April 2004

Welcome to the April issue of Connections, the American Society for Engineering Education's free e-newsletter.

Spotlight On Our Sponsors:

• Autodesk AutoCAD 2005
  www.autodesk.com/aer
• Miximize NI Academic Site Licenses
  http://digital.ni.com
• Journey ED, Engineering Software
  www.JourneyEd.com
• Visual Numerics, Advanced Analytics
  www.vni.com
• Revolutionary Materials Engineering Seminar
  www.grantadesign.com
• Management Science Workshop
  www.informs.org
• Electronics Workbench, Commsim 7
  electronicsworkbench.com

NEW! Autodesk's AutoCAD 2005

Once they've got the great idea, what's next?

When your students go digital with AutoCAD® 2005, anything can happen. A single drawing or a complete, coordinated set of drawings. AutoCAD 2005 is the latest version of the collaboration-driven AutoCAD general design platform. This is the 2D drafting and design and basic 3D visualization software that professionals use worldwide. And for good reason: All the new features enable them to work faster, with fewer mistakes. Your students can too. Plus they can share their work more quickly and more easily. That means a lot to a team of inspired, and usually impatient, students. Get them started on AutoCAD 2005 today.

For information and pricing, contact your local Authorized Autodesk Education Reseller by calling 800-964-6432 or going to www.autodesk.com/aer.

Maximize the NI Academic Site License to Improve Your Research and Curriculum

Whether you are looking for a cost-effective way to outfit an individual department or an entire campus with industry-leading engineering and scientific software, we invite you to attend an introductory 45-minute Web event to learn about the incredible value offered in the NI academic site license that includes:

• Unlimited installations of all software, including the powerful graphical development environment, NI LabVIEW
• Add-on modules available for math, signal processing, control, image processing, and more
• Award-winning maintenance and support programs
• Complete training resources available for instructors

Discover all of the software available from NI to enhance your curriculum and research! Register for this live event here: http://digital.ni.com.

JourneyEd.com is your source for educationally priced software. We offer students and faculty all your popular Engineering software titles. This includes:

ProE WildFire..... $149.98
AutoCAD 2005....$379.98
Inventor Pro 7.......$499.98
Architectural Desktop....$379.98
SolidWorks...........$199.98
Microstation 8.1....$195.00
CadKey.................$189.98
Chief Architect......$189.98

Microsoft, Adobe, Macromedia, Alias, Avid and many other software titles are available at academic pricing. Faculty can request a free box of Software Catalogs for your students. Visit us online at www.JourneyEd.com or call us at 1-800-874-9001.

Advanced Analytics for Education

Visual Numerics has been providing advanced analytics and visualization tools to educational institutions for over three decades. Our educational customers have trusted Visual Numerics to deliver the tools they need to conduct critical research and build leading edge curricula.

Find out more about our education services that allow institutions to support interactive teaching and learning environments. Our offerings include a special education program, Knowledge in Motion , designed to rapidly get students up to speed on current technology and help professors develop state-of-the-art programs while leveraging the Java language. We also offer flexible licensing options for students, departments and campuses.

For more information and a free product demo, visit: www.vni.com/.

A Revolutionary Approach to Materials Education

Inspiring students is so much easier if they can relate to the function of an object and the material from which it is made rather than the traditional approach of how a material is structured.

Professor Mike Ashby of Cambridge University will be giving a one-day course on his approach to this challenge on June 20 in Salt Lake City to coincide with the ASEE Annual Conference.

This course combines the Ashby methods with the widely used Cambridge Engineering Selector software, which you will be able to use during hands-on sessions.

For more details, visit www.grantadesign.com.

INFORMS First Annual Teaching of Management Science Workshop

If you are involved in teaching management science, don't miss this opportunity to hone your skills and learn new teaching methods. The workshop was created to (1) inform you of recent discoveries about the brain, cognition, and human learning, (2) teach you practical classroom skills to actively involve students and make teaching more fun, (3) increase your teaching effectiveness, and (4) support your growth as a teacher through an on-going learning community. Plenary talks will be given by several distinguished speakers including Richard Felder, Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering, NCSU. Please see www.informs.org/ or e-mail lisa.klose@informs.org for complete program information.

Announcing Commsim 7!

Commsim 7 from Electronics Workbench is the next generation of the popular simulation software for modeling analog, digital and mixed-signal networks or communications systems at the signal or physical level.
Its intuitive drag-and-drop interface, combined with hierarchical and embedded compound blocks, makes it easy to build, modify and maintain even the most complex models without having to write a single line of code. Students gain a true understanding of their system's performance through interactive, batch, auto-restart, and single step execution modes. Commsim 7 supports new and emerging wireless communications technologies such as Bluetooth, 802.11, 802.11a and 802.11b (802.11 is also known as "WiFi" or "Hotspots").

For more information and pricing contact Electronics Workbench at 800-263-5552 or go to www.electronicsworkbench.com.

In this Issue:

I. Science and Technology Briefs

• Early Detection for Lung Cancer - Scottish researchers are working to adapt technology used to sniff out natural gas reserves to detect the deadly disease.
• Fill 'er Up with Air, Please - A UCLA researcher has developed an engine that uses air to boost fuel efficiency and decrease emissions.

II. Congressional Hotline

• K-12 Teachers Praise NSF Math and Science Partnership Program
• Political Storm Swirls around Bush's Science Policy

III. Teaching Toolbox

• Phony Degrees Proliferate Down Under - Australian educators worry that peddlers of phony degrees hurt their reputation overseas.
• Falling for Plato - The University of Colorado's Herbst Program of Humanities introduces engineering students to the liberal arts.

IV. Feature Articles

• Proceed with Caution - The debate about academic researchers getting too cozy with industry rages on. The relationship can work if certain rules are followed.
• A Model for Success - Stanford's Tom Byers has plenty of experience as an entrepreneur and now he is teaching engineering students how to navigate the business world.

I. Science and Technology Briefs

Early Detection for Lung Cancer
GLASGOW-One of the diabolical aspects of lung cancer is that it often spreads to fatal levels before symptoms appear, and early detection remains difficult. But thanks to technology devised to improve prospecting for gas and oil reserves, doctors may soon be able to discover the onset of lung cancer at a much earlier stage.

Researchers at the Optics Group at Glasgow University in Scotland have devised a unique sensor system that can sniff out ethane at levels less than one part per billion. Trace amounts of hydrocarbons, including ethane, naturally leak from oil and gas reserves. Physics professor Miles Padgett and his team worked on a system to monitor minute amounts of ethane; software they developed combines the ethane measurements with wind direction to pinpoint the source of the leak. The system uses an infrared laser to measure the gas. It can detect ethane by measuring the amount of infrared light absorbed at a specific wavelength.

So how does that lead to the detection of lung cancer? Humans react to cancer cells by producing higher levels of free radicals, chemicals that reduce cell membranes to hydrocarbons, including ethane. Physicians, including Dundee University's Chris Longbottom, who were visiting the Glasgow laboratory, immediately saw the potential of using the geologists' tool to screen for cancer. Connected to a breathalyzer, the ethane detection system appears to accurately diagnose lung cancer by sensing trace amounts of ethane. In clinical trials at Dundee's Ninewell Hospital, the breath of 50 patients was analyzed. Of 21 suffering from lung cancer, only one failed to produce a high ethane reading. But there was a problem with false negatives. Five patients who were cancer free also had measurable ethane readings. Padgett has begun a two-year project to improve the device.

Fill 'er Up with Air, Please
Now here's a concept for making the air that we breathe cleaner: Cars that are partly fuelled by air. Tsu-chin Tsao, a researcher at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), working with engineers at the Ford Motor Co., has devised a plan for a hybrid car that uses air-not electricity-to boost fuel efficiency.

When cars slow down, their kinetic energy is transformed to heat by the friction brakes. Hybrid cars capture braking energy, convert it to electricity, store it in batteries and use the power to run a small electric motor that helps the car accelerate. That reduces the use of gasoline, a fossil fuel that when burned emits pollutants, primarily carbon dioxide. While the technology can cut emissions to impressively low levels, adding a second battery and motor is costly. They're also heavy, which forces automakers to reduce vehicle weight in other areas. Not surprisingly, the resulting hybrid cars are expensive, and that has slowed their acceptance in the marketplace. But Tsu-chin Tsao's air hybrid converts the braking energy to air, which is compressed and stored. When that air is allowed to expand, there is a burst of power that can help accelerate a car. And air hybrids need only a small tank-weighing about 66 pounds-to hold the compressed air. So his proposed technology is cheap as well as lightweight. It's also efficient: Computer modeling of a 2.5 liter, V-6 engine using the system indicated that it would improve fuel efficiency in urban areas by 65 percent and on the highway by 12 percent.

Tsao, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, says the key to air hybrids is a camless valve train. An engine's valve system lets in air and fuel, and releases exhaust. Tsao's system uses the engine to compress the air when it is not combusting fuel. That requires a valve timing system that can react almost instantaneously. That's accomplished by using actuators controlled by microchips. One minor hurdle that Tsao thinks can easily be surmounted is that air cools when it expands, and for propulsion purposes, it's best to have warm air. Tsao would like to build a prototype air hybrid car, but right now there are no funds available to do so. "The concept looks feasible," he says. But without funding, it's a concept that's still floating in the air.

Back to the index.

II. Congressional Hotline

K-12 Teachers Praise NSF Math and Science Partnership Program
Four recipients of the 2003 NSF Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching testified before the House Science Committee on March 18, heralding the support they receive from the federal government. The teachers singled out the National Science Foundation and its Math and Science Partnership (MSP) program for providing the funding that made them "great" educators. Gail Bromiley McGee, a science teacher at Carnegie VanGuard High School in Houston said, "the federal government is on to a good thing-offering educators a consistent, well-thought-out overview for success in science education." Jonathan Roland, a physics teacher at Perry Hall High School in Baltimore and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, echoed her sentiment. "I am not an extraordinary teacher, but I have been given extraordinary focus and opportunities by NSF."

Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) commended the teachers for their exemplary achievements and noted that policymakers do not take advantage of hearing from those "on the frontlines" often enough. "You'd think that this sort of hearing would be happening all the time but, unfortunately, that's not the case. Instead, Congress talks constantly about education but it rarely listens and it listens least of all to the most important experts-actual classroom teachers."

The Presidential Award program is administered by the NSF and bestows the nation's highest honor for mathematics and science teachers for kindergarten through grade 12. The 2003 Presidential Awardees received $10,000 grants to their school and a trip to Washington, D.C., to attend the award ceremony and participate in award week activities.

To read Rep. Boehlert's keynote address at the Congressional breakfast for all awardees, visit: http://www.house.gov/science/press/108/108-214.htm.
To read more about the NSF Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching, visit: http://www.paemst.org.

Political Storm Swirls around Bush's Science Policy
Responding to a Union of Concerned Scientists statement blasting President Bush for emphasizing political goals over scientific inquiry, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a 9-page tome on its science and technology accomplishments since the Bush Administration took office. The document compares the current level of funding for various S&T agencies with the 2001 level, claiming that total funding for research activities at the NSF, the Department of Energy's Office of Science, NASA's Office of Space Science, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at the Department of Commerce has increased $2.6 billion or 29 percent. The report also gives the administration credit for a 44 percent increase in federal research and development funding-including increases in basic research spending-and praises its commitment to science endeavors. The document places Bush's S&T commitment in the context of the fight against terrorism, and claims that its "high" S&T budget has created many new jobs, especially in the area of homeland security.

At the center of the controversy over the administration's alleged obscuring of scientific facts for political gain is John H. Marburger, director of the OSTP and Bush's top science advisor. Lewis M. Branscomb, a physicist and emeritus professor of public policy and corporate management at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, wrote the following in a New York Times article: "[I] have a great deal of sympathy for [Marburger's] position, because I don't believe he has the authority, the power, to go back into all the agencies and unearth all the facts about all these [disputed and controversial scientific] cases."

To read the full-version of the "Accomplishments" document, visit: http://www.ostp.gov/html/AdministrationS&TAccomplishmentsApril2004.pdf.

Back to the index.

III. Teaching Toolbox

Falling for Plato
While studying for her bachelor's degree in applied mathematics, Yvonne Yancey stumbled across Plato. Yancey, a senior in the college of engineering and applied science at the University of Colorado at Boulder, discovered the seminal philosopher's work in the Herbst Program of Humanities. Reading Plato has led her to seek out the works of Nietzsche, C.S. Lewis, and Voltaire on her own. "Now that I've started reading philosophy I just can't stop," she says.

Program Director Wayne Ambler says Herbst is based on an approach to education that stresses engaging the complicated questions confronting humankind as they appear in the great books of Western literature. "Is there a purpose to human life? Is there a God," are two such questions Ambler says. The program, he adds, is part of a general move away from the departmental specialization that tends to seal off engineering from literature and the arts. "Students should be able to follow a question to wherever it leads," he says.
Founded in 1989 by an endowment from chemical engineering alumnus Clarence Herbst, Jr., the program is a two-class sequence that satisfies the college's humanities requirement. The first class has a fixed curriculum and allows students to, Ambler says, read "a smattering of the great books" of fiction, poetry, and philosophy. The second course moves beyond the study of specific texts to the completion of student projects that consider underlying themes and ideas.

After completing projects on "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy and modern and contemporary literature, Yancey found she wasn't quite ready to leave the humanities. Last year, she founded the Herbst club, an informal, Friday-night discussion group modeled after the college's program. Yancey credits her experience in the club's and program's small discussion groups with helping her feel more comfortable speaking in class and helping her meet students from other disciplines within the college. Regarding any insight she's gained, Yancey says that "it's amazing how close math, design, engineering, and philosophy are to each other."

Phony Degrees Proliferate Down Under
AUSTRALIA-Education officials down under are worried that peddlers of bogus college degrees are hurting their reputation overseas. Thousands of students from Malaysia, Singapore, and increasingly China, flock to Australian colleges and universities every year attracted by the nation's reputation for high academic standards. But authorities fear that the proliferation of phony degrees may cause future students to decide to study elsewhere, which would be a big drain on the country's economy. There are currently about 145,000 students in the system, and foreign students are expected to pump almost $10 billion into the economy by decade's end.

The states of New South Wales and Queensland, whose prestigious schools attract many foreigners, are going after those hawking forged degrees from reputable schools and real degrees from dubious institutions that are in some cases no more than mail-drop addresses. "Students are provided with a degree using counterfeit university crests, serial numbers, and student identification numbers," says New South Wales State Education Minister Andrew Refshauge. He says fake degrees from top universities can be easily obtained. Last year, New South Wales's Department of Fair Trading investigated nearly two dozen allegations about suppliers of worthless degrees. Queensland is in the process of passing a law toughening controls on education providers. The state's education minister, Anna Bligh, says that degree mill operators will face heavy fines and possible jail time. In addition, any new universities in the state will be monitored and their licenses reevaluated after five years.

Shady operators target foreign students in all disciplines, including engineering. The first priority for education officials is to guard their reputations but they also want to prevent students from purchasing worthless degrees. They want a degree from an Australian university to be worth far more than the paper it's printed on.

Back to the index.

IV. Feature Articles

Proceed with Caution
By Thomas K. Grose

Robert Langer is an unlikely pioneer in the burgeoning field of bioengineering. For one thing, he's not a biologist. Yet, Langer, 54, a much-honored professor of chemical and biomedical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is pre-eminent in the field, and his work has led to highly effective and novel cancer therapies and drug-delivery systems. His name graces more than 400 patents, licensed to scores of companies. Around 35 products have been sparked from his research. Indeed, Langer has found 12 biotech companies. By almost any measure, he is a success, an archetypal 21st-Century Renaissance man who adroitly blends cutting-edge academic science with entrepreneurial commerce.

Visit www.prism-magazine.org/oct03/caution.cfm to read the rest of this story.

A Model for Success
By Alice Daniels

Even if you've never met Tom Byers, you know him. He's the type whose infectious enthusiasm could jolt an apathetic heart. He'll ask you a question and really want to know the answer. He can talk on any topic from Southern rock music to pen computers. His students and colleagues speak of him as a guru, a visionary, someone who preaches his ideas with missionary-like zeal. He could be a politician, a good one, but he's not, exactly. He's an entrepreneur in academia and he's doing his part to change the way engineering and science students do business all over the world.

Visit www.prism-magazine.org/oct03/success_model.cfm to read the rest of this story.

Back to the index.

Post Jobs to 20,000 Engineering Faculty

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