Directed Evolution...

© AP The prize was awarded on Tuesday in Helsinki

Topics: Biology, Diversity, Diversity in Science, Engineering, Research, Women in Science

US engineer Frances Arnold has won the Millennium Technology Prize for pioneering "directed evolution".

By driving a sped-up version of natural selection in the lab, the method has created new enzymes for industrial catalysts, household detergents, and even to make rocket fuel from sugar.

The €1m (£0.8m) prize is awarded biennially and Prof Arnold is the first female winner in its 12-year history.

It recognises developments that "change people's lives for the better".

The Technology Academy Finland, which presents the prize, said the deliberations began in November 2015 but that "there was only one outstanding candidate".

Prof Arnold, from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), spoke to the BBC before travelling to Helsinki for Tuesday's ceremony.

She said the "basic concept" of using evolution to create better enzymes emerged from her laboratory more than 20 years ago.

BBC News: Evolutionary engineer wins tech prize, Jonathan Webb

Metamorphosis...

Image credit: rexboggs5 via flickr | http://bit.ly/1SECwxD
Rights information: http://bit.ly/1haBUhX

Topics: Engineering, Materials Science, Metamaterials, Research, Robotics

(Inside Science) -- By using fluids similar to Silly Putty that can behave as both liquids and solids, researchers say they have created fluid robots that might one day perform tasks that conventional machines cannot.

Conventional robots are made of rigid parts that are vulnerable to bumps, scrapes, twists and falls. In contrast, researchers worldwide are increasingly developing robots made from soft, elastic plastic and rubber that are inspired by worms, starfish and octopuses. These soft robots can resist many of the kinds of damage, and can squirm past many of the obstacles, that can impede hard robots.

However, even soft robots and the living organisms they are inspired by are limited by their solidity — for example, they remain vulnerable to cutting. Instead, researcher Ido Bachelet of Bar-Ilan University in Israel and his colleagues have now created what they call fluid robots that they say could operate better than solid robots in chaotic, hostile environments. They detailed their findings online Jan. 22 in the journal Artificial Life.

Inside Science: Researchers Are Developing Shape-Shifting Fluid Robots
Charles Q. Choi

WISE...

Image Source: Louisiana Tech University

Topics: Diversity, Diversity in Science, Economy, Engineering, Women in Science

Arizona: The Women in Engineering Program at the University of Arizona aims to increase interest and diversity in the fields of social and natural science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine by offering a variety of outreach programs and student engagement opportunities. In doing so, we work to motivate students to enter careers in STEM fields and to support them along the way. At WISE we firmly believe that greater diversity produces better science and science that is better equipped to address some of the most pressing problems we face in the world today.

Stony Brook: The Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Program seeks to increase the number of women in science, math and engineering fields through outreach, recruitment and retention efforts. Combining the vast resources of a major university with the close bonds of a small community, the WISE College Program enables undergraduate women to work closely with peers and faculty to form friendships and to achieve a solid background in their field. The WISE Precollege Program reaches out to local schools to inspire young women to choose to pursue science math and engineering degrees.

The WISE Program is multidimensional. Thank you for your interest in the program. We hope you find the information on this web site useful. If you would like additional information, please contact the WISE office.

UK: At WISE (Women in to Science and Engineering), our mission is to increase the gender balance in the UK’s STEM workforce, pushing the presence of female employees from 13% as it stands now, to 30% by 2020.

Our services are designed to build and sustain the pipeline of female talent in STEM from classroom to boardroom, boosting the talent pool to drive economic growth.

WISE, which has 30 years experience of inspiring girls to pursue STEM subjects, now incorporates the UKRC, which had a contract from the Government from 2004-12 to increase opportunities for women in science, engineering and technology through support services to business, education and women returners. The UKRC is now an independent Community Interest Company trading as WISE (company number 07533934).

SWE...

Society of Women's Engineers - About

Topics: Diversity in Science, Engineering, Science, Women in Science

The Society of Women's Engineers was established in 1950, and has over 30,000 members. For more than six decades, SWE has given women engineers a unique place and voice within the engineering industry. Our organization is centered around a passion for our members' success and continues to evolve with the challenges and opportunities reflected in today's exciting engineering and technology specialties.

We invite you to explore the values, principles, and priorities that guide our initiatives and learn how together, WE can continue to make a lasting impact on the future.

Site: Society of Women's Engineers: Aspire - Advance - Achieve

One Plus One Equals Three...

Guest blog post by Paul R. Zielinski, MS, MBA, Director, Technology Partnerships Office, National Institute of Standards and Technology & Chair, Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer

Topics: Economy, Industry, Investment, Jobs, NIST, Science, STEM

When you want a plant to grow, you provide water, light, and fertilizer. When you want an economy to grow you provide capital, labor, and innovation.

In today’s global markets, companies that don’t innovate generally don’t survive for long. To keep your current customers and earn new ones, you must continually look for ways to be faster, cheaper, better . . . or all three.

At the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) we specialize in helping industry find those “Wow!” innovation ideas that create jobs and raise everyone’s standard of living.

Commerce.gov: Lab to Market: When One Plus One Equals Three

Other-ing...

Source: LA Times Opinion

The epic conflagration between Ben Affleck, Bill Maher and Sam Harris in some links has well over a million hits. The "emperor has no clothes" when Bill is getting props from that other-Bill-named-O'Reilly for Islam-o-phobia as a "proper" mental state.

To note:

Isaac Asimov - secular humanist, scientist and science fiction writer - gave a succinct explanation regarding critical thinking, fundamentalism, science and religion. He pointed out in his interview with Bill Moyers, Robert Millikan - of the famous oil drop experiment (I met his grand nephew at Manor HS); Michelson - of the Michelson-Morley experiment measuring the speed of light - were both Nobel Laureates and devout Christians.

Steven Weinberg (born May 3, 1933) is an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in Physics for his contributions with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow to the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles. Dr. Salam was known as a devout Muslim and was a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community who saw his religion as fundamental part of his scientific work. (Wikipedia)

In the Slate article: "What Jefferson Really Thought About Islam":

...his vote was interpreted by Jefferson to mean that Virginia's representatives wanted the law "to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahomedan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination." Mahomedan would have been how Islam was referenced. Might have also been the origin of that pesky Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment everyone seems to gloss over.

When blanket statements are made of one group - in this case, Muslims - it broad brushes those that practice their religion peacefully, it atomizes them into a prejudicial, bigoted category. One could say: "if/because the Ku Klux Klan has been known to burn crosses, then all Christians must burn crosses." In logic, that is Post Hoc Fallacy.

The debate - if you can call it that - ignored pretty much the impact of our foreign policy that can be summed up in three words since Mossadegh was deposed from democratically elected power in Iran in 1953 and the Shah installed by the US: get-the-oil! Never mind like oil rich and mineral rich countries - i.e. aluminum, diamond, lithium - the people living over the mineral wealth get NOTHING. We'll just "pray" for them as we enrich ourselves - cell phones, jewelry, laptops, etc. Being poor and hungry probably doesn't radicalize them: they just "hate us for our freedoms" (to loot).

Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Michael Shermer - all supposed paragons of critical thinking, rationality and reason - have lately been called out for their sexism and boorish statements. I notice however, they are all authors with public platforms on social media not unlike Bill Maher who has his show, and controversy quite frankly sells a lot of books.

It is true many scientists - a vast majority - do not believe in a personal deity. Lack of belief or otherwise does not make one a good scientist. As I've pointed out to many numerous times, science requires adherence to its tenants: following The Scientific Method and submitting your results to rigorous, brutal inquiry. It is then you've got something that can be called a Law or Theory, both of which are horribly misunderstood.

There is a prevailing modern myth regarding theism and science, a large part owed to the pseudoscience of creationism/intelligent design; its plainly politicized motivations and lack of usefulness - what has intelligent design "designed"? The insistence of passing it off as science - as the rest of the global economy carries no such delusions - in the public classroom has set up animosity between the two camps of reality vs. fantasy. Global warming denial, despite the evidence and 97% of climatologist agreeing on it, is just another example of the crackpot mainstreamed via marketing.

Science may/may not lead one to become either Atheist or Agnostic. That like theism is a personal choice. The solution is not politically injected authoritarian pseudoscience or willful ignorance. Atheism nor theism will make you more rational, reasoned or thoughtful in your approach to problem-solving, science or interactions with your fellow humans.

I could however, go for a few less narcissistic, xenophobic assholes.

Zero-Friction Quantum Engine...

Scientists have devised a way to run a quantum cycle based on the use of quantum shortcuts to adiabaticity, where friction-like effects are quenched. Shown are the four steps of a quantum Otto cycle, where heat enters (exits) the working medium and those where work is performed by (done onto).
Credit: A. del Campo, et al. ©2014 Nature Scientific Reports

(Phys.org) —In real physical processes, some energy is always lost any time work is produced. The lost energy almost always occurs due to friction, especially in processes that involve mechanical motion. But in a new study, physicists have designed an engine that operates with zero friction while still generating power by taking advantage of some quantum shortcuts.

The laws of thermodynamics successfully describe the concepts of work and heat in a wide variety of systems, ranging from refrigerators to black holes, as long as the systems are macroscopic. But for quantum technologies on the micro- and nano-scale, quantum fluctuations that are insignificant on large scales start to become prominent. As previous research as shown, the large quantum effects call for a complete reformulation of the thermodynamics laws.

What a quantum version of thermodynamics might look like is not yet known, and neither are the limitations or possible advantages of the quantum devices that would be described by such laws. However, one intriguing question is whether it may be possible to build a reversible quantum engine—one in which the engine's operation can be reversed without energy dissipation (an "adiabatic" process *).

In the new paper, the physicists have shown one example of a quantum engine that is "super-adiabatic." That is, the engine uses quantum shortcuts to achieve a state that is usually achieved only by slow adiabatic processes. This engine can achieve a state that is fully frictionless; in other words, the engine reaches its maximum efficiency, while still generating some power.

* See:

Hyper Physics: Adiabatic Processes
Princeton Wiki: Adiabatic process

Phys.org: Physicists design zero-friction quantum machine

SiTC...

Source: Gotta Love Science, Dr. Scott B. Goldscher

The University of Washington’s Biology 220 course serves hundreds of students in a massive lecture-hall setting, but a related science-writing course—enhanced by Science in the Classroom resources—helped a subset of those participants better understand core concepts, educator Greg Crowther reported.

By analyzing, annotating, and reviewing two Science papers as part of a Science in the Classroom (SiTC) exercise, Crowther’s students also improved their scientific vocabulary and critical-thinking skills. For their contributions to the growing SiTC stockpile of study materials, they will all get bylines on the Science website, too.

“Working on the Science in the Classroom project was a great opportunity for meta-cognition by the students in my science-writing course,” said Crowther, a faculty member at UW as well as South Seattle College. “It encouraged them to think about how they learn most effectively. With their homework, they had to answer questions like, `How did this aid your understanding of the paper, or not?’ They were prompted to think about how they approach learning, and going forward, that will help them in all of their courses.”

AAAS: Science Offers New Tools for Educators and Students, Ginger Pinholster

Origami Robotics...

Source: Fold Ed Fun

With its own soundtrack no less...


And yes, I got nostalgic as life imitates comic art (intro)...


Science Mag: Robot folds itself - and walks away, Jia You

Emma...

   

Engineering.com: Emma w/WREX (Wilmington Robotic Exoskeleton)

Explaining the Future: 3D Printing

Nano Darwinism...

Credit: Physics World - Gold Nanoantennas

Physicists in Germany have used evolutionary algorithms to help them pinpoint the best geometry for a nanoantenna. As well as zeroing in on the optimal design out of more than 10¹³² alternatives, the technique has provided unexpected new insights into the complex optical properties of nanostructures.

Nanoantennas convert light to electrical power and vice-versa, and are essential in the design of tiny electro-optical devices. They have diverse potential applications in just about anything based on light–matter interaction, including optical sensing and signalling, microscopy, solar-power conversion and quantum cryptography.

Inspired by natural selection, evolutionary optimization algorithms work towards an ideal design rather than evaluating the performance of all possible designs. For the problem tackled by Feichtner's team, the latter would be impossible because more than 10¹³² antenna designs would need to be evaluated using a process that takes 20 minutes per structure. The team's goal was to find a geometry that would enhance the near-field intensity of an illuminating beam of light as much as possible, so they chose this as the "fitness parameter" that they would judge each design against. Just as in nature, the fittest patterns got the chance to pass on their characteristics to the next generation, while the weaker specimens were discarded. The highest-performing five from each batch were used to build a new generation of 20 structures via crossing techniques and mutations. The new structures were in turn pitted against one another, so the overall fitness of the designs improved generation by generation – over 100 generations – until the near-field intensity enhancement registered almost twice that of the reference antenna.

Physics World: Survival of the fittest nanoantenna

Our Peter Wey...

Reference to Prometheus.

Identity Crisis...

USA Science and Engineering - Facebook

My first experiment was with a chemistry set.

I wasn't successful, because my impatience at ten-years-old did not allow me to take the time to "read" the manual instructions on what chemicals NOT to mix. The result was an impressive explosion that stained the roof of my room (and luckily, didn't kill me). My parents, though concerned, did not discourage my pursuit of knowledge. They did even more so, closely supervise all my future experiments.

There is a delicate balance between engineering and science. Engineering by definition is: "the art or science of making practical application of the knowledge of pure sciences, as physics or chemistry, as in the construction of engines, bridges, buildings, mines, ships, and chemical plants." Dictionary.com

There is an "art" to taking data and working it into something that translates into a product. I'm not belittling that at all.

By definition, engineering is kind of a bottom-line profession. You may have the STEM background to think like an scientist: but as an engineer, you have deadlines, deliverables, timelines and a budget. Engineers move from project-to-project; scientists may work on one or two, each with a genuine interest, an "assigned curiousity" (Ref: Disciplined Minds). Rarely do engineers win the Nobel Prize. One profession moves mankinds' overall knowledge of nature; the other the next generation of I-Pad.

Thus, the lens we judge science through is becoming the same as the Hedge Fund manager or stock investor's: that would be wrong-headed. This is unfortunately the impact of corporate research dollars swiftly replacing academic grants. It would reduce scientists to bottom-line university engineers, and deprive us all of the youthful joy of the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge's sake - hopefully minus any explosions.

"Throughout history, artists and poets, lovers and mystics, have known and written about the 'knowing' that comes from the loss of self - from the state of subjective fusion with the object of knowledge." Evelyn Fox Keller

"The state of feeling which makes one capable of such achievements is akin to that of the religious worshipper or one who is in love." Albert Einstein

Physics Today: A crisis of perception

"Back to the Future"...

Artist conception: Boeing Space Taxi, Spacedotcom

"Aerospace giant Boeing has inked a deal to use an old space shuttle hangar at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida as the headquarters to build and test the private company's new spaceship designed to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, company officials announced today (Oct. 31).


"Boeing is making Florida the headquarters of its space taxi venture, a move that will add up to 550 new jobs in the area, Boeing's vice president and program manager for commercial crew vehicles said in a news briefing today from Kennedy Space Center."


Space.com: Boing to Build Private Space Taxis in Old NASA Shuttle Hangar


W-I-I-T-F-M? J-O-B-S, which as a country we should rise intellectually to this occassion.

Innovation Lauded in Poughkeepsie...

Image Credit (London office): Answersdotcom

"It all started in New York in 1911 when the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) was created by a merger of The Tabulating Machine Company (Hollerith's punch card company in Washington, DC), International Time Recording Company (time clock maker in NY state), Computing Scale Company (maker of scales and food slicers in Dayton, Ohio), and Bundy Manufacturing (time clock maker in Auburn, NY). CTR started out with 1,200 employees and a capital value of $17.5 million.

"In 1914, Thomas J. Watson, Sr., became general manager. During the next 10 years, he dispensed with all non-tabulating business and turned it into an international enterprise renamed IBM in 1924."

IBM R&D Spending

2010 $6 billion
2009 $5.82 billion
2008 $6.33 billion

IBM U.S. Patents

2010 5,896
2009 4,914
2008 3,125

Recent patents include

• A method for gathering, analyzing, and processing patient information from multiple data sources to provide more effective diagnoses of medical conditions
• A system for predicting traffic conditions based on information exchanged over short-range wireless communications
• A technique that analyzes data from sensors in computer hard drives to enable faster emergency response in the event of earthquakes and other disasters
• A technology advancement for enabling computer chips to communicate using pulses of light instead of electrical signals, which can deliver increased performance of computing systems.

Source: IBM and Journal archive

Poughkeepsie Journal: IBM spends $6 billion to keep industry lead

Time-Reversed Light Pulses...

Image Credit: PhysOrg.com

(PhysOrg.com) -- By taking advantage of the properties of periodic systems, physicists have described how to efficiently time-reverse ultrashort electromagnetic pulses. Since a time-reversed pulse evolves as if time runs backwards, time reversal eliminates any distortions or scattering that occurred at earlier times, regardless of the medium the pulse has propagated through.

This is related to time reversal signal processing: unlike the comments I've read at the link below, it's not to build a "time machine."

TRSP primarily uses a function of waves called Reciprocity: "if one has a solution to the wave equation, then the time reversal (using a negative time) of that solution is also a solution of the wave equation." (Wikipedia). Understanding this comes from Ordinariy Differential Equations, usually a sophomore science/engineering math course in colleges and universities. This will have applications in communications, thus mobile phone applications, fiber optic cable applications, and bandwith/information delivered on the Internet, sadly not time travel.

PhysOrg.com link: Physicists describe how to make time-reversed light pulses

About Time...and Some Suggestions...

The federal government should create a multiagency advanced manufacturing initiative to help US industry regain its competitiveness, says a new report by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). The program should be funded at $500 million during the first year, and increase to $1 billion by the fourth year.

"We were quite shocked to see how quickly [manufacturing] jobs have disappeared with globalization," said Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google who cochaired the PCAST subcommittee that wrote the report. Without government intervention, he said, job losses "will continue apace." During a 19 May presentation of the report's major findings and recommendations, PCAST cochair Eric Lander, an MIT biologist, observed that the US trade deficit in advanced technology manufactured products has increased from $17 billion in 2003 to $81 billion in 2010. Prior to 2000, the US had always run a trade surplus in those goods.

Image Credit: I-Micro News

Mentioned in this article: SEMATECH, a government-industry consortium started in Austin, Texas - where I moved from - now located in New York (where I moved to). I don't work for SEMATECH, but I know engineers and scientists that did. Through Silicon Vias, from Intel (pictured above) have spread through the industry, and they are an active participant of this knowledge sharing effort. TSV manufacturing allows companies to get around bandwidth issues as demands for our electronics to move faster (meaning smaller, denser), do more apps, etc.

I strongly support this initiative: we cannot continue acquiescing our manufacturing to "the global market" with shrugged shoulders. This will rightly refocus education towards the goals of preparing our kids to compete on a world scale; continuous replacement of an eventual aging workforce and paying into the retirement that workforce deserves.

So that I'm not accused of any "tech-ed bias": firms employ all kinds of workers, tech and non-tech, which is a good thing because engineers and scientists make awful HR representatives: think Catbert, the evil HR director, and probably just as bad Administrative Assistants!

Just let one plan your office party...you'll see...

For your own sakes, leave her/him in the lab where they can't do too much social damage!

Physics Today: Obama's science advisers call for new initiative to spur advanced manufacturing in US

Related links

I-Micro News: Kionix's big plans for the future

Painting On Your Next Solar Panels...

Image Credit: Nanotechweb

...which seems a bit counter-intuitive at first glance.

This applies the use of quantum dots. A quantum dot is small: on the order of the exciton Bohr Radius, about 0.53 Angstroms (10^-10 meters = 0.0000000001 meters).

"For all its utility on roofs, car tops and stretches of flat desert, the structural limitations of silicon severely limit the harvest of solar energy. After all, the sun beats down on a universe of irregular shapes, and maximizing that energy means generating power from more areas than simple flat surfaces. With quantum dots, small bits of material that act as miniature solar panels, engineers can do just that, provided they figure out how to get the electricity off the dots.

"Recent research from the Colorado School of Mines helps solve that problem by tricking the electrons in quantum dots to spread solar energy around to other particles, instead of simply releasing it as heat. Unfortunately, figuring out the optimal size for those quantum dots needed to best perform this trickier may turn out to be the hard part."

American Institute of Physics: Quantum Dots Hold The Energy of the Future, for Better or Worse

Brittany Webb: Quantum Dots Presentation

Semiconductor Nanocrystals: Shape Matters

3D versus 2D...

...no, not him:

Image Credit: movie-squad.blogspot.com



...but, dare I say just as "impactful"?

Image Credit: Nature

Most transistors are 2D, or what makes up a transistor: source, drain and gate (that channels current when the right voltage is applied) all lie flat in the same plane. Intel's 3D uses the portruding "fin" resulting in three sides contacting the overlapping gate: Tri-Gate.

The concept was first introduced as the "FinFET" design by Dr. Chenming Hu and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley in the 90s. TSMC and Samsung are working on their own FinFET/Tri-Gate designs.

Currently, Polysilicon gates are in the range of 22 - 35 nanometers (10 to the minus 9 meters, or 0.000000001 meters). This will drive the technology to 14 nanometers or smaller and transistor speeds should be 37% faster.

The smaller we get, the more defectivity (I was a once a product/yield enhancement engineer) plays into manufacturing as well as quality concerns: the slightest amount of dirt will short out circuits the size of atoms. The smaller we go, quantum effects will come into play.

But that is the challenge... and the opportunity.

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."

"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."

Both quotes by Albert Einstein

Link to article: Intel enters the third dimension

Nerd Widget...

A handy tool I found I hope is useful to undergraduates, grad students and working professionals.