To parse the simultaneous claims of both a shortage and a surplus of STEM workers, we’ll need to delve into the data behind the debate, how it got going more than a half century ago, and the societal, economic, and nationalistic biases that have perpetuated it. And what that dissection reveals is that there is indeed a STEM crisis—just not the one everyone’s been talking about. The real STEM crisis is one of literacy: the fact that today’s students are not receiving a solid grounding in science, math, and engineering.
Category Archives: STEM
NASA’S Mars Curiosity Debuts Autonomous Navigation
The drive on Tuesday, the mission’s 376th Martian day, or “sol,” took Curiosity across a depression where ground-surface details had not been visible from the location where the previous drive ended. The drive included about 33 feet (10 meters) of autonomous navigation across hidden ground as part of a day’s total drive of about 141 feet (43 meters).
“We could see the area before the dip, and we told the rover where to drive on that part. We could see the ground on the other side, where we designated a point for the rover to end the drive, but Curiosity figured out for herself how to drive the uncharted part in between,” said JPL’s John Wright, a rover driver.
via NASA’S Mars Curiosity Debuts Autonomous Navigation – NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Using Metadata to find Paul Revere
Rest assured that we only collected metadata on these people, and no actual conversations were recorded or meetings transcribed. All I know is whether someone was a member of an organization or not. Surely this is but a small encroachment on the freedom of the Crown’s subjects. I have been asked, on the basis of this poor information, to present some names for our field agents in the Colonies to work with. It seems an unlikely task.
If you want to follow along yourself, there is a secret repository containing the data and the appropriate commands for your portable analytical engine.
Grading Essays at College Level
EdX, the nonprofit enterprise founded by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to offer courses on the Internet, has just introduced such a system and will make its automated software available free on the Web to any institution that wants to use it. The software uses artificial intelligence to grade student essays and short written answers, freeing professors for other tasks.
via New Test for Computers – Grading Essays at College Level – NYTimes.com.
Two start-ups, Coursera and Udacity, recently founded by Stanford faculty members to create “massive open online courses,” or MOOCs, are also committed to automated assessment systems because of the value of instant feedback.
Researchers Find Tweets and Votes Line Up
In a study released Monday, researchers found a strong correlation between the percentage of votes candidates received in 2010 and 2012 House races and the percentage of tweets that mentioned the candidates’ names — whether or not those tweets were complimentary.
via Researchers Find Tweets and Votes Line Up – Washington Wire – WSJ.
A Material That Could Make Solar Power “Dirt Cheap”
Like any other new entrant into the highly competitive solar-panel market, perovskites will have difficulty taking on silicon solar cells. The costs of silicon solar cells are falling, and some analysts think they could eventually fall as low as 25 cents per watt, which would eliminate most of the cost advantage of perovskites and lessen the incentive for investing in the new technology. The manufacturing process for perovskite solar cells—which can be as simple as spreading a liquid over a surface or can involve vapor deposition, another large-scale manufacturing process—is expected to be easy. But historically, it has taken over a decade to scale up novel solar-cell technologies, and a decade from now silicon solar cells could be too far ahead to catch.
via A Material That Could Make Solar Power “Dirt Cheap” | MIT Technology Review.
Simple technique puts graphene capacitors on par with lead-acid battery
The resulting material displays all the electrical properties associated with a capacitor, meaning that it can charge and discharge its full capacity almost instantly. But it has a storage density that’s right at the low-end of the range seen in lead-acid batteries. It’s also stable over multiple charge/discharge cycles and holds on to 90 percent of its capacity even after being charged for 300 hours straight.
via Simple technique puts graphene capacitors on par with lead-acid battery | Ars Technica.
Scientists Demonstrate Ultra-Fast Magnetite Electrical Switch
However, there’s a slight hitch to be overcome before fabbing magnetite computer chips is possible. To lock an electrical charge in place in the material, it has to be chilled to minus 190 degrees Celsius.
Kukreja said the next objective for the team will be to try out electrical switching with “more complex materials and room-temperature applications” through new experiments which “aim to identify exotic compounds and test new techniques to induce the switching and tap into other properties that are superior to modern-day silicon transistors.”
via Scientists Demonstrate Ultra-Fast Magnetite Electrical Switch | News & Opinion | PCMag.com.
College students hijack $80 million yacht with GPS signal spoofing
A group of students at the University of Texas at Austin built and successfully tested a GPS spoofing device to remotely redirect an $80 million yacht onto a different route, the Houston Chronicle reports. The project, which was completed with the permission of the yacht’s owners in the Mediterranean Sea this past June, is explained in the video below.
via College students hijack $80 million yacht with GPS signal spoofing.
Astronaut Suni Williams: You need to make peace before leaving Earth
US astronaut Sunita Williams spent a total of 322 days in space on two missions to the International Space Station. As part of BBC News’ How to put a human on Mars coverage she explains how she coped and considers whether a crew could endure a voyage to the Red Planet.
via BBC News – Astronaut Suni Williams: You need to make peace before leaving Earth.