Volume III Issue 8 August 2007 |
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 College
Finance Planning Tool
 The
U.S. Department of Education has unveiled a new online tool to help
students and families financially prepare and plan for college before a
student's senior year of high school. Called the
FAFSA4caster, it
provides students with an early estimate of their eligibility for
federal financial aid, which could include a Pell grant of up to $4,310.
The FAFSA4caster instantly calculates a student's eligibility for
federal student aid, including grants, reduces the time it will take to
complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), and
simplify the financial aid process for students and families.
In addition to helping
families make informed decisions as they plan for college, the
FAFSA4caster will also reduce the application time when students file
their FAFSA in their senior year in high school. The FAFSA4caster
pre-populates 51 of the 102 questions on the FAFSA, significantly
reducing the time it takes for the student to complete the FAFSA in
their senior year of high school. In September, the Department will
release an expanded feature, which will estimate a student's federal
entire aid package, including eligibility for federal student loans.
Find out more...
Your
PC is a Telescope!
 Astronomy
obeys Moore's law: it is producing about two times more data each year.
Current instruments typically produce nearly a terabyte per night.
Managing huge data archives and processing complex data are now among
the major astronomy challenges. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is a
good example. It is a 5-band optical survey of the northern sky,
observing about 400 million sources as images and 1 million with
spectra. These spectra allow detailed studies of large star and galaxy
populations.
Now everyone can use one of the world's best telescopes. An online
catalog of the SDSS data as a web-accessible database and visual
analysis tools are online. The
site has been a big success -- about 10 percent of the visitors are
students using online courses, but the main users are astronomers
analyzing the available data.
Find out more about career paths in
physics and
astronomy...
Microsoft
and Carnegie Mellon Establish
Center for Computational Thinking
 Microsoft
Corporation and Carnegie Mellon University have announced the creation
of the Microsoft Carnegie Mellon Center for Computational Thinking. The
center represents a long-term collaboration between Microsoft Research
and Carnegie Mellon's Computer Science Department and will support
research in emerging areas of computer science, particularly those that
can influence the thinking of other disciplines. "Increasingly,
scientists and researchers rely on computer science to enable them to
sift through massive amounts of data and find breakthroughs that could
provide new insights into the human body, the earth we live on and even
the universe," said Rick Rashid, senior vice president of Microsoft
Research.
Computational thinking, as developed by Jeannette M. Wing, head of
Carnegie Mellon's Computer Science Department, involves solving
problems, designing systems and understanding human behavior by drawing
on the concepts fundamental to computer science. The new center will
support research in core computer science areas and researchers from a
variety of fields will address specific, real-world problems; initial
topics include privacy, e-commerce, multicore computing and embedded
medical devices. In addition, the center will develop and disseminate
courses and curricula suitable for graduate and undergrad students, as
well as K–12 classes. The center will also host a series of "mindswaps"
for the purpose of data sharing, problem solving, resource sharing and
collaborating on bigger computer challenges. Find out more about the
center online.
Find out more about careers in
computer science...
Degree
Profile: Electrical and Electronics Engineering
 Electrical
and electronics engineers conduct research, and design, develop, test,
and oversee the development of electronic systems and the manufacture of
electrical and electronic equipment and devices.
From the global positioning system that can continuously provide the
location of a vehicle to giant electric power generators, electrical and
electronics engineers are responsible for a wide range of technologies.
 Electrical
and electronics engineers design, develop, test, and supervise the
manufacture of electrical and electronic equipment. Some of this
equipment includes broadcast and communications systems; electric
motors, machinery controls, lighting, and wiring in buildings,
automobiles, aircraft, and radar and navigation systems; and power
generating, controlling, and transmission devices used by electric
utilities. Many electrical and electronics engineers also work in areas
closely related to computers.
Electrical engineers direct
systems control at Walt Disney World in Florida, manage graduate
programs at Intel in California, design aircraft electrical power
systems at Boeing in Seattle, and research electrochemotherapy for
biomedical companies nationwide.
Find out more about career paths in
electrical and electronics
engineering....
Bizarre
Hexagon Observed on Saturn
 An
odd, six-sided, honeycomb-shaped feature circling the entire north pole
of Saturn has captured the interest of scientists with NASA's Cassini
mission. NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft imaged the feature over two
decades ago. The fact that it has appeared in Cassini images indicates
that it is a long-lived feature. A second hexagon, significantly darker
than the brighter historical feature, is also visible in the Cassini
pictures. The spacecraft's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer is
the first instrument to capture the entire hexagon feature in one image.
"We've never seen anything like this on any other planet. Indeed,
Saturn's thick atmosphere where circularly-shaped waves and convective
cells dominate is perhaps the last place you'd expect to see such a
six-sided geometric figure, yet there it is," said Kevin Baines,
atmospheric expert and member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping
spectrometer team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA.
The hexagon is similar to Earth's polar vortex, which has winds blowing
in a circular pattern around the polar region. On Saturn, the vortex has
a hexagonal rather than circular shape. The hexagon is nearly 25,000
kilometers (15,000 miles) across. Nearly four Earths could fit inside
it.
The new images taken in thermal-infrared light show the hexagon extends
much deeper down into the atmosphere than previously expected, some 100
kilometers (60 miles) below the cloud tops. A system of clouds lies
within the hexagon. The clouds appear to be whipping around the hexagon
like cars on a racetrack. The hexagon appears to have remained fixed
with Saturn's rotation rate and axis since first glimpsed by Voyager 26
years ago. The actual rotation rate of Saturn is still uncertain. "Once
we understand its dynamical nature, this long-lived, deep-seated polar
hexagon may give us a clue to the true rotation rate of the deep
atmosphere and perhaps the interior," added Baines.
Find out more...
Stem-Cell
Treatment for Heart Attacks
 Dramatic
findings have been released by Joshua Hare, M.D., chief of the Division
of Cardiology and director of the
Interdisciplinary Stem Cell Institute at the University of Miami's
Miller School of Medicine, on the first human clinical trial to test a
stem-cell based treatment for heart attack patients. The phase one
trial was designed to determine the safety and efficacy of infusing
adult human mesenchymal stems cells intravenously in patients within
days of a myocardial infarction, or heart attack, to lessen damage to
the heart muscle.
Fifty-three patients, who had suffered a first heart attack within one
to ten days, were enrolled at ten medical centers across the U.S.
beginning in February 2005. "Over the six month follow-up period the
stem cell treated patients had lower rates of side effects such as
cardiac arrhythmias, and they had significant improvements in heart,
lung and global function," said Hare. "Echocardiography showed improved
heart function, particularly in those patients with large amounts of
cardiac damage."
As a cell-based therapy, mesenchymal stem cells have several unique
advantages: they can be taken from genetically distinct donors, are easy
to prepare, and have a tendency to collect within injured areas. This
year an estimated 700,000 Americans will suffer a heart attack, and
despite the best care many will go on to develop congestive heart
failure from the muscle damage caused by the heart attack. The promise
of stem cell therapy in reversing or preventing that damage provides a
significant benefit in an area of unmet medical need.
Find out more about career paths in
medicine and
bioengineering....
Extreme
Data Computing
 Boeing
and Sun Microsystems Federal, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sun
Microsystems, Inc., have announced plans to launch an industry-leading,
open architecture that will enable organizations to collect, process,
and store massive amounts of data at extremely high rates of speed.
Capable of processing more than 10 gigabits of data per second, the
joint solution is designed to foster data analysis, sharing and decision
making for a variety of markets, including government, life science,
energy, education, aerospace, entertainment and media. Ten gigabits per
second is equivalent to processing 250 copies of the complete works of
Shakespeare or 125 chest x-rays in one second. The architecture
addresses the computing demands of several data-intensive tasks,
including: operational intelligence and surveillance, epidemic trend
analysis and prediction, failure analysis of aircraft and ships,
predictive traffic management, weather and ocean forecasting, and
virtual design. Target applications for the 10 gigabit technology
include experimental analyses and simulations in scientific disciplines
such as high-energy physics, climate modeling, earthquake engineering,
astronomy, human genomics and the development of nano-scale electronic
devices. In such applications, massive datasets must be shared by a
community of hundreds or thousands of researchers distributed worldwide.
Find out more about careers in
computer engineering and
software engineering...
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