Shameless Self Promotion

I guess the whole concept of a blog is pretty self-promoting.  I've tried to keep my entries interesting across the board, but I'm going to do a little shameless self promotion today and share an article that made the front page of the Daily Beacon (UT's student-led newspaper):

Software tutorial helps engineers

Robbie Hargett - Staff Writer
Thursday, September 09, 2010 issue

Theta Tau, UT's professional engineering fraternity, offered a free Autodesk Inventor tutorial to engineering students Wednesday.
Theta Tau members Alex Sheinfeld, senior in industrial engineering, and Stephen Oi, senior in electrical engineering, taught the tutorial.
"Autodesk Inventor is a program that allows the design, modeling and simulated testing of parts and assemblies in 3-D," Sheinfeld said. "This can range from one-piece parts, such as a key chain, all the way up to full, complex pieces of machinery, such as a car."
Karl Hughes, senior in mechanical engineering and Theta Tau professional development chairman, said all industrial and mechanical engineering majors at UT will use Inventor in industrial engineering 330/mechanical engineering 366 and manufacturing processes, but it is not explicitly taught in any class.
"Students are expected to teach themselves via the included tutorials, but the learning curve when starting out is pretty steep," Hughes said. "It took me several hours of tutorials plus hours of trial and error to figure out how to make a simple part."
Sheinfeld said the level of exposure to these kinds of programs in the classroom is much too low.
"The projects are mostly homework and very little time is spent in class teaching the techniques of the program," Sheinfeld said. "Furthermore it's only the very basics of the program which are covered, and it's really up to the student to take interest and try to discover more of the program on their own."
Sheinfeld said he started using Inventor in the manufacturing processes class. He said he developed an interest in the program that remained after taking the class.
"I hope (to) go a couple steps beyond what's normally taught in the classrooms to bridge the gap between learning how to make basic shapes and making the types of assemblies that we, as engineers, will be expected to make in the professional world," he said.
Hughes said Inventor and other similar programs are used frequently in the professional engineering world, and while there are many design programs other than Inventor, the skills are easily transferable.
"The advantage of this free tutorial is that every student who attends will be better equipped to face the challenges of being a professional engineer," Sheinfeld said. "The skills in this tutorial class will be very useful, not only in the context of how to use the program, but also in the context of how a product is designed."
He said he hopes students will obtain a greater appreciation for what it takes to actually make something, to "show students a more practical side of engineering than just bookwork."
"We're entering an age where every product you see, from pencils to jets, has been designed in a program like Inventor," Sheinfeld said. "This allows much greater precision in designing the product which results in more rapid prototyping, more efficient machine layouts, and an overall better and cheaper product."
Hughes said the overall goal of the tutorial was to reach out to fellow engineers, who could likely use the help.
"We will be hosting several more professional development opportunities for engineers this semester and will be working with other engineering student groups to bring guest speakers and company representatives to campus," Hughes said.

 Quoted from http://dailybeacon.utk.edu/showarticle.php?articleid=57181

I guess I can't take that much credit, the hour and a half class was taught by my good friends Stephen Oi and Alex Sheinfeld, but as the Professional Development Chairman, I did most of the behind the scenes planning. Either way, this is the first time that Theta Tau has made the Daily Beacon, and definitely the first time I've made the front page!

Net Neutrality and the Tea Party

It looks like one of the last vestiges of truly free speech and expression may be under siege.  Lately there has been a debate raging between some of the large telecoms and congress over the idea of "net neutrality". To sum the whole thing up in simple terms, Verizon and Google want to control the access speed of certain websites so that, for instance, YouTube will load faster than someone's personal home-video website. The ISP would have the power to allow bigger companies to pay them more in order to get faster connection speeds to users.

I have a fundamental problem with any sort of regulation or censorship of the Internet. I like the fact that the Internet provides (mostly) uncensored access to a wealth of information. To me, it has become one of the great equalizers in our society - allowing small companies to compete with big ones by getting equal exposure on the web for a relatively low cost. I don't know if this is going to continue if large companies are allowed to buy higher connection speeds.

Maybe this is just the way things go. As Wal-Mart kills off "mom and pop" stores, Google and other large internet companies will be able to keep the competition down on the web. Something that is interesting about this debate is the stance of the Tea Party. They oppose the FCC's attempts to block Verizon and Google's plan because they hold that government control of anything is wrong.  I see their point - I don't want the government regulating internet use either - but is it better to let large companies censor the internet?

This is the fundamental problem with letting the "free-market" control everything.  There is no such thing as a truly free-market.  Large corporations with exponentially greater resources than small start-ups will always be able to bully and monopolize the market if allowed to essentially create "legislation". In my mind, this replaces an elected government with a group of large businesses, but is this truly a better option?

One Good Night's Sleep

As most busy college students probably know, sleep is a precious commodity.  There is always something more important to do than sleep, whether it be pulling an all-nighter studying, or staying out late partying.  I've always tried to consistently get 6-7 hours of sleep a night, with the occasional "catch-up" nap, but since I have real trouble actually sleeping past 9 am, this isn't always possible.

I have been kind of sick all weekend, so last night, I took the recommended dose of NyQuil and passed out for 11 hours.

Needless to say, I felt great this morning, but it got me thinking, "why does a good night's sleep make me feel so good?"  Here are some interesting facts on sleep:

- Adults who report sleeping 6-7 hours per night live longer than those who sleep more or less.
- Sleep deprivation does adversely effect the immune system, but has not been proven to stunt growth in children.
- In mammals, the amount of sleep needed is generally inversely related to size (rats sleep 14 hours per day, while elephants sleep 3-4).
- Despite popular belief, tryptophan has not been linked to changes in sleep patterns.  Turkey does not magically make you tired, but overeating and certain times of the day do.
- Your body experiences a natural dip in alertness at both 2am and 2pm.
- REM sleep is important in brain growth and maturity.  Deprivation in REM sleep can lead to behavioral and psychological problems
- Drinking alcohol may make you feel sleepy by causing somnolence, but it reduces the amount of REM sleep that you get.

Courtesy of Wikipedia

Congratulations, Mrs. Diaz

Cameron Diaz won the prestigious "Most Infected Celebrity" award this year.  McAfee's top 10 list includes such notables as Heidi Klum and Penelope Cruz as well as male heart-throbs Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise (apparently "Knight and Day" was popular with hackers).

With an average age of 36 in the top 10 list, I am assuming that middle-aged people still don't understand that clicking on links like "See CAMERON DIAZ naked!" is a great way to get yourself a nice little Daprosy Worm.

Some Levity for Good Measure

I've been trying to make my blog a little more entertaining lately, because I know how boring reading is for most people, so here's a break from science with a little social comedy by Maz Jobrani:

The End of Humans, the Rise of Bacteria

Very few thinking people are naive enough to believe that humans will remain the dominant species on this earth forever.  "Forever" is a long time.  I'm sure that if dinosaurs possessed the level of cognitive thinking that humans do, they would have thought they were going to live forever too.  Of course, dinosaurs are a whole grouping of various species that are somewhere between birds and reptiles, but they roamed the earth for 165 million years.  Mammals have only been a dominant species for the better part of the last 60 million years, so should we be looking for the downfall of mammals anytime soon?

Provided a drastic change in climate or other unforeseen disaster occurs, probably not, but the human species?  That's a whole different question.  I don't buy into scare tactics by the media or even scientists.  It's too hard to tell who's got an agenda these days, but I do believe that in some ways, our modern medicine is both saving and destroying our species.

Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog is one of my favorite weekly reads (despite it's late 90's website design format).  Check out his newest article on the end of antibiotics and potentially the end of humans:

http://engineering.curiouscatblog.net/2010/08/15/are-you-ready-for-a-world-without-antibiotics/

Sustainability

It's a word that has gotten a lot of attention in the past 10 or so years.  We have finally discovered that we have the power to essentially use-up the world's resources.  Of course none of us want that, but Jason Clay offers a "solution" (PS - I love TED) :




I see some problems with this philosophy though.  I appreciate the progress he is making, and I agree that we need to address this issue of diminishing resources and growing population, but I don't think the solution is as simple and neat as Dr. Clay believes.  Here's the way I see it:

Private Business is a competitive environment.  Without short-term profits, a company will struggle and die at the hands of companies who will sacrifice long-term access to resources for short-term competitive gains.  For example, Company A has an idealistic CEO who leads his company in the direction of sustainability.  He says, "We will no longer support any environmentally or ecologically detrimental suppliers, and we will conduct business in a manner that will conserve as many natural resources as possible."  Sounds great...

Meanwhile, Company B - a similar company - has a more traditional capitalist serving as CEO who's goal is to drive out competition, and maximize profits for expansion and reinvestment.  He knows about Company A's new goal of sustainability, so he decides to fight fire with fire.

Company A may be able to make a great marketing campaign to promote their new commitment to sustainability, but being that they are bound to have larger materials costs since they are no longer buying from "traditional" suppliers, their profits will likely falter.  Meanwhile, Company B launches a marketing campaign promoting their lower prices, and then puts a little side bar about their new "green" packaging (mostly just marketing fluff, but the consumer doesn't know any better).  Company B has lower costs, and sells their product for a significantly lower price, plus they too have some interest in saving the environment.  What happens next?  Since this is hypothetical, there's not a right answer, but I'm putting my stock in Company B.

My point is that companies will not buy into this 100% sustainability if they will lose money from it.  That's just Econ 101.  It doesn't matter if the resource you are taking from the land will be gone in 75 years; if you are a well-run business, you will have already foreseen this, and redirected your investment into another channel by then.  We have made some gains in environmental awareness in the past decade, but those have been far outweighed by increasing population, and the boom of industry in the developing world.  Maybe I'm just a skeptic, but I have very little faith in Dr. Clay's solution.