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Well, so much for the idea that fewer and fewer students are studying math and the sciences. The National Center for Education Statistics compared surveys of high school seniors in 1972, 1980, 1982, 1992, and 2004. One result:
The percentage of seniors enrolling in calculus during their senior year grew from 6 percent to 13 percent between 1982 and 2004. The percentage of seniors taking no mathematics courses during their senior year declined from 57 percent to 34 percent over this time period. Seniors increased their senior-year enrollment in advanced science courses (chemistry II, physics II, and advanced biology) from 12 percent in 1982 to 25 percent in 2004.
Here is the link for the complete report, which is free:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2008320
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Here's a news flash: People who take higher level math courses tend to make more money than those who do not, regardless of what they majored in. As reported in the blogs of the Chronicle of Higher Education,
In raw terms, the two scholars found the usual salary disparities: Nursing and social-work majors earn $48,900 per year, on average, while engineering majors bring home an average of $102,290. But Mr. Hamermesh and Mr. Donald found that .....................regardless of their choice of major and regardless of their mathematics SAT scores — students earn significantly more money if they take more upper-level math and science courses.
Here is the link:
http://chronicle.com/news/article/4656/major-in-business-make-a-bundle-its-not-quite-so-simple?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
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At the AUVSI unmanned systems show earlier this week, it was interesting to note all the interest in engine technology for UAVs. The image most people have of the typical UAV powerplant is something pulled out of an RC plane and tweaked for military use. Not anymore. Perhaps the most interesting development at the show was a super compact but powerful gas turbine from Hamilton Sundstrand that company officials wouldn't discuss with us, even though an example was on display at the booth. It was small enough to hold in your hands.
Another theme: There is a lot of work among both piston engine and gas turbine suppliers toward making these things operate from heavy fuel -- that's ordinary kerosene-like jet fuel to for the uninitiated. The key seems to be in atomizing the fuel adequately so it will burn more efficiently. That lets the military use one kind of fuel for all its vehicles and simplifies logistics immensely.
Finally, another interesting development came from Frontline Aerospace, Inc. with its V-Star UAV. The V-Star employs morphing wing technology in the form of extensions at the end of its wings that flip up to handle slow flight conditions. So far the craft is only a concept, and there is some pooh-poohing about it from the aviation press because the company is a start-up:
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&plckPostId=Blog%3a27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3a54bc4110-8356-43c5-9876-ff8dd5578ede
But there is a 50% scale demonstrator under construction that should be ready next year.
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You may remember from your calculus classes that symmetry can sometimes be used to solve equations that at first look daunting. But some symmetries are so complicated that they are tough to spot, even for a computer. University of Michigan researchers recently reported a breakthrough in this area. From the release:
In less than a half-second, the new software captured 1083,687 different symmetries in an Internet connectivity graph of routers around the world. A symmetry in this graph signifies a way the routers could be shuffled that wouldn't change the operation.
Previous methods timed out in the 30 minutes they were given to generate results in these experiments. Darga said it would take these older programs days to solve such a complicated problem. In searching for symmetries in the road networks between cities and towns in Illinois, the new algorithm captured the 104,843 symmetries in less than a half-second, whereas the most robust previous algorithm took 16 minutes.
They are even giving the software away. You can request a copy here:
http://vlsicad.eecs.umich.edu/BK/SAUCY/
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This sort of makes you wonder about other inventors who might have been buried in what they invented:
Associated Press
June 3, 2008 - Cincinnati--The man who designed the Pringles potato crisp packaging system was so proud of his accomplishment that a portion of his ashes has been buried in one of the iconic cans.
Fredric J. Baur, of Cincinnati, died May 4 at Vitas Hospice in Cincinnati, his family said. He was 89.
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Baur's children said they honored his request to bury him in one of the cans by placing part of his cremated remains in a Pringles container in his grave in suburban Springfield Township. The rest of his remains were placed in an urn buried along with the can, with some placed in another urn and given to a grandson, said Baur's daughter, Linda Baur of Diamondhead, Miss.
Baur requested the burial arrangement because he was proud of his design of the Pringles container, a son, Lawrence Baur of Stevensville, Mich., said Monday.
Baur was an organic chemist and food storage technician who specialized in research and development and quality control for Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co.
Baur filed for a patent for the tubular Pringles container and for the method of packaging the curved, stacked chips in the container in 1966, and it was granted in 1970, P&G archivist Ed Rider said.
Baur retired from P&G in the early 1980s.
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I happened to come upon this piece of information from D.R. Barton, a financial columnist, on the cost components of gasoline. It makes interesting reading.
----------------------------------------
What is the breakdown in the cost of a gallon of gasoline? Based on several sources, here are the best ranges I could find:
• Tax per gallon (U.S. Only): 18.4 cent Federal excise tax, plus, an average of 27 cents of state taxes (including sales and environmental taxes).
• Refining costs: ranging in estimates from 8% up to 22%.
• Transportation, storage & marketing: about 4.5% to 8%.
• Cost of crude oil: at $3.80 per gallon – 72% or $2.74.
These numbers come from a combination of resources including the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and articles from the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and CNN.com.
I provided these numbers because the number one question I’ve been asked by folks when discussing the article is, “What goes into the price of a gallon of gas?”
Interestingly, in 2006, with gas at an average of $2.43 per gallon, taxes made up almost 19% of the cost; now it’s down to “only” 12%. Clearly the price of crude oil is dominating the cost right now, but that’s not always the case. As we found out when Katrina shut down key refining plants on the Gulf coast, refining, distribution and storage costs can fluctuate based on supply and demand.
But despite high historic prices in the U.S, prices here remain relatively low compared to other countries around the world. Many oil producing countries subsidize gas prices, so countries like Venezuela, Nigeria, and most states in the Middle East have prices well below the cost of production (to stimulate economic growth and gain political favor). On the other end of the scale, most European countries have heavy gas taxes; the average price for a gallon of petrol in the UK is now $8.56 and in many Scandinavian countries, it’s north of $9.00 per gallon.
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There has been yet another study that has concluded that corn-based ethanol is bad news from a variety of angles. To quote the summary,
The study looked at factors such as the energy needed to produce a renewable fuel source compared with how much energy is produced, the impact on soil fertility and effects on food supply when fuels based on crops such as corn and soybeans are mixed with fossil fuels. Based on those factors, the authors determined that corn-based ethanol is the worst alternative overall.
The authors, research biologists, think that cellulosic and algea-based ethanol would be better, but their technologies really aren't developed yet. Here is the link to the full press release:
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/541144/?sc=swtr
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Here's a situation a lot of us have experienced: You take a class that gives you headaches. After a lot of soul searching, you start to wonder if the problem is not you and not the material, but the instructor.
Well, the problem might well have been a poor hiring choice on the part of school administrators. This short article from the Chronicle of Higher Education gives some interesting insights into some not-so-good educators who were considered for college teaching jobs.
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2008/05/2008052301c/careers.html?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
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Awhile back I wrote about a mutual funds manager who took FedEx management to task for investing in hybrid delivery vehicles though there was no economic justification for it:
http://machinedesign.com/ContentItem/57416/Costlybutgreen.aspx
Then on Friday, FedEx missed its earnings target, saying, according to CBS Marketwatch:
FedEx Corp. warned Friday that fourth-quarter earnings are poised to come up well short of prior targets, adding that if oil prices continue to rise from this point, more damage to the bottom line could be on the way.
FedEx blaimed both a slowing economy and lower package volume as well as fuel costs for the shortfall, but did not say how much of the shortfall was due to either factor, at least not in the statements I've seen. There are a couple of things that could be said here. One is that presumably, some of the higher fuel costs FedEx is seeing presumably come from keeping its fleet of jets flying, which fly all its packages to Tennessee for distribution. I wonder if company management has considered turboprops as a means of reducing that fuel cost. You can find out more about what's new on the turboprop scene here:
http://machinedesign.com/ContentItem/70215/Fewertripsforthefueltruck.aspx
Second, one wonders how much benefit FedEx really gets out of a hybrid delivery truck in that the energy efficiency benefits only emerge during stops/starts. Vehicles that do a lot of stopping and starting will get the most benefit out of hybrid technology -- postal delivery vans and garbage trucks come immediately to mind. But for commercial vehicles that spend a lot of time on the highway, the payoff is less dramatic. There is no benefit from a hybrid powertrain while tooling along on a freeway. That's why a lot of Californians criticize the decision to allow single-occupant Prius' in the car pool lanes there.
My guess is that FedEx trucks may not do enough start/stop driving on average to get much benefit out of a hybrid powertrain. Some benefit, yes, but probably not enough to put much of a dent in the company's fuel costs. And when the additional capital costs of acquiring the hybrids are factored in, does FedEx come out ahead? The answer to that question would be interesting.
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A few issues ago, I wrote an editorial challenging the conclusions of a report called Engineers of Jihad, which claimed engineers had a linear-thinking mindset that predisposed them to recruitment by Islamic terrorist groups. You can read the editorial here:
http://machinedesign.com/ContentItem/72455/LelandTeschlersEditorialTheEngineeringExtremistMindset.aspx
The authors of the report in question weren't the first to claim something like this. The novelist Stephen King alluded to something similar in his book called The Stand, which came out in the 1980s and was made into a TV miniseries. In the book, a plague has cut the total population of the US to less than 2 million people who are separating themselves into two different camps, one following God, the other following the devil. King creates this conversation between two members of the 'God' camp:
"I think he's (referring here to the devil) going to get most of the techies......Don't ask me why; it's just a hunch. Except that tech people like to work in an atmosphere of tight discipline and linear goals, for the most part. They like it when the trains run on time.......But that other fellow (again, referring to the devil)... I'll bet he's got the trains running on time and all his ducks in a row. And techies are just as human as the rest of us; they'll go where they're wanted the most. I've a suspicion that our Adversary wants as many as he can get."
It's all utter BS in my opinion. Note to Stephen King: I've known a lot of high-caliber engineers whose desks looked like disaster areas and who couldn't show up on time for an appointment if their life depended on it. Does that sound like linear goals and tight discipline to you?
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Someone emailed me a link to Rockwell Automation's spoof of several years ago wherein they created a short video for their new "retro turboencabulator." I had forgotten about this thing. It is still funny. I also found out there is even a Wikipedia page on the origins of the Turboencabulator:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turboencabulator
According to Wikipedia, GE engineers even managed to insert a page in a GE catalog in 1962 about GE's version of the encabulator. All I can say is, GE must have been a different place in 1962 than it is now. Here is the link to the Rockwell video:
http://www.komando.com/videos/3-22.asp
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A while back I wrote an editorial wherein I quoted Duke University's Vivek Wadhwa about the role of foreign PhD's in U.S. innovation. Wadhwa recently coauthored a report about the character of U.S.-born tech entrepreneurs.
What he found was that they had an average age of 39 and were likely to come from Ivy league schools. But their definition of a tech startup is important. The report authors talked to 652 U.S.-born chief executive officers and heads of product development in 502 engineering and technology companies established from 1995 through 2005. The companies have more than $1 million in sales, twenty or more employees, and company branches with fifty or more employees.
In other words, they only talked to startups that by any definition were overwhelming success stories. Companies started up in the same period that could be considered successful but not overwhelmingly so never got interviewed. And, of course, startups that got acquired by somebody else aren't in the data, nor are those that went belly up. So the best you can say is that the report authors now have data on super-visible tech startups by US-born tech entropreneurs. That's better than nothing.
Here's a link to the report:
http://www.kauffman.org/pdf/Education_Tech_Ent_042908.pdf
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