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Do some of your students struggle
with alertness during your lectures?
Well, if sleepyhead students are
a problem in your classes, don’t
even think about making your material
more interesting or your delivery
more entertaining. There might be
an easier cure: acupressure. Researchers
at the University of Michigan Health
System found that students who self-administer
acupressure—a regimen of light
tapping or massaging—at stimulation
points on the legs, feet, hands
and heads were able to fend off
classroom fatigue. Those who used
acupressure but instead focused
on relaxation points did not fare
nearly as well.
The study used 39 students attending
an executive education program at
Michigan’s School of Public
Health that required them to sit
through three days of all-day lectures.
To assess how tired the participants
were, the investigators used the
validated Stanford Sleepiness Scale.
The finding, says Richard E. Harris,
a researcher at the school’s
Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research
Center, “could be very good
news for students who have trouble
staying alert at school.”
Further study, he adds, might “determine
whether acupressure also can have
an impact on performance in the
classroom, as well.” Talk
about pressure to get good grades.
—Thomas K. Grose
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A new campaign to whip grade
inflation at Princeton University
is making “real strides,”
the school reports. The policy seeks
to curb the number of A’s
awarded. In the 2004-05 school year,
A’s accounted for 40.9 percent
of grades, down from 46 percent.
The goal is to reduce A’s
to less than 35 percent. A’s
awarded in engineering courses dropped
from 48 percent to 43.2 percent,
and in the natural sciences, the
A’s held steady at about 36.4
percent. In social sciences, A’s
were down nearly 4 points to 38.4
percent, but the biggest decrease
was in the humanities, where the
percentage of A’s awarded
fell from 56.2 to 45.5. The committee
overseeing the policy says if similar
progress is made this academic year,
the goal will be met. For now, however,
what used to be referred to as the
“Gentleman’s C”
remains safe. —TG
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BY THE NUMBERS |
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In
2001, U.S. industry spent
more money on tort litigation
than on research and development. |
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Let’s say you’re
attempting to put a bit of salt
on your fries, but the salt’s
not flowing out of the shaker too
well. The top’s not clogged,
so what do you do? Probably bang
on it a bit and shake it even harder,
right? But researchers at Duke University
have determined all that banging
and shaking will likely make matters
worse. Physics professor Robert
Behringer, working with postdoc
researcher Karen Daniels (who has
since joined the faculty at North
Carolina State University), has
discovered that the more that granules
in a container are agitated, the
more likely they are to clump together
into a rigid mass. That led them
to develop a method to either make
granules “freeze” into
a solid-state crystal formation
or “melt” so they flow
like a liquid. “Our technique,”
Behringer says, “allows us
to both control and measure the
effect of different ways to energize
a granular material, which has not
been possible before.” The
real-world applications, he says,
could help solve some “common
engineering problems,” like
predicting the stability of a dirt
embankment or how best to un-jam
coal or gravel hoppers and grain
silos. Working with a container
full of plastic beads, Behringer
and Daniels first stirred the mix
and saw that the top beads became
more disordered and flowed more
like liquid. But when they sharply
vibrated the container, the movement
of the top beads became more uniform
and the mix solidified. “As
I shake it harder, everything freezes
up,” Daniels says. Conclusion:
If you shake and rattle granules,
they won’t roll. —TG
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In
1869, Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleyeve
published the first Periodic Table
listing the world’s known
elements, which together make up
almost everything there is. Today,
scientists recognize 83 elements,
which are differentiated by the
positive electrical charge in their
central nucleus. There are another
10 trace elements, the byproducts
of the radioactive breakdown of
the two heaviest elements. Another
20 elements are manmade.
Nineteenth-century researchers
figured out that by listing elements
by weight of their atoms, it’s
possible to see recurrences of their
chemical characteristics. (They’ve
since been arranged by how much
charge their nucleus holds.) That
inspired Mendeleyeve to devise the
table, which placed the elements
in rows and columns. But sequences
were broken up, and even Mendeleyeve
realized it wasn’t an adequate
format. The best arrangement, he
felt, would be a cylindrical helix,
but that’s a 3-D abstraction—no
good for a chart. So scientists
over the decades have tried to improve
the table’s design.
The latest version comes from Oxford
University ecologist Philip Stewart.
It’s based on the galaxy Andromeda
and is a counterclockwise spiral
he’s dubbed the Chemical Galaxy.
Elements that are chemically linked
spin out in arms from the center,
which is home to neutronium, the
heaviest of the elements. “The
intention,” Stewart writes,
“is not to replace the familiar
table but to complement it and at
the same time to stimulate the imagination
and to evoke wonder at the order
underlying the universe.”
Stewart’s galaxy chart certainly
looks better than Mendeleyev’s
prosaic table. It looks so good,
in fact, that it’s become
a popular poster. Want one? Head
here: http://www.sciencemall-usa.com/petapo.html
—TG
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Autonomy has long been the byword
for America’s colleges and
universities in setting policies.
Though the federal government accounts
for a third of spending on higher
education, it pretty much stays
out of things. Is that about to
change with the U.S. Department
of Education’s formation of
a 19-member commission charged with
delivering a “comprehensive
national strategy on the future
of higher education?”
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings
says no. It’s not about intrusion,
she says; it’s about “how
we can get the most out of our national
investment.” That still sounds
like meddling to the Cato Institute,
a right-leaning think tank. “If
they’re going to have a national
strategy, who is going to implement
it other than the federal government?”
asks Neal P. McCluskey, a policy
analyst at the institute’s
Center for Educational Freedom,
as quoted in the Chronicle of Higher
Education. The commission is to
focus on rising enrollments and
costs and how colleges can help
make America more competitive.
Eleven of the commissioners have
backgrounds in higher education,
including the panel’s head,
Charles Mil-ler, former chairman
of the University of Texas Board
of Regents. Four members are retired
university presidents, three are
professors and several members come
from the business community. The
American Federation of Teachers
was irked that no one from a teachers’
union was included and wrote to
Spellings to say that an organization
such as theirs that represents thousands
upon thousands of faculty members
should have been on the commission.
—TG
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QUOTED |
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"America
must act now to preserve its
strategic and economic security
by capitalizing on its knowledge-based
resources, particularly in S&T,
and maintaining the most fertile
environment for new and revitalized
industries that create well-paying
jobs."
- NORMAN R. AUGUSTINE, RETIRED
CHAIRMAN AND CEO OF LOCKHEED
MARTIN CORP. |
|

AUSTRALIA—Veena Sahajwalla
can’t resist red-hot ovens.
“They’re so attractive
and fascinating,” jokes Sahajwalla,
who recently won a major prize for
developing an economically effective
way to make high-grade steel from
waste plastic. Sahajwalla is a professor
at the University of New South Wales
School of Materials Science and
Engineering.
“About 40 percent of the
world's steel is produced in electric
arc furnaces operating at 2,912
degrees Fahrenheit,” she says.
Up to 30 percent of the coal in
these furnaces can be replaced with
recycled plastic, and she is aiming
for even more. Not only does waste
plastic replace coal as a carbon
source, but it also acts as a fuel—reducing
power for the furnace. The extreme
temperatures of steelmaking eliminate
pollutants such as dioxins.
In her lab, Sahajwalla used scrap
from automobile wrecking yards and
discarded home appliances from trash
bins as well as industrial waste
metal to make steel—plastic
from bottles and bags supplied the
heat. She is negotiating with leading
steel producers in Australia and
the United States. —Chris
Pritchard
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Photo
by John Bush, David Hu, Brian Chan
The Robostrider is comprised of
a 7-Up can fitted with three sets
of stainless steel wire legs; it’s
powered by an elastic band connected
to a pulley to move the middle set
of legs. It may sound like a junk-room
robot, but darned if the contraption
built by Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT) researchers
can’t skim across the top
of a water surface. The Robostrider
mimicks the movement of water striders,
insects that skate across the surface
of ponds and oceans. Earlier research
at Stanford University determined
that baby striders move as well
as adults, but paradoxically, they
weren’t swimming because their
tiny legs weren’t able to
create waves. MIT associate professor
of mathematics John W.M. Bush, along
with Brian Chan, a graduate student
in mechanical engineering, and David
L. Hu, a math grad student, solved
the riddle using math, high-speed
photography and flow visualization
techniques. It seems the tips of
the strider’s spindly legs
make microscopic indentations in
the water as they rest on the surface.
The insect uses its middle legs
to oar itself forward while the
water in the indentations quivers
like a drumhead. The sculling does
create little waves, but they don’t
move it forward. Instead, what propels
the bug is subsurface vortices.
Fine leg hairs keep them afloat.
And they’re peppy, too: Striders
can reach speeds of 150 centimeters
per second. Once the team figured
out how the little buggers moved,
they cobbled together the Robostrider
to prove their point. –TG
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Two Gulf Coast universities are
on track to complete their fall
semesters, despite being knocked
out of business for several weeks
by powerful Hurricane Rita, which
blew through parts of Texas and
Louisiana in late September. Lamar
University in Beaumont, Texas, sustained
wind and water damage to buildings,
blown-out windows and downed trees;
20 campus roofs were either destroyed
or heavily damaged. Tons of debris
had to be cleared as well. Lamar
reopened its campus Oct. 17, and
classes resumed two days later.
McNeese State University in Lake
Charles, La., recommenced its fall
schedule on Oct. 24. President Robert
Hebert says the process of reopening
the school was arduous and frustrating.
Each room of each building had to
be inspected and OK’d by teams
from several state agencies, including
environmental and architectural
assessment teams. The state’s
Office of Risk Management sent in
mechanical and engineering inspectors.
And because Louisiana had been whacked
by the even-more destructive Hurricane
Katrina only weeks before Rita,
“state assessment crews have
been stretched pretty thin,”
a school official notes, and that
slowed the process. —TG
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University of Colorado students
nabbed first place in the 2005 Solar
Decathlon, beating out 17 other
teams in a quest to create the most
attractive, effective and energy-efficient
solar-powered home.
The two-week contest, which created
a solar village on the National
Mall in Washington, began under
cloudy skies and rain. But students
in engineering, architecture, computer
science, public relations, marketing
and other disciplines persevered
with their solar creations. The
houses, designed by teams from the
United States, Canada and Spain,
were judged on architecture, livability,
comfort and how well the homes provided
energy for space heating and cooling,
hot water, lighting and appliances.
The homes also had to provide enough
extra power to fuel an electric
car.
Cornell, California Polytechnic
Institute and Virginia Tech finished
second, third and fourth, respectively,
in the Department of Energy contest.
The Colorado students used the poor
weather to their advantage, developing
a strategy to gain points using
the energy they collected on a series
of very cloudy days to keep their
car charged. A University of Colorado
team also won the last competition,
held in 2002. –Lynne Shallcross
Photos
by Stefano Paltera / Solar Decathlon
- Top Right: University of Colorado’s
prize- winning house. Bottom: Cornell’s
house, which took 2nd prize
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Is the sheepskin losing its
economic advantage? Business Week
magazine crunched the latest (2004)
income figures from the Census Bureau
and discovered that for four years
in a row, real income for bachelor’s
degree-holders has fallen. Last
year, real income for degree-holders
dropped 4.9 percent. Income for
high school-educated workers dropped
just 0.2 percent; for those with
“some college” education,
the falloff was 4.5 percent; and
associate degree-holders’
income edged back 2.5 percent. Those
with advanced degrees, however,
saw their real income rise 2.5 percent.
Still, earnings for those with undergraduate
degrees are 10 percent higher than
they were in 1994. So it would take
some time for the college advantage
to be erased. Business Week surmises
there might be several reasons for
the decline: skilled jobs heading
overseas, an oversupply of college-trained
workers, technology that requires
fewer skills to use or an ongoing,
but temporary, effect from the bursting
of the tech bubble. Whatever the
cause, the trend should worry universities.
–TG
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