Few Female Engineers — Particularly URM Women — Join Academia

As of 2014, women accounted for 23 percent of assistant professors of engineering, 18 percent of associate professors, and 10 percent of full professors. With time, and assuming women are promoted as fast as men, the share of women will likely grow among associate and full professors. But even if this is the case, it is unlikely to increase by much given the low numbers overall of women engineers in academia. Even more striking is the share of under-represented minority (URM) women who have becoming engineering academics: 5 percent of assistant professors, 3 percent of associate professors, and 1 percent of full professors in engineering.

LEADING ARMS-CONTROL SCIENTISTS BACK IRAN NUKE DEAL

Essentially every Republican member of Congress and a fair number of Democrats, as well, are opposed to the White House-led international agreement to roll back Iran’s nuclear program. But the deal was given a big booster shot when 29 top American scientists wrote a letter to President Obama applauding it and calling it smart and robust. One of the letter’s organizers was Richard L. Garwin, the physicist who helped build the first hydrogen bomb and who is a long-time Washington adviser on nuclear arms control. Indeed, nearly all of the signatories have had “Q clearances,” which is equivalent to the military’s top secret security clearance, the New York Times notes. They wrote: “This is an innovative agreement, with much more stringent constraints that any previously negotiated non-proliferation framework.” The scientists scoffed at criticisms that the deal was not tough enough and was too favorable to Iran. It’s a given that the GOP-led Congress will vote to reject the deal -- a measure that Obama will veto. The president will then need to keep enough Democrats on board to prevent Congress from overriding his veto.

CHRISTIE, PAUL SPAR OVER NSA PHONE RECORDS COLLECTIONS

The Republican Party’s long list of presidential candidates are divided on the issue of the intelligence-gathering capabilities of federal agencies. The topic sparked a war of words between Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor, and Sen. Paul Rand of Kentucky during the recent GOP debate. As The Hill newspaper noted, Christie’s defense of the National Security Agency’s collection of domestic data and Paul’s opposition to it underscored a divide within the party. The GOP’s hawkish wing, which seems to be in ascension, backs Christie on this issue; its younger, more libertarian wing wants to check the NSA’s intel-gathering powers. Paul said: “I want to collect more records from terrorists, but less records from innocent Americans.” Christie, a former U.S. attorney who relied on the Patriot Act while pursuing terrorist cases, called that a “completely ridiculous answer. How are you supposed to know?” Paul, who earlier this year temporarily shut down a portion of the Patriot Act that allowed the bulk collection of telephone records, yelled at Christie: “Use the Fourth Amendment! Get a warrant! Get a judge to sign a warrant! Use the Constitution!” To which Christie responded: “Listen senator, you know when you’re sitting in a subcommittee just blowing hot air about this, you can say things like that.” Paul responded he didn’t “trust Obama with our records,” and took a jab at Christie for having hugged of the president when they toured the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Christie said the only hugs he remembers are those he gave to families who lost members on 9/11. Cue to Paul rolling his eyes.

III. THE K-12 REPORT

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AT&T DEVELOPING STUDENT’S IDEA FOR A HOT-CAR ALERT

Engineers at the telecom AT&T are working on a device that would alert parents if they’ve accidentally left an infant in a hot car. The prototype for the device, which includes motion detectors, and heat and carbon dioxide sensors, was developed by a recent mechanical engineering graduate of the University of Texas, Dallas: 22-year-old Nancy Dominguez. Dominguez was an intern at the AT&T Foundry lab in Fort Smith, Ark., according to the local paper, the Times Record. On average, the paper notes, 38 children a year die from hyperthermia because they were left in hot cars. On a sweltering day, the inside temperature of a car can rise rapidly. In 90-degree heat, the interior of an automobile can reach 114 degrees within 10 minutes, the paper says. If the device determines movement in the car once a certain high temperature is detected, it will alert the owner by text message or a call. If a set amount of time lapses and there’s no response, the device can send a message to emergency services. An AT&T spokesperson tells the Times Record that the device isn’t market-ready yet, but that it could become available within a few months.

Image: Christine Daniloff/MIT

EGG-INSPIRED ANODE MAY CRACK BATTERY CAPACITY HURDLES

Most of today’s rechargeable lithium-ion batteries use anodes, the negative electrodes, made of graphite. Graphite is used because it is more resistant to the degradation caused by repeated cycles of charging and discharging. But graphite has a charge capacity of just 0.35 ampere-hours per gram (Ah/g). A good low-cost option with more capacity is aluminum, which has a theoretical capacity of 2Ah/g. But there’s an issue with aluminum. It expands and shrinks during each cycle, and in doing so it absorbs and releases lithium, a process that fairly quickly degrades its performance. Now researchers at MIT say they’ve found a solution -- encasing the aluminum anode in a shell made of nanoparticles, not unlike an egg. The aluminum “yolk” inside the shell can expand and contract repeatedly without the outer shell sustaining any damage. The result, the team says, is an electrode that has more than three times the capacity of graphite at normal charging rates, and double the capacity at very fast charging rates (within six minutes). The materials are inexpensive, the researchers say, and should be simple to manufacture at scale.

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VI. COMMUNITY ANNOUNCEMENTS

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

COVER: Chile is spending $62.5 million to shake up the country’s leading engineering schools and get them to focus more on innovation, technology transfer and entrepreneurism, and to form closer working relationships with local, regional and national industries.

LYCOMING: While advanced manufacturing whets policymakers’ appetite for ever-more sophisticated products, a central Pennsylvania company successfully adapts new techniques to a product it began making in 1929: the piston aircraft engine.

RENCIS: A profile of Joseph J. Rencis, ASEE President (2015-16).

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