Category Archives: Events

fairs, competitions, festivals and other science and engineering events.

Science and the City

Science and the City, from the New York Academy of Sciences, serves to show how much all of us outside of New York City miss, but, also offers value to those away from NYC. Those of you lucky enough to be in New York City can find an amazing array of science related activities. For example this week you could choose from:

Making Chinese Medicine Modern at Columbia University Medical Center
Squishy Gel Phases as Templates for Nanostructured Materials at the City College of New York
The Beginner’s Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize at the New York Academy of Sciences
This Just In: The Latest News from the Universe at the American Museum of Natural History
Condensed-Matter Physics & Materials Science Seminar

Those are less than 10% of the listings included on the Science and the City calendar for this week.

For those of us outside NYC their site does offer a great deal of useful information including: Science and the City podcasts featuring interviews, conversations, and lectures by noted scientists and authors. Recent additions include: Father of String Theory Muses on the Megaverse by Leonard Susskind and In Search of Memory by Eric Kandel.

Great stuff for those in NYC, and elsewhere.

Intel International Science and Engineering Fair Awards

Nearly 1,500 students from 47 countries competed for nearly $4 million in scholarships and prizes at the 57th Intel International Science and Engineering Fair this week.

The grand prize winners of $50,000 scholarships were:

Hannah Louise Wolf, 16, Parkland High School, Allentown, Pennsylvania
Madhavi Pulakat Gavini, 16, Mississippi School for Mathematics & Science, Columbus,
Mississippi
Meredith Ann MacGregor, 17, Fairview High School, Boulder, Colorado

Information on all of the 2006 award winners as well as past winners.

Five Indian students win Intel awards:

Five Indian students are among the winners at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, the world’s largest pre-college science competition in which an Indian-American girl also received a $50,000 scholarship by taking top honours.

The students excelled among a record-setting, worldwide pool of 1,482 competitors from 47 countries, regions and territories, setting the bar for future scientific research in three disciplines.

Teen’s project places second at science fair

His engineering design for emergency shelters, now in the hands of the U.S. Patent and Trademark office, yesterday earned Toll, 17, a junior at Cedar Crest High School, a second-place award at an international science fair in Indianapolis.

America’s Technology Advantage Slipping

A Red Flag In The Brain Game.

The 30th Annual ACM-ICPC World Finals sponsored by IBM were held in San Antonio this April: view results.

Of the home teams, only Massachusetts Institute of Technology ranked among the 12 highest finishers. Most top spots were seized by teams from Eastern Europe and Asia. Until the late 1990s, U.S. teams dominated these contests. But the tide has turned. Last year not one was in the top dozen.

As an indicator this is a minor one. But it is one more indication that indeed the tide is turning. The results seem worse based on “The 83 teams who competed in the World Finals are made up of 22 North American teams, 3 teams from Africa/Middle East, 7 from Latin America, 22 from Europe and Russia, and 29 from the Asia/South Pacific region.” So the USA had close to 20% of the participants and only 1 of the top 38 teams (Canada had at least 4 in the top 38). The USA had 5 of the 17 teams tied for 39th place.

The poor showings should serve as a wake-up call for government, industry, and educators. The output of American computer science programs is plummeting, even while that of Eastern European and Asian schools is rising. China and India, the new global tech powerhouses, are fueled by 900,000 engineering graduates of all types each year, more than triple the number of U.S. grads. Computer science is a key subset of engineering. “If our talent base weakens, our lead in technology, business, and economics will fade faster than any of us can imagine,” warns Richard Florida, a professor at George Mason University and author of The Flight of the Creative Class.

Again results of two years of this programming challenge are hardly a significant indication. Still if there was any field that Americans felt they still felt they were dominant in it would likely be programing (maybe health care – what do you think?). Given that this seemed at least worth a post in our blog.

It is also interesting to note, this Business Week article uses the “China and India, the new global tech powerhouses, are fueled by 900,000 engineering graduates of all types each year, more than triple the number of U.S. grads.” stats even though this article specifically tracks a Duke team and Business Week published several articles on the Duke study, USA Under-counting Engineering Graduates, that refutes those numbers.

Great Moonbuggy Race – Huntsville Center for Technology High School and Pittsburg State University win their divisions.

The two winning teams were among 33 that raced their original moonbuggy designs across a half-mile simulated lunar surface at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville April 7-8.

NASA Engineering Challenges

NASA has been increasing the use of challenges to encourage innovation along the lines they could use for their future missions. The NASA challenges now 9 open challenges including the: beam power challenge and the astronaut glove challenge.

These centennial challenges provide a small monetary award to encourage solutions to challenges.

By making awards based on actual achievements, instead of proposals, Centennial Challenges seeks novel solutions to NASA’s mission challenges from non-traditional sources of innovation in academia, industry and the public.

Previous post: NASA Telerobotic Competition

Like to Tinker? NASA’s Looking for You by Noah Shachtman

Many of NASA’s contests also center on robotics. The Telerobotic Construction Challenge, scheduled for August 2007, requires a team of machines to assemble items with minimal human supervision. The idea is to let robots, instead of astronauts, build shelters and machinery on the moon and Mars.

Robot Dreams

RAYERD-X robot

Video podcast of amazing robot:

One of the most surprising robots that appeared at the 9th Robo-One competition held here in Tokyo on March 18-19th, 2006, was RAYERED-X developed by Asurada. Its unique design allows it to reconfigure and transform itself into some amazing shapes. At first it looks like a short tower, then becomes a carousel, then a walking spider, then into a tall biped battle robot.

All sorts of robot news via the Robot Dreams blog, including RAYERD-X – The Magical Robot:

The robot really surprised the crowds, but may have puzzled the panel of judges to some extent. It’s hard to make a direct comparison between RAYERD-X and the more conventional robot designs. Nevertheless, it did capture the 24th position during the initial Demonstration phase of the Robo-One 9 competition and was awarded the Sunrise Special Prize.

RAYERD-X web site (Japanese).

2006 FIRST Robotics Competition Regional Events

2006 FIRST Robotics Competition Regional Events in Philadelphia, Denver, Houston and more 30 March – 1 April.

Competition events are, in the words of our teams, “full of passion, excitement, joy, and sorrow…the thrill of success and the agony of defeat.” The FIRST Robotics Competition has grown to 33 regional events and the Championship.

Boston FIRST Robotics Event by Computer Science Teacher

I was amazed at how much interest in engineering and science FIRST generated. A lot of students were inspired to look at area of education that they had never ever thought about before.

One of the things I noticed this year was that the number of girls involved in FIRST continues to climb. At the Boston event three of the 44 teams were all girls. All of the teams seemed to have significant numbers of girls. People at FIRST say that there are upwards of 30% girls in the program. That could be better of course but it is growing.
…
I highly recommend you drop in on one. FIRST has to be seen to really be understood.

See previous post: For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST)

Soil Could Shed Light on Antibiotic Resistance

Soil Could Shed Light on Antibiotic Resistance, Science Friday podcast (7 minutes) from NPR. The podcast is an interview with Gerry Wright, McMaster University, Canada.

“New research points to drug resistance in soil-dwelling bacteria. Scientists say studying bacteria in the soil can help in understanding how the bacteria in humans develop resistance.”

Posts relating to antibiotics
Overuse of anitbiotics articles
Curious Cat McMaster University Alumni Connections

Contraption Engineering Fair

Photo from Contraption Engineering Fair

Contraption Invention Fair is lots of fun by Shirley Briggs, Special to the Arizona Daily Star

The 51st Southern Arizona Regional Science and Engineering Fair will be held March 20-25 at the Tucson Convention Center. The 300th anniversary of Benjamin Franklin’s birth will be celebrated.

Once again, SARSEF has been approved to take up to six high school projects to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Grants and awards (worth more than $15,000) are being awarded to this year’s high school and middle school participants.

Science and Engineering Fair Directory

Amber’s Science Talent Search Blog

Photo, left to right: Erika Ammons, Intel; Amanda Berry; Dr. A. J. Galindo, teacher at my school; Amber Hess; Tami Casey, Intel.

Amber’s 2005 Intel Science Talent Search Blog. Today the 300 semifinalist for 2006 were announced. Amber’s blog recounts her experience in 2005.

The CNN broadcast aired today. I was on NewsNight with Aaron Brown. They did a great job with me in a segment that lasted about three minutes, although they showed stock footage that included microscope images of chromosomes while we were discussing my project. They were either alluding to the genetic differences between women and men (I don’t think so), or they thought that “chromatography” and “chromosomes” were similar. Not really, but whatever! Nonetheless, I am mad at CNN right now because they didn’t show very much of Amanda. I think something “important” also aired that day, and they needed more room for it, so they cut her out. Bleah…but I am happy that they did not make me look stupid. All of this has been really exciting!

Also see, Amber Hess’ 2005 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair Blog