NASSMC Executive Director Activities: LCASE, Department of Energy, Delaware Foundation for Science and Mathematics Education
NASSMC Executive Director Jim McMurtray spoke on Saturday, September 15, at the Leadership Conference on Aviation and Space Education (LCASE) as part of the Concepts for the Future panel. Other panelists included Karen Elzey (U.S. Chamber of Commerce), Brian Finnegan (Professional Aviation Maintenance Association), and Peter Wolfe (Professional Aviation Board of Certification). The entire schedule is available here.
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McMurtray also just finished serving on the Department of Energy Workforce Development for Teachers and Scientists (WDTS) Future Workforce Strategies program peer review. The three-day review was held to determine if the Department of Energy's WDTS programs:
- Address the education and workforce needs of the Department of Energy and of the Nation.
- Are consistent with Section 3165 of the Science Education Enhancement Act of 1990, provisions of the 2005 Energy Policy Act, Title 5 of the America Competes Act and other relevant Department of Energy legislation that authorizes science education and workforce development activities.
- Use available resources for maximum participant benefit.
- Foster trusted partnerships and collaboration with industry, academia, and other government agencies.
- Enable management decisions that are informed by the results of systematic and rigorous evaluations of program benefits and effectiveness.
- Support plans for program implementation that are sufficient to meet WDTS mission goals.
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McMurtray presented at the Getting Down to Business with Science and Math meeting on September 26 about the innovative and effective initiatives from the other state coalitions around the country in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. The presentation is part of a stakeholders meeting sponsored by the Delaware Foundation for Science and Mathematics Education (DFSME) along with Agilent, AstraZeneca, Delaware Biotechnology Institute, DuPont, and the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce. The half-day event was an opportunity for businesses to share information about their successful programs in K-12 science and mathematics education.
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Of Interest...
| Items selected for this section come from a variety of sources – including but not limited to NASA, NSF, ESA, Science (AAAS), Nature, Smithsonian, New Scientist, Live Science, Science News, and Discover Magazine – and are meant to represent the vast and ever-changing body of scientific research. Selected for their interest value, these items are neither juried nor validated by NASSMC or its member coalitions. |
+ Scientists warn of 'vocal terror': In the future, it may be possible to mimic someone's voice exactly after recording just one sentence. Such technologies would pose a danger if it were not possible to verify who was speaking, researchers believe. Scientists were predicting the future at the British Association (BA) Festival of Science in York. Dr David Howard from the University of York said: "The reason things are changing is because no longer are we using an acoustic model proposed in the 1950s." ~via BBC News Science/Nature
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| Artist concept of Phoenix in space. Image credit: NASA/JPL. |
+ Phoenix Mars Lander status report: Radar and other gear pass checkouts: Two crucial tools for a successful landing of America's latest mission to Mars, the radar and UHF radio on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, have passed in-flight checkouts. The ultra-high-frequency radio won't be turned on again until landing day, May 25, 2008, when it will relay communications from Phoenix to orbiters already in service around Mars. Since launch on Aug. 4, 2007, and until the day it reaches Mars, Phoenix is communicating directly with Earth via even higher frequency X-band radio, mounted on a part of the spacecraft that will be jettisoned shortly before Phoenix hits the top of the Martian atmosphere. ~via NASA
+ Astronomers Find Enormous Hole in the Universe: Astronomers have found an enormous hole in the Universe, nearly a billion light-years across, empty of both normal matter such as stars, galaxies, and gas, and the mysterious, unseen "dark matter." While earlier studies have shown holes, or voids, in the large-scale structure of the Universe, this new discovery dwarfs them all. "Not only has no one ever found a void this big, but we never even expected to find one this size," said Lawrence Rudnick of the University of Minnesota. Rudnick, along with Shea Brown and Liliya R. Williams, also of the University of Minnesota, reported their findings in a paper accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. Astronomers have known for years that, on large scales, the Universe has voids largely empty of matter. However, most of these voids are much smaller than the one found by Rudnick and his colleagues. In addition, the number of discovered voids decreases as the size increases. ~National Radio Astronomy Observatory, via NSF
+ Mathematical cosmos: Reality by numbers: What is the meaning of life, the universe and everything? In the sci-fi spoof The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the answer was found to be 42; the hardest part turned out to be finding the real question. Indeed, although our inquisitive ancestors undoubtedly asked such big questions, their search for a "theory of everything" evolved as their knowledge grew. As the ancient Greeks replaced myth-based explanations with mechanistic models of the solar system, their emphasis shifted from asking "why" to asking "how".~via New Scientist
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| A new fabrication technique, known as soft interference lithography (SIL), makes it possible to inexpensively produce large sheets of gold films with virtually infinite arrays of perforations and microscale "patches" of nanoscale holes.(Legend: Si=silicon; Cr=chromium; PEEL=a fabrication procedure Odom and her colleagues developed to make free standing films.)
Credit: Reprinted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: "Multiscale patterning of plasmonic metamaterials," Joel Henzie, Min Hyung Lee and Teri W. Odom, Nature Nanotechnology 2, 549 - 554 (2007 |
+ Nanomaterials with a bright future: An innovative and inexpensive way of making nanomaterials on a large scale has resulted in novel forms of advanced materials that pave the way for exceptional and unexpected optical properties. The new fabrication technique, known as soft lithography, or SIL, offers many significant advantages over existing techniques, including the ability to scale-up the manufacturing process to produce devices in large quantities. The research, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and led by Teri Odom of Northwestern University, appears as the cover story in the September 2007 issue of Nature Nanotechnology. ~via NSF
+ Quantum threat to our secret data: It might seem like an esoteric achievement of interest to only a handful of computer scientists, but the advent of quantum computers that can run a routine called Shor's algorithm could have profound consequences. It means the most dangerous threat posed by quantum computing - the ability to break the codes that protect our banking, business and e-commerce data - is now a step nearer reality. Adding to the worry is the fact that this feat has been performed by not one but two research groups, independently of each other. One team is led by Andrew White at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and the other by Chao-Yang Lu of the University of Science and Technology of China, in Hefei. Both groups have built rudimentary laser-based quantum computers that can implement Shor's algorithm - a mathematical routine capable of defeating today's most common encryption systems, such as RSA. ~via New Scientist
+ Virtual worlds open up to blind: Online virtual worlds could soon be accessible to blind people thanks to research by students at IBM in Ireland. Some estimates predict that 80% of active internet users will be using a virtual world in four years' time. The company said that it is keen to ensure that blind people are not excluded from an environment that sighted people will take for granted. The students have designed an audio equivalent of the virtual world using 3D sound to create a sense of space. ~via BBC News Science/Nature
+ Brain connections cause rethink over human memory: How do we store so many memories? It is a question that has puzzled neuroscientists for decades - and now it seems that our concept of how memory works may have been wrong all along. It was originally assumed that the number of memories was proportional to the number of neurons in a network. Given that even 1 cubic centimetre of the brain's cortex contains about 50 million neurons, it seemed that the brain could indeed store masses of information. However, this model relied on the notion that each neuron is connected to every other neuron, whereas a neuron is actually connected to between 5000 and 10,000 others. Neuroscientists then proposed that the number of memories was proportional to the number of connections per neuron. Now Yasser Roudi and Peter Latham at University College London have found a problem with this model too. They calculated that even with 10,000 connections per neuron, a network could only store about 100 memories - regardless of how many neurons were in the network (PLoS Computational Biology, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.0030141). ~via New Scientist
+ New evidence on the role of climate in Neanderthal extinction: The mystery of what killed the Neanderthals has moved a step closer to resolution after an international study led by the University of Leeds has ruled out one of the competing theories – catastrophic climate change – as the most likely cause. The bones of more than 400 Neanderthals have been found since the first discoveries were made in the early 19th century. The finds suggest the Neanderthals, named after the Neander Valley near Düsseldorf, where they were first recognized as an extinct kind of archaic humans, inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia for more than 100,000 years. ~University of Leeds, via NSF
+ Russia Tests Powerful Vacuum Bomb: The Russian military has successfully tested what it described as the world's most powerful non-nuclear air-delivered bomb, Russia's state television reported Tuesday. It was the latest show of Russia's military muscle amid chilly relations with the United States. Channel One television said the new weapon, nicknamed the "dad of all bombs" is four times more powerful than the U.S. "mother of all bombs." ~via LiveScience
+ Brain's Capacity Limited by Connectivity Issues: If you can't remember where you left the car keys, take comfort in a new study that suggests the brain's memory capacity may be far lower than once thought. About 100 billion neurons, or brain cells, make up the average adult's brain, but the computer-based discovery shows our memory isn't based simply on neuron numbers. Instead, the limited amount of connections a neuron can make to other neurons may cut memory capacity. ~via LiveScience
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