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.

Student Algae Bio-fuel Project

photo of Tessa Churchill, left, and Holly Jacobson

Students take algae-to-biofuel project to MIT by J.T. Leonard. Photo: Tessa Churchill, left, and Holly Jacobson. The students are competing in the regional finals of the Siemens Math, Science & Technology competition.

Holly Jacobson and Tessa Churchill, seniors at Greely High School in Cumberland, are at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology today, explaining how they would use fast-growing algae to help solve the energy crisis.

In a nutshell, the young women may have found a way to produce more biodiesel fuel while consuming fewer organic resources.

The project got its start two years ago when Jacobson and Churchill began examining natural oils stored in fatty acids — called lipids — in various forms of marine algae. Recently, they identified a strain of algae that produces more oil for a given mass.

Fishy Future?

Will seafood nets be empty? Grim outlook draws skeptics:

The researchers found that harvests of nearly 30 percent of commercial seafood species already have collapsed. Without major changes in fisheries management, they say, the trend will accelerate.

“It looks grim, and the projections into the future are even grimmer,” said Boris Worm, a marine biologist and a lead author in the peer-reviewed study, which was published today in the journal Science.

But other scientists question that forecast. “It’s just mind-boggling stupid,” said Ray Hilborn, a University of Washington professor of aquatic and fishery sciences.

The evidence seems pretty convincing overfishing has created serious problems and if unchecked those problems threaten to become even more serious. It also seems a stretch to claim those problems will be unchecked (that the checks will be less than they should be I think is a reasonable position). It seems to me the original stories talking about the end of fishing stocks in the next 40 years are alarmist to the point of being counterproductive.
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Google History

Google History @Google.com

Already Google.com, still in beta, was answering 10,000 search queries each day. The press began to take notice of the upstart website with the relevant search results, and articles extolling Google appeared in USA TODAY and Le Monde. That December, PC Magazine named Google one of its Top 100 Web Sites and Search Engines for 1998. Google was moving up in the world.
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As 2000 ended, Google was already handling more than 100 million search queries a day — and continued to look for new ways to connect people with the information they needed, whenever and wherever they needed it.
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In February of 2002, AdWords, Google’s self-service advertising system, received a major overhaul, including a cost-per-click (CPC) pricing model that makes search advertising as cost-effective for small businesses as for large ones. Google’s approach to advertising has always followed the same principle that works so well for search: Focus on the user and all else will follow.

Programing Bacteria

Duke Packard Fellow to Examine Processing Speed of “Reprogrammed” Bacteria:

research into the development of synthetic gene circuits, carefully designed combinations of genes that can be “loaded” into bacteria or other cells, directing their activity in much the same way that a basic computer program directs a computer. Such re-programmed bacteria might eventually serve in a wide variety of applications, including biocomputing, medical treatments, and environmental cleanup
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The research now, however, is in its very early stages, You said. So far, E. coli bacteria have been programmed to grow in numbers until a certain population size is reached. The bacteria then kill themselves off, growing again only after their numbers dwindle sufficiently.

The relatively simple program takes advantage of bacteria’s ability to communicate with one another, a process known as “quorum sensing,” and essential genetic pathways that control cell death.

The Next Generation Internet

Experts say U.S. must act on Internet. The results of a survey by Juniper Networks:

86 percent of a group of more than 1,000 experts on the next-generation Internet say they worry that the head start of other nations will hurt the United States.

They fear that China, India, and many European and Asian countries are moving faster to implement the addressing scheme known as Internet Protocol version 6, or IPv6.

Vint Cerf – Spotlight on IPv6 Challenges

Related: China Builds a Better Internet

Flying Luxury Hotel

The Aeroscraft is capable of carrying up to 20 tons of cargo or 80-200 passengers and speeds up to reach speeds up to 150 knots (170 miles per hour/ 310 kph). This ship is being developed by Aeros.

This design approach has resulted in the evolution of a craft that can fly further, operate more economically, and lift more than any other craft in the skies. The Aeroscraft has been designed to fill the very widest range of missions and conditions.

Characterized by its oversized payload bay, the Aeroscraft is a natural configuration to be adapted to luxury tour travel, allowing an unordinary space allotment to each passenger. For the same reason the craft can easily be adapted to a cost effective low density cargo or perishable goods hauler.

See an overview of Aeros products.

The Flying Luxury Hotel from Popular Science.

Brain in a Dish

It’s Alive (ish) by Brandon Keim:

Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology figured they could learn more from neuron clumps that acted more like real brains, so they’ve developed “neurally controlled animats” — a few thousand rat neurons grown atop a grid of electrodes and connected to a robot body or computer-simulated virtual environment.

In theory, animats seem to cross the line from mass of goo to autonomous brain. But Steve Potter, a neuroscientist and head of the Georgia Tech lab where the animats were created, said his brain clumps won’t be reciting French philosophy anytime soon.

“Our goal is not to get something as conscious as a person,” he said. “We’re studying basic mechanisms of learning and memory.” The researchers are focusing on how groups of individual cells interact and change when stimulated.

Two videos of growing brain cells in a dish. More from,
Human 2.0 by the BBC.

Laboratory for Neuroengineering (NeuroLab) at Georgia Tech

Engineers and the Making of the 20th Century

Dr. Billington

Photo: David P. Billington explains the mechanics of a suspension bridge with the help of a model.

An innovator in engineering education, Billington connects disciplines:

Billington’s latest project is a book that provides an accessible account of eight breakthrough innovations that transformed American life from 1876 to 1939. He and his son, historian David P. Billington Jr., collaborated to write “Power, Speed and Form: Engineers and the Making of the 20th Century,” published this month by Princeton University Press. The authors provide short narrative accounts of each breakthrough to explain the engineering behind the innovation and to describe how its innovators thought.

Related: Science and Engineering Books

Civil Engineering Challenges

I received the following interesting comment. Do any of you have suggestions? Please leave a comment:

I know that in mathematics there are famous problems that have never been solved, and mathematicians are constantly trying to solve them. Occasionally, someone will claim to have solved one of these problems, and sometimes they have. Either way, the announcement makes big news.

Is there the equivalent in engineering? Something like the 10 Toughest Civil Engineering Problems in the Universe? 10 (As Yet) Impossible Engineering Challenges. Maybe something like the perpetual motion machine or the like.

I’m looking for “something” that will tickle the imagination of a civil engineer. Amuse him. Intrigue him. Something that might fit in a smallish, mailable box, but isn’t very costly. Something he or she can play with.

How Many Engineers?

Brian Hollar comments on the comments of MIT President, Charles Vest in Wither the Engineers?:

I fully agree with all of this. Some of the best counsel I got when I was co-oping at DuPont during my junior year of college was when one of the other engineers told me: “Every engineer is good at math. What will set you apart is your ability to communicate — both written and spoken.” This has indeed been absolutely true in my own career.
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My guess is that there are a roughly optimal number of Americans entering the engineering profession to meet industry demand. Unfortunately, that number is not as high as deans of engineering schools or university presidents would like it to be.

A good read. I believe there is a difference between equilibrium for the individuals who choose to be engineers (or something else) and the equilibrium that is best for the economy of the country. The many advantages that having a strong engineering workforce is a huge part of why China, Singapore, Korea, India, USA, China, Mexico and many others are investing in that area.

This is how I want those investing in our economy to think: if we want a strong economy with good jobs we need to invest in a strong engineering workforce, a supporting legal system and effective capital markets. All of us living in America benefit from this now.