their idea. “Learning Factory students see firsthand the importance of teamwork, effective communication, and engineering ethics,” says NAE President Wm. A. Wulf. “Mastering such qualities is essential for engineers to become leaders in a dynamic workplace.”

The Learning Factory originated from a coalition between three universities, Sandia National Laboratories, and 36 industrial partners that shared a desire to give students firsthand experience in design, manufacturing, and business. A 1994 National Science Foundation/Advanced Research Projects Agency grant funded the creation of the Learning Factory as a Manufacturing Engineering Education Partnership (MEEP).

Within three years, the university partners — Pennsylvania State University, the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez (UPRM), and the University of Washington (UW) — successfully integrated the Learning Factory into their institutions and curricula. Since then, Learning Factory concepts and course materials have spread to other departments within these institutions, and to other universities in the U.S. and Latin America. More than 10,000 students have created over 1,200 Learning Factory design projects involving more than 200 industry partners.

Contraption Engineering Fair

Photo from Contraption Engineering Fair

Contraption Invention Fair is lots of fun by Shirley Briggs, Special to the Arizona Daily Star

The 51st Southern Arizona Regional Science and Engineering Fair will be held March 20-25 at the Tucson Convention Center. The 300th anniversary of Benjamin Franklin’s birth will be celebrated.

Once again, SARSEF has been approved to take up to six high school projects to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Grants and awards (worth more than $15,000) are being awarded to this year’s high school and middle school participants.

Science and Engineering Fair Directory