Volume IV Issue 8
August 2008 |
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 Research
Paves Way for Better Roads
 The
next generation of asphalt and concrete pavements used to build and
rebuild roads, bridges, and other paved surfaces may well be based on a
design guide produced by researchers from Arizona State University's Ira
A. Fulton School of Engineering. Officials with the Transportation
Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences and the American
Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), have
approved new design guidelines for pavements developed by a team led by
Matthew Witczak, a professor in the Department of Civil and
Environmental Engineering.
AASHTO launched a study in
1999 into upgrading the methods by which asphalt and concrete pavements
were designed. It included everything from pavements for roads and
bridges to airfields, shipping ports, and rail lines. As a result, ASU
studied new ways to design and construct asphalt and concrete pavements.
The project became the largest transport study to be conducted in the
United States, leading to an extensive update of the design guide. The
new version provides different design and building guidelines for
different locations based on varying climate, soil and other
environmental conditions. The team researched how soil changes due to
climate conditions and its impact on pavement performance. This will
help predict how well a road will be hold up in 10 or 15 years. The
complexity of the design guide requires the final analysis to be done
with the use of a computer program, which enables assessment of how much
stress will make pavements crack.
 Find
out more about career paths in
materials engineering...
Math,
Science, & Technology Competition
 Registration
is now open for the 2008-09 Siemens Competition in Math, Science &
Technology. The Siemens Competition attracts entries from high school
science and math students nationwide. In the 2007-08 competition, 1,641
students registered to enter. The $100,000 Grand Prize winners for
2007-08 represented the first young women to earn the top individual and
team prizes. Isha Jain, a senior at Freedom High School in Bethlehem,
PA, won top honors for her research on bone growth. The team of Janelle
Schlossberger and Amanda Marinoff, seniors at Plainview-Old Bethpage
John F. Kennedy High School in Plainview, NY, were commended for their
research on tuberculosis. Students may enter as individuals or as
members of a team. The deadline for entries for the 2008-2009
competition is October 1, 2008. More details are
online.
There are many national and regional engineering, math, and science
projects that offer students an opportunity to network with other
students, meet professionals in the field, and gain experience.
Find
out more about precollege programs and
projects...
Technical
Disciplines Command Highest Salaries
 New
college graduates with degrees in the engineering and computer science
fields boast the highest average starting salaries, according to a new
report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE).
The NACE Salary Survey shows that chemical engineering graduates are
currently pulling the highest average starting salary offer of $63,616,
followed by computer engineering graduates at $59,962.
In fact, many disciplines have seen their starting salaries offers rise by
10 percent or more over the last year. For example, the average offer to
computer science graduates skyrocketed 14.7 percent from $52,177 in
Spring 2007 to $59,873 currently. Also aerospace engineers saw an 11.3
percent increase from $52,131 to $57,999. And hefty increases aren't
limited to the technical fields. The average offer to psychology
graduates rose 10.7 percent from $30,751 to $34,054.
Conversely, many of the business disciplines seem to be feeling the
effects of changes in the economy and have seen little movement in their
average starting salary offers. For example, the current average salary
offer to accounting majors -- $47,429 -- is literally just a few dollars
higher than the average these grads posted in Spring 2007.
Keep
up to date with all the salary trends for careers in
science,
technology,
engineering,
mathematics,
computing, and
healthcare.
Degree
Profile: Respiratory Therapist
 Respiratory
therapists evaluate, treat, and care for patients with breathing or
other cardiopulmonary disorders. Practicing under the direction of a
physician, respiratory therapists assume primary responsibility for all
respiratory care therapeutic treatments and diagnostic procedures,
including the supervision of respiratory therapy technicians.
Respiratory therapists consult with physicians and other health care
staff to help develop and modify patient care plans. They evaluate and
treat all types of patients, ranging from premature infants whose lungs
are not fully developed to elderly people whose lungs are diseased.
Respiratory therapists provide temporary relief to patients with chronic
asthma or emphysema, and they give emergency care to patients who are
victims of a heart attack, stroke, drowning, or shock.
 To
evaluate patients, respiratory therapists interview them, perform
limited physical examinations, and conduct diagnostic tests. To treat
patients, respiratory therapists use oxygen or oxygen mixtures, chest
physiotherapy, and aerosol medications -- liquid medications suspended
in a gas that forms a mist which is inhaled. An associate degree is the
minimum educational requirement, but a bachelor's or master's degree may
be important for advancement. All States, except Alaska and Hawaii,
require respiratory therapists to be licensed.
Find
out more about a career as a
respiratory
therapist...
First
Steps Toward Autonomous Robot Surgeries
 The
day may be getting a little closer when robots will perform surgery on
patients in dangerous situations or in remote locations, such as on the
battlefield or in space, with minimal human guidance. Engineers at Duke
University believe that the results of feasibility studies conducted in
their laboratory represent the first concrete steps toward achieving
this space age vision of the future. Also, on a more immediate level,
the technology developed by the engineers could make certain
contemporary medical procedures safer for patients, they said.
For their experiments, the engineers started with a rudimentary tabletop
robot whose "eyes" used a novel 3-D ultrasound technology developed in
the Duke laboratories. An artificial intelligence program served as the
robot's "brain" by taking real-time 3-D information, processing it, and
giving the robot specific commands to perform. The results of a series
of experiments on the robot system directing catheters inside synthetic
blood vessels demonstrated that the autonomous robot system could
successfully perform a simulated needle biopsy. Advances in ultrasound
technology have made these latest experiments possible, the researchers
said, by generating detailed, 3-D moving images in real-time.
The Duke laboratory has a long track record of modifying traditional 2-D
ultrasound -- like that used to image babies in utero -- into the more
advanced 3-D scans. After inventing the technique in 1991, the team also
has shown its utility in developing specialized catheters and endoscopes
for real-time imaging of blood vessels in the heart and brain. In the
latest experiment, the robot successfully performed its main task:
directing a needle on the end of the robotic arm to touch the tip of
another needle within a blood vessel graft. The robot's needle was
guided by a tiny 3-D ultrasound transducer, the "wand" that collects the
3-D images, attached to a catheter commonly used in angioplasty
procedures. While the research will continue to refine the ability of
robots to perform independent procedures, the new technology could also
have more direct and immediate applications.
Find
out more about careers in engineering
and healthcare...
Experiment
Sheds Light on Ketchup Phenomenon
 Using
data recovered from a damaged computer hard-drive that was aboard the
ill-fated Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003, scientists have recently
learned more about why the act of shaking a material can quickly
transform it into something completely different. One of the best
examples of this phenomenon is ordinary ketchup. Shake the bottle and
the semi-solid paste becomes a runny liquid. Food scientists do the
shaking in a controlled way by putting ketchup (and other processed
foods) into a rheometer (rheo, meaning "flow") to see how its viscosity
-- the scientific word for stickiness -- decreases when shaken. Robert
Berg and his colleagues at the National Institute of Standards and
Technology wanted to do more than measure viscosity. They wanted to know
why the changes happen through "shear thinning," a phenomenon in which
agitation enhances a force that cuts across weak attachments among atoms
or molecules. Understanding shear thinning is a big deal in the
industrial world of processed foods, polymers, and paints. For instance,
motor oil's viscosity can be degraded by the movement of engine parts,
and the application of paint to a surface can be easy or hard depending
on the manner of the brushstroke.
To better understand the microscopic relation between viscosity and
shear thinning, the NIST scientists looked at how the thinning works in
an unusual fluid -- the gas xenon. The trick is, xenon's own weight--as
light as it is--still can compress the sample of the gas enough to throw
off the delicate measurements that were needed. To do a proper study,
the experiment needed a zero-gravity environment. And so up it went in
Columbia. Fortunately, NASA found the hard drive and the packaged
experiment among Columbia's debris. While in orbit aboard Columbia, the
xenon was gently stirred by a fine mesh, a sort of tiny tennis racket.
Stirring harder decreased the viscosity, confirming a decades-long
theory about the relation between shear thinning and stirring.
Find
out more about careers in science
and engineering...
Research
on Underrepresented Minorities in STEM
 The
National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering has released new
research that quantifies a growing "opportunity gap" in the number of
minority students pursuing degrees and careers in science and
technology. In what NACME characterizes as "the 'New' American Dilemma,"
the
report shows that rates of participation by African Americans,
American Indians, and Latinos in science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics (STEM) fields have flatlined, and in some cases have
actually declined. At a time when the pursuit of careers in science and
technology is a major indicator of the nation's ability to be
competitive and economically strong, the report finds a vast pool of
minority students who aren't prepared for STEM fields and who thus can't
contribute to the solution. Among other statistics, the report reveals
that the proportion of bachelor's degrees in engineering awarded to
African Americans between 1995 and 2005 has declined. In addition,
though Latinos are expected to account for 25% of the U.S. population by
the mid-21st century, the gap in educational attainment for Latinos
relative to non-Hispanic whites has widened.
Find
out more about careers in STEM and
diversity support...
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