Category Archives: Engineering

Discoveries by Accident

‘Failed’ experiment produces a bacterial Trojan horse by Katie Weber. Interestingly the usefulness of Penicillin, the most popular bacteria fighting agent, was discovered by accident (and then a smart scientist learning from the accident and applying that knowledge to creating an incredibly useful medication).

As he was puzzling out why what should have been a routine procedure wouldn’t work, he made a discovery that led to the creation of a new biological tool for destroying bacterial pathogens – one that doesn’t appear to trigger antibiotic resistance.

The discovery also led to the startup of a promising new biotechnology firm that has already brought Wisconsin a dozen new, high-paying, highly skilled jobs.

This is yet another example of the power of scientists and engineers to boost the economy and society at large.

Google 2007 Anita Borg Scholarship

USA: Open to female, undergraduate seniors or graduate students at a university in the United States studying Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related technical fields. Apply by January 15, 2007. The scholarship recipients will each receive a $10,000 scholarship for the 2007-2008 academic year. Remaining finalists will receive $1,000 each. Both groups will visit Google headquarters April 5-7, 2007 for workshops with a series of speakers, panelists, breakout sessions and social activities.

Europe: Similar to the above, apply by January 12th, 2007

More Great Science Webcasts

Lectures from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center including: Whispers of the Big Bang by Sarah Church, Archimedes: Accelerator Reveals Ancient Text by Uwe Bergman, Our Lopsided Universe: The Matter with Anti-Matter by Steve Sekula and The Runaway Universe by Roger Blandford. This collection is yet another great resource.

The number of great resources has prompted me to created a directory of great science and engineering webcast libraries: Curious Cat Science and Engineering Webcast Libraries. These sites have awesome science and engineering videos. Definitely worth viewing.

Artificial Corneas

Closer to fooling the eye

Transplanting human corneas from cadavers can restore someone’s vision. But because of a tissue shortage, only 100,000 corneal transplants are performed worldwide annually — serving just 1% of the 10 million people who are stricken with corneal blindness.
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Bioengineers are making significant progress. They predict that within a few years we could have cornea substitutes that slip over the surface of the eye as easily as contact lenses and mesh neatly with surrounding tissue to form a protective barrier against the outside elements.

UC-Berkeley Course Videos

Google offers a huge number of University of California, Berkeley course videos. They include full courses on subjects including:

Physics for Future Presidents (with 26 lectures by Richard A. Muller including: Atoms and Heat; Gravity and Satellites; Radioactivity; and Electricity and Magnetism)
Search Engines: Technology, Society and Business (including a lecture by Sergey Brin: Search, Google, and Life
Electrical Engineering 213 / Applied Science & Technology 210 with 31 lectures on Soft X-Rays and Extreme Ultraviolet Radiation by David T. Attwood

Great stuff and hopefully much more to follow. A great example of open access education material. It is a bit surprising that it is not easier to navigate the videos to find what you might be interested in. The videos are not great quality (like all of Google Video) but the content is great. And it seems likely (hopefully) 5 years from now we will get great quality such videos from many schools.
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Nanoparticles to Aid Brain Imaging

Nanoparticles to aid brain imaging, team reports by Cathryn M. Delude

If you want to see precisely what the 10 billion neurons in a person’s brain are doing, a good way to start is to track calcium as it flows into neurons when they fire.
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So Jasanoff designed the new sensor to incorporate so-called “superparamagnetic nanoparticles”–extra-strength molecular-sized magnets previously designed for ultrasensitive tumor imaging. They produce large MRI contrast changes capable of producing very high-resolution images.

500 Engineering Jobs for Texas

Dell, Perry announce 500 engineering jobs:

Dell, the world’s largest seller of personal computers, aims to attract a broad range of educated and experienced engineers, including electrical, mechanical and software engineers, as well as those holding doctorates, to expand the company’s commitment to technological design.

“Austin and Central Texas is the largest engineering recruiting site by far,” Dell said, adding that Texas college graduates will compose nearly 10 percent of new recruits.
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New jobs are likely to yield an annual income of $60,000 to $100,000.

Interesting, Dell is often criticised for not investing in technological innovation. They have often been seen as relying on manufacturing and business process (build to order system) innovation but not technological innovation. Maybe the recent stock price troubles have caused Dell to decide to invest in more technological innovation. Dell has stated they have greatly increase spending on customer service as a result of recent troubles.

Engineered Ice Cream

Moo bella Vending Machine

Technology Innovation One Scoop at A Time

For the world’s best-engineered ice cream, go to the Union Court dining area at Boston University. What you’ll find is a vending machine that can make 96 varieties of ice cream to order from 12 flavors, two base mixes–premium and low carb–and three dry-ingredient mix-ins.
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The sophisticated internals are invisible to consumers, who use a touch pad and 15-inch flat-panel display to select flavors. What happens next is an ice cream geek’s dream: “We pump the base mix, aerate it, flavor it, flash freeze it, scrape it up off of a freezing surface, form it into a scoop and into the consumer’s cup in 45 seconds,” Baxter explains.

Very cool: Moo Bella web site with the flavor options and a video.
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UTexas: Engineering Career Podcasts

Introducing the Engineering Career Assistance Center Podcast

The University of Texas at Austin “ECAC provides resources for students ranging from resume tips, job counseling, workshops, internship and externship programs, and yearly career fairs.” I’m not sure why they require iTunes but that is the choice they made. It would seem better to me to make things available in formats that don’t require one particular player.

externs.com (affiliated with this blog) offers a directory of externships and internships. It is completely free: add your internship openings or search for opportunities. We will be making an effort to increase the science and engineering related opportunities. Please add your internship positions.

Japan Project X: Innovators Documentaries

Project X is a popular Japanese TV documentary that examines historically successful companies and the engineers that made them successful – and more.

Japan in stew over recalls:

Perhaps only in Japan could a television series like Project X have become one of the most popular TV shows. No, it isn’t a science fiction thriller. It’s about product quality.

More specifically, it’s about a bunch of corporate engineers who invented the handheld calculators and ink-jet printers that helped turn this nation into an industrial powerhouse.

MIT Sloan Japan club on Project X

Searching on the web I see that Japanese embassies have made them available overseas but I can’t find them online. I did find this list of the episodes: Project X: Innovators. Maybe Japan will copy a recent move by the White House and post the videos online.