Free Republic

America is turning out plenty of science and engineering grads, a university study concludes, but many of the best are taking jobs in finance and consulting. U.S. colleges and universities are graduating as many scientists and engineers as ever, according to a study released on Oct. 28 by a group of academics. But that finding comes with a big caveat: Many of the highest-performing students are choosing careers in other fields. The study by professors at Rutgers and Georgetown suggests that since the late 1990s, many of the top students have been lured to careers in finance and consulting. "Despite...

Oct 21, 2009 — Plants are not as stationary as one might think. Parts of them, like seeds, can travel for miles. One good example is the maple seed. Its little helicopter seeds can catch an updraft and fly a long distance from the tree. Now, engineers at University of Maryland have imitated its physics and designed a radio-controlled mono-copter that can sustain stable flight for hours...

In a brutal job market, here's a task that might sound easy: Fill jobs in nursing, engineering and energy research that pay $55,000 to $60,000, plus benefits. Yet even with 15 million people hunting for work, even with the unemployment rate nearing 10 percent, some employers can't find enough qualified people for good-paying career jobs. Ask Steve Jones, a hospital recruiter in Indianapolis who's struggling to find qualified nurses, pharmacists and MRI technicians. Or Ed Baker, who's looking to hire at a U.S. Energy Department research lab in Richland, Wash., for $60,000 each. Economists say the main problem is a...

(Please also see email to a Sacramento employer who is running a PERM ad to demonstrate that "no Americans are available" to sponsor an H-1b worker for a green card.) For years the Programmers Guild has been calling for some basic reforms to the H-1b program. Now the harm of the H-1b program is hitting home. In May 2009, Kim's daughter Stephanie graduated from the University of Southern California (USC) with dual STEM degrees. (U.S. News ranks USC Engineering school 7th in the nation.) Stephanie completed both degrees in only four years and worked at summer internships. She has incurred...

If you have a look at the world of today from an economic point of view, you'll quickly find out that the Nordic countries (Scandinavia + Finland) is the richest part of the Globe (mesured by nominal GDP per Capita). This is not a matter of coincidence and neither is it a matter of oil, at least not to a large extent. For instance, the Danes earn the highest salaries on Earth and very few of them work for oil companies. The Nordic countries are immensely wealthy because we focus on things in life like R&D, economic growth, education, infrastructure,...

http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/594 About the Lecture Don’t believe everything you learn in business school, cautions Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen. “It’s the principles of good management we teach that cause successful companies to fail.” In this meaty lecture, Christensen distills several books’ worth of research describing how business leaders sometimes metamorphose into losers when confronted with market-rocking innovations. He also reveals how we may harness his insights in such socially significant and complex industries as health care. Christensen distinguishes between the kind of sustained and incremental technological improvements that help a market leader retain its edge, and “disruptive technology,” where a...

John Scalzi's Guide to the Most Epic FAILs in Star Wars Design I'll come right out and say it: Star Wars has a badly-designed universe; so poorly-designed, in fact, that one can say that a significant goal of all those Star Wars novels is to rationalize and mitigate the bad design choices of the movies. Need examples? Here's ten. R2-D2 Sure, he's cute, but the flaws in his design are obvious the first time he approaches anything but the shallowest of stairs. Also: He has jets, a periscope, a taser and oil canisters to make enforcer droids fall about in...

Hoping to protect one of the Bay Area's main water supplies after the next major earthquake, construction crews will soon embark on a job that sounds like something out of a Jules Verne novel: building a massive, 5-mile-long tunnel underneath San Francisco Bay.The project is believed to be the first major tunnel ever built across the bay.Using a giant boring machine, workers will carve a 14-foot high corridor through clay, sand and bedrock from Menlo Park to Newark as deep as 103 feet below the bay floor. They'll then run a 9-foot-high steel water pipe through the middle."All the experts...

Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminium by bombarding the metal with the world’s most powerful soft X-ray laser. ‘Transparent aluminium’ previously only existed in science fiction, featuring in the movie Star Trek IV, but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion. In the journal Nature Physics an international team, led by Oxford University scientists, report that a short pulse from the FLASH laser ‘knocked out’ a core electron from every aluminium atom in a sample without disrupting the metal’s crystalline structure. This turned the aluminium nearly...

The Hollywood star's striking appearance was often put down to the contrast between her ample cleavage, tiny waist and swinging hips. Her vital statsistics were an amazing 37-23-36. But her voluptuous body was not all God-given, it has been discovered – she boosted her bust to a D cup using a heavy duty padded bra favoured by strippers and burlesque dancers. One of her bras – known as a Fling – is up for auction in Britain after being unearthed after 50 years in a private US collection. The heavy-duty bra – which "perfectly positioned" and enlarged the breasts was...

THE WIDER VIEW: Taking shape, the new bridge at the Hoover Dam 04th July 2009 Creeping closer inch by inch – 900ft above the mighty Colorado River – the two sides of a £160million bridge at the Hoover Dam in America slowly take shape. The bridge will carry a new section of US Route 93 past the bottleneck of the old road which can be seen twisting and winding around and across the dam itself. When complete, it will provide a new link between the states of Nevada and Arizona. In an incredible feat of engineering, the road will be...

One of the most significant transformations in U.S. graduate education and the international market for highly-trained workers in science and engineering during the last quarter century is the representation of students from outside of the United States among the ranks of doctorate recipients from U.S. universities. In all but the life sciences, the foreign share of Ph.D. recipients now equals or exceeds the share from the United States. Students from outside the United States accounted for 51 percent of Ph.D. recipients in science and engineering in 2003, up from 27 percent in 1973. In 2003, doctorate recipients from outside the...

The eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia in 1815 pumped so much sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere that New England farmers found their fields frosted over in July. Climate change, it seems, can be quick and overwhelming, at least on short scales. The eruption of the Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 cooled global temperatures for several years by about half a degree Celsius. Sulfur dioxide works. So how about this: We send a fleet of airships high into the stratosphere, attached to hoses on the ground that pump 10 kilos of sulfur dioxide every second. The airships then...

Claims of bias against women in academic science have been greatly exaggerated. Meanwhile, men are becoming the second sex in American higher education.In 2006 the National Academy of Sciences released Beyond Bias And Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering, which found “pervasive unexamined gender bias� against women in academic science. Donna Shalala, a former Clinton administration cabinet secretary, chaired the committee that wrote the report. When she spoke at a congressional hearing in October 2007, she warned that strong measures would be needed to improve the “hostile climate� women face in university science. This “crisis,�...

Two months ago I did what most environmentalists would consider unthinkable. I purchased my first 4X4 vehicle. Since I wasn't planning on using it as my primary vehicle, I wasn't willing to shell out the multiple thousands of dollars involved in purchasing new. The logical choice was to pick an early 1990's model which was still in good condition. I found one with electronic fuel injection, A/C, and power everything. Even though it's verging on its twenty year birthday, it is still a sharp looking vehicle in very good condition. So, imagine my surprise at the responses of my friends...

Blog: Note: The following blog entry is a quote: Iran, China Ink $17 Billion In Deals Asadollah Asgarowladi, director of the Iran-China trade bureau, has said that China has signed 18 economic contracts, worth $17 billion, with Iran in the areas of technology, engineering, infrastructure, and trade. Iran's Press TV reported that in 2008 there was $29 billion in trade between the two countries. Source: Press TV, Iran, May 18, 2009 Posted at: 2009-05-18

The Ancient World's Longest Underground Aqueduct Roman engineers chipped an aqueduct through more than 100 kilometers of stone to connect water to cities in the ancient province of Syria. The monumental effort took more than a century, says the German researcher who discovered it. When the Romans weren't busy conquering their enemies, they loved to waste massive quantities of water, which gurgled and bubbled throughout their cities. The engineers of the empire invented standardized lead pipes, aqueducts as high as fortresses, and water mains with 15 bars (217 pounds per square inch) of pressure. PHOTO GALLERY: ROME'S LONGEST PIPE In...

Viral Batteries: A Case for Evolution? by Brian Thomas, M.S.* Researchers at MIT have invented a “greener” battery with the help of viruses. Three years ago, they engineered a virus that coats itself with material that serves as an anode, a structure within a battery that attracts positive ions. They have now engineered a virus (bacteriophage) that serves as a cathode, which indirectly links to the anode to help make the battery functional. The result is a battery with little impact on the environment. National Public Radio (NPR) ran a report on its Morning Edition that compared the development of...

It was a chink in the armour that could have proved US dear. America’s nuclear-warhead upgrade was delayed as government laboratories forgot how to make crucial components. The Department of Defense and the National Nuclear Security Administration had to wait more than a year to refurbish aging nuclear warheads, a government report states. Regarding a classified material codenamed ‘Fogbank’, a Government Accountability Office report released this month states that “NNSA had lost knowledge of how to manufacture the material because it had kept few records of the process when the material was made in the 1980s and almost all staff...

Flirtmeister, 101 by: Deborah Lambert, February 19, 2009 In Germany it appears that all work and no play still makes Hans a dull boy. That’s why German IT engineering students at the U. of Potsdam are leaving nothing to chance. Over 400 of them have signed up for a two-week course on the art of flirting. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that the quickie course will provide a broad overview of the topic, including “how to write flirtatious text messages and e-mails, impress people at parties, and cope with rejection.” Local bon vivant Philip von Senftleben will be teaching...

The non-GMO Project Product Verification Program is Up and Running The governments of the US and Canada stand in sharp contrast to sixty other countries around the world, including the European Union, Russia, and China, by not requiring foods that contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to be so labeled. They do so despite good evidence that GMOs could have negative health implications for humans and the environment, and despite the fact that 87% of American consumers want products that contain GMO ingredients to be labeled. The Non-GMO Project is a non-profit originally formed by retailers whose customers were concerned about...

FRANKFURT, Germany – Siemens AG — rocked by a series of corruption cases that has cost the company both prestige and money — agreed Monday to pay more than $1 billion in fines in Germany and the U.S. as it moved a step forward in closing a dark chapter in its history. Munich-based Siemens agreed to pay more than $800 million in fines to settle long-standing corruption charges in the United States and another 395 million euros ($533.6 million) to European authorities. The announcements of the amounts of both fines came Monday. Siemens, which makes products ranging from wind turbines...

Title IXing Science, UT-Austin Style by: Bethany Stotts, November 07, 2008 As Accuracy in Academia’s executive director Malcolm Kline outlined in a recent article, proponents of Title IX have adopted the feminization of engineering programs as one of their key goals. Moreover, at a recent conference at St. Vincent College, Kline said that “At least one scholar even speaks openly of applying Title IX to scientific professions.” Gretchen Ritter of the University of Texas at Austin told a congressional committee in 2007 that “To support equal academic opportunities for these young women, we ought to use the leverage of federal...

DALLAS — Southern Methodist University will open an engineering laboratory that will be modeled after a Lockheed Martin research center considered among the most innovative in the world.SMU’s Lockheed Martin Skunk Works Lab will open in December 2009 and will draw heavily from the management style forged by the defense contractor. Lockheed’s Skunk Works plant in Palmdale, Calif., develops the nation’s fastest, most versatile military jets and systems. Skunk Works also has offices in Fort Worth, where Lockheed builds fighter jets. "Every groundbreaking technology that has produced an aircraft for the military has been thought about, tested and delivered by...

China's breathtaking transformation of their own country over the past couple of decades is accompanied by robust new Chinese enterprises all over the world. In this report on China's activities in Africa, the Chinese are seen to be involved in infrastructure projects across this vast continent. Everything about Africa is writ large - during the past twenty years, as China's economy exploded, Africa's population doubled. There are now over 900 million people living in Africa, and collectively the Africans have lower per capita wealth than the peoples of any other continent. But the potential in this vast land mass of...

AIRLINES are desperate. With jet fuel over $4 per gallon and still climbing, American, United and other major carriers are raising fares, cutting flights, trimming fleets and laying off pilots. They're also ordering fuel-efficient Boeing 787s and Airbus A350XWBs — the new generation of plastic planes. These new aircraft promise 20-percent-lower fuel consumption. Replacing heavier traditional aluminum alloys, 50 percent of their skins, panels and load-bearing structures are comprised of lighter, stiffer carbon-fiber-reinforced-plastic (CFRP) composites. Then add the latest, most fuel-efficient engine technology. Sounds good. But beneath these advantages danger lurks — novel maintenance challenges for which neither airlines nor...

It was probably the most ingenious student prank of all time. In June 1958, Cambridge awoke to see a car perched at the apex of an inaccessible rooftop, looking as if it were driving across the skyline. The spectacle made headlines around the world and left police, firefighters and civil defence units battling for nearly a week to hoist the vehicle back down before giving in and taking it to pieces with blowtorches. The shadowy group of engineering students who executed the stunt were never identified and the mystery of how they did it has baffled successive undergraduates and provided...

The enormous steel ball you see in the photos (and the incredible video below) is the world’s largest ‘tuned mass damper’ and sits near the top of the world’s largest completed skyscraper on earth, taipei 101 in taiwan. the idea behind a tuned mass damper is quite simple: as a building sways (resulting from high winds, earthquakes etc), its tuned mass damper, essentially a finely tuned and ridiculously heavy pendulum, will move in opposition to the structure’s oscillations and minimise any movement. if that makes no sense, watch the crude gif below. due to both the immense size of taipei...

It's sweltering in Boston, and a dozen Tufts University coeds are out in shorts and tanks, attracting the usual stares. Only today the stares are for a different reason: the girls are huddled around a 750-pound machine that looks like a spaceship, long and wide with a bubble-shaped cockpit open to reveal a mass of pipes and wires. It's actually a solar car—one they've built from the ground up and hope to race next year. Suddenly sparks fly, and the girls jump back. They may be engineering whizzes, but they know a hazard when they see one. They call a...

  In a move that will cheer up lovers of vehicles that can travel on both water and (very flat) land, students at a German engineering university have built a one-person hovercraft that uses an air thrust system to move and steer.Folks over at the Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences use a pneumatic propeller that pushes air through two channels. Each of the channels has a pair of flaps that behave like the thrust-reversing system of a turbo-drive to help a user easily maneuver left or right, go in reverse, and brake.The way the project is set up hints that...

Every nation could be described as a manifestation of a unique trait of character and most countries furthermore nurture, give emphasize to and celebrate this national identity of theirs. Some examples of such key national characters (please DO comment if you feel inclined to); USA: Liberty Italy: Creativity France: Refinement India: Spirituality Germany: Self-discipline Finland: "Sisu" (a Finnish term meaning "To have guts") Britain: Elevatedness Denmark: "Hygge" (a Danish word meaning "Good-naturedness", of mind as well as of deed) Spain: Passion China: Cultivation Russia: Chaos - just joking, I would actually say "Heart" (in the sense of having a big...

India's tech companies, interested in capitalizing on their success in drawing IT outsourcing business from U.S. and other Western countries, are examining what they need to do to capture a broader range of the engineering services business. The National Association of Software and Service Companies in Delhi, India's leading IT trade group, commissioned a study by Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., a McLean, Va.-based consulting firm, to examine the country's potential to gain a larger share of the offshore engineering services business, going beyond software engineering to a swath of industries, including automotive, aerospace, utilities, construction and industrial. The Booz Allen...

Mississippi State University, for the second consecutive year, earned top honors in the GM and US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Challenge X student engineering competition. Over the past nine months, the 2008 Challenge X: Crossover to Sustainability competition challenged 17 university teams from the US and Canada to re-engineer a Chevrolet Equinox that employs advanced powertrain technologies. The Mississippi State team designed a through-the-road parallel hybrid electric vehicle powered by a 1.9L GM direct injection turbo diesel engine fueled by biodiesel (B20). It used a GM F40 6-speed manual transmission and a Johnson Controls 300V NiMH battery pack in conjunction...

Oilfield services companies will need to join forces in the next few years to avoid a downturn of the sector's own making, the chief executive of French oil services company Technip SA (TKPPY) said Wednesday. That could mean merging with each other or, for the first time in decades, with energy companies, Technip CEO Thierry Pilenko said. During a panel at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, Pilenko floated the idea of international oil companies acquiring service firms as a way to manage a growing labor shortage facing the entire energy industry. International oil companies explore for and produce oil...

If the British and French can design and build spectacular bridges at a modest or at least reasonable cost, why can’t we? Or maybe we can, but we haven’t tried it lately, at least not in Oregon. The question comes up because Peter DeFazio, our man in Washington, is chairman of the highways and transit subcommittee in the U.S. House. His committee will write the next highway bill, probably by the end of 2009. And when DeFazio led his colleagues on a fact-finding trip to Europe, he saw the viaduct at Millau. It’s the most spectacular bridge he has ever...

How the Chinese plan to modify the weather in Beijing during the Olympics, using supercomputers and artillery. To prevent rain over the roofless 91,000-seat Olympic stadium that Beijing natives have nicknamed the Bird's Nest, the city's branch of the national Weather Modification Office--itself a department of the larger China Meteorological Administration--has prepared a three-stage program for the 2008 Olympics this August. First, Beijing's Weather Modification Office will track the region's weather via satellites, planes, radar, and an IBM p575 supercomputer, purchased from Big Blue last year, that executes 9.8 trillion floating point operations per second. It models an area of...

BAGHDAD — The Iraqi River Patrol Police station is training their trainers to maintain and troubleshoot their river craft while underway with a 10-day basic engineering course taught by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Joseph Aldana, Naval Special Warfare Unit 3, Bahrain. Students are participating in the Basic Engineering course offered as a way to assist the river police in troubleshooting malfunctions of boat equipment and help them understand how the river craft operate. The topics taught within the Basic Engineering course are Internal Combustion; Basic Electricity; Marine Battery/Electricity; Backing Gaskets and Seals; Troubleshooting and Planned Maintenance System checks....

MANHASSET, N.Y. " Is there a thread that ties engineers to Islamic terrorism? There certainly is, according to Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog at Oxford University, who recently published a paper titled, "Engineers of Jihad." The authors call the link to terrorism "the engineer's mindset." The sociology paper published last November, which has been making rounds over the Internet and was recently picked up by The Atlantic, uses illustrative statistics and qualitative data to conclude that there is a strong relationship between an engineering background and involvement in a variety of Islamic terrorist groups. The authors have found that graduates...

You're wading knee-deep in science if you're following the presidential primaries this year, but in some cases, the candidates' positions are as clear as mud. Stem-cell research, climate change, alternative fuels and creationism versus evolution in public education are acknowledged by even some of the most marginalized candidates. More broadly, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, John McCain and Barack Obama have directly criticized the current Bush Administration for its science policies, with accusations — based on numerous media reports — ranging from data distortion to research censorship. "I respect scientists and the scientific method, so I believe that policy should be...

Engineering students around the country will be able to apply their education to a real-world challenge. The EcoCAR challenge, a contest sponsored by General Motors and the Dept. of Energy, will offer students the opportunity to design a car that gets maximum fuel economy and minimal emissions. The students’ requirements include designing and building advanced propulsion solutions that emulate vehicle categories from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) zero emissions vehicle requirements. The alternative technologies include electric hybrids, fuel cells, bio-fuels, lightweight materials, and high-tech aerodynamics. The EcoCAR challenge launches in the 2008-2009 academic year as a three-year program with...

SUGAR LAND — The global demand for energy is keeping the Sugar Land offices of international engineering and construction leader Fluor Corp. busy — and growing. Sugar Land is home to Irving-based Fluor's energy and chemical division, the biggest source of the company's revenue. In 2006, the segment accounted for 38 percent of Fluor's $14.1 billion in revenue. And it's only becoming more prominent. For the first nine months of 2007, the energy and chemical unit brought in $6 billion, more than half the company's nearly $12 billion in revenue for that time frame. Sugar Land is at the center...

One myth dogging the immigration debate is that employers are fibbing (or grossly exaggerating) when they claim that hiring foreign professionals is unavoidable because U.S.-born Ph.D.s are hard to come by. But a new report on doctorates from U.S. universities shows they're telling the truth, and then some. Foreign-born students holding temporary visas received 33% of all research doctorates awarded by U.S. universities in 2006, according to an annual survey by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. That number has climbed from 25% in 2001. But more to the point of business competitiveness, foreign students comprised...

Signs with the words "U.S. citizens and permanents only" greeted students at employers' booths at a recent career fair at Duke University, where I teach. In previous years only government jobs requiring security clearances were labeled off-limits to international students. Foreign-born engineering graduates told me they were disappointed that employers like General Electric, IBM, and Carmax as well as smaller companies would not even interview them. Recruiters told me they were frustrated that they could not fill critical positions. They have few options because the visas they need to hire foreign nationals simply aren't available. This visa shortage is a...

As baby boomers retire, aerospace and engineering companies in the Antelope Valley need an influx of new workers - homegrown, if possible. Like creosote, mesquite and other native plant species, Antelope Valley residents have an easier time putting down roots in the dusty Mojave Desert, home to Plant 42 and Edwards Air Force Base. "From an employer's perspective, we see much higher rates of turnover when we recruit young engineers from anywhere east of California," said Michael Huggins, chief of the Air Force Research Lab at Edwards. "They're not used to the desert environment and they're away from home." Using...

For decades, and most particularly since Sept. 11, 2001, commentators have noted the curious prevalence of higher education amongst members of radical Islamist movements. The idea that poverty is a "root cause" of radical terrorism can no longer be put forward without attracting snickers -- at least not without some further account of why it is the brightest and educationally best-equipped in poor societies who turn to violence. Of course, no one can be surprised that university campuses should serve as incubators of radicalism in the Muslim world, since they have served the same function here for so long. The...

Visiting Sweden, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said that Sweden is one of NATO’s most important partners and is welcome as a member in the rapid reaction force, should Sweden decide to join. On Friday Morning, NATO’s Secretary General met Sweden’s Defence Minister Sten Tolgfors to discuss the situation in Afghanistan, one of the two places where Swedish troops come under NATO command as part of the ISAF force. They also discussed possible participation in NATO’s rapid reaction force (NRF), with Sweden saying a decision may be reached by the spring. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer also promised to...

Forget the conventional wisdom. U.S. schools are turning out more capable science and engineering grads than the job market can support. Political leaders, tech executives, and academics often claim that the U.S. is falling behind in math and science education. They cite poor test results, declining international rankings, and decreasing enrollment in the hard sciences. They urge us to improve our education system and to graduate more engineers and scientists to keep pace with countries such as India and China. Yet a new report by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, tells a different story. The report disproves many...

COLTON, N.Y., Oct. 30 — The bridge that carries Route 56 over the Raquette River here is so ordinary that it has no name, only a number, 1027260. But for now it is a bridge like no other, studded with instruments like a cardiac patient, giving up secrets that may explain how to keep others from falling. Bridges are big, dumb pieces of steel and concrete, and mostly out of mind, until one collapses, as the Interstate 35W bridge did in Minneapolis on Aug. 1. Even now, three months later, no one is sure why that happened, but it has...

Arleigh Burke-class destroyers 'buckling' under stress, admits USN By Tara Copp Serious structural defects have been identified throughout the United States Navy's fleet of Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, Jane's can reveal. The navy (USN) has admitted that many of the 51 ships currently in service are buckling under the stress of higher-than-anticipated loads at sea. The impact of rough-sea slamming on the bow has led to warping of main transverse bulkhead beams and some of the cribbing, a source said. Repairs and strengthening work is already being carried out on the latest Flight IIA ships as well as vessels from the...

Bell Helicopter engineers have resolved a performance anomaly that test pilots had discovered when flying the hybrid aircraft in conventional flight mode, also known as the zero-degree position of the nacelles. The BA609 is a six- to nine-passenger corporate aviation tiltrotor, a product the companies expect to begin delivering in 2011. According to Roy Hopkins, Bell's chief test pilot for the BA609, both prototype aircraft had been exhibiting a differential torque between the two prop-rotors in flight tests, causing a left-turning tendency at cruise speeds. The companies are flight testing one aircraft at Bell in the USA and the other...