Category Archives: Students

Items for students and others, interested in learning about science and engineering and the application of science in our lives. We post many of the general interest items here.

Video Game Designers Use Statistics

Here is another article on working in the gaming field – Statistically Speaking, It’s Probably a Good Game: Probability for Game Designers:

Being a designer in this day and age requires a pretty wide variety of skills. Designers are the generalists of the development team, needing to bridge the gap between Art and Engineering, competently communicating with each other.

Related: Want to be a Computer Game Programmer? – Science and Engineering Careers

via: Video Game Designers Use Statistics

How The Brain Rewires Itself

How The Brain Rewires Itself:

The finding was in line with a growing number of discoveries at the time showing that greater use of a particular muscle causes the brain to devote more cortical real estate to it. But Pascual-Leone did not stop there. He extended the experiment by having another group of volunteers merely think about practicing the piano exercise. They played the simple piece of music in their head, holding their hands still while imagining how they would move their fingers. Then they too sat beneath the TMS coil.

When the scientists compared the TMS data on the two groups–those who actually tickled the ivories and those who only imagined doing so–they glimpsed a revolutionary idea about the brain: the ability of mere thought to alter the physical structure and function of our gray matter.

Related: Feed your Newborn Neurons – Brain Research on Sea Slugs – How the Brain Resolves Sight – Oliver Sacks podcast

TB Pandemic Threat

The dilemma of a deadly disease: patients may be forcibly detained

More than 300 cases of the highly infectious disease, which is spread by airborne droplets and kills 98% of those infected within about two weeks, have been identified in South Africa.

But doctors believe there have been hundreds, possibly thousands, more and the numbers are growing among the millions of people with HIV, who are particularly vulnerable to the disease. Their fear is that patients with XDR-TB, told that there is little that can be done for them, will leave the isolation wards and go home to die. But while they are still walking around they risk spreading the infection.

Related: ‘Virtually untreatable’ TB found – Prevention and Treatment of Tuberculosis in the Coming Century – UN Special Envoy warns of deadly synergy between TB and HIV

Slowing Down Light

Putting the Brakes on Light Speed:

The achievement is the latest in the fast-paced field of “slow light” — a discipline that barely existed a decade ago. While other researchers have dragged light to slower speeds than the Rochester scientists, who got it down to one-three-hundredth of its normal velocity, the new method is far simpler. That means the dream of domesticating one of nature’s most feral forces for use in computing, image processing and a host of military and homeland security applications could be nigh.

“This is a big step toward bringing slow-light technology into practical usage,” said Steve Harris, a professor of electrical engineering and applied physics at Stanford University. As the fleetest form of energy in the universe, light has the potential to revolutionize a wide range of technologies. Pulses of light can substitute for the digital “ones” and “zeros” that are today conveyed by relatively massive electrons on silicon chips.

Related: Delaying the Flow of Light on a Silicon Chip

Sex and the Seahorse

Sex and the seahorse (site broke the link so I removed the link – poor usability):

Unlike the sex roles in the vast majority of animals, the male seahorse looks after the fertilised eggs in a special brood sac on the front of his abdomen, which works much like the womb of a female mammal. The fertilised eggs get embedded into the wall of the pouch and are bathed in a fluid that provides nutrients and oxygen. In effect, the male seahorse becomes pregnant and gives birth to live offspring – the only male in the animal kingdom to do so.

Related: Seahorse podcast (mp3 – NPR Our Ocean World) – Kingdom of the Seahorse (NOVA)

Millennials in our Lifetime?

No I don’t mean the generation Y types born in the 1980s and 1990s I mean 1,000 year old people. I doubt it, but according to Cambridge University geneticist Aubrey de Grey – yes. And his credentials are better than mine, well I guess some of us might see who is right. ‘We will be able to live to 1,000’. Do You Want to Live Forever?:

As he surveyed the literature, de Grey reached the conclusion that there are seven distinct ingredients in the aging process, and that emerging understanding of molecular biology shows promise of one day providing appropriate technologies by which each of them might be manipulated — “perturbed,” in the jargon of biologists. He bases his certainty that there are only seven such factors on the fact that no new factor has been discovered in some twenty years, despite the flourishing state of research in the field known as biogeron­tology, the science of aging; his certainty that he is the man to lead the crusade for endless life is based on his conception that the qualification needed to accomplish it is the mindset he brings to the problem: the goal-driven orientation of an engineer rather than the curiosity-driven orientation of the basic scientists who have made and will continue to make the laboratory discoveries that he intends to employ.

Aubrey de Grey Responds – Methuselah Mouse Man – Aubrey de Grey on TEDTalks: Aging is “an engineering problem” – The Prophet of Immortality

Science, Engineering and the Future of the American Economy

9 leaders (Craig Barrett, Charles Vest, Scott McNealy, Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande, Judith Rodin, Rick Rashid, Nick Donofrio, Dr. Ralph Wyndrum Jr. and Lou Dobbs) share their thoughts in Keeping Research and Leadership at Home by Vivek Wadhwa:

[several] stress the need to improve K-12 education, encourage students to study more math and engineering, bring in the best and brightest talent from around the world, and up the ante in basic research.
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Craig Barrett, Intel chairman – Currently we have lost the race in K-12 education, we are losing our position as a top educator of science, technology, engineering and mathematics students, we are losing our lead in university research, and we have our head in the sand on government policy.
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Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande, Sycamore Networks co-founder and chairman – We believe that all of this greatly increases the chances of a particular innovation having impact. Such sophisticated systems can only be developed in the U.S. because it is the only country with both flexible thinking and free markets.
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Charles Vest, former president of MIT, president-elect of the National Academy of Engineering – We’re on top, but our share of the world’s R&D spending, new patents, scientific publications, researchers, and BA and PhD. degrees in science and engineering are all dropping. We need to start right now to strengthen investment in basic research, get serious about K-12 education, especially in math and science, and attract more of our best and brightest young men and women into what will be crucial and exciting careers in engineering and science.

In previous posts I discuss my thoughts on the important topics of science, engineering and the economy: The Future is Engineering – Science and Engineering in Global Economics – Engineering the Future Economy – Diplomacy and Science Research – Economics and Science and Engineering – U.S. Slipping on Science
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Asia: Rising Stars of Science and Engineering

Great report – The Atlas of Ideas: How Asian innovation can benefit us all by Charles Leadbeater and James Wilsdon:

Each country will develop differently. In South Korea strong government support has created a world-class information infrastructure.
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China is mobilising massive resources for innovation through ambitious long-term plans, funded by rapid economic growth. Beijing’s university district produces as many engineers as all of western Europe. China is developing world-class universities and attracting multinational innovation centres.
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India’s elite, trained at the Indian Institutes of Technology, are second to none. New institutions like the National Science and Engineering Foundation could energise a disjointed innovation system. Yet India’s innovation elite may face a rural backlash. Its infrastructure is in poor repair and cities like Bengalooru are congested. Even the much-vaunted IITs do not, unlike their US counterparts, animate innovation clusters.
Percentage of world share of scientific publications

Year China France Germany Japan Korea UK US EU-15
1995 2.05 6.09 7.62 8.65 0.79 8.88 33.54 34.36
1998 2.90 6.48 8.82 9.42 1.41 9.08 31.63 36.85
2001 4.30 6.33 8.68 9.52 2.01 8.90 31.01 36.55
2004 6.52 5.84 8.14 8.84 2.70 8.33 30.48 35.18

Excellent reading, the report is full of useful information I have not been able to obsorb yet.
Related: Diplomacy and Science Research – The World’s Best Research Universities – Engineering the Future Economy – Worldwide Science and Engineering Doctoral Degree Data – USA Under-counting Engineering Graduates – Increasing American Fellowship Support for Scientists and Engineers
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