“Without courage, all other virtues lose their meaning.”
~ Winston Churchill
|
 |
Find an IEEE Article or Standard in IEEE Xplore digital library  |
|
HELP SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT IEEE
Please
feel welcome to share this with your friends and colleagues.
|
|
Managing Editor: Michelle Garner, m.g.garner@ieee.org
SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION
To subscribe to this or any other What’s New @ IEEE newsletter
please click
here.
To modify your current information for What’s New @ IEEE newsletters
please click
here.
If you want to subscribe to, or view the archives for, Eye on Washington (USA), click here. |
|
|
 |
IEEE Educational Activities Launches New Academic Portal
The IEEE Educational Activities Department is pleased to announce the launch of their latest portal, Accreditation.org. This online resource, developed as a joint effort by IEEE and IBM, will provide the worldwide public with a comprehensive tool to search for accredited academic programs in the fields of engineering, engineering technology and computing. It will also serve as a valuable one-stop resource to practitioners of engineering, technology and computing; students, teachers and administrators of education programs in these fields; and decision makers in government, industrial and private organizations who are interested in finding out more information on accreditation topics. Accreditation.org is poised to serve as the ultimate resource on engineering, engineering technology and computing education accreditation. Visit Accreditation.org
Girls Equal to Boys in Math Scores, New Study Reports
Reported in the journal Science, the largest study of its kind found that girls measured up to boys in math in every grade, from second through 11th. Janet Hyde of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, led the study. Hyde’s team looked at annual math tests required by the U.S. government’s No Child Left Behind education law in 2002. Researchers were able to compare the performances of more than seven million children in 10 states, finding no difference in the scores of boys versus girls, compared to 20 years ago where studies showed girls and boys did equally well on math in elementary school, but girls fell behind in high school. However, according to Hyde, parents and teachers persist in thinking boys are simply better at math and girls who grow up believing it avoid harder math classes, ultimately keeping some women out of careers in science and technology. As researchers looked across the data for states' testing, such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), they found a lack of questions that involved the complex problem-solving needed to succeed in high levels of science and math. If tests don't assess these reasoning skills they may not be taught, putting American students at a disadvantage, said the researchers. A panel of experts convened by the Education Department recommended that state tests be updated to emphasize critical thinking. Read more
 BACK TO TOP
IEEE Kenya Chapter to Fight Poverty with Technology
The IEEE Kenya Chapter will host its annual Engineering Students' Exhibition at Sarit Expo Hall in Nairobi, Kenya on 12-13 September 2008. The event is a contest challenging students from universities across Africa to invent products that have commercial potential. All of the entries will be based on this year's theme, ICT & Alternative Energy in Rural Development. The point is to use technology to stimulate socioeconomic development in the continent's poorest regions. Prizes for the winners will include support from Kenya's ICT Board in bringing their inventions to market, laptop computers, Apple iPhones and oscilloscopes. Learn more about the exhibition
BACK TO TOP
First Impressions Makes All the Difference in Interviews
You have arrived at the offices of a prospective employer. You are not under arrest, but from this point on, anything you say—verbal or non-verbal—can be used against you. According to a career expert , "Many hiring managers go on first impression and spend the rest of the interview justifying their decision." So the firmness of your handshake, your posture and the way your clothes fit are as important as your education and experience. After all, the hiring manager already has your resume. The interview is his or her opportunity to determine whether you are a better fit, than other candidates. Read more
BACK TO TOP
Device Aims to Protect Electric Utility Workers
Engineering students at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, have invented a tool that would allow utility workers to disconnect power lines from residential transformers at a safe distance, beyond the range of dangerous electrical arcs. Their prototype, built at the request of a local utility company, consists of a lightweight aluminum frame that uses rope and a lever-and-pulley system to enable the worker to detach a transformer's power connector, known as a load break elbow. The finished prototype features three guide rails that surround the transformer's elbow connection. A sliding component of the device houses a clamp that grabs onto the connector. The utility technician can then use the lever and pulley system to detach the power line from a safe distance. Compared to the current hot stick procedure, their device requires the worker to exert only a third as much force, the students said. Read more
BACK TO TOP
Pharmaceutical Company Opportunities Growing for Science Students in India
Dr. Bindhumadhavan Gururajan, Senior Scientist at AstraZeneca’s Research and Development Center is a world expert on the granulation process used to produce pills in tablet form. Now involved in making key products for treating cancer, the renowned scientist was asked about opportunities for science students in India in a recent interview. “Most of the leading pharmaceutical companies are struggling with high manufacturing costs and a shortage of skilled people in the West,” said Dr. Gururajan. “Therefore, they are investing in India and China to take advantage of the manpower availability and the cost benefits. With the right skills and training, our students have the potential to work for leading pharmaceutical companies and contribute to the discovery and development of the next blockbuster drug within India.” Dr. Gururajan says that increased interaction between academia and industry would help students learn more about the domestic pharmaceutical industry. His department at Astra-Zenecka, for instance, supports graduate level research projects to take advantage of new talents and facilities. Read more
BACK TO TOP
Companies Work Hard at Finding Enough Engineers
Engineering companies in the United States are working to solve a big problem: finding enough engineers to fill their work force. The gap between engineers needed and the number of graduates available to fill positions is wide. Some place the need as high as 117,000 a year, and new engineering graduates at 65,000 to 70,000. With enrollments lagging behind demand, companies are increasing recruiting efforts on college campuses across the country. Going beyond traditional career fairs, companies are establishing partnerships for research, offering scholarships, supporting student teams in regional and national competitions, hosting a company day and providing internship opportunities. Of all the engineering disciplines, computer software holds the highest demand nationwide—with employment expected to grow about 38 percent by 2016. Read more
BACK TO TOP
UVA Professor Wins IEEE Undergraduate Teaching Award
John C. Bean, the J.M. Money Professor of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia (UVA), USA, is the 2009 winner of the IEEE Undergraduate Teaching Award. Bean was given the award "for providing opportunities to both undergraduate and pre-college students for discovery through both laboratory projects and virtual experiments on the World Wide Web." Holding 14 U.S. patents, Bean has published 300 technical papers, including invited reviews in Proceedings of the IEEE, Physics Today and Science magazines. In 2004, Bean received the UVA All University Teaching Award. Read more
BACK TO TOP
Student Designs Harvest Energy, Provide Help for Aging
Teams of engineering students at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, displayed the results of their third-year design project to develop items that improve the quality of life for aging people or make use of untapped energy. Projects included a self-cooling water bottle, which taps into environmental energy through evaporation; a radio-frequency identification device embedded in the sole of a shoe to help health-care staff keep track of dementia patients prone to wandering; and a method to harvest energy from rainfall by connecting rooftop gutters to a tank where rushing water turns a turbine and produces energy. Read more
BACK TO TOP
Students Aid Tanzania with Capstone Project
A capstone project for engineering students at Brigham Young University, Utah, USA, is helping Tanzanian women boost their daily income by better utilization of a local natural resource: the coconut. Responding to a challenge issued by the Pope Foundation, the six-member group developed an inexpensive oven and press that extracts coconut oil from the fruit. Using the technology, village women can raise their incomes from US$2 to US$6 or US$8 a day by selling the oil to Pope, which owns a Kenyan coconut oil processing plant serving the cooking, health and beauty industries. The students spent months designing a process that would be simple and cheap enough for African women to do on their own, as opposed to the conventional process which takes two days and requires heavy factory machinery. Project faculty adviser Terri Bateman and four of the students traveled to Boza, Tanzania to introduce the technology to villagers and supervise them as they constructed their own ovens. "It was pretty cool to combine the engineering process with helping people around the world," said senior mechanical engineering student Shara Richards. “The people implementing this will be going out there and being entrepreneurs and making a huge difference." Read more
BACK TO TOP
TSU Ranks Big in AICE Engineering Competition
Competing against much larger schools in a national contest sponsored by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, students from Tri-State University (TSU), Angola, Indiana, USA, won a prestigious chemical engineering design prize for the second year. Given a complex chemical engineering problem to solve, students compete for the best design solution as well as the best safety in design. Taking both awards for TSU were students Jon Guscinski, David Hellen and Paul Handke. The complex yet real-world problems that TSU dealt with the last two years involved recovery of pyridine and 3-methyl pyridine from a product waste stream and crystallization of uranyl nitrate hexahydrate from spent nuclear fuel. Read more
BACK TO TOP
Read Past What's
New @ IEEE Newsletters 
Search
Issues Prior to May 2007
|
|
|
