I have added a new page on our web site that includes links to online resources with advice on applying for and winning science and engineering scholarships and fellowships. That page also includes a list of the largest science and engineering scholarships and fellowships. Please share your comments and suggestions for additions for that page.
Category Archives: Science
China’s Science and Technology Plan
Interesting article – China’s 15-year science and technology plan by Cong Cao, Richard P. Suttmeier, and Denis Fred Simon:
China initiated a 15-year “Medium- to Long-Term Plan for the Development of Science and Technology.” The MLP calls for China to become an “innovation-oriented society” by the year 2020, and a world leader in science and technology (S&T) by 2050
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China will invest 2.5% of its increasing gross domestic product in R&D by 2020, up from 1.34% in 2005; raise the contributions to economic growth from technological advance to more than 60%
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China will invest 2.5% of its increasing gross domestic product in R&D by 2020, up from 1.34% in 2005; raise the contributions to economic growth from technological advance to more than 60%
Related: China’s Economic Science Experiment – China challenges dominance of USA, Europe and Japan – Diplomacy and Science Research – Best Global Research Universities – China Builds a Better Internet – Engineering Graduate Data: China, USA and India – Worldwide Science and Engineering Doctoral Degree Data – China and USA Basic Science Research – Chinese Engineering Innovation Plan
Finding Dark Matter
Dark matter hides, physicists seek
Scientists don’t know what dark matter is, but they know it’s all over the universe. Everything humans observe in the heavens—galaxies, stars, planets and the rest—makes up only 4 percent of the universe, scientists say. The remaining 96 percent is composed of dark matter and its even more mysterious sibling, dark energy. Scientists recently found direct evidence that dark matter exists by studying a distant galaxy cluster and observing different types of motion in luminous versus dark matter. Still, no one knows what dark matter is made of.
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The experiment is the most sensitive in the world aiming to detect exotic particles called WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles), which are one of scientists’ best guesses at what makes up dark matter. Other options include neutrinos, theorized particles called axions or even normal matter like black holes and brown dwarf stars that are just too faint to see.
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The experiment is the most sensitive in the world aiming to detect exotic particles called WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles), which are one of scientists’ best guesses at what makes up dark matter. Other options include neutrinos, theorized particles called axions or even normal matter like black holes and brown dwarf stars that are just too faint to see.
WIMPS are thought to be neutral in charge and weigh more than 100 times the mass of a proton. At the moment these elementary particles exist only in theory and have never been observed.
Misleading headline of the week
Misleading headline of the week:
But armed with an author name, Christine Born, I could do a Google search, and found many more articles — for example, this one from the Washington Post. Of course, I still want to know more about the study, which brings me to another pet peeve of mine: mainstream media reports on research that hasn’t yet been peer reviewed. This article doesn’t appear to have been published, just presented at a conference. We don’t know how the group defines “better-known” brands, or even what brands were used. We don’t even know if this research is actually publishable.
There is a conflict between publishing news and properly vetting the science (this conflict is pretty simple to manage I believe but exists nonetheless). I wish, at least, news stories made it clearer when the ideas are speculation, when they are very early research with some evidence in support of the contentions… And online news site should link to original research, more information, related information… That is one big problem with non-open access material. No simple way to share the material online. Links provide a big step toward providing an easy way for the reader to learn more themselves.
Commercial Carbon Nanotubes
Method Could Help Carbon Nanotubes Become Commercially Viable:
Researchers worldwide are striving to apply these nanostructures in electronics, high-resolution displays, high-strength composites and biosensors. A fundamental problem relating to their synthesis, however, has limited their widespread use.
Current methods for synthesizing carbon nanotubes produce mixtures of tubes that differ in their diameter and twist. Variations in electronic properties arise from these structural differences, resulting in carbon nanotubes that are unsuitable for most proposed applications.
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carbon nanotubes first are encapsulated in water by soap-like molecules called surfactants. Next, the surfactant-coated nanotubes are sorted in density gradients which are spun at tens of thousands of rotations per minute in an ultracentrifuge. By carefully choosing the surfactants utilized during ultracentrifugation, the researchers found that carbon nanotubes could be sorted by diameter and electronic structure.
Ancient Greek Technology 1,000 Years Early
Ancient Moon ‘computer’ revisited
Although its origins are uncertain, the new studies of the inscriptions suggest it would have been constructed around 100-150 BC…
Writing in Nature, the team says that the mechanism was “technically more complex than any known device for at least a millennium afterwards”.
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the Moon sometimes moves slightly faster in the sky than at others because of the satellite’s elliptic orbit. To overcome this, the designer of the calculator used a “pin-and-slot” mechanism to connect two gear-wheels that introduced the necessary variations.
“When you see it your jaw just drops and you think: ‘bloody hell, that’s clever’. It’s a brilliant technical design,” said Professor Mike Edmunds.
Larger image via Hellenic Ministry of Culture
Related: An Ancient Computer Surprises Scientists – High tech helps solve mystery of ancient calculator
Designed Experiments
One-Factor-at-a-Time Versus Designed Experiments by Veronica Czitrom:
The advantages of designed experiments over [One Factor at a Time] OFAT experiments are illustrated using three real engineering OFAT experiments, and showing how in each case a designed experiment would have been better. This topic is important because many scientists and engineers continue to perform OFAT experiments.
I still remember, as a child, asking what my father was going to be teaching the company he was going to consult with for a few days. He said he was going to teach them about using designed factorial experiments. I said, but you explained that to me and I am just a kid? How can you be teaching adults that? Didn’t they learn it in school? The paper provides some examples showing why OFAT experimentation is not as effective as designed multi-factor experiments.
Related: Design of Experiments articles – Statistics for Experimenters (2nd Edition) – Design of Experiments blog posts
NSF: Girls in Science and Engineering
via: Girls in Science and Engineering – NSF book. The 2003 book from NSF on Girls in Science and Engineering offers advice on improving k-12 engineering education for girls.
Girls who are overly protected in the lab or on the playground have few chances to assess risks and solve problems on their own. In SMART classes, once-dreaded mistakes become hypotheses. Girls are urged to go back to the drawing board to figure out why their newly assembled electric door alarm doesn’t work or why their water filter gets clogged. Supported by adults instead of rescued, girls learn to embrace their curiosity, face their fear, and trust their own judgment.
I must admit most of the advice I read for how to improve education for girls is really about doing a better job of science and engineering education for anyone. There is also some good advice (in this booklet and elsewhere) that is specifically about how to improve education for girls. And those practices have been shown to lead to increased desire by girls to to pursue more education, and and achieve future success, in science and engineering fields.
Improving Elementary Science Education
Experts Combine Efforts to Improve Elementary Science:
“We want to address ways to make science education more interesting for the students, and incorporating engineering and technology into elementary science programs often motivates the students to learn the science,” explains Tufts University Professor of Mechanical Engineering Chris Rogers, who is also the director of CEEO. Research on how people learn suggests that weaving engineering and technology into basic science curricula can deepen students’ understanding of and interest in science, which can be especially critical for young girls.
Good advice.
Improvements compared with conventional instruction Researchers expect that including engineering in science instruction in this way will help students deepen their understanding of the material. The curriculum design will also be informed by the “theory of triarchic intelligence,” developed by psychologist Robert Sternberg, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts and director of the PACE Center. Sternberg’s work indicates that course instruction that builds a combination of analytical, practical and creative skills to improve student achievement compared with conventional instruction.
Related: Center for Engineering Educational Outreach at Tufts University – Middle School Engineers – Middle School Science Teacher – k-12 Engineering Education
13 things that do not make sense
13 things that do not make sense by Michael Brooks discusses such things as dark matter, the horizon problem and the placebo effect:
Don’t try this at home. Several times a day, for several days, you induce pain in someone. You control the pain with morphine until the final day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline solution. Guess what? The saline takes the pain away.