Carnegie Mellon University’s geoengineering expert, Jay Apt, and his group have recently put up with a price on the plan of spraying aerosol into stratosphere in order to reflect more solar radiation back into space. In fact, this proposal has been controversial for a long while. Other than the issue of expense, the environmental and political risks that will be produced by this plan remain unsolved. The following documentary entails the story.
Harvard bioengineers have made an artificial jellyfish by growing a single layer of rat heart muscle on a patterned sheet of polydimethylsiloxane. As you can see from the following video, when placed between two electrodes in water, this synthetic structure can swim exactly like its living counterpart. The rat muscle contacts when an electric field is applied across the structure, and then the elastic silicone pulls the jellyfish back to its original shape.
“Morphologically, we’ve built a jellyfish. Functionally, we’ve built a jellyfish. Genetically, this thing is a rat,” said Kit Parker, the researcher who led this project.
You may still remember the scene from the movie “Minority Report” where Tom Cruise controlled the computer by wearing a pair of special gloves and performing gestures in the air. A new software, called “g-speak”, came into being at Oblong Industries which might change the way we interact with computers in the future, since a mouse will never be useful in a g-speak operating environment. The following video demonstrates how the g-speak system works.
“Earlier this month, researchers at the University of Duluth revealed that the temperature of Lake Superior – the coldest and deepest of the bodies of water that make up the Great Lakes – is sitting at about 20°C, the warmest it’s been in a century.”
We have all heard that rising temperatures have the potential to impact almost everything. For example, if water levels decrease, loads of shipping vessels would need to be decreased too and shipping costs would increase accordingly. And if levels shrink to the point that the Great lakes were no longer connected, shipping might discontinue.
Rising temperatures also lead to the growth of toxic algal in Lake Erie, which increases pollution for people living in that region.
If you are interested in keeping track of this topic, you could set up an email alert in a database, such as SCOPUS. Search by the topic, and then click “Set alert” from the top menu of the search results page. You will be able to receive the updates weekly in your email.
Anette Hosio, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering recently talked to MIT news about the mechanics of sports. From her points of view, what helped Usain Bolt give the record-breaking performance in 2008 is “his unique combination of both strength and the long stride.” In the following video, Hosio also explained the mystery of the “fast pool” from the perspective of fluid mechanics.
I just read the news that University of Windsor students now have access to their textbooks in digital formats through Flat World Knowledge – one of the publishers of openly-licensed college textbooks. This reminded me of the electronic books that we have at McGill University. We have more than two million e-books in our collection! They work on a variety of platforms from e-book providers; some of them are major publishers for academic content, such as Springer, Wiley, and Palgrave Macmillan. They are accessible for McGill students and staff for free (see instructions on how to access our online resources). You can read them online or choose to download by chapter. The Library Catalogue is a great place to start your search. For books published recently, I would recommend an extra search on the publisher’s platform through our e-books webpage. SpringerLink, the electronic content platform from Springer – a globally-known publisher in science, technology, and medicine disciplines also allows you to Buy A Print Copy For $24.99 for some of their books. McGill subscriptions in SpringerLink are indicated by a green box.
Coursera recently announced that it had signed on with more than a dozen major educational institutions worldwide, including U of T, the only university from Canada. Coursera was created by two computer science professors at Stanford University earlier this year. The plan of Coursera is “to partner with the top universities in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free”. The creators “envision a future where the top universities are educating not only thousands of students, but millions.”
The courses on Coursera contain lectures, forums, quizzes, assignments, and exams. The students will be able to join online discussion with classmates everywhere on the earth, submit their assignments, and get grades for free. Coursera has now 111 courses available which are categorized in Biology & Life Sciences, Business & Management, Computer Science, Engineering, Sciences, etc. Below is an example of a Coursera course, Software Engineering for SaaS, which is currently offered by Fox and Patterson, professors from UC Berkeley.
Other than Coursera, edX and Udacity are also known for offering MOOCs. The most influential MOOC so far is Stanford University’s computer science professor, Sebastian Thrun’s Introduction to Artificial Intelligence which drew more than 160,000 students who eventually received detailed grades and a class ranking.
A recently released report by Council of Canadian Academies, Informing Research Choices: Indicators and Judgment, says that quantitative indicators, such as the number of publications and citation counts, cannot replace expert judgment when making decisions on allocating research grants.
Existing science assessment strategies can be categorized in many ways, including deliberative methods, such as peer review, and quantitative indicators, like publication and citation counts, numbers of researchers or students, research funding amounts, etc. “Quantitative indicators should be used to inform rather than replace expert judgment in the context of science assessment for research funding allocation.” The research panel reviewed the best practices worldwide and concluded that “the most promising strategies rely on a balanced use of quantitative indicators and expert judgment”.
Each module consists of a conceptual framework, regional case studies, and collaborative projects. The conceptual framework introduces students to the relevant concepts, theories, and analytical approaches in geography; case studies illustrate how geographic concepts, methods, and technologies can be used to investigate and solve problems in different regions; collaborative projects connect classes worldwide for online learning and discussions. Researchers (Baiio & Ray, 2011) found that the CGGE project had gained students “content knowledge” and “the enthusiasm for international cooperation”.
Baiio, W., & Ray, W. C. (2011). The challenges and rewards of an international undergraduate student learning interaction in geography. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 20(4), 287-296. doi:10.1080/10382046.2011.619806
IBM Sequoia, is now the fastest computer in the world. The computers were ranked by a test, the Linpack Benchmark, which gives each computer a petaflop/s score (quadrillion floating-point operations per second). Sequoia tested at 16.32 petaflop/s, compared to the previous top one – Japan’s K Computer’s 10.51 petaflop/s, which made K fall to the second place. Wonder how fast it works? IBM said, “Sequoia is capable of calculating in one hour what otherwise would have taken 6.7 billion people using hand calculators 320 years to complete if they had worked non-stop.” Also, Sequoia consumes less energy than the K computer, 7.9 megawatts compared to 12.6 megawatts. Professor Dongarra told the BBC “it was unlikely that another manufacturer would overtake IBM in the next year”.
