Category Archives: Technology

Computer Science Education

The Perils of JavaSchools by Joel Spolsky:

Therein lies the debate. Years of whinging by lazy CS undergrads like me, combined with complaints from industry about how few CS majors are graduating from American universities, have taken a toll, and in the last decade a large number of otherwise perfectly good schools have gone 100% Java. It’s hip, the recruiters who use “grep” to evaluate resumes seem to like it, and, best of all, there’s nothing hard enough about Java to really weed out the programmers without the part of the brain that does pointers or recursion, so the drop-out rates are lower, and the computer science departments have more students, and bigger budgets, and all is well.

Except.

I wish they hadn’t listened.

As usually Joel wraps intelligent thought within great writing. For those interested in computer science his blog is a great resource. Also, don’t miss Paul Graham’s essays or his book: Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age. Joel’s writing is also available as a book: Joel on Software. Joel has also collected relating writing: The Best Software Writing I.

Robot Surgeons

Three-inch Life Savers

Each camera-carrying robot — the width of a lipstick case — would illuminate the patients’ abdomen, beam back video images and carry different tools to help surgeons stop internal bleeding by clamping, clotting or cauterising wounds.

Four Vehicles Finish in $2 Million Robot Race

Four Vehicles Finish in $2 Million Robot Race:

Update: link broken – too bad they don’t know pages must live forever

The vehicles were equipped with the latest sensors, lasers, cameras and radar that feed information to several onboard computers. The sophisticated electronics helped vehicles make intelligent decisions such as distinguishing a dangerous boulder from a tumbleweed and calculating whether a chasm is too deep to cross.

NSF TeraGrid

$150 Million TeraGrid Award Heralds New Era for Scientific Computing:

“We fully expect TeraGrid to catalyze the next generation of scientific discoveries,” said Deborah Crawford, acting director of NSF’s Office of Cyberinfrastructure. “Simply put, breakthrough science and engineering depends on a first-class cyberinfrastructure.”

Autonomous Vehicle Technology Competition

DARPA Grand Challenge:

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) today announced the 40 teams selected to advance to the semifinals of the DARPA Grand Challenge 2005 autonomous ground vehicle competition. The teams come from 14 states and Canada and represent varied backgrounds including universities, individuals, corporations, and a high school.
…
The team that develops an autonomous ground vehicle that finishes the designated route most quickly within 10 hours will receive $2 million.

Only if a team succeeds will the the money be paid. Last year no team succeeded.

Six-legged Intestinal Robot

Robot combined with swallowable camera could give docs a better look inside the small intestine by Byron Spice, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Metin Sitti, director of the NanoRobotics Lab, is developing a set of legs that could be incorporated into the swallowable camera-in-a-pill that has become available in the past four years for diagnosing gastrointestinal disorders in the small intestine.
…
The work is supported by the Intelligent Microsystems Center in Seoul, Korea, and sponsored by the Korean Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy.
…
Another CMU roboticist, Cameron Riviere, is developing his own robotic inchworm that would use suction pads to adhere to the exterior of a beating heart. The two-footed device, called HeartLander, might be used to inject cells or drugs, implant electrodes or perform coronary artery bypass procedures.

Metin Sitti is an engineer with Carnegie Mellon University.

Appropriate Technology

Technology is not only about new breakthroughs. In some cases the technology used is nothing special, the impact is made in applying the technology well. Many opportunities exist for breakthroughs using technology that has been around for a long time.

I was reminded of my father‘s work by the article: From Stanford Engineering to Social Innovation (broken link):

In 1991, Martin Fisher and Nick Moon founded ApproTEC, a non-profit organization that develops technologies for alleviating poverty. More than 36,000 farmers in Kenya have now used their low-cost water pumps to create their own small businesses. They hope to take 400,000 people out of poverty in the next few years.

From the ApproTEC web site (broken link – it sure gets annoying how many people fail to follow basic web usability guidelines such as keeping links alive – organization now called KickStart):

ApproTEC’s Impacts To Date
Over:

35,000 new businesses started * 800 new businesses per month
$35 million a year in new profits and wages generated by the new businesses
New incomes account for over 0.5% of Kenya’s GDP and 0.2% of Tanzania’s GDP

On a related note, TrickleUp is my favorite charity. Their mission: to help the lowest income people worldwide take the first steps up out of poverty, by providing conditional seed capital, business training and relevant support services essential to the launch or expansion of a microenterprise.

John Hunter