Posts

May 23, 2013

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After writing about my experience manning a booth at a conference (geez…even how you work a booth at a conference can be phrased in male-centric terms), it has slowly dawned on me that there is another way to view the experience. I was rather frustrated that people seemed surprised when they found out I was […]

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12:56 AM | Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your nanogarden...

Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your nanogarden grow? Harvard engineer Wim Noorduin has a green thumb. Only his thumb is only a few microns wide. By carefully controlling gradients of chemicals, he guided the construction of flower-like crystal structures to match their larger biological forms. It’s certainly art, but it also demonstrates a masterful manipulation of chemistry on the nano scale. Just how small are they? As NPR reports, these flowers could fit in the lapel of the tiny […]

May 22, 2013

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12:00 PM | Drive it to break it

Recent mechanical engineering graduate Andy Benn isn’t used to having time on his hands. Spending an afternoon playing tennis and eating lobster rolls, is well, unprecedented for the former Baja team captain who said he was clocking 80 to 100 hours a week in the auto shop in the basement of Richards Hall before graduating [...]

May 21, 2013

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8:45 PM | I only wear goggles when swimming

I was recently chatting with an acquaintance when they mentioned they had seen me in the local paper a while back. You were wearing goggles, right? No. Well, you did have a lab coat… No, I was actually wearing a sweater. I have had articles on my work run in the paper a couple times […]

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2:15 PM | Algorithmic view of historicity and separation of scales in biology

A Science publications is one of the best ways to launch your career, especially if it is based on your undergraduate work, part of which you carried out with makeshift equipment in your dorm! That is the story of Thomas M.S. Chang, who in 1956 started experiments (partially carried out in his residence room in […]

Pais, D. & Leonard, N. (2013). Adaptive network dynamics and evolution of leadership in collective migration, Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena, DOI: 10.1016/j.physd.2013.04.014

Citation

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2:15 PM | Algorithmic view of historicity and separation of scales in biology

A Science publications is one of the best ways to launch your career, especially if it is based on your undergraduate work, part of which you carried out with makeshift equipment in your dorm! That is the story of Thomas M.S. Chang, who in 1956 started experiments (partially carried out in his residence room in […]

Pais, D. & Leonard, N. (2013). Adaptive network dynamics and evolution of leadership in collective migration, Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena, DOI: 10.1016/j.physd.2013.04.014

Citation

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1:28 PM | A Survival Plan for America’s Tornado Danger Zone

There are affordable ways to live more safely in tornado zones.

May 20, 2013

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2:17 PM | Between a rock and a soft (money) place

I’ve been cogitating on another comment that showed up on a proposal review. The general complaint was that we were funding too many staff and not enough students. I could see this…except for the fact that all but one of the people involved is on soft money. This proposal was already being trimmed left and […]

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3:45 AM | Natural algorithms and the sciences

Today, I am passing through New York City on my way to Princeton’s Center for Computational Intractability for a workshop on Natural Algorithms and the Sciences (NA&S). The two day meeting will cover everything from molecular algorithms for learning and experiments on artificial cells to bounded rationality in decision-making and the effects of network topology […]

Chazelle, B. (2012). Natural algorithms and influence systems, Communications of the ACM, 55 (12) 101. DOI: 10.1145/2380656.2380679

Citation

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3:45 AM | Natural algorithms and the sciences

Today, I am passing through New York City on my way to Princeton’s Center for Computational Intractability for a workshop on Natural Algorithms and the Sciences (NA&S). The two day meeting will cover everything from molecular algorithms for learning and experiments on artificial cells to bounded rationality in decision-making and the effects of network topology […]

Chazelle, B. (2012). Natural algorithms and influence systems, Communications of the ACM, 55 (12) 101. DOI: 10.1145/2380656.2380679

Citation

May 17, 2013

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3:30 PM | How does a paper get published without the alleged corresponding author knowing?

The Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering ran a retraction yesterday that’s left us scratching our heads. The paper, “Wettability-gradient-driven micropump for transporting discrete liquid drops,” was published on February 8 of this year. For a paper published in a journal run by the Institute of Physics, the retraction notice reads like a mix of Hindenburg […]

May 16, 2013

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10:11 PM | The hard work of making cities smart and green

By 2050, 90 percent of Americans will live in cities that consume most of the nation's energy and generate most of its greenhouse gases. Whether sprawling cities devolve into ecological disasters or slowly transform into smart, sustainable economic growth engines will depend partly on the next generation of engineers and the technologies they invent.To face the challenges posed by megalopolises, experts say Americans need to do more than just upgrade the current, rusting infrastructure. In a […]

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8:28 PM | And I wah-wah-wonder why…

I’ve been getting comments back on proposals I wrote last fall. Most of them are really helpful, but there are a couple major head scratchers. There was one comment, however, that was just plain funny and managed to make it into the project summary. One of the reviewers simply asked, “Why?!” As our group was […]

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6:00 PM | How Does Your Mineral Garden Grow?

With silica stems and carbonate cones and corals all in a row. ______ False-color electron micrograph* of a barium carbonate and silica ‘flower’ standing approximately 100 micrometers tall (courtesy of Wim Noorduin). ______ How do you sculpt a flower so small that even a honey-bee would never see it? There are ways to be sure, […]

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4:27 PM | In Praise of Unsung Heroes in Science at the USA Science & Engineering Festival

Heroes should never be forgotten, but unfortunately too many of them in the field of science go missing from our classroom textbooks. Equally disturbing is that a disproportionate number of these heroes overlooked are women and minorities. While the average American young person will likely have no trouble detailing the latest antics of such stars…

May 15, 2013

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3:56 PM | Exploring Engineering with Hands-on Building Systems

Born on May 15, 1863: Frank Hornby, an inventor whose "toys" included Meccano, an engineering construction set of nuts, bolts, and strips of sheet metal. Hornby first devised the system for his children. When he moved on to mass produce...

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1:30 AM | Four color problem, odd Goldbach conjecture, and the curse of computing

For over twenty-three hundred years, at least since the publication of Euclid’s Elements, the conjecture and proof of new theorems has been the sine qua non of mathematics. The method of proof is at “the heart of mathematics, the royal road to creating analytical tools and catalyzing growth” (Rav, 1999; pg 6). Proofs are not […]