Category Archives: Engineering

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.

Medical Buckyballs

Secret’s in the stuffing – Researchers fill ‘buckyballs’ with metals in hopes they’ll have medical applications

Virginia Tech has been stuffing hollow buckyballs, or fullerenes, with metals in hopes they could someday be used as contrast agents for imaging or tracing cancer cells.

Nobel laureate and co-discoverer Harold Kroto of Florida State University, who worked out the structural rule that the buckyegg violates, learned of Virginia Tech’s pursuit of buckyballs for pharmaceutical and medical applications during a visit to Blacksburg this month.

“It’s very exciting,” he said, joking that he’d been about ready to give back his Nobel because no one had found humanitarian uses for buckyballs until now.

The buckyegg is the latest from Virginia Tech, where in 1999 Harry Dorn and a team of chemists created the first buckyballs made with a shell of 80 carbon atoms and three metal atoms stuffed inside.

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.

SMART Fellowships

The Science, Mathematics, And Research for Transformation Defense Scholarship for Service Program (SMART) is administrated by ASEE. As I have stated before – while I work for ASEE this blog is my own and is not associated with ASEE.

Program highlights include:

Starting salary/stipend ranging from $22,500 for undergraduates to $38,000 for doctoral students
Full tuition and related education fees and a book allowance of $1,000
Paid summer internships
Career opportunities after graduation

Read more about the program and apply online – the deadline is 5 February 2007. Article on the SMART program from ASEE’s magazine: PRISM.

The deadline from the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship is as early as tomorrow for some applications and as late as November 13th for others.

Diversity In Engineering – Canada

Via Celebrating Engineering in the Globe and Mail – the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers: What can diversity bring to engineering (pdf format):

Strategies to encourage more women to take up engineering are being adapted to reach out to other under-represented groups. Making engineering more inviting to a diverse pool of future practitioners holds tremendous promise for a profession dedicated to the public interest.
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There is no doubt a renewed emphasis on diversity reflects–some would suggest belatedly–the changing demographic of engineering in Canada, and especially Ontario. While female engineers still represent only about 10 per cent of membership in most Canadian jurisdictions, there has been significant growth in membership from international engineering graduates, particularly in larger urban centres. In some ways, this indicates how the evolving demographic of engineering practitioners is coming to reflect the changing Canadian population.

Educating Scientists and Engineers

Business Week has an articles discussing what business would like to see from graduates, Biotech’s Beef:

The problem is a disconnect between what universities are teaching and what biotech wants. “The focus of academia is getting basic and theoretical knowledge in place,”
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There are several weaknesses. First, recent grads lack the technical knowledge to carry out applied research in areas that straddle engineering, math, and computers. Second, job candidates have little awareness of what the Food & Drug Administration is looking for when it considers whether or not to approve a drug. Recent grads simply aren’t familiar with issues such as quality control and regulatory affairs.

This general idea is not new. But, as always (and probably more so if the nature of what is needed is changing faster today than in the past) the changing environment does require universities (and students, at least those that want to work in industry) to adapt.

But with H-1B quotas filling up earlier every year, Invitrogen has chosen to do more drug development in Japan, China, and India. It may also open facilities in Korea and Singapore, says Rodney Moses, Invitrogen’s vice-president of talent acquisition. Compensation in China and India is lower than in the U.S., but that’s not what motivates the move offshore, says Moses. “If the talent is located in Singapore, it’s just easier for us to go there.”

U.S. colleges take the problem seriously. State university systems in California, Wisconsin, and elsewhere are adding more industry-oriented classes.

Residence Halls for Engineering Students

Three residence halls allocated just for engineering students at Southern Illinois University by Alexis Boudreau

The National Science Foundation in September granted SIUC $1.2 million to help fund the endeavor. Chrisman said more than half of the grant would go toward funding the peer mentors’ salaries.
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Nicklow said there would be approximately five students per mentor, and the mentor would attend at least one class per week with the students, along with providing tutoring and guidance.
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“The whole purpose is for them to interact with one another,” Lorentz said. “They will be able to live, learn and study together. It will enhance the student experience.”
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The new program will also involve faculty mentors, free tutoring available in the halls four or five nights a week and 36 practicing engineers who will periodically speak to students.

Some of the ideas sound good. I am skeptical of the advantage for completely separate dorms, but I believe in experiments so I like the idea of trying this. It will be interesting to see the results of this effort.