Author Archives: curiouscat

International Student Collaboration

Contest links high school students worldwide:

During the school year, 58 teams of American students coupled with students from China, India and Japan tackled technological solutions to global warming. They chatted online, divided jobs based on skill, consulted with advisers, and in the final grueling weeks, wrote a professional business plan.

“The most important goal is to engage U.S. students in international collaboration using science and technology,” said David Gibson, executive director of the Global Challenge and a research assistant professor in computer sciences at the University of Vermont. The idea for the contest came to management consultant Craig DeLuca two years ago as one of his clients planned to outsource design and manufacturing, and his community in Stowe considered putting off buying science textbooks.

“I’ve got to do something so that our kids have a shot in the global economy,” he said then. He launched the contest in Vermont, and last fall it was awarded a $900,000 National Science Foundation Grant and expanded worldwide. Winners will be announced in June.

Not only does the contest encourage interaction between students across the globe to solve problems, it also exposes them to opportunities in science, technology, engineering and math, Gibson said. “We need projects like this across the nation, so we can scoop these kids up because schools don’t do it for them,” he said.

Deep-Sea Alien Abode Discovered

Deep-Sea Alien Abode Discovered by Jeanna Bryner:

Recent expeditions have uncloaked this polar region, finding nearly 600 organisms never described before and challenging some assumptions that deep-sea biodiversity is depressed. The findings also suggest that all of Earth’s marine life originated in Antarctic waters.

Scientists had assumed that the deep sea of the South Pole would follow similar trends in biodiversity documented for the Arctic. “There are less species in the Arctic than around the equator,” said one of the study scientists, Brigitte Ebbe, a taxonomist at the German Center for Marine Biodiversity Research. “People assumed that it would be the same if you went from the equator south, but it didn’t prove to be true at all.”

Very interesting stuff. Related: Altered Oceans, the Crisis at Sea – Ocean Life – Antarctic Robo-sub

Treadmill Desks

Treadmill desks cut obesity

The participants were able to use the computer while walking without falling or injuring themselves. In fact, they enjoyed it so much, they wanted to keep the walking desks even after the study ended.
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Findlay got the idea from Mayo Clinic researcher James Levin, a co-author of the BJSM study who has been touting the benefits of his walking desk for years.

I must admit I like to think this idea would be work, but am a bit skeptical. I did switch to a job a few years back where I really just sat at my desk all day and would get tired. Previously I had walked around a fair amount going to see people… Someone suggested that getting some activity at lunch would help me feel more energized. It worked. If nothing else walk around at lunch.

Well, most of us in the corporate world feel like rats on a treadmill, so we might as well make the figurative literal…

Great comment on the post. Many of the other comments state categorically this cannot work. I wonder why they think they know what will work for everyone? I am skeptical but that is not the same thing as being sure this can’t work – I think being open to testing out ideas (especially ones that already have studies that claim they work) is a good thing. I would love to try it out myself (though given my skepticism I wouldn’t want to pay up to buy the equipment ðŸ™‚ ).

Think Tech Hawaii Podcasts

Think Tech Hawaii provides webcasts of radio shows on topics such as: Why the College of Engineering at Manoa Is Important–and Why It’s So Hard to Get Students to Study Engineering, Hawaii Academy of Science and its 50th Science Fair and New Technologies for an Aging Population.

3-D Images of Eyes

High-res, 3-D images of eye:

Future clinical studies, as well as further development, may someday enable ophthalmologists to routinely obtain three-dimensional “OCT snapshots” of the eye, containing comprehensive volumetric information about the microstructure of the retina. Such snapshots could potentially improve diagnoses of retinal diseases such as diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration.
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The current research was sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

CDC Advice on the Use of Masks to Prevent Flu

CDC offers advice on citizen use of masks, respirators:

Though there is little scientific evidence to go on, wearing a surgical face mask may make sense for people who have to go into crowded public places during an influenza pandemic, federal health officials said today.

Furthermore, people who care for a pandemic flu patient at home or have other close contact with sick people in a pandemic should consider wearing an N-95 respirator, a more elaborate type of mask designed to stop virus-sized particles, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advised.

CDC officials said avoiding crowded conditions and infected people are the most important precautions in a pandemic, but masks and respirators may provide additional protection. Standard precautions such as hand hygiene and social distancing should also be used, officials said.

Grand Visions

The smartest (or the nuttiest) futurist on Earth:

The secret is something he calls the Law of Accelerating Returns, and the basic idea is that the power of technology is expanding at an exponential rate. Mankind is on the cusp of a radically accelerating era of change unlike anything we have ever seen, he says, and almost more extreme than we can imagine.

What does that mean? By the time a child born today graduates from college, Kurzweil believes, poverty, disease, and reliance on fossil fuels should be a thing of the past.
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By 2027, he predicts, computers will surpass humans in intelligence; by 2045 or so, we will reach the Singularity, a moment when technology is advancing so rapidly that “strictly biological” humans will be unable to comprehend it.

Why do We Sleep?

Study puts us one step closer to understanding the purpose of sleep:

Sleep remains one of the big mysteries in biology. All animals sleep, and people who are deprived of sleep suffer physically, emotionally and intellectually. But nobody knows how sleep restores the brain.
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Although an electronic power-napper sounds like a product whose time has come, Tononi is chasing a larger quarry: learning why sleep is necessary in the first place. If all animals sleep, he says, it must play a critical role in survival, but that role remains elusive.

Based on the fact that sleep seems to “consolidate” memories, many neuroscientists believe that sleeping lets us rehearse the day’s events.

Tononi agrees that sleep improves memory, but he thinks this happens through a different process, one that involves a reduction in brain overload. During sleep, he suggests, the synapses (connections between nerve cells) that were formed by the day’s learning can relax a little.

Hacking Your Body’s Bacteria

Hacking Your Body’s Bacteria for Better Health by Brandon Keim

In sheer numbers, bacterial cells in the body outnumber our own by a factor of 10, with 50 trillion bacteria living in the digestive system alone, where they’ve remained largely unstudied until the last decade. As scientists learn more about them, they’re beginning to chart the complex symbiosis between the tiny bugs and our health.

“The microbes that live in the human body are quite ancient,” says NYU Medical Center microbiologist Dr. Martin Blaser, a pioneer in gut microbe research. “They’ve been selected (through evolution) because they help us.” And it now appears that our daily antibacterial regimens are disrupting a balance that once protected humans from health problems, especially allergies and malfunctioning immune responses.

When Fair Use Isn’t Fair

In her post, Antioxidants in Berries Increased by Ethanol (but Are Daiquiris Healthy?), Shelley Batts, commenting on a journal article which was written based on publicly funded research, used “ONE panel of ONE figure, and a chart, from over 10+ figures in the paper.” The for profit journal sent a threat of legal action. This is exactly the type of behavior that leads many (including me) to push for open access publication of publicly funded research.

When Fair Use Isn’t Fair:

Isn’t the point of publishing data to disseminate it, rather that lob threats at grad students who happen to be excited about it?

It should be but many of the for profit publishers seem to have mistaken their mission to promote science (which would then generate funds to sustain their organization) for a mission to make money with no concern for science.

One comment on that post includes a link to the Standford Fair Use Project which looks like a great resource. Also see: Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation