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.

Grand Flood

Grand Canyon photo by John Hunter

Model analysis helps protect river’s ecosystem

The goal of the high-flow experiment, the third since 1996, is to see if such high flows can help reconstruct some of the canyon’s beaches and sand bars that are instrumental to ecological systems and native fishes that have suffered since the building of the Glen Canyon Dam in 1963.
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By allowing flow of water that, at its peak, will be more than three times its normal rate (to a volume of 41,500 cubic feet per second), researchers hope to flush some of the dam system of its backed-up sediment and reconstruct habitat downstream. It is expected that the high water-flows will rebuild eroded beaches downstream of the dam by moving sand accumulated in the riverbed onto sandbars.

That in turn will allow the re-establishment of eddy sandbars that provide the slow moving, backwater channels vital for native fish species. The sand bars also provide camping areas for river runners and hikers, and the beaches provide sand to the canyon that helps preserve archaeological resources.

Dolphin Rescues Beached Whales

New Zealand dolphin rescues beached whales:

The pygmy sperm whales had repeatedly beached, and both they and the humans were tired and set to give up, he said. But then the dolphin appeared, communicated with the whales, and led them to safety.

The bottlenose dolphin, called Moko by local residents, is well known for playing with swimmers off Mahia beach on the east coast of the North Island.
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Mr Smith said he felt fortunate to have witnessed the extraordinary event, and was delighted for the whales, as in the past he has had to put down animals which have become beached. He said that the whales have not been seen since, but that the dolphin had returned to its usual practice of playing with swimmers in the bay.

“I shouldn’t do this I know, we are meant to remain scientific,” Mr Smith said, “but I actually went into the water with the dolphin and gave it a pat afterwards because she really did save the day.”

Dino-Era Feathers Found Encased in Amber

Seven dino-era feathers found perfectly preserved in amber in western France highlight a crucial stage in feather evolution, scientists report. The hundred-million-year-old plumage has features of both feather-like fibers found with some two-legged dinosaurs known as theropods and of modern bird feathers, the researchers said.
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The find provides a clear example “of the passage between primitive filamentous down and a modern feather,” said team member Didier NÃ©raudeau of the University of Rennes in France. The study team isn’t sure yet whether the feathers belonged to a dino or a bird. But fossil teeth from two dino families thought to have been feathered were excavated from rocks just above the layer that contained the amber, Perrichot said. “It is entirely plausible that the feathers come from a dinosaur rather than from a bird,” he said.

Easy File Sync Over the Internet

Dropbox aims to simplifying file backup, sync, and sharing for the world. Like other Y Combinator startups it is small and focused – 3 MIT computer science alums. Watch a web presentation that shows a very useful looking service. It is in private beta now – you can register to be notified when it is open for public launch.

Y Combinator: “We care more about how smart you are than how old you are, and more about the quality of your ideas than whether you have a formal business plan.” You have until April 2nd to apply for funding for the current cycle.

Google Tech Webcasts #4

While I worked in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB) – part of the white house complex, I was able to hear some great speakers. However, those talks were only available to those of us that could make it to room 450 of the EEOB when it was scheduled. Google has far more speakers and they have posted webcasts of those talks online. It is great stuff, some excellent recent examples:

Michael Pollan on In Defense of Food – related: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Cory Doctorow on Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present
Annalee Newitz, Charlie Anders, Ellen Spertus, & Jenn Shreve discuss their book She’s Such a Geek: Women Write About Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff
Daniel Goleman on Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships

Home Repairs

In making a repair to my toilet last week I found this useful resource: Replace The Toilet Fill Valve, Flush Valve Or Flapper

Your first step is to shut off the water. In most cases, you’ll have a shutoff valve right next to the toilet coming either through the floor or out of the wall… If the height of your valve is adjustable, set the height before you install the valve (Photo 5). If your valve is a different style from the one we show, check the directions. After mounting the valve (Photo 6), connect the fill tube (Photo 7). The fill tube squirts water into the overflow tube to refill the toilet bowl. The water that refills the tank gushes from the bottom of the fill valve. When you install the valve and supply lines, turn the nuts finger-tight. Then give each another one-half turn with a pliers. When you turn the water supply back on, immediately check for leaks and tighten the nuts a bit more if necessary.

The site does a great job of explaining what needs to be done and provides excellent graphics. It is also interesting to take a look at how things we use actually work.

Deep-Sea Denizen Inspires New Polymers

Stealing a trick from a tiny, pickle-shaped creature that dwells in the depths of the ocean, scientists have designed a new polymer that, when exposed to water, can instantly change its rigidity and strength.
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Christoph Weder, an associate professor in the same department at Case, says he and Rowan thought of copying the sea cucumber’s adaptation more than five years ago. Working with marine biologists, they determined that the deep-sea animal accomplished its transformation thanks to fibers made of a protein known as collagen. The tightness of the connections between those fibers determines how stiff the cucumber’s skin is, and is controlled by the animal’s nervous system.

To get their polymer to do the same thing, the Case scientists used fibers found in another deep sea dweller, sea squirts, and also in cotton. When they mixed those fibers – known as cellulose nanofibers – with the rubbery polymer ethylene oxide–epichlorohydrin, they formed a stiff network, “almost glued to each other,” says Weder. Due to the nature of the bonds between the polymer and the fibers, however, water gets between the two substances, weakening the fibers’ adhesion. The material then becomes soft.

Seeking Solar Supremacy

The dance of the particles

Engineering professors Ray LaPierre, who is working with Cleanfield on solar cells made from a dense turf of nanowires, and Adrian Kitai, who co-founded Flexible Solar to make bendable solar panels that are less costly to manufacture, are showing how skills typically prized in the telecom sector can be repurposed to build better solar technologies.

Similar efforts are also being made at the University of Toronto’s Institute for Optical Sciences, where a new spin-off called The Solar Venture aims to improve the economics of solar. “Ontario was a global leader in telecom, but now that has slowed down,” says Rafael Kleiman, professor of engineering physics and director of McMaster’s Centre for Emerging Device Technologies. “All the people, all this research (in telecom), is finding a new home. I really believe Ontario can make itself a global hub in solar photovoltaic technologies.”
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A solar cell is just a big specialized chip, so everything we’ve learned about making chips applies,” Paul Saffo, an engineering professor at Stanford University, recently told the New York Times. There’s a reason why California’s Silicon Valley, the headquarters of data-networking king Cisco Systems and semiconductor goliath Intel, is positioning itself as Solar Valley.

All around the world people are aiming to create centers of excellence for solar power research and production.

Dr. Tara Smith

Interview of Dr.Tara C. Smith:

I’ve started to think more seriously about science communication in general over the past few years, so hanging out with so many other people who have a passion for this was a great motivator to simply get more done, especially at the local level. I already run our state’s Citizens for Science group but would like to do more with it; perhaps move more toward the SCONC group model. As far as sessions, I really enjoyed Hemai Parthasarathy’s session on open science; I thought I knew a decent amount about open-access publishing, but I learned a lot more. I also was equal parts enjoying myself and seething with frustration at the session on gender and race in science. It’s so hard to know if you’re doing the right thing as a junior scientist, and especially a junior scientist who’s female or a racial minority. It was interesting listening to ScienceWoman and others talk about the difficulties they had with blogging anonymously; they feel confined in what they write about because they don’t want to blow their cover, while as a junior female scientist blogging under my own name, I feel constrained because I feel I’m under a bit of a microscope.