Anyone looking for a research project? The Treasury Department needs you; it's been ordered to change the way it prints money so that it will be easier for the blind to tell bills apart.
The federal judge's ruling proposes several options, like using raised ink or printing bills of different sizes. The department has 10 days to decide whether to appeal.
Any change will be expensive, I'm sure. But after seeing how my blind uncle lives, I think it's worth it.
What do you say?
We have it on good authority that the four UMR students who participated in the MIT Vehicle Design Summit last summer showed up the competition. Any readers with HDTV who subscribes to Discovery HD Theatre can find out for themselves just how the UMR contingent fared at the event. The network is airing MIT Design Summit tonight (10 p.m. Eastern), so if you want to catch some UMR design team students in action, here's your chance.
Four UMR design team members – Navarre Bartz, Jerrod Bouchard, Craig George and Andrew Sourk – were among the 50 engineering students to participate in the summit last summer. The students presented four energy-efficient vehicles they hope will save the world from today’s polluting cars. Earlier this year, Bouchard was profiled in an earlier news story about the event.
If you can’t catch the MIT Design Summit tonight, you'll have other chances tomorrow (Wednesday, Nov. 30) or Dec. 3. Check the schedule for showtimes.
When a journalist from St. Louis TV station Fox2 KTVI wanted to know what was causing the stainless steel Gateway Arch to stain, one of the experts he talked to was Matt O'Keefe, a UMR metallurgy professor (and 1985 MetE grad). KTVI's Paul Schankman interviewed O'Keefe for the story, which aired Monday night (but can be viewed again, thanks to the Internet).
The Air Force needs a revolutionary source of efficient, light, compact power. Some UMR scientists think nature might hold the answers. (Thanks to Dr. Fatih Dogan for the photo)
Three-time UMR graduate James Friend has a big idea about a very small surgical device.
As reported today by Australian newspaper The Age, in Melbourne, Friend and his colleagues at Monash University are "developing micro-robots they hope will be able to swim through the human body and perform medical tasks." Friend hopes "to build a tiny machine no wider than two human hairs side by side to do the job."
Friend leads the Micro/Nanophysics Research Laboratory at Monash. He learned the art of designing minuscule motors at UMR, where he earned a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering from UMR in 1992, then stayed on to earn his master's and Ph.D., both in mechanical engineering, in 1994 and 1998.
While your favorite bloggers take a Thanksgiving break, you might want to check out some other science-related reading. Here are a couple of sources for your perusal:
1. Discover's 25 greatest science books of all time. Many of the classics are there. (How sad that I've only read one of the top 25 -- Rachel Carson's Silent Spring -- and only two of the honorable mentions -- The Lives of a Cell, by Lewis Thomas, and Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams. See what a journalism education'll get you?)
2. The 100 Greatest Science Books, a list in progress from the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology. Readers are encouraged to nominate their own favorites.
Both lists come courtesy of Confessions of a Science Librarian, who has more to say on the subject of science books.
A little understanding of physics could get you out of a speeding ticket. At least it worked for 20-year-old Gavin Matthews, who used "schoolboy science" to beat the rap in Wales.
Convinced of his innocence, he wrote off asking for photographs of the incident and used the classroom formula 'speed equals distance over time' to prove he was travelling at 44.8mph in the 50mph zone. ...Via Curious Cat."The photographs show the back of my car and the white lines at the side of the road. The second photograph shows that it was taken 0.5 seconds later by which time I had moved five white lines along."
He remembered from school you could calculate speed if you had the correct distance and time. He said he looked on the internet and found an official website stating that lines on the motorway are spaced two metres apart.
"That meant I had driven 10 meters in 0.5 seconds or 20 meters per second. That works out at precisely 44.8mph."
Two movie-related items today, completely unrelated except they both have a tie to a University of Missouri campus:
Born Feb. 20, 1925, Altman hung out in his teen years at the jazz clubs of Kansas City, Mo., where his father was an insurance salesman. During World War II, Altman was a bomber pilot in the U.S. Army Air Force from 1943 to 1945. After the war he studied engineering at the University of Missouri in Columbia before taking a job making industrial films in Kansas City.
Via AP.
Biotechnology is becoming more and more popular in movies and television, but most people don’t know where the science stops and the fiction begins, says Dr. Anne Maglia, assistant professor of biological sciences. Maglia hopes to clear up some biology misconceptions through her upcoming UMR course, “Biologywood: Unraveling Biology Fact from Fiction at the Movies.”
Technorati tags: robert altman, biotechnology
Oakland A's General Manager Billy Beane is famous for applying statistical methods (sabermetrics) to the art of running a Major League Baseball organizaiton. But he isn't the only guy out there analyzing the best way to win. A UMR Ph.D. who goes by the handle Buster1 in the online world of Protrade, a sports stock market of sorts, calculated the odds of winning an MLB game way back in 1994. He writes in a recent Protrade post:
In 1994 I completed a dissertation for my Ph.D. at the University of Missouri(Rolla): THE APPLICATION OF MARKOV STATE PROBABILITIES IN DEVELOPING ARTFICIALLY INTELLGENT MANAGERIAL STRATEGIES: A CASE STUDY BASED ON MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL (U.M.I Order Number 9507444)The following is a sample result of the dissertation:
Top of the 3rd Inning:
Home Team leading by 2 Runs
Is this even possible? Surely there are some readers who could settle this for us, maybe even readers who actually have UMR degrees in some kind of science or something. Or maybe you just took a biology class once. That would probably work too. Please give us your expert opinion by leaving a comment.
Nominations for the 2006 weblog awards are now open. Wouldn't it be cool if Visions won for best science blog?
I've already nominated us, but another nomination from an objective third party -- such as you, gentle reader -- wouldn't hurt. It might not help, but it wouldn't hurt.
Ok, so the past few weeks have been tough for me -- a car accident (complete with a totaled car and stitches), a son with strep, a dog with pink eye, two inches of standing sewage in the basement, a grandmother in the hospital -- you get the picture, right? I'm generally an optimist, someone who can find the bright side of things. But it's been cloudy for several, several days. I've even considered making my own Earl list, so that I could find some way to improve my karma.
That's why today's Secret Santa story in the Kansas City Star really caught my attention. Growing up in Warrensburg, I often heard about this guy who would go to laundries and thrift stores and other similar places during the holidays to distribute thousands of dollars to people in need. What I guy, I thought, to do without seeking credit. No one knew his name.
Tired of the same boring, plain vanilla search engines? Or that cartoon butler that never gives you the right answer to your questions? Ms. Dewey may be just the antidote for your Internet search doldrums.
She's saucy, she's sexy, she even poses provocatively from time to time with a cute little notepad - but beware, like most hot chicks she is chatty as hell and gets a little needy when neglected (along the lines of "Hel-loooo? Type something here!"). Also, sometimes she sings. We don't get embarrassed often, but we got embarrassed then.Via Adrants.
It's a good time to be studying nuclear engineering. As noted in the subhead of a recent story (subscribers only) in the Chronicle of Higher Education, "For the first time in decades, new reactors are being planned, and a new generation of engineers must be trained."
It's up to universities like UMR to do the training, and UMR is uniquely poised to do so. Unlike many universities with nuclear engineering programs, UMR is not hamstrung by what the Chronicle calls "the demise of the university-based reactor."
Lance really isn't an idiot. Nor is he the only one employed by this premier technological research university who struggles with poorly designed products.
Just this past weekend, when my cell phone/PDA informed me that an update was available for some software held deep within its tiny bowels, I innocently clicked OK. After all, software upgrades are good, right? (Yeah, I'm one of those guys at the airport who likes to tap the stylus on the screen of my cell toy to give the illusion of busyness and ever-important connectivity; usually, though, I'm playing chess against the microchip, and losing.)
I now have the latest upgrade, but I can't figure out the new, improved interface for email.
So, I may know how to program the clock in my car (FYI, Lance, I just use a ball-point pin to push in the tiny button until the right hour shows up), but I don't know why I should have to. I mean, my computer knows when Daylight Savings Time starts and ends. Why can't my car? They're both about the same age.
Which brings us, again, to today's holiday, World Usability Day, and a blog post at Fast Company Now a few months back about how half of the consumer-electronics products returned to stores function properly, but customers simply can't figure out how to operate them.
Here's the thing: After the time changes, like it did recently, I drive around for half a year with the wrong time on my car clock. Also, I get extremely frustrated at 2 a.m. (3 a.m. if you look in my car) on Christmas Eve when I'm trying to put together some stupid toy that's supposed to transform from a radio telescope to an easy-bake oven and back. And don't get me started on all the cell phones and blackberries and crap gadgetry that people in airports are constantly monitoring in order to make themselves feel important (What ever happened to quietly reading the Wall Street Journal?). But, then, I am an idiot.
This brings us to World Usability Day, which is tomorrow. The St. Louis Science Center will observe the day (which is devoted to fostering a better relationship between high tech companies and the people who actually use their products) with a digital alarm-clock setting competition and some hands-on displays and other stuff. John Warmbrodt, a UMR graduate student in information science and technology, will demonstrate a video game called “Journey to the Wild Divine," which is operated via a device that detects the heart rate and respiration of the player. Instead of using a joy stick or keyboard, players control events in the game by consciously changing their nervous system activity. How's that for user-friendly? More on World Usability Day.
Seriously. This explains a lot.
UMR's concrete teams won the hearts and minds -- in the form of votes -- of attendees at the American Concrete Institute's fall convention in Denver Sunday. They also capture the judges' attention, garnering nine awards overall in the student design competitions. Or, as team leader Justin Carr tells it, the UMR teams just "smoked the competition."
“We took first and second with indented specimens that were wavy and black,” Carr explains. “Our aesthetic cylinders looked like they were made of black plastic, not concrete, which impressed many.”
UMR graduate Steve Sullivan already has one Academy Award to his credit (for Technical Achievement in 2001). Now the 1989 UMR EE grad could garner a second award for developing the special-effects wizardry used to create Davy Jones and his barnacled crew in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.
Sullivan is director of research and development for George Lucas' special effects firm Industrial Light & Magic. Featured in a recent Kansas City Star article, Sullivan, a Raytown, Mo., native, has led the ILM effort on developing a "new motion capture technique that allows us to build models, sets and characters from pictures." The process improves upon the "cumbersome and costly" laser scan techniques currently used to create many special effects, Sullivan says.
The technique is eligible for a technical Oscar this year. In 2001, he won his first Academy Award for the out-of-this-world ILM Motion and Structure Recovery System, or MARS. MARS uses mathematical formulas and computer software to allow moviemakers to create ultra-realistic special effects while reducing costs.
If I learned anything from reading Horton Hears a Who to my kids, it's that things as small as a speck of dust can be very important. Yangchaun "Chad" Xing's research proves it.
Xing has been working to develop an efficient polymer electrolyte membrane (or PEM) fuel cell using a new material called carbon nanotubes, which is more durable than carbon black (the traditional material used). Xing, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering, along with Guoqiang Ren, a Ph.D. student at UMR, have developed a new, "fast evaporation" technique for depositing metal nanoparticles on carbon nanotubes. Their findings are in the November issue of the Institute of Physics Publishing journal, Nanotechnology.
Graduate student Brandon Distler has a cool idea about chilling the core of nuclear reactors.
While water is what cools the core of a conventional nuclear reactor, Distler, a grad student in UMR's nuclear engineering program, says salt would be a better alternative in some advanced reactor designs. The federal Energy Department thinks his idea has merit and has granted Distler a fellowship to study it further.
Distler is one of only a dozen graduate students to receive the fellowship this year through the DOE’s Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative. (Full story.)
Technorati tags: nuclear reactor
UMR students will use acid -- and a little magnesium -- to "turn on" their car in the upcoming American Institute of Chemical Engineers's Chem-E Car national competition.
The UMR Chem-E Car team earned a spot in the San Francisco competition by placing second in the regional chemical reaction-powered, autonomous vehicle competition last April. The competition challenges teams to design and build a shoebox-sized car that can carry an additional load a specified distance. The actual distance and load requirements will be announced 20 minutes before the beginning of the national competition.
Team leader Dan Burtman of Blue Springs, Mo., a junior in chemical engineering, says the group is very hopeful about its upcoming performance.
If nothing else, the team will be in for one great trip.
OT: I'd like to say "Happy Birthday" to Visions blogger, Andrew Careaga, who turned 46 today. I think I promised him that I wouldn't post his Halloween photo on Visions and I won't do that, especially since he's my boss. But I will link to it.
Missouri University of Science and Technology | Rolla, MO 65409 | 573-341-4111 | 1-800-522-0938
©2008 Curators of the University of Missouri | UM System | Intellectual Pluralism
Mission · DMCA · EEOC · Disability Resources · Contact S&T
