I. DATABYTES |
AMONG ASIAN ENGINEERING FACULTY, MALES GREATLY OUTNUMBER WOMEN
Significantly more Asian American men than women hold faculty positions, ASEE data show. For the five years from 2011 to 2015, Asian American women numbered 4,500 and men 28,030. When it comes to faculty rank, the Asian American male population expanded with increased seniority. For the period reviewed, assistant professors numbered 6,684; associate professors, 7,915; and full professors, 13,439. Among women, the opposite occurred: Assistant professors numbered 1,765; associate professors, 1,623; and full professors, 1,112. Mechanical Engineering, Electrical/Computer Engineering, and Computer Science (inside engineering) were the top three disciplines for both Asian American men and women, although how they ranked differed slightly by gender.
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II. POLITICAL HOTLINE |
SUNNY FORECAST FOR SOLAR, DESPITE POLITICAL CLOUDS
The solar industry in the U.S. is booming. Last year it employed 260,077 workers, a jump of 25 percent from 2015, according to an annual report by the nonprofit Solar Foundation. The increase was fueled by a huge spike in solar panel installations. Indeed, the report says, installed solar capacity for 2016 will likely grow by a record 14 gigawatts, nearly double the 7.5 GW growth that occurred in 2015. A U.S. Department of Energy study from last month showed even a higher total solar industry employment—374,000 workers, Fortune
reports. The foundation says the difference in totals comes from a more rigorous test it uses in counting jobs. The DOE report said that the industry now employs more people than the 187,117 workers at the country’s coal, gas and oil power plants. Still, Fortune notes that the number of people employed directly or indirectly by the fossil fuels industry—including exploration, excavation, construction and surveying—numbers in the millions. The foundation expects solar job growth to continue this year, but only at a rather more conservative rate of 10 percent. Why a slower growth rate? Politics. There’s a lot of uncertainty about how the new Trump administration will affect the industry, the foundation tells Fortune.
For instance, there are looming questions about the future of the U.S. Clean Power Plan, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and trade with China—all issues that have the potential to roil the industry.
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TECH WORKERS PROD THEIR EMPLOYERS TO FIGHT
During the 2016 election, most tech industry executives declined to back or donate to Donald Trump. But after he was elected, some companies met with him, and a few Silicon Valley executives joined his business advisory council. However, since the president’s controversial executive order of late January banning travel to the U.S. from seven mainly Muslim countries, the industry is once again backing away from Trump. Several publications report that employees of tech firms are pushing their bosses to distance themselves from the president or actively oppose him. As Wired
notes, the valley’s workforce is liberal and dedicated to the principles of meritocracy: Talent, not national origin, is what matters. And because there is a shortage of techies and engineers, workers can easily opt to leave one company to work for one more aligned with their anti-Trump views. The tech industry is highly dependent on foreign talent. Additionally, consumers are also pushing tech companies to shun Trump. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick resigned from Trump’s business council after more than 200,000 of the car-service’s users, angry over the immigration order, deleted their accounts. The Hill
reports that Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, maintains that his continuing participation in the council allows him to influence the Trump administration on issues like immigration and global warming. Nevertheless, newspaper adds, Musk’s companies joined around 130 others that filed an amicus brief with a federal appeals court, urging it to overturn Trump’s travel ban. Most of the companies that joined the brief were from Silicon Valley, including Apple, Intel, Google and Facebook.
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III. INNOVATIONS
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AN EFFORT TO HELP AUTONOMOUS CARS WEATHER ROAD GLARE
One hurdle for autonomous cars is bad weather. Most self-driving cars rely on cameras to stay on roads or within lanes, but cameras can be compromised by snow, ice, and rain. And the glare they cause can lead to accidents. So a team led by Hayder Radha, a professor of electrical and computer programming at Michigan State University, is working on fitting sensors and laser radar devices onto robotic cars that can “see” static objects regardless of the weather. According to the Lansing State Journal,
the devices Radha’s team is developing can tell the difference between roadways, sidewalks, trees, and buildings. The sensors and radar collect data that enable the car to generate a 3D aerial model of the area around it to guide it, the paper says. The professor and his grad students had a video display at the recent North American International Auto Show in Detroit that demonstrated the technology. One video showed a car driving on a snow-covered track at a speedway near the MSU campus. This was paired with another video displaying the computer-generated aerial view of the car’s position on the track, made from the data collected by the car’s radar and sensors. The car was able to keep to the roadway and avoid driving on the grass. The MSU car also has cameras—including night-vision and thermal types—and other sensors on its bumpers so it can avoid
pedestrians and other moving vehicles. One of Radha’s doctoral students, Mohammed Al-Qizwini, told the State Journal that the data the car collects will allow it “to drive even more accurately than a human.”
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TEST OFFERS HOPE OF DETECTING PANCREATIC CANCER EARLY
A bioengineer at Arizona State University has developed a simple, non-invasive blood test using nanoparticles that could allow for the early detection of pancreatic cancer. Right now, pancreatic cancer is extremely difficult to diagnose and treat, which is why only five percent of patients live another five years after being diagnosed. In comparison, 90 percent of breast cancer victims survive at least five years after diagnosis. According to New Scientist,
the only effective treatment for pancreatic cancer is complete surgical removal of the cancer before it spreads, so early detection is paramount. But that effort is complicated because the pancreas is hard to reach and biopsy, and ultrasound screening isn’t too effective. So by the time the cancer is detected because symptoms arise, it’s often too late to treat it. Tony Hu, an associate professor who heads the school’s Biodesign Institute, has developed a cheap blood test that needs only one-thousandth of a milliliter of blood plasma. In a pilot study of 59 people with early-stage pancreatic cancer, the magazine says, the test picked up 90 percent of the cases. The study also involved 48 healthy participants, and 48 who had pancreatitis, an inflammatory condition that’s sometimes hard to distinguish from cancer. Most cells secrete extracellular vesicles, or small
globules, into the blood stream, and when pancreas cells become cancerous, they secrete vesicles that are unique, the magazine says. Hu’s test uses gold nanoparticles that bind to those pancreatic vesicles. Once that occurs, if the particles’ light-emitting properties change, that’s a signal of the presence of pancreatic cancer. Hu now wants to conduct bigger trials, and he hopes his blood test will not only be approved, but eventually used for large-scale screening of pancreatic cancer. He also tells New Scientist that the test could one day also be adapted to other diseases that secrete unusual vesicles, including lymphoma, lung cancer and tuberculosis.
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IV. THE K-12 REPORT
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AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOLS ATTRACTING CHINESE STUDENTS
Top American universities have long been an irresistible draw for Chinese students. But now a growing number of well-to-do Chinese families are spending big bucks to send their teen children to U.S. high schools in an effort to improve their chances of gaining acceptance at an American college. A recent, in-depth article in the New York Times Magazine
notes that “even as U.S-China relations have slipped toward mutual antagonism, the flood of Chinese students coming to the United States has continued to rise.” Around 370,000 students from China are enrolled in high schools and colleges, it says—six times the number 10 years ago. The Department of Commerce estimates that the students contributed $11.4 billion to the economy in 2015, making education a top American export to China. One research firm says 83 percent of Chinese millionaires plan to send their offspring overseas to study, and the average age is now 16, down from 18 in 2014. In 2005, the magazine reports, a mere 641 Chinese students were taking classes in American high schools, but that number nearly hit 40,000 by 2014—or around half of all international high-school students in the U.S. Fees for sending Chinese kids to American schools can be
steep—one father featured in the article paid a consultancy $40,000 to get his son into an American school. Oddly, it notes, many Chinese students end up in parochial schools, even though China is an atheist state, as parents are reassured by their emphasis on safety, discipline, and morals. Unfortunately, many also end up at diploma mills. Only around 5 percent attend public schools, but their numbers are increasing as school districts begin to market themselves to Chinese families. The article focuses on Oxford Township, Mich., whose public school district was one of the first to tap into the Chinese market.
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BOEING ENGINEERS HELP DESIGN STEM EDUCATION MATERIALS
Aerospace giant Boeing has teamed up with PBS, the Teaching Channel, and Curiosity Machine (which designs hands-on engineering projects for students) to produce a collection of free educational materials and tutorials for K-12 students. It’s aimed at helping kids learn engineering by doing. For instance, the dozens of activities include lessons in designing a satellite, engineering an airfoil and finding alternative energy sources, according to Via Satellite,
an industry trade publication. Boeing engineers worked directly with its partners to come up with the STEM lesson plans, videos and hands-on activities. The goal is to break down complicated concepts into easy-to-digest components, the magazine says. Amy Kim, senior director of Curiosity Machine tells the magazine: “The engineering design challenges we developed together with Boeing have helped us bring science and engineering concepts directly to school children and families in many underserved and underrepresented countries around the world.” Kids learn to apply the engineering design process in hands-on ways that result in many possible solutions, Kim says. The topic areas include engineering in action, the magic of flight, space exploration, designing the future and career runway.
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