Kids Not Clamoring for Engineering Careers

Engineering careers with experiences

Engineers are terribly misunderstood. Which might be one reason 85 percent of kids say “no way” to an engineering career. “The stereotype of the engineer is just wrong,” says Warren Miller, a retired Florida engineer who e-mailed me after I wrote about the short supply of workers in science and technology.

They think it’s “someone who is half-robot super genius” and “way more interested in machinery or circuitry than people.”
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Part of the misunderstanding starts with adults who influence future workers. The survey found that only 20 percent of parents have encouraged or will encourage their children to consider an engineering career. More girls say their parents are likely to encourage them to become an actress than an engineer.
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The National Science Foundation estimates a shortage of 70,000 engineers by 2010. To reverse the trend, we need to apply the engineer’s biggest tool: logic.

Based on the title of this blog you can guess I am in favor of engineers. Engineers can find great rewards in their careers from interesting work to high pay and leadership positions. In the modern world you need an understanding of science and engineering just to be a literate member of society.

The Psychology of Choice: We can be Overwhelmed

Is less always more? by Dave Munger

shoppers with just a few flavors of jam to choose from are more likely to buy than those given dozens of options (including the original choices). It’s as if we’re paralyzed when we have a large number of options to choose from, and so we end up getting nothing.
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Significantly more students bought the pens when there was a middle number of choices than when there were either high or low numbers of choices. So we appear to prefer a moderate number of choices — not too many, and not too few.

Shah and Wolford believe that purchasing patterns are likely to be similar for a wide range of products — although depending on the particular product, the optimal number of choices might be higher or lower than the 8-12 range they found for roller-ball pens.

In The Paradox of Choice – Why More Is Less, Barry Schwartz discusses related ideas and mentions the only kind of mobile phone you can’t get not is a simple one.

Teenage Engineer’s Company Launches Safety Stair

Young engineer launches stair aid by Geoff Adams-Spink

A young woman from Sheffield has turned a GCSE coursework project into an award-winning stair-climbing device for older and disabled people. Ruth Amos has launched her StairSteady handrail at Naidex 2008 – the annual disability exhibition in Birmingham.

She told BBC News that she was inspired to create the device for the father of one of her teachers who had had a stroke. She won an award for her idea and has now set up a company to sell it. The StairSteady is a horizontal rail at 90 degrees to the wall or banister that people can hold on to as they go up or down stairs.
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The invention was then entered for the Young Engineer for Britain competition and won first prize.

Great stuff. Innovation doesn’t have to be amazing technology. Finding solutions that make people’s lives better is the key. And then showing some entrepreneurship is great, Ruth setup her company when she was 16. I wish her luck.

Science Explained: RNA Interference

Explained: RNA interference

Every high school biology student learns the basics of how genes are expressed: DNA, the cell’s master information keeper, is copied into messenger RNA, which carries protein-building instructions to the ribosome, the part of the cell where proteins are assembled.

But it turns out the picture is far more complicated than that. In recent years, biologists have discovered a myriad of other molecules that fine-tune this process, including several types of RNA (ribonucleic acid). Through a naturally occurring phenomenon known as RNA interference, short strands of RNA can selectively intercept and destroy messenger RNA before it delivers its instructions.
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Double-stranded RNA molecules called siRNA (short interfering RNA) bind to complementary messenger RNA, then enlist the help of proteins, the RNA-induced silencing complex. Those proteins cleave the chemical bonds holding messenger RNA together and prevent it from delivering its protein-building instructions.

This article from MIT is one, of many, showing MIT’s commitment to science education of the public. Good job, MIT.

Open Science: Looking at Dust

Open access paper: Migration of Contaminated Soil and Airborne Particulates to Indoor Dust.

Indoor dust is a mixture of soil tracked into a residence, particulate matter derived from ambient outdoor air, and importantly, organic matter. Indoor dust is about 40% organic matter by weight in residential housing. Particles tracked into a residence are redistributed on floor surfaces account for over 60% of the dust mass on floors.

Soft Morphing Robot Future

This webcast shows iRobot’s (Romba maker) prototypes for soft flexible robots. The robot uses “jamming” to morph the body which allows animal like locomotion and the ability to reshape the body to squeeze through small and difficult to navigate locations.

Energy Secretary Steve Chu Speaks On Funding Science Research

Energy Secretary Steve Chu (and Nobel Laureate) speaks with Google CEO Eric Schmidt about science research. One of the things Steve Chu is doing is funding high risk experiments that have great potential. This is something that is often said should be done but then people resort to safe investments in research. Taking these risks is a very good idea.

This is another example the remarkable way Google operates. The CEO actually understands science and the public good. Google also provides a huge amount of great material online in the form of webcasts of those speaking at Google. Google behaves like a company run by engineers. Other companies have engineers in positions of power but behave like companies run by any MBAs (whether they are lawyers, accountants, marketers or engineers).

Engineering: Cellphone Microscope

UCLA Professor Aydogan Ozcan‘s invention (LUCAS) enables rapid counting and imaging of cells without using any lenses even within a working cell phone device. He placed cells directly on the imaging sensor of a cell phone. The imaging sensor captures a holographic image of the cells containing more information than a conventional microscope. The CelloPhone received a Wireless Innovations Award from Vodafone

a wireless health monitoring technology that runs on a regular cell-phone would significantly impact the global fight against infectious diseases in resource poor settings such as in Africa, parts of India, South-East Asia and South America.

The CelloPhone Project aims to develop a transformative solution to these global challenges by providing a revolutionary optical imaging platform that will be used to specifically analyze bodily fluids within a regular cell phone. Through wide-spread use of this innovative technology, the health care services in the developing countries will significantly be improved making a real impact in the life quality and life expectancy of millions.
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For most bio-medical imaging applications, directly seeing the structure of the object is of paramount importance. This conventional way of thinking has been the driving motivation for the last few decades to build better microscopes with more powerful lenses or other advanced imaging apparatus. However, for imaging and monitoring of discrete particles such as cells or bacteria, there is a much better way of imaging that relies on detection of their shadow signatures. Technically, the shadow of a micro-object can be thought as a hologram that is based on interference of diffracted beams interacting with each cell. Quite contrary to the dark shadows that we are used to seeing in the macro-world (such as our own shadow on the wall), micro-scale shadows (or transmission holograms) contain an extremely rich source of quantified information regarding the spatial features of the micro-object of interest.

By making use of this new way of thinking, unlike conventional lens based imaging approaches, LUCAS does not utilize any lenses, microscope-objectives or other bulk optical components, and it can immediately monitor an ultra-large field of view by detecting the holographic shadow of cells or bacteria of interest on a chip. The holographic diffraction pattern of each cell, when imaged under special conditions, is extremely rich in terms of spatial information related to the state of the cell or bacteria. Through advanced signal processing tools that are running at a central computer station, the unique texture of these cell/bacteria holograms will enable highly specific and accurate medical diagnostics to be performed even in resource poor settings by utilizing the existing wireless networks.

This is another great example of engineers creating technologically appropriate solutions.

White Paper on Engineering Leadership Education

Engineering leadership education is emerging as a topic in engineering institutions worldwide. But the review of international “best practices” in engineering leadership education says a lack of resources, expertise, and formal networks in the nascent field is causing concern in a profession threatened by a diminishing focus on the notion of the “engineer-as-doer.”

Commissioned by the Bernard M. Gordon-MIT Engineering Leadership Program, the new white paper, Engineering Leadership Education: A Snapshot”© Review”© of International Good”© Practice, reveals that the vast majority of engineering leadership education programs are based within the U.S. and most are relatively new (developed in the last five years). The white paper highlights the distinct divide between the U.S. and the rest of the world in both attitude and approach to engineering leadership education.

“As a sub-discipline, engineering leadership education is not yet on the radar of most engineering education experts outside the U.S.,” said Dr. Edward Crawley, Director of the Bernard M. Gordon-MIT Engineering Leadership Program. “Certainly for many of the programs outside the U.S., there’s some discomfort with the notion of ‘leadership education’, as they feel this concept runs counter to their educational culture of inclusiveness and equality.”

The report was conducted by Dr. Ruth Graham in a series of interviews between September 2008 and March 2009. Dr. Graham investigated more than 40 programs, seeking to provide an insight into current practice, highlight international variations in approach, and identify examples of good practice.

One major ”©current ”©trend”© in ”©engineering”© leadership ”©education”© is ”©the ”©development ”©of”© the ”©students’”© global ”©awareness”© and”© their ”©ability ”©to ”©work ”©on ”©complex”©cross”national”© projects”© – ”©which”© is”© seen ”©by many”© as”© the ”©environment”© within ”©which”© the”© engineering ”©leader”© of ”©the ”©future ”©will ”©need ”©to ”©operate. ”©
Many”© of ”©the ”©programs ”©which ”©were ”©most ”©highly ”©rated ”©by ”©interviewees ”©incorporate ”©some”© global”© elements ”©either ”©through ”©international ”©travel, ”©remote”© link”ups”© with”© overseas”© universities/companies ”©or ”©project”© briefs”© involving ”©an”© international ”©or”© cross”cultural”© context.”© ”©The trend ”©towards”© a ”©more”© ‘global’ ”©view”© of ”©leadership ”©education”© was ”©seen ”©by ”©many ”©of ”©the”© interviewees”© as”© one”© that ”©would”© continue.”©
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Dolphin Delivers Deviously for Rewards

Deep thinkers

At the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi, Kelly the dolphin has built up quite a reputation. All the dolphins at the institute are trained to hold onto any litter that falls into their pools until they see a trainer, when they can trade the litter for fish. In this way, the dolphins help to keep their pools clean.

Kelly has taken this task one step further. When people drop paper into the water she hides it under a rock at the bottom of the pool. The next time a trainer passes, she goes down to the rock and tears off a piece of paper to give to the trainer. After a fish reward, she goes back down, tears off another piece of paper, gets another fish, and so on. This behaviour is interesting because it shows that Kelly has a sense of the future and delays gratification. She has realised that a big piece of paper gets the same reward as a small piece and so delivers only small pieces to keep the extra food coming. She has, in effect, trained the humans.

Her cunning has not stopped there. One day, when a gull flew into her pool, she grabbed it, waited for the trainers and then gave it to them. It was a large bird and so the trainers gave her lots of fish. This seemed to give Kelly a new idea. The next time she was fed, instead of eating the last fish, she took it to the bottom of the pool and hid it under the rock where she had been hiding the paper. When no trainers were present, she brought the fish to the surface and used it to lure the gulls, which she would catch to get even more fish. After mastering this lucrative strategy, she taught her calf, who taught other calves, and so gull-baiting has become a hot game among the dolphins…

Too bad for the poor gulls but this is pretty cool. Plus it serves gulls right, one stole my breakfast a few years ago when I was down in Florida.