Friday's Fact

What’s the distance across the world’s widest part of the ocean?

Last week’s fact: No, Watson was not the founder of IBM. The company actually began as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. When Watson joined it already had approximately 400 employees.

The Good News for Engineers: America still No. 1

The Duke University in North Carolina has carried out a study that counters conventional wisdom with regard to the reported decline in America's competitiveness vis-à-vis India and China.

''In an apples-to-apples comparison, the United States actually graduates more engineers than India, and the Chinese numbers are misleading. On a per capita basis, the United States still has a strong lead as it graduates over 750 engineers per million, India graduates only 200 engineers per million and China graduates 500 per million of population,'' the study said. (Read Full)

Help keep America strong by supporting National University's School of Engineering and Technology (SOET)

Immune from offshoring

With digital engineers outnumbering analog ones by an estimated 200-to-1, one headhunter has even said recruiting analog engineers is like using a pig to sniff out truffles in the forest.

So the demand for many types of analog chips in the $32 billion-a-year analog market continues to grow. So does demand for these specialized designers. (More)

Engineering: Is the U.S. Really Falling?

Is America losing its competitive edge in engineering? Top Silicon Valley executives, U.S. think-tanks, industry associations, and university deans have all pointed out dropping enrollment in American science and tech programs and warn of a brewing problem. And in a November survey of 4,000 U.S. engineers, 64% said outsourcing makes them worry about the profession's future, while less than 10% feel sure America will maintain its leadership in technology. (more)

Maybe you should think about going into engineering....Check out National University's School of Engineering and Technology (SOET)

Friday's Fact

Did Thomas Watson start IBM from scratch?

Last week’s fact: How many layers of fluid make up normal tears and how do the tears stay on the vertical surface of the eyeball? Three layers.

· lipid or oil layer,

· lacrimal or aqueous layer, and

· mucoid or mucin layer

The epithelial surface of the cornea is naturally “hydrophobic” (water-repelling). Therefore, for a tear layer to be able to remain on the corneal surface without rolling off, the “hydrophilic” (water-attracting) mucoid or mucin layer of the tear film is laid down onto the surface of the cornea by “goblet cells,” which are present in the bulbar conjunctiva. In turn, the lacrimal layer of the tear film, located above the mucoid layer, can defy gravity and remain on the front of the eye. See Cornea

Symantec Vulnerability

Symantec on Wednesday named more than 60 of its products as affected by the critical vulnerability disclosed earlier this week, and said it was pushing out a "heuristic detection that would spot potential exploits. However, no patches have yet been released.

The number of impacted products was among the largest ever for a single vulnerability, and demonstrated the risk of reusing code in a large group of programs.

The bug, which was made public Tuesday by researcher Alex Wheeler, is in how Symantec's AntiVirus Library, part of virtually all the Cupertino, Calif.-based security giant's programs, handles RAR compressed files. RAR files are created by the WinRAR compression utility, developed and sold by RarLab. (more) Information Week

winter solstice - La Jolla Style

Beautiful Lines and Big Surf!!

You really should think about going to school here. At National that is....your days free for this and two nights a week in class plus 5 hours on a Saturday. The rest of the time is for whatever you can imagine!! Or you can just do it on-line.

winter solstice

Figuring out the changing seasons, the tilt of the Earth's axis, the date of the solstice, etc. is _very_ simple. E.g. look at how the rising (or setting) point of the Sun changes during a year. When the Sun rises or sets the furthest to the south, it is winter solstice. If it's furthest to the north, it's summer solstice. Measuring the difference between the maximum altitude of the Sun reached on the days of the solstices gives twice the tilt of the Earth's equator, and hence the tilt of the Earth's axis of rotation, and so forth. You don't need satellites or space travel for that.

Looking at nature with open eyes, observing the motion of the Sun across the sky will reveal these things very quickly. So it's no surprise at all that this was known very early to humans.

Martin Gotz - Physics Department
Brown University, Providence, RI

Does the US face an engineering gap?

A new study deflates claims that China and India have a vast advantage in graduates.

By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

If China graduates more than eight times the number of engineers that the United States does, is it thrashing America in the technology race?

That's what many scientists and politicians are suggesting in the wake of an October report by the highly regarded National Academies. Its numbers are startling: China adds 600,000 new engineers a year; the US, only 70,000. Even India, with 350,000 new engineers a year, is outdoing the US, the study suggests. (more)

Duke

Study: No U.S. engineering gap

ROCHESTER, N.Y., Dec. 20 (UPI) -- At least one study is refuting reports that China and India graduate more than eight times the number of engineers than does the United States.

National Academies of Science says China adds 600,000 new engineers a year; the United States only 70,000. India, with 350,000 new engineers annually, is also outpacing the United States, the study suggests.

But those assessments depend on how one defines "engineers," the Christian Science Monitor reported. Some studies only include those with at least four years of college training, while some also include two-year graduates of technical schools and others, as in China, even count auto mechanics. (more)

Duke

Engineering Gap?

SOURCE: DUKE UNIVERSITY STUDY

Engineering students use skills to help elderly

A computer table that raises and lowers at the push of a button seems just neat to most of us, but for someone living in a nursing home, it's almost a necessity if they want to get online.

For about the past 18 years, seniors in Manhattan College's mechanical engineering program have been visiting the Elant at Brandywine Nursing Home, finding problems and then inventing solutions like the computer table. Read more

Friday's Fact

The human eye is an engineering marvel. One of the unique aspects of the eye is the way it maintains its tears. The process is somewhat complex. How many layers of fluid make up normal tears and how do the tears stay on the vertical surface of the eyeball?

Last week’s fact: The world’s fastest computer runs what operating system? Today, the world’s fastest machine is IBM’s Blue Gene/L, installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to help maintain the country’s nuclear weapons stockpile. Blue Gene/L reinforced its lead with a top speed of 280.6 trillion calculations per second, according to a new list of the world’s 500 fastest supercomputers released by Tennessee’s Dongarra and other professors recently. Blue Gene runs a version of Linux on cells of special embedded, low-powered processors and uses ultra-fast memory connections to achieve its speed. Source: Information Week Nov. 21, 2005 Page 40.

Blue Skies Ahead for IT Jobs

Contrary to popular belief, career opportunities in computer science are at an all-time high. We’ve got to spread that message among students from a rainbow of backgrounds, or risk becoming a technological backwater.

BY MARIA KLAWE
(READ)

Engineering Gap...

This is good news....From BusinessWeek On-Line. (Read more)

One would expect that the numbers used in such debate would be defensible and grounded. Yet researchers at Duke University have determined that some of the most cited statistics on engineering graduates are inaccurate. Statistics that say the U.S. is producing 70,000 engineers a year vs. 350,000 from India and 600,000 from China aren't valid, the Duke team says. We're actually graduating more engineers than India, and the Chinese numbers aren't quite what they seem. In short, America is far ahead by almost any measure, and we're a long way from losing our edge.

Unfortunately, the message students are getting is that many engineering jobs will be outsourced and U.S. engineers have a bleak future of higher unemployment and lower remuneration. This could result in a self-fulfilling prophecy, as fearful young scholars stick to supposedly "outsourcing-proof" professions. In other words, we have more to fear from fear itself.

Engineering The Future

The School of Engineering and Technology (SOET) is working to attract students directly from High School and various Junior Colleges. One of the programs we are putting together is targeted at grades 11 and 12 along with College freshmen and sophomores. The idea is to nurture this group into developing business experience by actually launching a business but from a technology perspective. I thought that we could collaborate with Junior Achievement to assist us with grades 11 & 12. As you probably know, Junior Achievement helps train students K-12 to manage a business. Their mission will ensure that every child in San Diego and Imperial Counties has a fundamental understanding of the free enterprise system.

It was from this perspective that I invited Melissa Minas, Director of Education, Junior Achievement of San Diego and Imperial Counties over to National for lunch. She accepted and showed up right on time today. I introduced her to Dr. Howard Evans, Dean of SOET and we settled into a nice lunch in a private room off the main cafeteria.

It is so important for us to encourage students to pursue science, math and engineering. Somewhere along the line students in this country began a slow but steady distain for science. Maybe it was too hard of a topic or maybe the way it was presented via an antiquated scholastic system turned off students. I believe it is the latter argument.

My goal here is to make engineering and technology fun and I believe a way to go about doing that is to create an environment whereby students are exposed to various situations that stimulate them to begin to realize on their own the merits of approaching science from a “user-friendly” perspective.

An example is Sports Science or Sports Engineering. By starting with a topic of interest, like your favorite sport, then posing a challenge that brings out a need for science understanding naturally creates such an environment. When kids start to question how to build a better tennis racquet or how to design a new front air dam for their car they start to realize how understanding science makes their life better.

Having a continuous flow of new students into science, math, engineering and technology will make your life better too!

Anyway, thank you Melissa for the meeting and let’s see where we can take this idea!

Firefox

I like Firefox. It’s a fact and this blog happens to look better on Firefox. Wired published a good article on Firefox that includes links to various sites that offer add-on. Check it out and make the switch for yourself.

Friday’s Fact

The world’s fastest computer runs what operating system?

Last week’s fact: Anemia is a condition caused by a lack of iron in the blood (or is it?) but what happens if the reverse occurs or there is too much iron present? Hemochromatosis

A Million Americans have a potentially fatal disease--iron overload. So why are we still focused on deficiency? by Steven Finch

Ahamed took a stab at it and RockyJay, well let’s just say he took a shot at it.

Sober Strike on January 5th

Don't cry "not enough notice" if Sober gets you this time. The worm is programmed to strike again on January 5, 2006, according to researchers at VeriSign. Sober's authors are believed to be German; the date coincides with the opening of an important political convention and also the historic birth of the Nazi party, they explained. The worm will download unknown software to infected machines.

See Computerworld

Eclipse 500 recieves TIA

December 6 Update— Eclipse Aviation received its first Type Inspection Authorization (TIA) from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on the breakthrough Eclipse 500 very light jet. With this TIA, the FAA is authorizing its personnel to begin performing on-board aircraft testing of the Eclipse 500 for certification credit.

This milestone was achieved because Eclipse demonstrated to the FAA that adequate development testing, analyses, and design assurance have been achieved to allow formal entry into FAA certification testing. TIAs are issued when the technical data required for Type Certification have reached a point where it appears the item will meet FAA regulations. Over the coming months, the FAA will approve a series of TIAs that will allow FAA engineers and test pilots to explore every facet of flying and operating the Eclipse 500.

The Eclipse site allows you to track progress. Once at site click Track Our Progress to get detail.

Master of Science Wireless Communication

Get this degree….increase your earning power. HOT DEGREE

The Master of Science in Wireless Communications (MSWC) program is a professional degree that integrates communication techniques, problem solving strategies, simulations skills and mathematical foundations with hands-on training required to solve real world problems in telecommunications.

The program is designed for professionals and managers to facilitate the learning and application of skills in the field of wireless communications. The program uses a distinctive and challenging curriculum that emphasizes multidisciplinary knowledge and integrates theory throughout applications and design concepts.

Classes combine lectures, case and hands-on studies, individual and team projects, research papers and participant presentations.

For more information....

Friday’s Fact

Anemia is a condition caused by a lack of iron in the blood but what happens if the reverse occurs or there is too much iron present?

Last weeks fact: Correctly answered by Ahamed.

Well, if the Peregrine isn't the fastest bird in the world, which one is? If we were talking about the fastest RUNNING bird, then the answer would be the Ostrich, which can run at speeds of 60 mph (miles per hour). If we were talking about the fastest SWIMMING bird, it would be the Gentoo Penguin, which can swim underwater at about 22 mph.

The official answer is the Spine-tailed Swift, an Asian bird that has been recorded as being able to fly at 106 mph.

innovative edge continued

As stated in a previous post, I believe that the citizens of the US had better wake up if we want to keep what is left of an innovative edge because billions of people who have not grown up with luxuries we take for granted might pass us up otherwise. I also stated that my belief in education, especially in science, math, and engineering, is one of the main drivers of innovation and what motivates me to write this blog.

For the most part this blog is centered on the School of Engineering and Technology at National University. Now, I think everyone would agree that getting a degree from National University does not carry the same prestige as one from Stanford or MIT, however, National serves a very important function in that it focuses on working adults and the last time I checked working adults make up our economy. I will point out that both Stanford and National are accredited by WASC so even though National does not have the same prestige, a degree from National represents the same amount of work as one from Stanford.

In any event, the point is that our society must maintain on-going education programs and National’s School of Engineering and Technology is a great solution for many. Advances across every discipline occur so fast these days that it becomes necessary to re-educate ourselves on a continuing basis. The question is, ‘are we up for it?’