Tag Archives: engineering

Not likely: Engineers "Doing Well by Doing Good"

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CC Ed Schipul

(Do-gooders? Rice University Bioengineering Lab. Photo: CC Ed Schipul)

The engineering professional association IEEE reports that engineers are fairing well.

Good for them.

But to say they are “doing well by doing good” is laughable, generally speaking.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers cites technologists working on “solar energy and search engines, cellphones and fuel cells, DNA sequencing and Hollywood blockbusters,” as fairly pathetic examples of do-gooding.

The IEEE goes on in this bit (below) to admit that aerospace and defense, and consumer electronics, are actually the industries keeping engineers in good stead.

IEEE Spectrum: Engineers Are Doing Well by Doing Good
This rise in starting salaries would be even higher were companies not able to get young talent from such places as India, China, and Romania. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that over the next decade, EE ­employment will grow much more slowly than other ­engineering areas, because of the job outflux to other ­countries.

"Vegetative" brains process speech

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Terry Schiavo might have heard everything, after all.

Getty Images

Terry Schiavo. Photo: Getty Images

A new brain wave study finds that many people in persistent vegetative states, while unable to express themselves, are reacting internally to what they hear. The U.S. government does not keep track of the number plugs pulled on these patients, who might have been partially conscious, and aware of their fates. — mb

IEEE Spectrum: Brain-wave Test Challenges Vegetative-State Diagnosis
Of the 38 participants considered persistently vegetative, 22 percent responded to semantic errors with an N400wave effect. The group found similar results when testing the ability to discriminate between tones of different pitches. The data suggest that these patients are capable of a higher level of processing than previously thought. Although they cannot interact with their environment, many people with severe brain injuries may still be responding to it internally.

MIT's plug-in Porsche

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In MIT’s electric Porsche, I could reach my in-law’s Cape home in 39 minutes, and still have some juice left to take the kids out for ice cream.

Students at MIT’s Electrochemical Laboratory have stuffed this 1976 Porsche (right) with batteries, and are limiting their experiments to MIT parking lots.

One MIT grad student says the Porsche consumes the electrical equivalent of 65 miles per gallon.

MIT student ingenuity plus high-tech batteries yields advanced all-electric Porsche – MIT News Office
With a click and a hum, the sleek Porsche 914 pulled away from the curb while onlookers watched anxiously and the passenger gazed down at a laptop plugged into the dashboard.

Why the drama? Once powered by a conventional gasoline engine, the 1976 Porsche now operates on 18 high-tech batteries–the result of work by dedicated MIT students and their mentors.