Volume VII Issue 4
Summer 2011 |
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 Do
Concrete Canoes Float?
 California
Polytechnic State University's Concrete Canoe team earned first place in
the 'America's Cup' of Civil Engineering in late June, pulling past 21
other collegiate teams to win American Society of Civil Engineers' 23rd
annual National Concrete Canoe Competition. The team competed in a
170-pound, white canoe named the Amazona. The annual event challenges
competing teams to design, create and race canoes made of concrete.
Throughout the year, teams of civil engineering students from across the
country and Canada logged thousands of hours researching, designing and
constructing their concrete canoes in search of the winning combination
of creativity, knowledge and teamwork. After coming out on top in
regional competitions throughout the spring, the best and brightest from
22 top engineering schools matched wits and skills in the national
finals. The competition includes both academic and athletic events.
Students write a paper detailing the design and construction of their
canoe and then give an oral presentation on their year-long effort. They
are also judged on their final product, the canoe, and an accompanying
display which explains their design process. Finally, they put their
canoe through the paces in a series of five race events. For more
information on the competition,
click here.
 Find
out more about careers in civil
engineering...
Civil
Rights Data on AP and Math Classes
New data released by the US Department of Education shows some gaps in
students having access to or taking AP and advanced math courses. The
Civil Rights Data Collection (http://ocrdata.ed.gov), the new data is
the first installment of a two-part biennial survey. The survey covers
approximately 7,000 school districts and more than 72,000 schools. The
data shows that 3,000 schools serving nearly 500,000 high school
students offer no algebra 2 classes, and more than 2 million students in
about 7,300 schools had no access to calculus classes. Also, only 2
percent of students with disabilities are taking at least one Advanced
Placement class. In addition, girls are underrepresented in physics,
while boys are underrepresented in algebra II. To keep career options
wide open while in high school, it is important to take as many advanced
math, science, and AP courses as possible while still maintaining strong
grades.
Find
out about this and other precollege programs and projects...
The
Connection between Math and Art
 The
Mathematical Art Exhibition Award "for aesthetically pleasing works that
combine mathematics and art" was established through an endowment
provided to the American Mathematical Society by an anonymous donor who
wishes to acknowledge those whose works demonstrate the beauty and
elegance of mathematics expressed in a visual art form. Margaret Kepner
received First Place Award for her work, "Magic Square 25 Study." She
describes the work in the exhibition catalog: "Magic squares are
numerical arrays that have substructures with constant sums. This design
is based on a magic square of order 25, containing the numbers from 0 to
624. Each row, column, and main diagonal sums to the "magic constant" of
7800. The numbers in the magic square are represented by a visual base-5
system: four concentric squares serve as the 1, 5, 25, and 125 places,
while shades of grey stand for the numerals 0 to 4. Coding the numbers
into their base-5 versions yields a pattern of 625 unique,
nested-squares in shades of grey. This particular magic square also has
a substructure of 25 mini-squares of size 5. Each of these mini-squares
is "magic" (although the numbers are not consecutive), with rows,
columns, and diagonals summing to 1560. In addition, certain other
groups of 5 squares add up to 1560. Colored accents are used to indicate
a few of these "magic" substructures. Explore more at
www.ams.org/mathimagery.
Explore
careers in
mathematics...
Degree
Profile: Actuarial Science
 One
of the main functions of actuaries is to help businesses assess the risk
of certain events occurring and to formulate policies that minimize the
cost of that risk. For this reason, actuaries are essential to the
insurance industry. Actuaries assemble and analyze data to estimate the
probability and likely cost of the occurrence of an event such as death,
sickness, injury, disability, or loss of property. Actuaries also
address financial questions, including those involving the level of
pension contributions required to produce a certain retirement income
and the way in which a company should invest resources to maximize its
return on investments in light of potential risk. Using their broad
knowledge of statistics, finance, and business, actuaries help design
insurance policies, pension plans, and other financial strategies in a
manner which will help ensure that the plans are maintained on a sound
financial basis.
Most actuaries are employed
in the insurance industry, specializing in life and health insurance or
property and casualty insurance. Actuaries need a strong background in
mathematics. Applicants for beginning actuarial jobs usually have a
bachelor's degree in mathematics, actuarial science, statistics, or a
business-related discipline. Actuaries hold about 19,700 jobs in the
United States. About 55 percent of all actuaries are employed by
insurance carriers. Approximately 16 percent work for management,
scientific and technical consulting services. According to the U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, median annual wages of actuaries is $84,810.
Find
out more about a career in
actuarial
science...
Birds
See Many Colors Invisible to Humans
 The
brilliant colors of birds have inspired poets and nature lovers, but
researchers at Yale University and the University of Cambridge say these
existing hues represent only a fraction of what birds are capable of
seeing. The findings based on study of the avian visual system, and show
that over millions of years of evolution plumage colors went from dull
to bright as birds gradually acquired the ability to create newer
pigments and structural colors.
"Our clothes were pretty drab before the invention of aniline dyes, but
then color became cheap and there was an explosion in the colorful
clothes we wear today," said Richard Prum, chair, Yale Universtiy
Department of Ornithology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. "The same
type of thing seemed to have happened with birds."
Scientists have speculated
for years on how birds obtained their colors, but the Yale/Cambridge
study was the first to ask what the diversity of bird colors actually
look like to birds themselves. Ironically, the answer is that birds see
many more colors than humans can, but birds are also capable of seeing
many more colors than they have in their plumage. Birds have additional
color cones in their retina that are sensitive to ultraviolet range so
they see colors that are invisible to humans. Over time, birds have
evolved a dazzling combination of colors that included various melanin
pigments, which give human skin its tint, carotenoid pigments, which
come from their diets, and structural colors, like the blue eyes of
humans. Mary Caswell Stoddard of Cambridge, who began investigating the
avian visual system as an undergraduate at Yale, would like to know why
birds have not yet developed the ability to produce, for example,
ultraviolet yellow or red colors in their feathers -- colors invisible
to humans but visible to the birds themselves. "We don't know why
plumage colors are confined to this subset," Stoddard said.
"Birds can make only about 26 to 30 percent of the colors they are
capable of seeing but they have been working hard over millions of years
to overcome these limitations," Prum said. "The startling thing to
realize is that although the colors of birds look so incredibly diverse
and beautiful to us, we are color blind compared to birds."
Find
out more about careers in biology...
International
Year of Chemistry - 2011
 The
International Year of Chemistry
2011 (IYC 2011) is a worldwide celebration of the achievements of
chemistry and its contributions to the well-being of humankind. Under
the unifying theme “Chemistry -- our life, our future,” IYC 2011 will
offer a range of interactive, entertaining, and educational activities
for all ages. The Year of Chemistry is intended to reach across the
globe, with opportunities for public participation at the local,
regional, and national level. The goals of IYC2011 are to increase the
public appreciation of chemistry in meeting world needs, to encourage
interest in chemistry among young people, and to generate enthusiasm for
the creative future of chemistry.
IYC 2011 events emphasize that chemistry is a creative science essential
for sustainability and improvements to our way of life. Activities, such
as lectures, exhibits, and hands-on experiments, explore how chemical
research is critical for solving our most vexing global problems
involving food, water, health, energy, transportation, and more.
The year 2011 also coincides with the 100th anniversary of the Nobel
Prize awarded to Madame Marie Curie --an opportunity to celebrate the
contributions of women to science. IYC 2011 events emphasize that
chemistry is a creative science essential for sustainability and
improvements to our way of life. Activities, such as lectures, exhibits,
and hands-on experiments, explore how chemical research is critical for
solving our most vexing global problems involving food, water, health,
energy, transportation, and more.
Find
out more about careers in
chemistry and
chemical engineering...
Average
Salary Offer to Class of 2011 Rises 4.8%
 The
average starting salary to the college Class of 2011 rose 4.8 percent,
according to a new report from the National Association of Colleges and
Employers (NACE). The Summer issue of NACE's Salary Survey report shows
the overall average is $51,018, up from $48,661 last year at this time.
This is the third consecutive issue of Salary Survey to show an
increase. As a group, students in the computer science disciplines saw
their average offer rise 4.3 percent to $62,328. The engineering
disciplines as a group earned a 2.5 percent increase to their overall
average salary offer, which now stands at $60,465 -- the best increase
this group has seen since Fall 2009. In addition, nearly all of the
reported engineering disciplines posted increases, with petroleum
engineering and computer engineering grads seeing the highest bumps. The
average offer to those earning degrees in petroleum engineering rose 8.1
percent to $80,849 while the average offer to computer engineering
graduates rose 7.6 percent to $64,499. At the other end of the scale,
civil engineering graduates posted a tiny increase -- less than 1
percent -- bringing their average offer to $52,069. Electrical
engineering graduates and mechanical engineering graduates fared better,
posting increases of 2.8 ($61,021) and 3.2 percent ($60,345),
respectively.
Find
out about careers and salary data in
science,
technology,
engineering,
mathematics, and
medicine...
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