Category Archives: quote

Obesity Epidemic Explained – Kind Of

Graphic: percentage of population over 15 with a body-mass index greater than 30, for more see Wellington Grey

So maybe everyone else already knew this and I am like, bumpkin girl, but I just have to take a moment and point everyone to this USDA research site on the massive inflationary trend in daily caloric consumption over the past three decades.

1970 – Americans ate an average of 2170 calories per day
2000 – Americans ate an average of 2700 calories per day

I don’t think most people know that. It does seem odd to me that so much effort is put into trying to come up with explanations that are much more complicated. Most of the complicated suggestions (usually some explanation that indicates it is some biology issue and not eating to much or exercising too little) don’t explain why there is an increase in the incidence of obesity over time – at least I don’t see how they do. It seems to me the base requirement for improving the health issue of increasing obesity is to have an explanation of what has caused the incredible increase.

I can certainly believe biological issues impact how easy it is to become obese or how difficult it is to maintain a healthy weight. But it seems to me the proportion of the population that is obese has drastically increased over time (or different regions of the globe with a similar genetic makeup) and the logical place to look for an explanation is behavior differences that created this change (not some biological issue that has changed). If 5% of the population was predisposed obesity in 1950 to obesity I can’t see any rational reason to think that has increased to 30% today.

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.

Korean Engineering Education

Different Engineering Education Expectations

The “Engineering Education Innovation Center” of the engineering department at Yonsei University surveyed 350 human resources officials at some 100 small- and medium-sized companies, as well as big companies, including Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, Doosan Heavy Industries and Construction, and Nexon. In the survey, they gave engineering graduates an “F” grade in 13 out of 14 categories. Engineering graduates themselves also said, “Education in college is not useful to our work.”

On the contrary, however, engineering professors gave high marks of 97 out of 100 on their knowledge, and answered positively regarding their teaching skills, which revealed the different views colleges and companies have.

The conflict between what is being taught and what is needed in business is the subject of continuing debate globally.

Tracking the Ecosystem Within Us

Gut Check: Tracking the Ecosystem Within Us

For more than 100 years, scientists have known that humans carry a rich ecosystem within their intestines. An astonishing number and variety of microbes, including as many as 400 species of bacteria, help humans digest food, mitigate disease, regulate fat storage, and even promote the formation of blood vessels. By applying sophisticated genetic analysis to samples of a year’s worth baby poop, Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers have now developed a detailed picture of how these bacteria come and go in the intestinal tract during a child’s first year of life.
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Before birth, the human intestinal tract is sterile, but babies immediately begin to acquire the microbial denizens of the gut from their environment — the birth canal, mothers’ breast, and even the touch of a sibling or parent. Within days, a thriving microbial community is established and by adulthood, the human body typically has as many as ten times more microbial cells than human cells.
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The results, said Palmer, were striking: the group found that the intestinal microbial communities varied widely from baby to baby – both in terms of which microbes were present and in how that composition changed over time. That finding, she said, is important because it helps broaden the definition of healthy microbial colonization in a baby.

Another intriguing observation, Palmer noted, was a tendency for sudden shifts in the composition of the infants’ intestinal microbial communities over time as different species of bacteria ebbed and flowed.

I find this area and this study fascinating. I’m not exactly sure why this study and the incredibly significant positive bacteria for human life news doesn’t get more notice. Oh well I guess there are not cool pictures of robots or scary stories of potential threats to those reading which makes the news less interesting to some. Still I find this stuff amazing: Energy Efficiency of Digestion – Beneficial Bacteria – Skin Bacteria – Hacking Your Body’s Bacteria for Better Health – Where Bacteria Get Their Genes

Engineers: Future Prospects

In the The Future is Engineering I discussed some of the benefits of engineering education. And previous posts shows that S&P 500 CEOs are more likely to be engineering graduates than any other discipline. The future of engineering looks at what is in store for students of engineering today:

I doubt many of the incoming freshmen at Lehigh who are about to enter the College of Engineering have any clue what they are getting themselves into. I suspect they will end up very pleased with their choice… especially when they realize large numbers of engineering graduates before them did not take jobs as engineers but instead were hired as consultants – as a result many graduates are paid much higher salaries than they would have dreamt of as freshmen.
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But are they waging a rearguard battle, will the US become a services-land where most of the real engineering is outsourced to countries that value science more, and where the so-called engineers are number-crunching problem-solvers who stare at computers all day long? Or will the pendulum swing back in the engineers’ favor after a Sputnik-like incident that will bring engineering back into the list of national priorities?

It is very important to remember that the benefits of studying engineering cannot be measured solely by looking at engineers in the workplace – many go into different job title and are promoted into management… and as stated above CEOs. The second point will be an important determinant of the economic strength of the USA as I have addressed many times I think it is important the USA maintain science and engineering expertise. The multiple benefits of having research centers here, manufacturing engineering expertise… is huge. See: Continue reading →

Life-patents

New Life, New Patent by Carl Zimmer:

ETC is right in suggesting Venter might become “Microbesoft”–controlling operating system for anyone who wants to build an organism from scratch. Other researchers, such as Keasling, are promoting a different way of doing synthetic biology–what they call open source biology. Scientists and their students are amassing an open inventory of parts that anyone can use to design organisms of their own. And it’s open source biology, these researchers argue, that will provide the best protection against any evil uses of synthetic biology. Instead of being hidden behind patents, the information about these parts would be available to everyone, and collectively solutions could be found. As this debate starts to unfold, I think open source biology will keep it from becoming nothing but deja vu.

I support keeping science open. Patents are a tax on society that the government grants inventors for their efforts, in order to benefit society, by encouraging the inventors to innovate. The end is benefiting society. The means is granting a right of the patent holder (a right they do not have without patent law) that will encourage them to make the effort to innovate. I support the proper use of patents, but we have perverted the patent process into something that harms society. The system needs to be fixed. And the whole area of patents on life I find very questionable.

S&P 500 CEOs – Again Engineering Graduates Lead

2006 Data from Spencer Stuart on S&P 500 CEO (pdf document) shows once again more have bachelors degrees in engineering than any other field.

Field		% of CEOs
Engineering		23%
Economics		13%
Business Administration		12%
Liberal Arts		8%
Accounting		8%
No degree or no data		3%

This data only shows the data for 65% of CEOs, I would like to see the rest of the data but it is not provide in this report. 41% of S&P CEOs have MBAs. 27% have other advanced degrees.

Awesome Cat Cam

CatCam - photo of the famous cat photographer CatCam - cat photographer on the run CatCam - cat photographer get picture of another cat

CatCam by Juergen Perthold – this great project involved taking a digital camera and some additional equipment to create a camera that his cat wore around his neck which took pictures every 3 minutes. The pictures are great. The cat got photos of several other cats and seemed to like cars.

See more cool gadgets, See our other popular posts and our cat related posts.

Sometimes I have some challenging ideas, or crazy like some other people would say. This time I thought about our cat who is the whole day out, returning sometimes hungry sometimes not, sometimes with traces of fights, sometimes he stay also the night out. When he finally returns, I wonder where he was and what he did during his day. This brought me to the idea to equip the cat with a camera. The plan was to put a little camera around his neck which takes every few minutes a picture. After he is returning, the camera would show his day.
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The VistaQuest made it very easy for me, because it is able to supply my circuit also if switched off. This is because of an internal DC/DC converter which boosts the voltage from the 1.5V battery to 3.3V. The DC/DC converter is always working because of the internal SRAM which holds the pictures. I just had to hook the microcontroller to the internal camera supply.
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Well, I thought the hardest part is done by developing the software and soldering the controller board. But it is more the housing to protect the camera. You can not imagine what kind of requirements have to be fulfilled if you want to equip your cat with a camera. I built a small housing out of plastic plates and put it on the collar of the cat for evaluation purpose. This housing was last seen as the cat walked out of the door… Probably the wires I used for attaching were not strong enough. Or someone released the cat from the interesting looking piece.

For the second try I used the plastic package of a child toy (Kinderueberraschung), put a stone in it for loading it with some weight and attached it again to the cat collar. This time the part returned – dirty and scratched outside, water inside. What the hell is the cat doing !? This raised the requirements for the camera protective housing a lot
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Big moment no. 1: attach the collar with the camera to the cat. The reaction was not very happy but finally accepted. Reality check passed 🙂

This is my favorite home engineering project. The concept is great. The explanation of the technology is great. The adjustment to real life situations is great. The end result (the photos) is great. This wins the non-existent Curious Cat Cool Contraption award. If someone doesn’t start selling prefabricated cat cameras I will be very surprised (if I was more enterprising I would do it myself). Maybe J. Perthold will, in any event he should inspire many to try making their own.

Award for Us :-)

Best Web Site Name of the Week

The Curious Cat is a blog collecting news on science and engineering — but if the old saw is true, than that poor cat’s days are numbered. Or maybe the cat belongs to Schrodinger, and so exists in a quantum state between life and death, and as such artfully avoids the fate that excessive curiosity would usually visit upon a feline.

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Software Patents – Bad Idea

MIT League for Programming Freedom on Software Patents, including: Why Patents Are Bad for Software, No Patents on Ideas by Thomas Jefferson and letter from Donald E. Knuth to the U.S. Patent Office

In the period 1945-1980, it was generally believed that patent law did not pertain to software. However, it now appears that some people have received patents for algorithms of practical importance–e.g., Lempel-Ziv compression and RSA public key encryption–and are now legally preventing other programmers from using these algorithms.

This is a serious change from the previous policy under which the computer revolution became possible, and I fear this change will be harmful for society. It certainly would have had a profoundly negative effect on my own work: For example, I developed software called TeX that is now used to produce more than 90% of all books and journals in mathematics and physics and to produce hundreds of thousands of technical reports in all scientific disciplines. If software patents had been commonplace in 1980, I would not have been able to create such a system, nor would I probably have ever thought of doing it, nor can I imagine anyone else doing so.