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.

Arctic Sharks

Arctic Shark photo

Arctic sharks found in QuÃ©bec by Brian Lin:

The Greenland shark typically inhabits the deep, dark waters between Greenland and the polar ice cap. At over six metres long and weighing up to 2,000 kilograms, it is the largest shark in the North Atlantic and the only shark in the world that lives under Arctic ice. Once heavily harvested for its vitamin A-rich oil — as many as 50,000 were caught annually according to a 1948 estimate — little is known about the animal.

Physicists Find Long Sought Particle

Long the fixation of physicists worldwide, a tiny particle is found:

After decades of intensive effort by both experimental and theoretical physicists worldwide, a tiny particle with no charge, a very low mass and a lifetime much shorter than a nanosecond, dubbed the “axion,” has now been detected by the University at Buffalo physicist who first suggested its existence in a little-read paper as early as 1974.
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“We identified each vertex for each electron pair and we would not accept any electron pair unless we knew its vertex,” he said. “There was a congestion of all kinds of low mass particles, including axions, near the detector. The background has to be filtered out from this congestion in order to obtain the signal of the axion.”

Water flowed ‘recently’ on Mars

Two gullies that were originally photographed in 1999 and 2001, and imaged again in 2004 and 2005, showed changes consistent with water flowing down the crater walls, according to the study.

In both cases, scientists found bright, light-coloured deposits in the gullies that were not present in the original photos. They concluded that the deposits – possibly mud, salt or frost – were left there when water recently cascaded through the channels.

Other scientists think it possible that gullies like this were caused not by water but by liquid carbon dioxide.

Why Insects Can’t Fly Straight at Night

Why Insects Can’t Fly Straight at Night by Nicolas van der Leek:

Well, it’s simple really. The structure of their eyes (moths, mantises and plenty of other bugs) is distinctive. Under the microscope their eyes resemble a bunch of long tubes. So when the moth or mantis encounters an artificial light, suddenly when it swoops by the light slips out of its field of vision, and it swings round to get it to shine back into the tubes, and at a constant angle. Hence the chaotic, circular flying. They’re attempting to keep the light coming in at the same angle into the tube structure of their eyes.

Increasing American Fellowship Support for Scientists and Engineers

A great research paper is available today from the Brookings Institution: Investing in the Best and Brightest: Increased Fellowship Support for American Scientists and Engineers by Richard B. Freeman. For those interesting in science and engineering education and/or economic policy I recommend it.

In 2005, the United States employed about 31 percent of the world’s scientist and engineer researchers and financed 35 percent of R&D while accounting for 5 percent of the world’s population and 21 percent of the world’s GDP…
The U.S. share of global science and engineering activity is declining, however, and will continue to decline

I agree the declining trend is likely to continue, mainly due to the improvement of science and engineering efforts worldwide, see, for example: Diplomacy and Science Research and – U.S. Slipping on Science – Phony Science Gap?.

The growth of high-tech employment in Silicon Valley and in university-based locations of scientific excellence suggests that innovation, production, and employment in high-tech fields occur largely in areas strong in basic science.10 The supply of scientists and engineers is a major factor in the location of these centers of excellence.

Again I agree. I am in danger of confirmation bias since this report basically reinforces what I believe – so of course I find it worthwhile.

While no one can be sure of the particular areas where an increased number of scientists and engineers might make their greatest contribution, our recent history is filled with examples where young innovative researchers have made major contributions to economic progress: The Internet. The biotech industry. The PC. The mathematics of cryptography that underpins Internet commerce.

Again I agree. This is why so many countries have been devoting significant resources to improving their science and technology infrastructure – the economic benefits of doing so.
Continue reading →

Disrupting the Replication of Bacteria

UW-Madison researchers develop novel method to find new antibiotics:

Filutowicz’s approach involves looking for new drugs that render bacteria harmless by blocking the replication of—and thus eliminating—some of their DNA.

Bacterial DNA comes in two forms: chromosomal DNA, which is required for life, and plasmid DNA, which is not. The nonessential plasmid DNA contains many undesirable bacterial genes, including those that confer antibiotic resistance or lead to the production of toxins.

Filutowicz is seeking antibiotics that would selectively disrupt the replication of plasmid DNA, so that when bacteria reproduce, they would produce plasmid-free offspring that are harmless or susceptible to traditional antibiotics. Such compounds could dramatically alter the character of some of our nastiest microbial adversaries.

Google’s Start by Brin and Page

The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, 1998:

This paper addresses this question of how to build a practical large-scale system which can exploit the additional information present in hypertext. Also we look at the problem of how to effectively deal with uncontrolled hypertext collections where anyone can publish anything they want.

See more research papers from Google via Google Labs.

Science and Engineering Scholarships and Fellowships

I have added a new page on our web site that includes links to online resources with advice on applying for and winning science and engineering scholarships and fellowships. That page also includes a list of the largest science and engineering scholarships and fellowships. Please share your comments and suggestions for additions for that page.

Human Sonar – Echolocation

The Mystery of Sonar Boy:

Ben Underwood’s echolocation isn’t a hoax, but it’s not an unexplained mystery, either. Ben really can sense nearby objects with reflected sound waves. But so can you.
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Go ahead and try out the skill you never knew you had. First, close your eyes and put on a blindfold, and then ask a friend to move a frying pan forward and backward in front of your face. Now start making noises—any noises you want. You can click your tongue like Sonar Boy, or you can whistle, or you can sing a scale. With a little bit of practice, you’ll be able to tell when the pan is close to you and when it’s not.

Also see, two interesting videos, CBS story and an Ellen show appearance. And read a 2003 BBC article on how the Blind ‘see with sound’.

Computer Image Tagging

Researchers Teach Computers How to Name Images By ‘Thinking’

Penn State researchers have “taught” computers how to interpret images using a vocabulary of up to 330 English words, so that a computer can describe a photograph of two polo players, for instance, as “sport,” “people,” “horse,” “polo.”
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More than half the time, the computer’s first tag out of the top 15 tags is correct. In addition, for 98 percent of images tested, the system has provided at least one correct annotation in the top 15 selected words. The system, which completes the annotation in about 1.4 seconds…

This seems to be interesting, but still has a long way to go. Google has been using a human based process for the last few month. They show two people the same image and if their tags match Google accepts that tag as good.