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Curious Cat Science and Egineering blog full tag cloud
The Innovations in Engineering Education, Curriculum, and Infrastructure (IEECI) program supports research which addresses four aspects of engineering education: (1) how students best learn the ideas, principles, and practices to become creative and innovative engineers, and how this learning is measured (2) how application of cyberlearning resources of networked computing and communication, interactive visualization capabilities, and well designed user interfaces can be used to develop easily transportable tools and systems with low barriers to adoption which significantly improve learning, (3) integration of sustainability into engineering education, and (4) future directions of U.S. engineering doctoral programs.
Two types of awards will be supported: Expansion Projects (approximately 10 grants are anticipated) will only be available for area (1), Innovations in Teaching and Learning. Exploratory Projects (25-30 grants are anticipated) will be available in areas (2-4).
Anticipated Funding Amount: The total anticipated funding in fiscal year 2009 is $8,500,000. Expansion Projects will be funded at a level of up to $400,000. Exploratory Projects will be funded at a level up to $150,000, but exploratory projects involving multiple universities may apply for grants up to $200,000.
Full proposals are due by 11 March 2009.
Related: $92 Million for Engineering Research Centers - Worldwide Science and Engineering Doctoral Degree Data - NSF Graduate Research Fellows 2008 - House Testimony on Engineering Education - Webcast: Engineering Education in the 21st Century
NSF Launches Third Generation of Engineering Research Centers with Awards Totaling $92.5 Million. Each of the 5 sites will receive will use $18.5 million over five-years. Each center has international university partners and partners in industry.
The NSF Engineering Research Center for Biorenewable Chemicals (CBiRC), based at Iowa State University, seeks to transform the existing petrochemical-based chemical industry to one based on renewable materials.
The NSF Engineering Research Center for Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management (FREEDM) Systems, based at North Carolina State University, will conduct research to transform the nation’s power grid into an efficient network that integrates alternative energy generation and new storage methods with existing power sources.
The NSF ERC for Integrated Access Networks (CIAN), based at the University of Arizona, will conduct research to create transformative technologies for optical access networks that offer dramatically improved performance and expanded capabilities.
The NSF ERC for Revolutionizing Metallic Biomaterials, based at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, aims to transform current medial and surgical treatments by creating “smart” implants for craniofacial, dental, orthopedic and cardiovascular interventions.
The NSF Smart Lighting ERC, based at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, aims to create new solid-state lighting technologies to enable rapid biological imaging, novel modes of communication, efficient displays and safer transportation.
Photo: Alex Huang will lead direct the research of ways to integrate renewable energy sources into the nation’s power grid at North Carolina State University.
Related: $75 Million for 5 New Engineering Research Centers - NSF Awards $50 Million for Collaborative Plant Biology Project - Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers - posts related to the United States National Science Foundation
$12.5 Million National Science Foundation Grant
The University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering, College of Natural Sciences and College of Education have been awarded $12.5 million by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to prepare educators to teach engineering to Texas high-school students.
The UTeachEngineering program targets future and current teachers, providing multiple avenues to prepare them to teach high school engineering. University faculty will use half of the five-year grant funding for course development, lab development and salaries. The other half of the grant will provide stipends, scholarships and fellowships to students and teachers working toward engineering teaching certification.
Current teachers will benefit from two curricula developed through the grant: a six-week Engineering Summer Institute for Teachers and a UTeach Master of Arts in Science and Engineering Education, which takes place over three summers. The curriculum for prospective teachers will target undergraduate students in engineering and the natural sciences, and lead to a bachelor’s degree in a scientific or engineering field as well as dual teaching certification in science and engineering. Addressing the need for trained engineering teachers is especially crucial in Texas because of a new law that requires high school graduates starting in 2011 to complete four years of science. One year can be a course in engineering.
Related: Engineering Resources for K-12 Teachers - Leadership Initiatives for Teaching and Technology - Education Resources for Science and Engineering - Ioannis Miaoulis on k-12 Engineering Education - Alumni Return to Redesign High School Engineering Classes
A nice post from ScienceWoman: The PI lacks the experience with the proposed methodology…
I suspect that this is a criticism that I’m going to see a few more times before tenure. And I suspect that it’s a criticism that’s not uniquely being leveled at me.
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In this case, this criticism isn’t the reason the proposal wasn’t funded. But it’s the one reviewer critique that I can’t surmount on the resubmission. It’s like that itch I can’t scratch. So I guess the resubmitted proposal is just going to have to be so kick-ass in all other respects that there’s no way they can deny me these funds. Better get to work.
Related: Funding for Science and Engineering Researchers - HMMI Nurtures Nation’s Best Early Career Scientists - $1 Million Each for 20 Science Educators - posts on funding in science - Advice on Successfully Applying for Science and Engineering Scholarships and Fellowships
The world’s smallest species of snake, Leptotyphlops carlae, with adults averaging just under 4 inches in length, has been identified on the Caribbean island of Barbados. The species — which is as thin as a spaghetti noodle and small enough to rest comfortably on a U.S. quarter — was discovered by Blair Hedges, an evolutionary biologist at Penn State.
Hedges determined that the Barbados species is new to science on the basis of its genetic differences from other snake species and its unique color pattern and scales. He also determined that some old museum specimens that had been misidentified by other scientists actually belong to this new species.
Scientists use adults to compare sizes among animals because the sizes of adults do not vary as much as the sizes of juveniles and because juveniles can be harder to find. In addition, scientists seek to measure both males and females of a species to determine its average size. Using these methods, Hedges determined that this species, is the smallest of the more than 3,100 known snake species.
According to Hedges, the smallest and largest species of animals tend to be found on islands, where species can evolve over time to fill ecological niches in habitats that are unoccupied by other organisms. Those vacant niches exist because some types of organisms, by chance, never make it to the islands. For example, if a species of centipede is missing from an island, a snake might evolve into a very small species to “fill” the missing centipede’s ecological niche.
In contrast to larger species — some of which can lay up to 100 eggs in a single clutch — the smallest snakes, and the smallest of other types of animals, usually lay only one egg or give birth to one offspring. Furthermore, the smallest animals have young that are proportionately enormous relative to the adults. For example, the hatchlings of the smallest snakes are one-half the length of an adult, whereas the hatchlings of the largest snakes are only one-tenth the length of an adult. The Barbados snake is no exception to this pattern. It produces a single slender egg that occupies a significant portion of the mother’s body.
Related: Smart Squirrels Sneaky Snake Strategy - posts on evolution - posts on reptiles - Evolution in Darwin’s Finches - cat spies snake
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This stuff is cool. Here is the full press release from Penn State, Microbes beneath sea floor genetically distinct
Tiny microbes beneath the sea floor, distinct from life on the Earth’s surface, may account for one-tenth of the Earth’s living biomass, according to an interdisciplinary team of researchers, but many of these minute creatures are living on a geologic timescale.
“Our first study, back in 2006, made some estimates that the cells could double every 100 to 2,000 years,” says Jennifer F. Biddle, PhD. recipient in biochemistry and former postdoctoral fellow in geosciences, Penn State. Biddle is now a postdoctoral associate at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
The researchers looked at sediment samples from a variety of depths taken off the coast of Peru at Ocean Drilling Site 1229. They report their findings in today’s (July 22) online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“The Peruvian Margin is one of the most active surface waters in the world and lots of organic matter is continuously being deposited there,” says Christopher H. House, associate professor of geoscience. “We are interested in how the microbial world differs in the subsea floor from that in the surface waters.”
The researchers used a metagenomic approach to determine the types of microbes residing in the sediment 3 feet, 53 feet, 105 feet and 164 feet beneath the ocean floor. The use of the metagenomics, where bulk samples of sediment are sequences without separation, allows recognition of unknown organism and determination of the composition of the ecosystem.
“The results show that this subsurface environment is the most unique environment yet studied metagenomic approach known today,” says House. “The world does look very different below the sediment surface.” He notes that a small number of buried genetic fragments exist from the water above, but that a large portion of the microbes found are distinct and adapted to their dark and quiet world.
The researchers, who included Biddle; House; Stephan C. Schuster, associate professor; and Jean E. Brenchley, professor, biochemistry and molecular biology, Penn State; and Sorel Fitz-Gibbon, assistant research molecular biologist at the Center for Astrobiology, UCLA, found that a large percentage of the microbes were Archaea, single-celled organisms that look like Bacteria but are different on the metabolic and genetic levels. The percentage of Archaea increases with depth so that at 164 feet below the sea floor, perhaps 90 percent of the microbes are Archaea. The total number of organisms decreases with depth, but there are lots of cells, perhaps as many as 1,600 million cells in each cubic inch.
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Engaging the YouTube Generation in Hands-on Science
Follow the link for a webcast. Somewhat ironically the NSF headline mentions YouTube but fails to take advantage of one of the things that has made YouTube (and others sharing videos: TED…) so successful. The ability to embed the videos on web sites, blog posts… The technical quality of the video is very nice (more pixels than YouTube videos).
Related: Einstein Fellowship for Teachers - Excellence in K-12 Mathematics and Science Teaching - NSF Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 Education - Ministry of Silly Walks - more posts tagged: kids
The National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program aims to ensure the vitality of the human resource base of science and engineering in the United States and to reinforce its diversity. The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in the relevant science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees.
This year NSF awarded 913 fellowships: which come with a stipend of $30,000 and $10,500 cost of education allowance. On the ASEE Science and Engineering Fellowship blog, that I manage in my full time job with the American Society for Engineering Education (the Curious Cat Science and Engineering blog is my own and not related to ASEE), we highlight awardees including: Sarah Lukes mechanical engineering graduate working on her PhD at Montana State University; Ben Safdi, engineering physics and applied mathematics dual major at Colorado University - Boulder; Henry Deyoung, computer science major at Carnegie Mellon University, Jennifer Robinson, computer science major at North Carolina State; Lydia Thé, biology major at Swarthmore; and Julia Kamenetzky, physics major at Cornell College.
Fellows from previous years include: Sergey Brin, H. David Politzer and Eric Maskin.
Related: Proposal to Triple NSF GFRP Awards and the Size of the Awards by 33% - Increasing American Fellowship Support for Scientists and Engineers - Science and Engineering Scholarships and Fellowships Directory
But even though microbes essentially rule the Earth, scientists have never before been able to conduct comprehensive studies of microbes and their interactions with one another in their natural habitats.
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Because microbes are an ecosystem’s first-responders, by monitoring changes in an ecosystem’s microbial capabilities, scientists can detect ecological responses to stresses earlier than would otherwise be possible–even before such responses might be visibly apparent in plants or animals, Rohwer said.
Evidence that viruses–which are known to be ten times more abundant than even microbes–serve as gene banks for ecosystems. This evidence includes observations that viruses in the nine ecosystems carried large loads of DNA without using such DNA themselves. Rohwer believes that the viruses probably transfer such excess DNA to bacteria during infections, and thereby pass on “new genetic tricks” to their microbial hosts. The study also indicates that by transporting the DNA to new locations, viruses may serve as important agents in the evolution of microbes.
Related: Archaea, Bacteria, Fungi, Protista and Viruses - Microbe Food - Bacterium Living with High Level Radiation
Engineer Roy Choudhury wins NSF Early Career Award
“Security and privacy are additional advantages of antenna-aware protocols”, said Roy Choudhury. “By focusing your beams intelligently, you may prevent eavesdroppers form listening to your conversation, and even jam them selectively. Such capabilities have obvious implications for national security.”
Through his NSF CAREER project, named Spotlight, Roy Choudhury plans to develop the theoretical basis for antenna-aware networking, design distributed protocols, and implement them on an experimental testbed.
You can get the press releases on CAREER on nsf.gov for 1996-2000? Do they know it is 2008?
Here are some more awardees from this year: Worcester Polytechnic Institute Professor Wenjing Lou - Clarkson University Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Narayanan Neithalath - Engineering’s Ghosh Wins NSF Award for Novel Transistor Research at the Nanoscale - Shengquan Wang is an assistant professor of computer and information science at the University of Michigan-Dearborn - Dr. Glen Jackson, Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Bio Chemistry at Ohio University - Dr. C. Heath Turner, Reichhold-Shumaker assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at The University of Alabama
Related: Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2006) - 2005 MacArthur Fellows - Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (2007)
The Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers, established in 1996, honors the most promising researchers in the Nation within their fields. Nine federal departments and agencies annually nominate scientists and engineers who are at the start of their independent careers and whose work shows exceptional promise for leadership at the frontiers of scientific knowledge. Participating agencies award these talented scientists and engineers with up to five years of funding to further their research in support of critical government missions.
Awards were announced today - links to some of the awardees:
Related: 2006 MacArthur Fellows - Young Innovators Under 35 - Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2006) - NSF Release on 2007 awardees that are also NSF CAREER awardees
Over at my regular job I was finally able to get us to put into place something that I have wanted to for several years: profiles of past NSF Graduate Research Fellows. We started with probably the most famous and certainly the richest: Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin.
Sergey Brin, Co-Founder of Google, graduated from University of Maryland with high honors in mathematics and computer science in 1993 and, as a NSF Graduate Research Fellow, went on to Stanford to further study Computer Science. Early in his graduate studies, he showed interest in the Internet, specifically data-mining and pattern extraction…
In his short executive biography, Brin lists the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship that supported him while at Stanford among his top achievements. Like NSF, Brin understands the importance of research in innovation, and sponsors it in part through Google’s “20% time” program - all engineers at Google are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time on projects that interest them.
Read the full NSF Fellow profile of Sergey Brin.
Related: Directory and Advice on Science and Engineering Scholarships and Fellowships - How to Win a Graduate Fellowship - NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Application Open
Photo: Claire Gmachl, associate professor of electrical engineering at Princeton, the MIRTHE center director.
NSF Awards $75.3 Million for Five New Engineering Research Centers including the Mid-Infrared Technologies for Health and the Environment (MIRTHE):
The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRF) is now accepting applications (through early November). The NSF GRF is the largest and most prestigious graduate fellowship program for the sciences in the USA. Approximately 1,000 fellowships, which cover tuition and pay a $30,500 stipend for 3 years, will be awarded again this year. Previous winners include Sergey Brin, Google co-founder (he list winning in his 3 paragraph bio on Google’s site).
The main site for the NSF GRFP includes the solicitation with details on applying and eligibility etc.. I can’t figure out how you find the application from the main site but here is the link to apply for the fellowship.
Advice is available online for applying for the fellowship: How to Win a Graduate Fellowship, Advice for Applicants to the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and the University of Missouri provides a guide for completing an NSF FRF application.
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Read about the reorganization of NSF’s Engineering Division in their adobe acrobat (pdf) document (the only format in which they provide the document). How does an organization, in this day and age, post a scanned image online instead of posting a text readable document (for a present day document that obviously could just be printed to pdf format and retain text.
In addition to the obvious lameness of such a move when a federal government agency does it (like NSF) they violate the “section 508” regulations put in place to provide adequate access to government documents for those with disabilities.
Hopefully someone will get them to correct their failure soon. NSF does great things, but this failure to provide even the most basic web usability is an embarrassment.
Update - they did correct this, I don’t know when as it is months later when I am updating this but still I am glad they did.
US$425 million to boost Chinese innovation by Fu Jing:
“The boost has shown the government’s determination for China to become an innovative country by 2020,” said the foundation’s vice-president Zhu Zuoyan. He added that the foundation’s research funding is set to grow by about 20 per cent a year for the next five years.
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According to government plans, China’s total investment in science and technology should reach 2.5 per cent of its gross domestic product by 2020 — a share similar to that spent by industrialised nations.
By that time, China aims to be spending about US$112 billion annually on research and development (see China announces 58-point plan to boost science).
U.S. National Science Foundation Celebrates Opening of Beijing Office
“It is important for the U.S. scientific community, especially young researchers, to be aware of and consider collaborating with colleagues in China in this environment,” said Beijing office Director William Chang.
The NSF Beijing Office is NSF’s third foreign office. NSF also maintains research offices in Paris and Tokyo.
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