III. POLITICAL HOTLINE |
WHITE HOUSE WANTS NASA TO RETURN TO THE MOON
Vice President Pence used the first meeting of the recently revived National Space Council to declare that the Trump administration wants to refocus NASA on another lunar mission. “We will return American astronauts to the moon, not only to leave behind footprints and flags, but to build the foundation we need to send Americans to Mars and beyond,” Pence said. The Space Council was disbanded 14 years ago, but revived by the Trump White House in June. According to the New York Times, the council coordinates space policy between NASA and other federal agencies, and its members include the secretaries of state, transportation and commerce, the national security adviser and the budget director. Details were vague. Pence didn’t indicate any deadlines,
explain the rationale behind it, or say how much the U.S. was willing to spend, the Times says. As Slate magazine notes, the lack of details is a big problem. The nonprofit Planetary Society, which advocates for increased space exploration, tells the magazine there’s no need for a return trip, given that both NASA and private space companies are now keen to send humans to Mars. Pence’s comments indicate a desire to plant a base on the moon. But, Slate says, that would be very expensive to do and maintain. As for a lunar launch pad for a Mars mission, NASA already has plans for a deep-space staging post that would accomplish the same objective for less money. Says Casey Dreier, director of the society: “Money spent on a moon base is money you’re not spending on going to Mars.”
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SMART TOY LAUNCH CANCELLED AFTER POLS RAISE CONCERNS
Bipartisanship is in scarce supply in Congress these days. But last month, Ed Markey, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, and Joe Barton, a Republican congressman from Texas, joined forces to write a letter to toymaker Mattel urging it to cancel plans for a digital voice assistant called Aristotle. The lawmakers’ letter came on the heels of a petition drive co-led by the Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood. This month, Mattel bowed to the pressure and pulled the plug on the smart device, the New York Times reports. Markey and Barton’s letter read, in part: “This new product has the potential to raise serious privacy concerns as Mattel can build an in-depth profile of children and their family. It appears that never before has a device had
the capability to so intimately look into the life of a child.” There have been breaches to children’s privacy in the past, the Times notes. For instance, in 2015, game and toy manufacturer VTech admitted that the accounts of five million parents and six million students had been compromised. The campaign also noted there were fears that having youngsters interact at an early age with devices instead of parents raised child-development concerns. Aristotle was designed to be a voice-activated Wi-Fi device with a camera that kids could use from birth to adolescence. Early on it could be used as a night light, monitor and emitter of white noise. As a child aged, it could read stories, play interactive games, help with homework, and even give language lessons. Mattel said its new chief technology officer, Sven Gerjets, killed Aristotle’s launch after deciding
“that it did not fully align with Mattel’s new technology strategy.”
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IV. INNOVATIONS |
GM APPLE SLICES THAT DON’T BROWN; WILL CONSUMERS BITE?
Some 400 stores in the Midwest and California may soon be selling bags of sliced apples, a new variety of Golden Delicious that’s been genetically altered so it can last up to three weeks before turning brown. The so-called Arctic apple hopes to overcome marketplace reluctance to some genetically-modified foods because it’s been modified to make it more palatable to consumers, as opposed to foods modified to make them easier for farmers to grow, according to MIT Technology Review. Moreover, the Arctic apples won’t be labeled as being genetically engineered, thanks to a 2016 labelling law. Instead the package will have a QR code that, if scanned with a smartphone, links to a webpage that explains how the apples were developed, the magazine
explains. Neal Carter, a grower and farming innovator, independently developed and won regulatory approval for the apple for his company Okanagan Specialty Fruits. But two years ago, Okanagan was acquired for $41 million by Intrexon, a Maryland biotech company whose other products include genetically-engineered salmon and cloned cattle. Carter’s research team used a technique called gene slicing to reengineer the apple’s DNA to produce less polyphenol oxidase, an enzyme that causes the white flesh of an apple to turn brown, the article says. Groups opposed to genetically-modified foods are already protesting the planned rollout. But David Zilberman, a professor of agriculture at the University of California, Berkeley, tells Technology Review that the apples are safe and the labelling adequate. “Cigarettes have a huge (label), but GMO is not cigarettes;
it’s not poison.”
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A USE IS FOUND FOR RECYCLED TOILET PAPER: MAKING ASPHALT
The Netherlands is a pretty wet place. It gets 27 to 35 inches of rain a year. Accordingly, it uses a special type of asphalt to pave its roads. It’s called open-graded asphalt friction course, or OGCF. OGCF is very porous and water permeable, so water leaves a road surface more quickly, making it less slippery. A key ingredient of OGCF is cellulose, which thickens the mixture and allows it to retain higher volumes of the bitumen that binds together the stones and sand in asphalt. Last year, according to CityLab.com, the Dutch province of Friesland tried an experiment: It paved a one-kilometer stretch of a bike path
that used cellulose derived from recycled toilet paper. And one year on, the bike path is holding up well. Toilet paper is a hassle for wastewater treatment plants. It has to be filtered out, dried and incinerated, which produces a lot of carbon dioxide. But TP is mainly made from wood chips or recycled paper, so it contains a lot cellulose. Legally, cellulose taken from wastewater that’s contained human excrement cannot be used in products humans would touch, the article explains, but asphalt production requires such high temperatures that no pathogens could survive the process. Other cities are looking at using TP for road-paving. But even if it catches on, it may not solve the problem of treatment plants choking on toilet paper. One expert tells the website that cellulose comprises just 5 percent of the asphalt mixture, and only 15,000 tons of it would be needed if every road in
Holland were repaved. Meanwhile, treatment plants deal with around 180,000 tons of TP a year.
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V. THE K-12 REPORT
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CRITIC: TESTS ARE THE WRONG METRIC TO EVALUATE SCHOOLS
The accountability movement, which is mainly based on standardized test scores, aims to better evaluate outcomes, or how well students have learned, and how well teachers, principals and school districts have performed. It began decades ago, but accelerated under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002. As the Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss notes, the movement has generated considerable grassroots pushback in recent years, but it nevertheless continues. However, a new book, The Testing Charade: Pretending to Make Schools Better, by Harvard University expert Daniel Koretz, argues that it’s the wrong approach and has been a failure. In a Q&A with Strauss, Koretz claims “the improvements it has produced have been limited, and these are
greatly outweighed by the serious damage it has done.” Many improvements, he notes, didn’t actually occur, but resulted from inflated test scores. Adds Koretz: “The problem is not tests. The problem is the misuse of tests. Tests can be a useful tool, but policymakers have demanded far more of them than is reasonable, and this has backfired … policymakers have ignored the fact that tests capture only some of what we want students to accomplish and even less of what we want schools to do.” Read the entire interview here.
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NEW YORK TOPS RANKING OF MOST TEACHER-FRIENDLY STATES
The attrition rate for K-12 teachers is high. A fifth of newly certified teachers don’t last a year in the job, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. And nearly half quit within five years. Long hours, heavy pressure and low pay are some of the reasons. Among occupations requiring a bachelor’s degree, teaching is one of the lowest-paid. But some states are better than others when it comes to treating and paying teachers more fairly. A new analysis that looked at teaching environments in all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, by WalletHub, the online credit-score company, compared and ranked
them using 21 key indicators of teacher-friendliness, including salary growth potential, pupil-teacher ratios, and safety. The top five states were, from one to five: New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. The worst five were: Arizona, Hawaii, South Carolina, Mississippi and Florida. Michigan has the best paid teachers, Hawaii the lowest-paid. Vermont spends the most per public-school pupil, Idaho the least.
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VI. JOBS, JOBS, JOBS |
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VII. COMING ATTRACTIONS |
HERE’S THE LINEUP FOR NEXT EDITION OF PRISM MAGAZINE
COVER: RESILIENCY—Engineers develop new ways to mitigate the worst effects of natural disasters and spur recovery.
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FEATURE: HYPERSONIC—A giant leap beyond supersonic, aircraft flying at up to 20 times the speed of sound are becoming a more realistic prospect.
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FEATURE: EVALUATION—How faculty members survive negative assessments by students.
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VIII. COMMUNITY ANNOUNCEMENTS |
AWAKEN YOUR INNER ENTREPRENEUR!
ASEE is offering two two-week courses in the spring of 2018 for researchers and innovators who want to take their STEM education vision to the next level. The application period opens October 25. For more information click here.
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GOFLY COMPETITION
In partnership with Boeing, ASEE is calling on the world’s greatest thinkers, designers, engineers, and builders to challenge themselves and change the future. Registration for the competition is now open and all details are available here.
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ASEE IS CO-HOSTING the First Annual CoNECD (Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity - pronounced “connected”) Conference next April 29 to May 1. It will be a forum on enhancing diversity and inclusion of underrepresented groups in engineering and computing. CoNECD will encompass many diverse groups, including those based on gender (including gender identity and gender expression), race and ethnicity, disability, veterans, LGBTQ+, 1st generation and socio-economic status. It's a collaboration of ASEE's Minorities in Engineering and Women in Engineering divisions and several outside groups. ASEE members can submit an abstract here (login required.)
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ASEE BOARD REORGANIZATION - FEEDBACK NEEDED
ASEE ED Norman Fortenberry presents rationale on a proposed reorganization of the ASEE Board of Directors. Watch a video and leave your feedback (ASEE member login required; Firefox works best.).
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THE ACCELERATOR RETURNS
Beginning this month, ASEE's free monthly newsletter for undergraduate and graduate students will resume publication with a wide array of resources: scholarship and internship/co-op listings, student news and essays, podcasts, professional development resources (e.g., advice on how to get an internship and how to make the most of it), and academic advice - plus entertaining engineering videos. Tell your students! Click here to sign up. Click here to advertise. Send content to
Jennifer Pocock at j.pocock@asee.org.
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CAPSTONE DESIGN CONFERENCE
The 2018 Capstone Design Conference is scheduled for June 4-6, 2018 in Rochester, New York, USA. The call for papers and workshops is now available on the conference website: www.capstoneconf.org/callforpapers. The deadline for papers and workshops is January 8, 2018 - submissions are welcome!
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IX. SOUND OFF |
Do you have a comment or suggestion for Connections?
Please let us know. Email us at: connections@asee.org. Thanks.
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