Category Archives: Engineering

Authors of Scientific Articles by Country

The United States National Science Foundation published – Changing U.S. Output of Scientific Articles: 1988–2003.

In an unexpected development in the early 1990s, the absolute number of science and engineering (S&E) articles published by U.S.-based authors in the world’s major peer-reviewed journals plateaued.
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The unprecedented plateau in the number of U.S. S&E articles should not be confused with a decades-long and familiar decline in the U.S. share of the world’s S&E articles. As other states built up their S&E capabilities, the U.S. share of the world’s articles in natural sciences and engineering dropped from 38% in 1973 to 28% in 2003. This decline in share is not surprising, nor has it been viewed as a cause for concern. By many measures, including articles published in peer-reviewed journals, the United States has been the world’s leading scientific nation for decades and remains the world’s leading scientific nation.
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Although the U.S. share of the world’s influential articles dropped substantially, the United States remained dominant in this area. At the end of the period studied, U.S. institutions were at least partially responsible for half of the world’s influential articles; no other major publishing center approached this figure. Moreover, compared with other major publishing centers, a considerably higher percentage of total U.S. output was classified as influential.

NSF includes a great deal of interesting data along with commentary. One compelling area is that of the location of authors of the top 1% of the most cited papers. The USA leads with 64.6% in 1992 and 56.6% in 2003. European Union-15 (15 countries for this measure) 23.3% to 27.7% (interesting, not what I would have predicted – which would have been a decline, though a small one). Japan 4.2% to 5.3%. East Asia – 4 (China, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan) from .1 to 1.1% (and rising rapidly – .5% in 2001 to .8% in 2002) – interesting but not so surprising, basically what I would expect – rapid gains. All other countries: 7.8% in 1992 and 9.3% in 2003. I predict these figures will have to break out India sometime in the next 10 years – I wish they did now though I expect it is a fairly low figure. China will also be reported separately, I believe.

The NSF data includes all sorts of great stuff. For the same top 1% of cited articles by topic East Asia – 4 in Engineering/Technology: 1992 .9% – 2003 7.2% in Social Sciences 0.0% to .6% in Mathematics 1.3% to 5.6%. In Engineering/Technology the USA dropped from 63.3% to 45.4%.

This is more data supporting what I have said before Science Excellence and Economic Benefits:
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YouTube Architecture

This very interesting post by Todd Hoff gives an overview of the YouTube Architecture and thus some interesting ideas on large scale web application architecture.

Each video hosted by a mini-cluster. Each video is served by more than one machine.
* Using a a cluster means:
– More disks serving content which means more speed.
– Headroom. If a machine goes down others can take over.
– There are online backups.
* Servers use the lighttpd web server for video:
– Apache had too much overhead.
– Uses epoll to wait on multiple fds.
– Switched from single process to multiple process configuration to handle more connections.
* Most popular content is moved to a CDN (content delivery network):
– CDNs replicate content in multiple places. There’s a better chance of content being closer to the user, with fewer hops, and content will run over a more friendly network.
– CDN machines mostly serve out of memory because the content is so popular there’s little thrashing of content into and out of memory.
* Less popular content (1-20 views per day) uses YouTube servers in various colo sites.
– There’s a long tail effect. A video may have a few plays, but lots of videos are being played.

I have noticed a large increase in significant delays (taking 10-20 seconds to start playing) with YouTube in the last few months.

High Pay for Engineering Graduates – July 2007

From the National Association of Colleges and Employers survey , Starting Salary Offers to Class of 2007 Continue to Rise.

Degree	Average Salary Offer	Increase over 2006
Chemical Engineering	$59,361	5.4%
Civil Engineering	$48,509	5.4%
Computer Engineering	$56,201	4.8%
Computer Science	$53,396	4.1%
Mechanical Engineering	$54,128	4.6%
Electrical Engineering	$55,292	3.2%
Information sciences and systems	$50,852	4.6%

Economics was the next highest pay reported by NACE at $48,483. So once again engineering graduates are being paid well. Some other majors: Accounting – $46,718; English – $32,553 and Psychology $31,631.

Evolutionary Design

Evolutionary algorithms now surpass human designers by Paul Marks:

Evolutionary Algorithms take two parent designs – for a boat hull, say – and blend components of each, perhaps taking the surface area of one and the curvature of another, to produce multiple hull offspring that combine the features of the parents in different ways. Then the algorithm selects those offspring it considers are worth re-breeding – in this case those with the right combination of parameters to make a better hull. The EA then repeats the process. Although many offspring will be discarded, after thousands of generations or more, useful features accumulate in the same design, and get combined in ways that likely would not have occurred to a human designer. This is because a human does not have the time to combine all the possibilities for each feature and evaluate them, but an EA does.

Evolving new designs is very cool. One point I would like to make (I am biased since my father did a great deal of work in this area) is the power of design of experiments to allow experimenting on multiple factors at once. This is a methodology that is still used far too little. Regardless, evolutionary design is very cool. The Human-Competitive awards highlight some examples.

Laser Tool Creates “blueprints” of Archeology Sites

Laser mapping tool traces ancient sites

Born in northern Iraq in 1940, Kacyra developed this laser-mapping tool several years ago to solve a problem in construction — keeping accurate records of the real dimensions of factories and power plants when they deviate from the architect’s plans.

The 67-year-old sold his invention in 2001 and now works with his wife, Barbara, to get the $100,000 tool into the hands of archaeological researchers who are using it to create electronic blueprints so accurate that scientists sitting at computer terminals can glean the secrets of ancient monuments remotely. “We both loved the ancient-built environment and we wanted to put high technology to use saving ancient places,” Kacyra said.

Today the Kacyras have created a Web site, at www.cyark.org, that allows anyone to see these blueprintlike images. But that’s just the start. Down the line they would like to superimpose real graphics on top of these geospatial maps — recreating ancient worlds onscreen.

“Using the latest laser-scanning technology, CyArk collects the most accurate 3D model of cultural heritage sites, stores them safely and provides them freely to the world.” More on the laser tool:
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New York Steam Pipes

About a year ago I posted about the civil engineering report that the USA Infrastructure Needs Improvement. Why the heck does New York have steam pipes, anyway?

It turns out that Con Ed has been piping steam–which is a by-product of power generation, naturally–to buildings throughout lower Manhattan since 1882. (The pipe that blew up dates to 1924.) Incredibly, the system, which includes 7 plants, one with a boiler 8 stories tall, produces an average of one million pounds of steam per hour.

The reason that’s interesting, at least to me, is that this is a prime example of what’s known as combined heat and power generation. It’s an old idea, but one that’s making a resurgence as bills for all our petroleum-dependent energy sources–heating oil, natural gas and electricity–continue to climb. As we all know, the easiest way to “generate” more energy per dollar spent is simply to conserve.

You might also wonder, as I did, why the heck these pipes are pressurized even in the middle of July–clearly the steam isn’t being piped into radiators. Here it turns out that an additional cleverness has been introduced into the system: buildings in the financial district use the steam to power the compressors that run their massive air conditioning units.

The whole thing is rather brilliant–a model of re-use and smart urban planning–that is until disaster strikes. Apparently there have been lethal steam pipe explosions before, the most recent in 1989 in Gramercy Park. There’s a movement to bring these kinds of combined heat and power systems to cities small and large throughout the U.S., since it’s more efficient to combine the two functions and reuse the “waste” products of the power generation process.

Interesting. The event has also resulted in several articles on the deteriorating infrastructure: When Cities Break Down – Explosion exposes NYC’s aging systems

Engineering – Economic Benefits

The issues involved in the impact of engineering education and a strong economy are not easy to address in one short article. Impacts are delayed over time. Confusion between available skills and available skills at a certain price is often raised (people claiming there can’t be a shortfall of engineers if salaries are not rising even higher). But I continue to post about these topics because I think they are important (and I find it interesting to think about and read about…). And hopefully a good understanding can be gained through the many post (and the sources referenced in those posts – Economic Strength Through Technology Leadership, includes a listing of over 15 posts on these topics). Another article addresses some of these issues with some interesting points – Innovator fears U.S. losing edge:

Not unlike Hewlett and Packard or Harley and Davidson, Bob Kern created a company while tinkering in a rented garage in Waukesha more than five decades ago. To him, too few Americans seem capable of doing that today. “There’s a gross shortage of engineering talent in the country,” Kern says. Now 81, Kern built Generac into a company that employs some 2,000 people at three factories in Wisconsin and one in his native Iowa.

Generac makes power generators, the type that back up data centers, hospitals and homes during power failures. Equipped with a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Illinois, Kern spent his career searching for inventive folks to maintain a culture of constant innovation. More often than he cares to admit, he couldn’t find them in his home country. Since the 1970s, he has contracted with engineers in Korea, Taiwan, China, Japan and Great Britain.

What Kern represents is exactly what countries around the world are trying to duplicate. Talented businessmen creating good job. And note he started as an engineer and retired as the head of a 2,000 person company (S&P 500 CEOs – Again Engineering Graduates Lead).
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Economic Strength Through Technology Leadership

One of the topics I keep coming back to is the future economic impact of science, engineering, technology and the supporting structures in countries for the same. I believe a significant part of the benefit we enjoy today and will enjoy in the future is tied to how well those areas are integrated with economic factors (raising capital, open financial markets, infrastructure…). Some past posts include: The Future is Engineering, U.S. Slipping on Science, Diplomacy and Science Research, Shrinking Science Gap and Engineering the Future Economy. Fortune discusses the issue in – The United States of Technology?:

As we celebrated the nation’s birthday, I asked myself a patriotic question: Does the United States still lead in tech? As an American myself, my lens is inevitably distorted. Even so, the answer is hardly an unqualified yes.

I agree. While I still think the USA leads the question is debatable in various fields and as I have said before the future looks to be moving in the other direction. This is more due to the rest of the World improving than the USA failing. The continued reduction in advanced science and engineering degrees awarded to USA citizens compared to the rest of the world is a leading indicator I believe. Along with my belief that we will attract fewer leaders to the USA than we have in the past.

No other country can duplicate the American environment of tech creativity, which arises from a unique stew of entrepreneurs, academics, engineers, imaginative marketers and savvy financiers packed together in an atmosphere of risk-taking and plentiful capital. There is nowhere outside the United States remotely like the three places where this formula is most clearly at work – Silicon Valley of course, plus Austin and Boston.

True but the precursors for doing so are being created, the question is whether countries can pull all of it together. If only one country had a shot, I would guess that they would fail, because it is a difficult thing to do. But given how many places have a chance (including: China, Japan, UK, Singapore, France, India, Germany, Korea, Canada, Finland…) it seems very possible other centers of such excellence will appear. I must admit I would not put Austin in such a class, but maybe I am uninformed…

Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2007

Top 3 students - Intel ISEF 2007

Can These Kids Save American Science?

Jose Manuel Otero realized that science was his goal in 1996, when he went to ISEF with a project on filtering diesel from water using charcoal that he made from leaves and grass. Otero, the son of Spanish immigrants who never finished high school, took first place in the Connecticut state fair and went on to the internationals, winning third place in his division. “I didn’t know I wanted to be a scientist until I got to ISEF,” he says.
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Where students in previous generations built robots in their basements or sampled pond water in the local park, the majority of today’s winning projects showcase research done in a lab under the supervision of a mentor, an academic at a university or corporate research institute. Students get their own portion of the lab’s investigation. If they discover anything of significance, they might be rewarded as a co-author of a paper the professor submits to a journal, or they might share in a patent that the lab takes out on their work. One team project from Stony Brook’s summer program on detecting individual cancer cells by how hard or soft they are is up for a patent and has been submitted to the journal Science.

The top three winners of the ISEF receive a $50,000 scholarship and $4 million in cash and scholarships are awarded. Related: Intel ISEF Awards 2006 – Science Fair Project on Bacterial Growth on Packaged Salads – Amber’s Science Talent Search Blog – Science Fair Directory

USA Losing Brain Drain Benefits

US should act to curb reverse brain drain, India Times:

“Indians are among the best educated of all immigrant groups,” he says, adding that Indians founded more engineering and technology companies in the US in the decade up to 2005 than the next four groups combined-those from Britain, China, Taiwan and Japan. They accounted for 26 percent of all start-ups, about 117,000 jobs and $14 billion in revenue in 2005.

But that trend could be arrested or reversed by a growing phenomenon: Large numbers of skilled Indian immigrants are returning home. Many of them are heading back, Wadhwa says, because of the six-to-10 years it takes for their green cards – or permanent immigrant status – to arrive. “This is a double loss for the US. One is that we lose good people. The second loss is that they will become our competitors,” he notes, adding that this is true for many Chinese, Russian and European immigrants too.
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Unlike in earlier years, Wadhwa doesn’t expect the Indian government, for one, to lobby for easier green cards for its people in the US “Right now, India wants its people to come back home,” he says. “India has gone from a country which was dependent on revenues from foreign workers to one that is booming on its own. It needs all the skilled people it can get.”

I have discussed before that my belief is the USA will not continue to be able to attract as large a percentage of the highly educated and skilled scientists and engineers as they have in the last 30 years. Obviously other countries will take actions that they believe will benefit them and as times change what they seek will change – as they should. In my opinion other countries are doing a better job of encouraging investment in science and engineering excellence. The USA continues to do very well but risks having their positions deteriorate much faster than is expected (especially since some don’t seem to expect any relative deterioration) as others continue to make great strides.

The USA has taken for granted the many advantages of hosting scientific, engineering and related entrepreneurship excellence. As other locations establish centers that can draw the best minds and capital they will get the benefits the USA has grown to expect. Countries that aim to gain these benefits are doing the right thing. And the USA continues to make good progress (the biggest comparative advantage the USA has now is in entrepreneurism and the combination of technology and business) but the competitions continues to grow stronger and the level of performance to remain at the top continues to increase. And if the USA doesn’t respond with appropriate investments and action it will suffer economically.