Learning from the fire ant

I saw this great article yesterday with wonderful visuals about fire ants working together cooperatively to avoid drowning - they link together and form living rafts that are remarkably hydrophobic. Engineers are looking to the ants for new ideas in waterproof materials. It was too fascinating not to share with you!

Celebrate Computer Security Day

November 30 is Computer Security Day, so I sat down for a chat with Itinerant Cryptographer, my resident computer security expert.

Mama Joules: Welcome to Mama Joules, Itinerant Cryptographer. You certainly have an unusual name. What do you do for a living?

Itinerant Cryptographer: I do research in computer security and cryptography. Most of my work is in applied cryptography - cryptography applied to real-world problems such as electronic voting and encrypting files based on passwords.

MJ: That sounds interesting. What is cryptography?

IC: Cryptography is the mathematical end of computer security. It includes encryption, which is a way of scrambling up information so that no one can read it except the person with the key, and other related ideas like digital signatures and information hiding.

Some ways that people use cryptography:

-- You have a movie and you want to embed a copyright notice in [it].

-- [You are playing an] online multi-player game [and want] to make sure that somebody else can't steal your player or the items that your player owns.

-- [You want] to keep a log of events on a computer that can't be deleted or tampered with without detection.

A digital signature lets you send a message [so that] anybody who knows your public key can identify that the message comes from you and hasn't been changed. Microsoft, for example, uses digital signatures when they distribute updates or programs. That lets your computer verify that the program really came from Microsoft.

The most important place where most people use encryption every day is SSL (secure socket layer). When you order things online and use a credit card, that information goes through an encrypted connection.

MJ: What are the biggest threats facing computer security today?

IC: A big problem in computer security is that over the last ten years or so, attacks over computer systems have moved from being done by hobbyists for fun to attacks that are done by criminals for a profit. When they were done by amateurs, the attacks tended to be more like pranks. Now, the attacks tend to be a lot more serious, more professional. They are harder to defend against and there are a lot more of them.

MJ: What can we, as users, do to make our personal computers more secure?

IC: Unplug them? (laughs)

You need to have a personal firewall and a virus scanner. A personal firewall is a computer program that sits between the outside world and your computer and tries to prevent bad communications from coming in from the outside and taking over your computer. Computer attacks are all about communicating. They can cause the computer to crash or malfunction in a useful way.

Imagine your computer is a house. A house has not only doors, but windows and an attic, air ducts, and maybe a crawl space underneath. What a firewall is supposed to do is block off most of those access points [to your home] except for the doors. You still have to lock your doors - keep your web browser and software up to date and run your virus scanner - but the firewall makes it harder to get in.

You need to be careful about accepting things over the Internet. If you click on a link and it tells you to download some software to view a movie, it may be trying to carry out an attack or take over your computer.

An attacker only has to find one weak point, like an Achilles heel. That's why computer security is a really hard challenge. You never get to the end of it. You never know if you've got all the bugs or the weakness. We can look for bugs in software. Weaknesses only show up if there's an attacker to exploit them.

MJ: What resources would you suggest for someone who is interested in cryptography, but doesn't know where to start?

IC: That's a good question. You're going to need to study a lot of math. And you also want to become a good computer programmer.

There are a lot of paper and pen ciphers that are good starting points - for example, the Vigenere cipher, the Caesar cipher, and the Rail Fence cipher. In a cipher, each individual piece of a message gets scrambled up. For example, each letter might be changed into a different letter. A cipher usually involves some calculation.

In a code, whole words or ideas get encoded into different words or ideas. A code uses a table or code book to translate the information. Read about the Navajo Code Talkers. These American soldiers used a different language [than English] as their code during World War II.

MJ: How are you planning to celebrate Computer Security Day?

IC: I think I'll go to work. (smiles)


Photo credit: Gil Paradis, via BurningWell.org

Go Fly a Kite This Week-End!

This Saturday, March 27th, marks the 44th Annual Smithsonian Kite Festival in Washington, DC. Come to this free event on the Washington Monument grounds from 10 am until 3 pm (schedule here). Kids can make a kite at the festival, view handmade kites from all over the world, and watch - or enter - the kite-flying competitions (adults can compete, too!). You could win an award; every child who competes will receive a participation ribbon.

Despite the "official" designation of February 8 as Kite Flying Day here in the U.S., celebrations involving kites are popular during the windy month of March. Washington, DC, isn't the only place you can see kites this week-end. South Korea is holding an International Kite Flying Contest at Dadaepo Beach in Busan and the Midland Kite Flyers are hosting Kite Flying Day at Calke Abbey near Ticknall in Derbyshire, England.

Let's hope the weather is nice and windy this week-end!


Photo credit: Smithsonian Kite Festival

Kids' Science Challenge

Ashwin Vasavada, planetary scientist at JPL, throws a Frisbee in the Mars yard (Photo credit: Kids' Science Challenge)

Would you like to see a scientist work to solve a problem or experiment that you designed? If you live in the U.S. and are in grades 3-6, you've got six days left to enter the three science contests presented by Kids' Science Challenge.

Let's say that you like astronomy. You can enter the Sports of Mars contest. In the future, astronaut explorers might colonize Mars. What kind of games could people play there? How would the Martian climate (dusty, with less atmosphere than Earth) affect the ways sports and games are played?

If Mars isn't your thing, check out the Detective Science Challenge ("Can you think of an everyday mystery that you can solve with the scientific tools of detection?") or the Bio-Inspired Designs Challenge ("Birds inspired airplanes. Seed burrs inspired Velcro. What part of nature will inspire your new invention?")

Visit the media arcade for inspiration. You can enter one idea for each contest! If you have a winning submission, you will get to work with a scientist to put your idea in action. And, your entry could win one of these awesome prizes, including a week at Space Camp, a bionic eye, or night vision goggles.

The entry deadline for all three contests in the Kids' Science Challenge is February 28, 2010. You can enter individually or as a team. You will have to describe your idea and tell how you came up with it; a sketch of your concept is optional. Complete rules are listed here; you'll need to register first. The official entry form (this is a .pdf file) can be mailed, faxed, or submitted online.

Good luck!

Happy National Engineers Week!

Have you hugged an engineer lately? This is National Engineers Week! If you're an engineer, here are 50 ways to get involved, suggested by the National Engineers Week Foundation. Some of these ideas are great for families, too!

Across the country, special events have been planned for tomorrow, February 18th, also known as Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day. If you're in the greater Washington, DC area, head to the National Building Museum this Saturday, February 20th, and Discover Engineering Family Day. You can try over 25 hands-on science activity stations. If you don't live in nearby, drop by the Discover Engineering Family Day website anyway and check out their list of family-friendly engineering projects to try at home.

And, if you are age 13 through grade 12, consider entering the 2010 West Point Bridge Design Contest. Follow the rules closely as you design your virtual bridge -- you could win a $5000 scholarship or a laptop computer! Not the right age? You can join the challenge anyway, you just aren't eligible to win prizes. The final day for the first round of design submissions is March 5, 2010.

Happy Engineers Week, everyone!

TOYchallenge 2010

Looking for a creative way to teach science to your group? How about TOYchallenge 2010? This toy design competition is for 5th to 8th graders in the U.S. and Canada, offered through Sally Ride Science. With an adult coach, each 3-6 member team of kids (half of the team must be female!) designs a new toy over the remainder of the school year. But you don't have be affiliated with a school to join in - homeschoolers, after-school clubs, and neighborhood groups are welcome.

Toys must be original and can not be built using pieces of existing toys. Each proposed toy must fit into one of three categories: Toys that Teach, Games for the Family, or Get Out and Play. After choosing your category, each team follows an engineering design process to prepare a written description and drawings of the proposed toy, due in the Preliminary Round Entry, which closes on February 12, 2010. Promising design teams are then invited to travel to compete in the Nationals (you can apply for travel assistance to off-set the cost, but all teams are expected to fundraise to offset their costs). Last year's competition was held in May at the United States Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, Virginia, but previous competitions have been held in other locations.

Check out last year's winners for inspiration. There's even a page of ideas to get you started. But there's only a week left to register, so be sure to sign up now! (Note: there is a $65 registration fee.)


Photo credit: Kok Leng Yeo through a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license via flickr.

Flying cars

Want your own personal flying car? Get your driver's and pilot's licenses -- and $10,000 deposit -- ready and head on over to Terrafugia. Their "roadable aircraft" is set to roll off the assembly line in 2011. The prototype hit the skies on March 5, 2009 for a test run. The company claims that the wings can fold up in less than 30 seconds! In car mode, the company says the vehicle can get 30 miles per gallon and can go up to 65 miles per hour. The full purchase price is expected to range around $200,000 (US).

Website of the Week: TryEngineering.org

In honor of Engineers Week, this week's website is TryEngineering.org. If you are between the ages of 8 and 18 and are considering a career in engineering, this website is for you! You can Ask an Expert what it's like to be a working engineer or engineering student. You can learn what courses to take to prepare, what engineering specialties are available, and check out 101 different Pre-University Student Activities (like camps, competitions, and projects) on your way to Becoming An Engineer. Be sure to Play Games while you are there!

If you're a parent or educator looking for engineering lesson plans, there's something here for you, too. Check out over 50 Lesson Plans on topics like flashlights and batteries, solar panel design, and building a canoe.

(A tip of the hat to the 2009 Chicagoland Engineers Week website for pointing me toward this site!)

Website of the Week: Engineer Girl!

This week's website is Engineer Girl!, brought to you by the National Academy of Engineering. Learn about different engineering careers and find out what type of classes to take in high school to prepare. You can also read Profiles of Women Engineers and ask them questions about their jobs.

Engineer Girl! is currently sponsoring the 2009 Imagine That! essay contest for girls AND boys ages 8 to 18. You could win $500! Write an essay inspired by one of three images describing the item, how it might be used, and what engineering design might have gone into making the object. Be sure to read the rules carefully, including the Essay Publication Agreement (this is a .pdf file). Entries must be received by March 1, 2009. Good luck!

Website of the Week: National Engineers Week Foundation

The National Engineers Week Foundation is holding Engineers Week from February 15-21, 2009. I received the following E-mail from Jamie Goldman (thanks, Jamie!) about the event. (I added links for easy reference):

The National Engineers Week Foundation, sponsored by the nation’s professional engineering communities, is dedicated to sustaining and growing a dynamic engineering profession. The Foundation’s biggest week of the year is its annual mid-winter slate of programs and events known as Eweek, which encourages and challenges young people to explore potential careers in science, technology, math and engineering.

During the week of February 15-21, 2009, Eweek’s jam packed slate of activities will include:

17th Annual Future City Competition

Future City Competition asks kids to come up with designs employing strategies and techniques used by architects, city planners and engineers. This year, the Future City finals take place in Washington, DC February 16-18, 2009. In preparation for this inspiring and exciting event, teams of middle school students in 40 states are hard at work right now on their creations, which they will then enter into qualifying regional finals around the country in mid-January.

This year’s theme is Creating a Self Sufficient System Within the Home Which Conserves, Recycles and Reuses Existing Water Sources. Recognizing that water will become an increasingly precious resource in the 21st Century, the competition organizers have tasked the middle school competitors with developing designs that focus on water conservation, re-use and self-sufficient water systems.

Students create cities on computers using the SimCity 4 Deluxe software and then build three-dimensional, tabletop models to scale. To ensure a level playing field, models must use recycled materials and can cost no more than $100 to build. Students also write brief abstracts describing their city and must present and defend their designs at the competition before a panel of engineer judges who test the depth of the teams’ knowledge. The grand prize is a week at Space Camp in Alabama.

9th Annual Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day

National Engineers Week Foundation is leading the effort to raise awareness among young women and girls by encouraging them to recognize that a career in math, science and engineering is not only possible but it is also within their power to achieve. Slated for Thursday, February 19th, Girl Day will see women engineers and their male counterparts reach as many as one million girls with workshops, tours, on line discussions and a host of hands on activities at businesses, universities and libraries across the country.

5th Annual Global Marathon By, For and About Women in Engineering

Starting at noon (EDT) Tuesday, March 10 and going until noon (EDT) Wednesday, March 11, Eweek’s Global Marathon is a live, 24 hour worldwide online forum providing information and insight for women on careers in engineering and technology. This continuous program follows the sun around the world as it features webcasts, Internet chats and teleconferences on five continents and connects an international community of women in engineering and technology. The Global Marathon coincides with Women’s History Month (March) and International Women’s Day (March 8, 2009).

New Faces of Engineering

Each year, National Engineers Week Foundation asks its members to nominate colleagues 30 years old and younger who have shown outstanding abilities and leadership. This year’s honorees, some of the best and brightest in the industry, will be announced during Eweek.

I am thrilled to see that Eweek is reaching out to girls and women in such a tangible way. And the National Engineers Week Foundation's website has some other great tidbits, too, including tips to introduce K-12 students to engineering. Check it out!

Engineer Your Life™: a website for female high school students

A tip of the hat to Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog for pointing me toward Engineer Your Life™, "a guide to engineering for high school girls." As you might remember from some of my earlier posts -- like this one on women and engineering -- I think it's so important for girls to have female mentors and role models in the sciences, particularly in male-dominated fields like engineering.

At Engineer Your Life™, you can Meet Inspiring Women who are making a difference in the field of engineering, read in-depth profiles of various engineering disciplines (including the types of projects you might work on and your likely salary range) in fields like aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, and (my personal favorite!) environmental engineering. You can even download a list of recommended high school coursework and tips for researching engineering schools. Enjoy!

The scientific benefits of origami

I picked up this interesting tidbit today from ScienceDaily: Studying origami, the ancient Japanese art of folding paper into shapes like birds and bugs, can improve your understanding of math. In ScienceDaily's The Science of Origami, Dr. Robert Lang is quoted as saying that the process used to create these intricate folded designs has made its way into scientific disciplines like medicine, aerospace design, and automotive engineering.

Dr. Lang has his own website with pages devoted to his art and the intersection of origami and math. His gallery of origami creations contains many fascinating specimens, including a 54 uniform-edge polypolyhedron. But to me, the most interesting are those folded from a single sheet of paper. Lang's page of crease patterns shows the detailed and complex folds necessary to create shapes like hermit crabs and garden spiders alongside the finished product.

Simple applied science

In our house, we've been dealing with a lot of interesting applied science lately. The most persistent and annoying source of it is the huge population of ants who seem to find a way into something sweet in our cupboard or on our counter pretty much every day. If I understood how thousands of tiny ants with pinpoint-sized brains could work together to act like a thinking being, I'd write a post about it. But I really have no idea.

Instead, I'll tell the story of how we unstuck two drinking glasses. For some reason, we have several different sizes of drinking glasses in our house. The second biggest size glass can fit inside the biggest size glass. However, once together, they tend to get stuck.

Mama Joules was trying to get them apart using water and soap, without success. I got them apart very quickly, with a different trick. I put ice and water in the smaller, inside glass. Most things contract (get smaller) when you make them colder, apparently including glass--the smaller glass came free from the larger one within just a few seconds.

Variations on this trick are pretty common--my grandmother used to use it to open jar lids that were stuck, by getting the lid hot. It's a kind of fun example of science that gets applied in the kitchen all the time.

Awhile back, I left some full soda cans on the porch, in the sun. When I came outside the next day, a couple of them had burst open. What do you think happened?

One interesting note: water expands when it gets hot, and also when it gets cold, but only so far. As the temperature drops, just before it freezes, water begins to expand again, and ice takes up more volume than the same amount of liquid water. Soda cans left out in the freezing cold can also burst!

BattleBots

BattleBots fans, rejoice! The dueling robot competition show, which last aired on American television in 2002, is due for a comeback. According to this article in Popular Mechanics, this new version of robot wars will focus strictly on the competition between the machines, targeting college students as designers. The televised event will likely air on an ESPN channel in November 2008.

With robot names like Diesector and Nightmare, watching the original BattleBots competitions on the Comedy Central TV series was a hoot. You can check out snips of previous BattleBot competitions on YouTube, like Best of Battlebots or Top 10 Battlebot Moments (the sound quality is poor on this one, but the clips are great -- note the sign-waving fans in the first one!)

Want to build your own competition-ready robot? There are a number of challenges out there just waiting for interested children and young adults! Check out the National Robotics Challenge or the Edventures Robotic Challenge: Grades 3-12 or drop by BEST and Botball® for middle & high school students.

Women and Engineering: The Great Debate (Part 2)

Following up on Women and Engineering: The Great Debate (Part 1), I recently had the pleasure of corresponding with a female engineer (several years older than I) who had this to share:

" ... I had a good experience in engineering. [My boss] was a big part of that, and very supportive of me and my work. I was lucky. Without such a supportive manager, my experience could have been very different.

I probably experienced more discrimination than I realized. Definitely there were a few instances I can recall, but in general, but I was always reticent to blame anything on my gender. If there was a problem, I tried to figure a way around it, regardless of the cause ...

My first day of work at one job, my boss sat down with me. The first words out of his mouth were he couldn't understand why a woman would want to work. He shook his head back and forth as he spoke. He wasn't being mean. He just couldn't understand it. I later discovered I was paid significantly less than my male counterpart, so I found a new job … and left. I told my boss and the department manager about it. I later heard the department manager cited my leaving as an example of why not to hire a woman, because they won't stay in a job for very long. He neglected to mention the pay inequity issue.

Even then, going back to my point about not blaming my gender, my take on the situation is this: Was I paid less because I was female, or was it because I could have done a better job of negotiating my salary? It was probably both, but I focused on the latter, because I could learn from it and do better next time, which I did ..."

Two things struck me as I read her words. First, I was impressed with her attitude toward work in the face of gender discrimination. She simply believed in herself, pressed forward, and moved on past a bad situation. I hope, in a similar situation, that I would do the same. Second, I marveled at the inappropriateness of a boss making comments like that.

But have things really changed in the intervening years? How are female engineers treated today?

In Stopping the Exodus of Women in Science, an article in the June 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Carolyn Buck Luce, and Lisa J. Servon summarize the findings of their recent study of women in the technology sector:

" ...Our research findings show that on the lower rungs of corporate career ladders, fully 41% of highly qualified scientists, engineers, and technologists are women. But the dropout rates are huge: Over time 52% of these talented women quit their jobs ... So why do women leave science, engineering, and technology careers? ... First and foremost, the hostility of the workplace culture drives them out. If machismo is on the run in most U.S. corporate settings, then this is its Alamo ..." (emphasis mine)

Kathleen Melymuka, of Computerworld, interviewed Hewlett in her June 16, 2008 post entitled Why women quit technology careers. Hewlett flatly denies that the primary reason women leave the workforce is to start families. Although work-life balance is a factor, Hewlett found that it is low on the list of reasons women are leaving the technology sector. Melymuka quotes Hewlett as follows:

"We found that 63% of women in science, engineering and technology have experienced sexual harassment ... demeaning and condescending attitudes … off-color jokes, sexual innuendo ... colleagues, particularly in the tech culture, who genuinely think women don't have what it takes -- who see them as genetically inferior. It's hard to take as a steady stream ..."

Well, at least the women who stick it out are paid well, right? Wrong. In 2006, the American Association of University Professors examined the salaries of women professors as compared to men. Looking at colleges and universities across the board, women are only making 80.7% of the salary of their male counterparts in similar jobs.

Unfair? Definitely. But are women also limiting their options and perpetuating these stereotypes without realizing it? Could you be an engineer and not know it? Gena Haskett notes some common misperceptions about female engineers -- including this gem -- in her blog post entitled Are You An Engineer?:

" ...Now you might not think that you have engineering tendencies but if you have every applied clear nail polish to a run in pantyhose, if you have stapled a hem or have 10 alternative uses for duct tape you might be a latent engineer or inventor ..."

And keep in mind the findings of a new study, conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, that looked at differences in math performance based upon gender. After studying data from 7 million U.S. students, the scientists came to this conclusion: There were no gender differences in math performance.

Let’s all take a step forward from these stereotypes and let our present and future engineers – of both genders – work in peace.

Women and Engineering: The Great Debate (Part 1)

There’s no argument that there are currently more men than women working in the field of engineering. However, the reasons for this inequality are hotly debated. Since parity has been reached in other scientific disciplines, such as medicine, some argue that the reason women are not as well represented in engineering, physics, math, and computer science must be that they are not as well suited to these fields as men. In other words, it’s not discrimination keeping women at bay – it’s a difference in aptitude.

To say that I disagree with this line of reasoning would be putting it mildly. I personally feel that women in the sciences still experience a tremendous amount of discrimination. I graduated high school – despite good grades and a supportive father who always told me I could do it – with the belief that I just wasn’t smart enough to be a scientist. I can remember going on job sites as a young environmental inspector and purposely not wearing make-up and pulling my hair into a ponytail so that I wouldn’t be treated as date material. I know what it’s like to enter an office where every other scientist is a good old boy and the only other women on staff are in the clerical department. (Which brings up another point: Just having similar numbers of men and women in a given field does not equal parity.)

Are women less suited to engineering than men? Elizabeth S. Spelke, of Harvard University, tackles this question in “Sex Differences in Intrinsic Aptitude for Mathematics and Science?: A Critical Review” in the December 2005 issue of American Psychologist (download the .pdf file here). She notes that previous research has indicated that women are less likely to major in mathematical disciplines, and that mathematically gifted women tend to choose different careers than men. Is there a genetic difference between the cognitive abilities of the sexes to account for this? Possibly, she concedes. However, she writes:

“Nevertheless, the wealth of research on cognition and cognitive development, conducted over 40 years, provides no reason to believe that the gender imbalances on science faculties, or among physics majors, stem from sex differences in intrinsic aptitude.”

So, if women aren’t less suited to engineering than men, are they discouraged from entering or staying in the field? Have things changed at all since the women’s liberation movement of the 1970’s? I’ll explore this topic again soon in Women and Engineering: The Great Debate (Part 2).