Engineering Education Advocate

Jolly Good Fellow by Thomas K. Grose

He thinks one reason for the decline is the way engineering is taught in the United Kingdom, with a heavy, early emphasis on theory and math. “Kids come in and they want to design and build cars, but instead they’re fed theory and hard math. And they say, ‘What the heck is this?’” Degree programs should be made more palatable and exciting early on, Sharkey says, with more hands-on learning to go along with the theoretical so students can more easily see how it relates to real-life applications. “We need to get out the idea that engineering can be creative—and then make it so. Somehow, we need to teach innovation.”

But Sharkey also realizes that few schools have either the time or the money to reshape their curricula. “So we could use a government initiative.”Sharkey also takes a more long-term view toward revitalizing engineering enrollments, noting that it’s best to capture the imagination of budding engineers when they’re as young as 10 or 11. Toward that goal, and with EPSRC funding, he runs a series of robot-control and construction competitions for children and young adults. A recent one was in Rotherham, a hardscrabble area outside Sheffield. About 2,000 inner-city kids made and took home simple cardboard robots from kits he devised that use a photoelectric sensor. Many of these kids are considered unteachable, “but to me, they seemed happy to learn. They didn’t see me as a teacher.” Moreover, constructing robots engages and entertains youngsters, which makes learning easier.

Single Gene Could Lead to Long Life

Single Gene Could Lead to Long Life, Better Mental Function by Charles Q. Choi:

The CETP gene variant makes cholesterol particles in the blood larger than normal. The researchers suggest smaller particles can more readily lodge in the lining of blood vessels, leading to fatty buildups, which are a risk factor for heart attacks and strokes.

Whether or not this gene variant protects the brain by preventing this buildup, or through some other mechanism, remains uncertain, says Barzilai. Future research should also investigate whether this gene has an effect on dementia associated with Alzheimer’s disease, says pathologist and human geneticist George Martin at the University of Washington.

Pharmaceutical companies are currently developing drugs that mimic the effect of this gene variant, says Barzilai. Unfortunately, one known as torcetrapib, manufactured by Pfizer, was pulled in December due to increased death and heart problems among study subjects, “but others in development aren’t seeing that, so it might just have been a problem with that drug,”

Knowledge Is Power – Teaching Math

Knowledge Is Power Program:

IM was the second charter school founded for low-income D.C. students by KIPP, the Knowledge Is Power Program. KIPP had gained a national reputation for math instruction. The KIPP leaders in D.C. had good reason to think, as they told Suben, that “we have math pretty much figured out.” Suben, 23 at the time, still thought she could do better. She told her supervisors she was going to produce her own fifth-grade math curriculum. A year later, her students achieved the largest one-year math score jump ever seen at a KIPP school (or any other school that I know of), from the 16th to the 77th percentile.

Suben said: “My primary goal as a teacher is to help my students understand the reasoning behind math rules and procedures. I have several core beliefs about this: (1) Understanding is constructed by the learner, not passively received from the teacher. (2) Understanding is built by making connections between as many strands of knowledge as possible. (3) Understanding is galvanized through communication. (4) Understanding is only valuable when you reflect on it and question it.”

The core of her method is the workbook she produced last year on the fly. It “lets students build their own notes and create their own examples. It is incredibly active learning,” she said. They were encouraged to write down the meaning of important terms and strategies they used that worked with certain kinds of problems.

Engineering Basketball Flop

Despite innovation, basketball maker loses grip on customers (newspaper broke the link so I removed it)

However, NBA players found many problems with the new ball, claiming that it caused finger cuts and friction burns. More important, they complained of control problems because of inconsistent bouncing by the new ball, its tendency to stick to the floor and backboards when dry, and the difficulty in gripping it when wet.

Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, asked researchers at the University of Texas in Arlington to compare the performances of both the synthetic and leather balls. Their investigation found that the microfiber composite ball did not bounce as high as the leather design and that it bounced 30 percent more erratically.

The investigators also used silicon sheets to replicate the surface of a player’s hands as they conducted frictional tests on the balls. The new balls were found to be slippery even when slightly moistened, whereas the leather balls actually became tackier when wet, making them easier to grip.

These results are not surprising because the synthetic covering is not as moisture absorbent as leather. These findings seemed to confirm the players’ concerns about the new ball.

So, You Want to be an Astrophysicist?

Dynamics of Cats (good name don’t you think) has an interesting series of posts: So, you want to be an astrophysicist? The latest is: Part 2.5 – grad school by Steinn SigurÃ°sson:

Think very seriously about whether you want to do theory, observation, data analysis or instrumentation.
You may end up doing things you never imagined out of necessity (like theorists go take observations, cause if they don’t no one else will; or observers running simulations, or building the instrument they need to do the observations etc etc).
…
Finally: READ!!! Pro-actively.
Check arXiv regularly and thoroughly. Read the papers relevant to you and anything else that looks interesting.
Read the references! They are there for a reason. Read the citations – if a paper is interesting, papers which cite it are also likely to be interesting. Use the ADS “C” option liberally and look through it quickly. If in doubt ask you advisor, or just read it anyway.

Next, the slightly tricky issue of what we actually “do”, research wise type of thingy. Might take a while…

arXiv.org is a (even the) great open access article resource. “Open access to 400,419 e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science and Quantitative Biology.”

State Foster Science for Future Jobs

State eager to foster young scientists for future jobs

The challenge for Massachusetts is to figure out how to inspire more youths to take the same steps. Across the region, observers from chief executives to policymakers are fretting that Massachusetts is not grooming a work force for the future. Part of that includes funneling enough young people into math, science, engineering and related professions to sustain the state’s companies and economy.
…
“I think as citizens we need to have a basic literacy of principles of science and technology, and that the level of literacy needed to sift through decisions and certain public policy debates has become greater,” Mr. Schneider said. “As science is more in the public policy arena, having fundamental knowledge of basic scientific principles is key.”

I agree. Education in science and engineering is needed both to provide skilled workers for a strong economy and to provide a level of understanding for people to participate in the modern world.

Getting Students Hooked on Engineering

Another article on project lead the way: Project is getting students hooked on engineering early

Brent Kindred, state leader for Project Lead the Way at the Department of Public Instruction, said the pre-engineering education movement has been gathering momentum since 2003 largely because “we are a manufacturing state, and we have a lack of engineers and highly skilled, highly trained workers.”

“Project Lead the Way is the first national pre-engineering program that’s had any real sustainability,” said John Farrow, a professor at the Milwaukee School of Engineering who is also the state affiliate director of the program. MSOE is the only Wisconsin college certified to offer the teacher training courses. In summer, MSOE expected 15 teachers in the middle school training course but ended up with about 37, Farrow said.

Smallest Known Living Organisms Found – 200 nanometers

Shotgun sequencing finds nanoorganisms by Robert Sanders:

Once Baker had found gene segments (ribosomal RNA) from three Archaea, he was able to fish the microbes out of the slime soup and found that they were extremely small, around 200 nanometers in diameter, the size of large viruses. Bacteria average about five times this diameter. These therefore could be the smallest organisms ever found, though Baker needs to culture them before confirming this. Because they’re so small, however, they may not be free-living.

“We’re not sure they can live independently, whether they have enough genes to fend for themselves, but instead are symbiotic with another organism or are feeding off another organism,” Baker said. Baker now is trying to find the right conditions for these Archaea to thrive in a culture dish. For now, he has dubbed them ARMAN-1, -2 and -3, for Archaeal Richmond Mine Acidophilic Nanoorganisms.

Jetson Jetplane

photo of person flying a jet-pack with wings

Finally the Jetpacks we were promised by the Jetson’s 🙂 Well not really but still pretty cool. Many very cool videos (they broke link so I removed it 🙁 ) on the Jet-man website show the jetpack in action. The flight is controlled by body movements (not controls, other than the gas). To fly, currently, Yves Rossy jumps from a plane and then extends the wings turns on the jets. Some additional improvements are needed to allow Yves to achieve ground take-offs, aerobatic operations and vertical climbs.

Science and Engineering Search Engine

The December 2006 Newsletter of the Google Librarian Center mentions the Curious Cat Science and Engineering Custom Search Engine. As they state it “searches a combination of lay and official sites for science and engineering information.”

The search box for this search is conveniently located on the right hand side of each page on our blog (there is a search box for this search and one for searching just this blog). The science and engineering Custom Search Engine (CSE) uses our selection of sites along with Google search technology to provide search results. We hope you find it useful. Please share your feedback.