Foreign-Student Enrollment Continues to Grow

The number of foreign-born students, who were on nonimmigrant visas at the time of attendance, is steadily growing in U.S. engineering schools. Between 2005 and 2014, enrollment of this group almost tripled in bachelor’s degree programs and doubled in graduate degree programs.

In 2005, 5 percent of all undergraduate students and 53 percent of all graduate students were foreign-born. In 2014, those proportions stood at 9 percent and 63 percent respectively.

MILLENNIAL TECHIES AND SANDERS - A DIGI-LOVE FEST

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ uphill quest to wrest the Democratic presidential nomination from Hillary Clinton is getting a big digital boost from technology professionals across the country who are donating time and expertise to his campaign. According to the New York Times, tech-savvy volunteers for the Vermont independent – including software developers and designers – have bolstered his candidacy by, among other things, building or designing an interactive map of campaign events, an iPad app that makes it easier to collection donations, and dozens of websites for supporters. They’ve self-organized using both a Reddit thread – Coders for Sanders – and Slack, an online chat program, the Times says. The developer of the website FeeltheBern.org says her 125 volunteers are a diverse group of mostly under-35-year-olds, including former aides to Mitt Romney and libertarians – surprising sources of support for a candidate who calls himself a Democratic Socialist. The newspaper says his young tech backers like his unconventional style and his fight against inequality. Whatever the reason they’re embracing Sanders, the fruits of their efforts are saving his shoe-string campaign many thousands of dollars – because the kinds of software they’re voluntarily creating for it would otherwise cost a bundle.

WOULD DIVESTING ENERGY STOCKS HURT COLLEGES?

Many universities are under pressure from students to divest their endowment funds of fossil fuel companies, according to The Hill newspaper. Both Stanford and Georgetown earlier this year dropped coal companies from their endowment funds. But, the paper says, a new industry-funded study by a Caltech visiting professor of finance found that schools with large endowments could lose millions of dollars if they divested their holdings of oil, gas and coal companies. Harvard would lose $108 million in returns a year, Yale $51 million, and MIT $17.8 million, the study says. Author Bradford Cornell claims that, in addition, divestment would do little to help fight global warming. “If climate change is a first-order problem, divestment is a very bad idea,” he told Bloomberg. The study was commissioned by the Independent Petroleum Association of America. A spokesperson for 350.org, a group that works to raise awareness of climate-change issues, dismissed the report: “No one takes something like this seriously – because the words ‘petroleum-funded study’ says it all.”

III. THE K-12 REPORT

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A GREEN LEAF SPROUTS AT CALTECH

Hydrogen, the most common element, emits only water when burned, so it’s a potentially great, clean fuel source. But most hydrogen is currently produced using natural-gas steam reforming, which releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Electrolysis can be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, but it requires a lot of energy, and how clean it is depends on the source of that electricity. But now, after five years and $122 million in funding, largely from the Department of Energy, researchers at the California Institute of Technology have devised an “artificial leaf” that uses sunlight to generate hydrogen. It’s similar to photosynthesis, they say, but 10 times more efficient. Other systems that have tried to use photosynthesis to produce hydrogen were either inefficient, or efficient but unstable – which is dangerous given that they create explosive mixtures of hydrogen and oxygen. Caltech’s investigators say theirs is efficient, stable and safe. It uses a plastic membrane to keep the gases separated and a pressurized system to pump the hydrogen into a pipeline to store it. Hydrogen could be used to store excess energy at solar plants and wind farms to keep the power flowing when the sun isn’t shining or the wind ebbs. They admit, however, it’s no quick solution. The proof-of-concept prototype is only 1 square centimeter in size, so the technology is still in its infancy – roughly where solar-panel research was 20 to 25 years ago.

M.I.T. CHILLER KEEPS INDIAN MILK COLD EVEN WHEN GRID’S OUT

India produces 130 million gallons of milk a year, making it the world’s largest producer of moo juice. Yet several million gallons of that milk goes bad because rural producers cannot always keep it refrigerated long enough before it’s collected by dairies because of spotty grid coverage in India’s countryside. Most of the bad milk is tossed out, though some makes it to market in low-quality dairy products that are health risks. To the rescue comes a new MIT spinout called Promethean Power. It’s designed a chiller than can keep milk cold and fresh even if no electricity is available. Promethean calls its technology a “thermal battery.”It’s not really a battery, although it is rechargeable. It’s a tank fashioned from two materials: a phase-changing material that freezes and liquefies inside tubes that are submersed in a heat-transfer fluid that cannot freeze. It’s attached to a compressor and a stainless-steel heat exchanger that cools the milk poured over it. The device stores thermal power when the grid is operating and releases it to keep the milk chilled when no electricity is available. Promethean has installed around 100 across India at collection stations where farmers can bring milk within 30 minutes after milking a cow. It ensures that collected milk won’t go bad. And for dairies, it cuts costs because they no longer have to buy and transport diesel fuel to rural areas to run generators.

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VI. COMMUNITY ANNOUNCEMENTS

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HERE’S THE LINE- UP FOR THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE OF PRISM MAGAZINE

TELESCOPE: Rising out of red sand and scrub is a scientific project that has energized South Africa’s engineering schools like nothing before. Four massive dishes pointing toward the sky are the first indication that this will be the epicenter of the largest radio telescope array the world has ever seen. Ultimately, the international Square Kilometer Array (SKA) consortium plans to build more than 2,000 of these antennas stretching across the continent.

OBSERVATORY: When it opens in 2024, the Thirty Meter Telescope will enable astronomers to look back more than 13 billion years in space. But engineers will also be gazing in wonder at the structure that houses it: a 20-story-high marvel of engineering design that will make it the most advanced observatory in the world.

ELECTROCEUTICALS: A new, fast-growing area of biomedical engineering uses electricity to treat myriad ailments by modulating nerve signals to allow an organ to regain healthy function.

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