Author Archives: curiouscat

USA Losing Scientists and Engineers Educated in the USA

The USA continues to lose ground, in retaining the relative science and engineering strength it has retained for the last 50 plus years. As I have said before this trend is nearly inevitable – the challenge for the USA is to reduce the speed of their decline in relative position.

A new open access report, Losing the World’s Best and Brightest, explores the minds of current foreign science and engineering students that are studying in the USA. This is another in the list of reports on similar topics by Vivek Wadhwa and Richard Freeman. And again they point out the long term economic losses the USA is setting up by failing to retain the talent trained at our universities. It is a problem for the USA and a great benefit for countries like India and China.

“Foreign students receive nearly 60% of all engineering doctorates and more than half of all mathematics, computer sciences, physics and economics doctorates awarded in the United States. These foreign nationals end up making jobs, not taking jobs,” said Wadhwa. “They bring insights into growing global markets and fresh ideas. Research has shown that they even end up boosting innovation by U.S. inventors. Losing them is an economic tragedy.”

According to the study’s findings, very few foreign students would like to stay in the United States permanently—only 6% of Indian, 10 percent of Chinese and 15% of Europeans. And fewer foreign students than the historical norm expressed interest in staying in the United States after they graduate. Only 58% of Indian, 54% of Chinese and 40% of European students wish to stay for several years after graduation. Previous National Science Foundation research has shown 68% of foreigners who received science and engineering doctorates stayed for extended periods of time, including 73% of those who studied computer science. The five-year minimum stay rate was 92% for Chinese students and 85% for Indian students.

The vast majority of foreign student and 85% of Indians and Chinese and 72% of Europeans are concerned about obtaining work visas. 74% of Indians, 76% of Chinese, and 58% of Europeans are also worried about obtaining jobs in their fields. Students appear to be less concerned about getting permanent-resident visas than they are about short-term jobs. Only 38% of Indian students, 55% of Chinese, and 53% of Europeans expressed concerns about obtaining permanent residency in the USA.

On the tonight show yesterday, President Obama said

we need young people, instead of — a smart kid coming out of school, instead of wanting to be an investment banker, we need them to decide they want to be an engineer, they want to be a scientist, they want to be a doctor or a teacher.

And if we’re rewarding those kinds of things that actually contribute to making things and making people’s lives better, that’s going to put our economy on solid footing. We won’t have this kind of bubble-and-bust economy that we’ve gotten so caught up in for the last several years.

Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, recently expressed his frustration with the policies discouraging science and engineering graduates staying in the USA after they complete their education.

That is a brilliant [actually not brilliant at all] strategy take the best people hire them in American universities and then kick them out” It happens. “Its shocking.” It happens. “I know we are fighting against it.” “We America remain, by far the place of choice for education, particularly higher education.”

Nearly Half of Adults in the USA Don’t Know How Long it Takes the Earth to Circle the Sun

Questions:

How long does it take for the Earth to revolve around the Sun?
Did the earliest humans and dinosaurs live on the earth at the same time?
What percent of the Earth’s surface that is covered with water?

According to the national survey commissioned by the California Academy of Sciences: only 53% of adults know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun; only 59% of adults know that the earliest humans and dinosaurs did not live at the same time; only 47% of adults can roughly approximate the percent of the Earth’s surface that is covered with water. Only 21% of adults answered all three questions correctly. I sure hope readers of this blog do much better than that.

Despite the fact that access to fresh water is likely to be one of the most pressing environmental issues over the coming years, less than 1% of U.S. adults know what percent of the planet’s water is fresh (the correct answer is 3%).

Answers: Continue reading →

Pi Ice Cube Trays

Pi ice cubes

Liven up a drink with Pi shaped Ice “cubes” from Think Geek:

But how about ice? You were planning to use that standard vaguely cubical stuff?… or worse the boring half-moon shape your fridge churns out? Well fear not intrepid nerdy party planner! ThinkGeek is here with the geekiest ice you’ll ever find… Pi ice! Yep these stylish silicone ice trays cast frozen H2O into the symbol for your favorite irrational number.

Mobile users at risk of ID theft

Security experts say that password protection and, where possible, data encryption, is essential. The advent of smartphones has seen the types of information that pass through handsets proliferate and it is now much more common to store sensitive information and work-related details on handsets.
…
But the storage of increasingly personal information is also on the rise; the survey found that 16% of people store their bank details on their phones and nearly a quarter store PIN numbers and passwords.

Security experts agree that the storage of such crucial details is ill-advised, and advise users to take advantage of the available security features of a phone.

The Amazing Rusting Aluminum

when aluminum rusts, it forms aluminum oxide, an entirely different animal. In crystal form, aluminum oxide is called corundum, sapphire or ruby (depending on the color), and it is among the hardest substances known. If you wanted to design a strong, scratchproof coating to put on a metal, few things other than diamond would be better than aluminum oxide.

By rusting, aluminum is forming a protective coating that’s chemically identical to sapphire—transparent, impervious to air and many chemicals, and able to protect the surface from further rusting: As soon as a microscopically thin layer has formed, the rusting stops. (“Anodized” aluminum has been treated with acid and electricity to force it to grow an extra-thick layer of rust, because the more you have on the surface, the stronger and more scratch-resistant it is.)

This invisible barrier forms so quickly that aluminum seems, even in molten form, to be an inert metal. But this illusion can be shattered with aluminum’s archenemy, mercury. Applied to aluminum’s surface, mercury will infiltrate the metal and disrupt its protective coating, allowing it to “rust” (in the more destructive sense) continuously by preventing a new layer of oxide from forming.

Continuing Bee Colony Collapse Disorder

Photo of a bee

‘I do everything… the bees still die’

The use of the term colony collapse disorder has been criticised by some scientists and other experts who say that it’s often an excuse for poor beekeeping. David sighs heavily.

“Well… I don’t abuse my bees, I kinda take offence at that, when we transport them we take great pains to make sure they arrive safely, to make sure they have water. It’s totally unexplained.

“That’s the frustrating part. There’s no reason that these bees here should be in this shape, just three months ago they were beautiful bees, they were large thriving colonies, and to have them dwindle down to one or two or frames of bees is beyond comprehension as far as I’m concerned.”

But despite the disappearance of his bees, and the lack of clarity about what’s causing it, David remains an optimist. He points to a small discreet emblem on the side of his pickup truck, a hieroglyph of an ancient bee.

“That little hieroglyph there is Egyptian it stands for a beekeeper or bees. It’s an ancient craft; it’s been around a long time. The bees will endure.”

Photo by Justin Hunter

NCAA Basketball Challenge 2009

Once again I have created a group on the ESPN NCAA Basketball Tournament Challenge for curiouscat college basketball fans. To participate, go to the curiouscat ESPN group and make your picks.

I also created a second challenge, using Sportsline, that rewards picking upsets. The password for this one is cat.

Those readers that enjoy the tournament, please join the fun.

Go Badgers,

Green Energy Projects in the Developing World

5 Huge Green-Tech Projects in the Developing World: Leyte Geothermal Field, Leyte, Philippines with a current capacity of 708.5 megawatts

Suzlon Wind Farm
Location: Near Dhule, India
Current capacity: 650 megawatts
Planned capacity: 1,000 megawatts
Estimated completion date: 2010
Built by Suzlon, a homegrown Indian energy compay, the Suzlon wind farm near Dhule will be the world’s largest when it’s completed in 2010. Already, it’s creeping up on Florida Light and Power’s Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center, which has a capacity of 735 megawatts.
…
Acme Solar Thermal Plants
Location: Haryana, India
Current capacity: 0 megawatts
Planned capacity: 1,000 megawatts
Estimated completion date: 2019
Acme, an Indian technology conglomerate, announced its intentions to build up to 1,000 megawatts of solar thermal power Tuesday. The company providing the technology, eSolar, makes 46-megawatt modular power plants that concentrate the sun’s rays onto a central boiler to generate steam to drive a turbine. ESolar’s Rob Rogan said that the companies would break ground on the first 100 megawatts of solar power within the year.

Qaidam Basin Solar PV Installaton
Location: Qinghai Province, China
Current capacity: 0 megawatts
Planned capacity: 1,000 megawatts
Estimated completion date: ?
Two local Chinese firms announced their intentions to install up to 1,000 megawatts of solar photovoltaic panels in northwestern China in January. The China Technology Development Group Corporation and Qinghai New Energy Company will start with a more modest 30 megawatts. They expect to break ground during 2009.

Home Engineering: Gaping Hole Costume

photo of gaping hole Halloween costume by Evan Booth, 2006

This great Halloween costume by Evan Booth shows what a bit of imagination and engineering can do. A projection screen over his stomach displays a live video image of a camera on his back giving the illusion of a gaping hole. Photos via flickr. Very cool.

Cactus Eating Bull Saving Kenyan Drylands

Cactus eating bull saves Kenyan drylands

Cows are playing an important role in land restoration in Baringo by eating up the invasive prickly pear cactus a nasty invasive plant that is destroying the drylands. It’s not obvious at all for cows to eat this thorny cactus, but Murry Roberts and his wife Elizabeth Meyerhoff told me about an amazing project that their organization, RAE (Rehabilitation of Arid Environments) has been working on. A few years ago they discovered that a local farmer had a bull that not only ate the nasty exotic thorny ugly, plant, but also taught other cows to go for it too.
…
During the drought of 1999 – 2000 grassy fields were reduced to bare earth and cows had nothing left to eat were dying of starvation leading to widespread famine. The story goes that one farmer persuaded his bull to eat the leaves after he had burned off the thorns. Opuntia are 80% water and if one can get past the thorns, the plant is quite nutritious . The other starving cows watched the bull and then followed suit thus saving the herd and the farmer who has never looked back. The thorns are burnt off using wood from another nasty invasive species, Prosopis juliflora – making this an eco-friendly project all round.