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Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder is a great engineer and full of wonderful quotes for engineers to take to heart. The autobiography of the Woz is certainly a good read for any engineer. Woz urges engineers to follow their hearts
Related: Interview of Steve Wozniak – Programmers at Work – The Woz Speaks – Curious Cat Science and Engineering books
By virtue of their rough, water-repellent coat, when submerged these insects trap a thin layer of air on their bodies. These bubbles not only serve as a finite oxygen store, but also allow the insects to absorb oxygen from the surrounding water.
“Some insects have adapted to life underwater by using this bubble as an external lung,” said John Bush, associate professor of applied mathematics, a co-author of the recent study.
Thanks to those air bubbles, insects can stay below the surface indefinitely and dive as deep as about 30 meters, according to the study co-authored by Bush and Morris Flynn, former applied mathematics instructor. Some species, such as Neoplea striola, which are native to New England, hibernate underwater all winter long.
Related: Swimming Ants – Fish Discovery: Breathes Air for Months at a Time – Giant Star Fish and More in Antarctica
Science Tuesday: Back into the hornets nest is a thoughtful follow-up post on the decision of a scientist to vaccinate his child.
This is one of the examples of what is so good about blogs. Great content that probably would not be available but through a blog.
Related: Scientists Reconsider Autism – Autism, Science and Politics – posts on vaccination
Google is investing huge sums in renewable energy with the aim of cheaper than coal renewable energy. Google.org (the philanthropic arm of Google) announced $10.25 million in investments in a breakthrough energy technology called Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS).
EGS expands the potential of geothermal energy by orders of magnitude. The traditional geothermal approach relies on finding naturally occurring pockets of steam and hot water. The EGS process, by comparison, replicates these conditions by fracturing hot rock, circulating water through the system, and using the resulting steam to produce electricity in a conventional turbine.
A recent MIT report on EGS estimates that just 2% of the heat below the continental United States between 3 and 10 kilometers, depths within the range of current drilling technology, is more than 2,500 times the country’s total annual energy use.
“EGS could be the ‘killer app’ of the energy world. It has the potential to deliver vast quantities of power 24/7 and be captured nearly anywhere on the planet. And it would be a perfect complement to intermittent sources like solar and wind,” said Dan Reicher, Director of Climate and Energy Initiatives for Google.org.
Google’s Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal initiative focuses on solar thermal power, advanced wind, EGS and other potential breakthrough technologies. Google has set a goal to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity, enough to power a city the size of San Francisco, in years, not decades.
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Very cool webcast. The ant nest covers 538 square feet and travels 26 feet into the earth. The nest is engineered with vents to promote the flow of air, bringing in fresh air and expelling carbon dioxide created by the large fungus gardens. The scientists filled the ant next with concrete to excavate it: 10 tons of concrete were needed.
Related: Symbiotic relationship between ants and bacteria – Ants on Stilts for Science – Giant Nests of Yellow-jackets
Synthetic molecules, derived from curcumin, a naturally occurring compound found in the spice turmeric have been killed cancer cells, in lab settings. Centuries of anecdotal evidence and recent scientific research suggest curcumin has multiple disease-fighting features, including anti-tumor properties. However, when eaten, curcumin is not absorbed well by the body. Instead, most ingested curcumin in food or supplement form remains in the gastrointestinal system and is eliminated before it is able to enter the bloodstream or tissues.
James Fuchs, assistant professor of medicinal chemistry and pharmacognosy at Ohio State University and principal investigator on the project, and colleagues are continuing to refine compounds that are best structured to interact with a few overactive proteins that are associated with cell activity in breast and prostate cancers. Blocking these molecular targets can initiate cell death or stop cell migration in the cancers.
A major component of their strategy is called structure-based, computer-aided design, a relatively new technology in the drug discovery field. Before ever working with an actual compound, the scientists can make manipulations to computer-designed molecules and observe simulated interactions between molecules and proteins to predict which structural changes will make the most sense to pursue.
“Most of the interaction between our compound and the overactive protein comes from what are called hot spots on the protein’s surface,” said Chenglong Li, assistant professor of medicinal chemistry and pharmacognosy at Ohio State and an expert in computational chemistry. “For each spot, we can design small chemical fragments and link them together to make a molecule. This is what computer-aided design and modeling can do.”
Some of the most effective compounds have been tested for their effectiveness against human cancer cell lines – as well as whether they might be toxic to healthy cells. So far, the molecule favored by the researchers has a nearly 100-fold difference in toxicity to cancer cells vs. healthy cells, meaning it takes 100 times more of the compound to kill a healthy cell than it does to kill a cancer cell.
Related: Full Press Release from Ohio State University – Cancer Killing Ideas From Honeybees – Cancer Deaths, Declining Trend – Cancer Cure, Not so Fast – Innovative Science and Engineering Higher Education
Nice post from Rich Hoeg – Lake Superior vs. Silicon Valley Hot Spots:
This is one small example of why Silicon Valley is so successful. To be economically successful, countries need to focus on big things (investing in infrastructure, sensible laws relating to innovation, creating and maintaining good capital markets, investing in science and engineering education, encouraging entrepreneurs, transportation systems…) and the small stuff like this. Silicon Valley continue to be a bright light (as do other places, like Boston) but overall the USA seems to be trailing, not leading, far too often lately.
Related: Engineering the Future Economy – USA Science Losing Ground – Diplomacy and Science Research – USA Broadband is Slow. Really Slow.
I love spicy food (Indian food is my favorite food). In my garden, this year, I am growing some spicy peppers (which honestly I don’t really like on their own – I have discovered). Still I eat them some and I get the hiccups almost every time. So I finally used Google to find out why. That lead to – MayoClinic on Hiccups:
Although there’s often no clear cause for a bout of hiccups, some factors that can trigger acute or transient hiccups include: Eating spicy food. Spicy food may cause irritation to the nerves that control normal contractions of your diaphragm.
I must say the internet is great. Still that is hardly a great explanation for me. I almost never get the hickups eating spicy meals but every time I eat a hot pepper on its own I seem to (which happens very quickly and then ends pretty quickly – under 5 seconds). I guess somehow the other food in my mouth disrupts the potential nerve irritation so that it doesn’t cause a hiccup? It doesn’t seem like the raw pepper is hotter (higher Scoville Heat Unit) than the food, so I don’t think it is just a matter of more “heat” causing the hiccups.
Photo by John Hunter, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (see requirements for use).
Related: The World’s Hottest Chili – Science Explains: Flame Color – posts on scientific explanations for what we experience – Backyard Wildlife: Birds – Save Money on Food with a Garden – food related posts
Superbugs by Jerome Groopman, New Yorker:
Great article. Related: Bacteria Survive On All Antibiotic Diet – Bacteria Can Transfer Genes to Other Bacteria – New Yorker on CERN’s Large Hadron Collider – posts on health related topics
Just a note that the Ruby on Rails job opportunity I posted about earlier is still available. ASEE has a RoR contractor working now, but is still looking to hire a full time employee.
Dolphin Kick Gives Swimmers Edge
The dolphin kick first hit Olympic swimming big-time 20 years ago, after Harvard backstroker David Berkoff figured out something fundamental. “It seemed pretty obvious to me that kicking underwater seemed to be a lot faster than swimming on the surface,” Berkoff says.
That’s because there’s turbulence and air on the surface of the water, and they create resistance. The “Berkoff Blastoff,” as it was called, was used at the start and after turns, with long stretches of that underwater undulating kick.
Follow the link for a video of Michael Phelps demonstrating the technique and more interesting details. Photo by A. Dawson shows Michael Phelps diving into the water at the 2008 U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials.
Related: Science of the High Jump – Sports Engineering – Physicist Swimming Revolution – Swimming Robot Aids Researchers
The Whitney in NYC has a Buckminster Fuller Exhibit through September 15, 2008.
Related: Buckminster Fuller, Everything I know – Buckminster Fuller: Dymaxion Man – Buckminster Fuller $100,000 Challenge – Metropolitan Museum of Art photos
Engineering TV offers some nice videos. The site needs more content and some better usability (almost no webcasts are returned on clicking the tags – though they can be found by searching, videos play with sound automatically (without user approval), the ad sounds are way too loud…) but it is another site that might provide some interesting webcasts. I am still most hopeful about SciVee (based on the tie to PLoS) – though the progress has been slow so far.
Related: doFlick Engineering Instructional Webcasts – Science and Engineering Webcast Libraries – Google Tech Webcasts #3
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
Surprise, surprise: U.S. broadband is slow. Really slow.
Japan dominates international broadband speed with a median download speed of approximately 63 Mb/s, more than enough to stream DVD-quality video with surround audio in real time. Next on the list is South Korea where download speeds achieve an average of 49.50 Mb/s. Finland and France follow with 21.70 Mb/s and 17.60 Mb/s, respectively. Canada ranked eighth with an average download speed of 7.60 Mb/s. The U.S. came in 15th with 2.35 Mb/s.
I see this as an economic issue. Countries that have provided an investment in internet infrastructure to provide broadband to the home at reasonable prices will be rewarded.
Related: Speed Matter Report (pdf) – PhD Student Speeds up Broadband by 200 times – Plugging America’s Broadband Gap – The Next Generation Internet – YouTube Access Denied – internet related posts
Cooking and Cognition: How Humans Got So Smart
To understand what caused the cognitive spurt, Khaitovich and colleagues examined chemical brain processes known to have changed in the past 200,000 years. Comparing apes and humans, they found the most robust differences were for processes involved in energy metabolism.
The finding suggests that increased access to calories spurred our cognitive advances, said Khaitovich, carefully adding that definitive claims of causation are premature.
Nice example of scientific discovery in action. The direct link from cooking to brain development is far from proven but it is interesting. I also like “the same very boring stone tools for almost 2 million years” – maybe that is because I am too cynical (but while evolution is amazing – sometimes it is amazing how slow progress is).
Related: Brain Development Gene is Evolving the Fastest – Mapping Where Brains Store Similar Information – posts on science and out brains
