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White men still hold majority of US science and engineering jobs – Nature.com

March 25, 2023 | Author: admin

A report from the US National Science Foundation finds that the majority of science and engineering jobs are held by white men.Credit: Getty

Women, members of minority ethnic groups and those with disabilities continue to be under-represented in positions across the US science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce, according to a report by the US National Science Foundation (NSF).

The report finds that although the proportions of jobs held by these groups rose overall between 2011 and 2021, they remained lower than the groups representation in the nations population. Women, for example, comprise 51% of the US population but represent just 35% of employees in the US STEM workforce. The findings relate to the academic, industry, non-profit and government sectors, including roles such as managers and technicians, and those in related areas such as health care.

White men dominate science and engineering positions in the nation, the report finds; nearly three-quarters of people in these roles identify as male. Almost two-thirds identify as white.

Just one-fifth of the science and engineering workforce identifies as Asian, 8% as Hispanic or Latino, 8% as African American and 0.4% as American Indian or Alaskan Native. Although people with at least one disability represent about one-quarter of the US population, they accounted for only 3% of those in science and engineering positions. The proportion of these workers in the general STEM workforce has remained unchanged in the past decade.

Ableism, or discrimination against people with disabilities, along with continuing inaccessibility of physical and virtual spaces, could bar scientists with disabilities from seeking or getting positions in their field, says Bonnielin Swenor, director of the John Hopkins University Disability Health Research Center in Baltimore, Maryland. She notes that barriers are exponentially greater for scientists with disabilities who are also members of other under-represented groups. These disparities are both a cause and consequence of inaccurate, but common, views that people with disabilities dont belong in STEM, are incapable of being scientists and are overlooked as STEM leaders, she says.

Academics fight moves to defund diversity programmes at US universities

Under-representation in STEM could result from a scarcity of role models, says Johnna Frierson, associate dean for equity, diversity and inclusion for the basic sciences at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina. She sees the problem as a cycle in which lack of representation leads to continued lack of representation. If ones environment doesnt have robust diversity in representation, it can send an implicit message that individuals from under-represented groups do not belong and cant be successful in those spaces, she says.

The NSF report also finds that earnings disparities in science and engineering (S&E) positions persist between different groups. In 2020, the median annual wage for all employees in the sector was US$89,990. But men in these fields earned around $25,000 more than their female counterparts ($99,923 versus $75,562). The median salary for white S&E workers was $89,977. For Asian S&E workers, it was $107,150.

The report also finds that female scientists hold almost two-thirds of positions in the social sciences, including psychology, sociology and anthropology, but fewer than half in biological, agricultural and related disciplines. They continue to be under-represented in the physical and related sciences, including physics and chemistry (33%), computer and mathematical sciences (26%) and engineering (16%). White people also take up a majority of positions in each discipline. Among computer and mathematical scientists, 57% identify as white. The other three disciplines have similar numbers: 63% of biological, agricultural and other life scientists identify as white, as do 69% of engineers and 71% of those in physical sciences.

Chemistry course corrections tackle bias

Some have criticized the report for its lack of data on people from sexual and gender minorities (LGBT+) in the STEM workforce. Ramn Barthelemy, a physicist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, who has studied equity and inclusion in physics, says that his work on LGBT+ faculty members, and on LGBT+ physicists in particular, has shown concerning trends, including exclusionary behaviours and negative workspace environments1. Those trends, he adds, are particularly worrisome for those in the community who also identify as women or as a person of colour. Without proper representation in data, he says, we arent being included in metrics on diversity, equity and inclusion, further marginalizing the community.

NSF representatives say that the agency is integrating questions about the LGBT+ community into its surveys, adding that it hopes to publish its analysis of the data in a few years.

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White men still hold majority of US science and engineering jobs - Nature.com

UK engineering degree coming to area | News | paducahsun.com – Paducah Sun

March 25, 2023 | Author: admin

Area students could pursue a bachelors in computer engineering technology through a collaboration with the University of Kentucky and West Kentucky Community and Technical College.

Dr. Charles Lu, director of the UK College of Engineering-Paducah Campus, said the final approval process began in November and is pending.

UK has offered the same ABET program since the late 90s to Lexington students through a partnership with Bluegrass Community & Technical College.

Likewise, students here would study at WKCTC for four years.

Students wont need to go anywhere; theyll stay here for two years and complete an associates, (then) stay for two more years and complete a four-year degree, Dr. Lu said. Along the way, the program offers several professional certificates.

Those certificates include aerospace, production, and sustainability and environmental engineering.

The concept isnt new: UK and WKCTC have offered four-year mechanical and chemical engineering pathways since 1997.

Dr. Lu said this program differed as a more general program.

Chemical engineering, for example, I might work at a chemical plant, he said. But computer engineering technology is basically everywhere every product you see every day in general manufacturing. Anyone graduating from this program can work in the aerospace industry, automotive industry anything automated with software.

Computer engineering blends hardware and software design. On the UK site, the program curriculum shows courses in coding and circuitry.

Early courses introduce students to programming. Later classes feature embedded systems i.e., software not in a normal computer. Modern refrigerators, traffic lights and timer circuits in coffee makers feature embedded programming.

The US Bureau of Labor projects a five-% growth for computer engineers by 2031. The 2021 median salary was some $128,000.

While some coding jobs will decline advances in AI could cause that there is similar growth projected for most hardware-, software- and computing-focused careers.

This program offers many options, Dr. Lu said. It has the potential to serve many industries and provide different types of workforces, from technicians to engineers.

When students come here, they enroll in WKCTC, so theyre also eligible for scholarships from both institutions.

The UK College of Engineering cites an annual $25 million economic impact from area engineering graduates.

Some 500 local engineers have graduated, 40% first-generation college students.

Over 70% of them choose to stay local, with the opportunity to go anywhere else in the country, Dr. Lu said. Thats the impact in the local community.

On Wednesday, the Paducah Area Community and Reuse Organization pledged $50,000 to the program, marking a total $602,000 in pledges.

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UK engineering degree coming to area | News | paducahsun.com - Paducah Sun

Engineering students work to provide clean water to residents of the … – The Daily | Case Western Reserve University

March 25, 2023 | Author: admin

When you wake up each morning, its likely you dont think twice about how youre going to acquire safe drinking water for the day. Unfortunately, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, thats not the case for 2 billion people around the world who lack easy access to such a commoditybut Case Western Reserve students are working to be a part of the solution.

In recognition of today (March 22) being World Water Day, The Daily caught up with the CWRU chapter of Engineers Without Borders. Members of the group traveled to Cruce de Blanco, a community in the Dominican Republic, in January to build a water chlorinator and install a sediment filtration system that would bring clean drinking water to the homes of 450 residentsand alleviate the cost of buying bottled water.

Theres rampant poverty in the community and [buying bottled water] is a huge cost for them to undertake, said Victor Nash, the teams translator and second-year civil and environmental engineering major. For all of their drinking water to come from that source is not good for their way of life.

Students from Case Western Reserve have traveled to Cruce de Blanco 12 times since 2007, and it was during one of their early visits that they constructed a brand new water distribution system all together.

Claire Daugherty, fourth-year mechanical engineering student and co-lead of the project, said historical documentation from prior trips is helpful, but since no one has traveled to the community since before the pandemic began, it was challenging to understand the current state of the system.

Still, the team of 10 students developed a strategy while working to reestablish relationships with community leaders and learn the lay of the land. By Jan. 6, they were ready to see it for themselves.

We had our schedule planned out the way we thought it would go, said Danielle Sarno, a fourth-year biomedical engineering major and co-lead. But the first day we got there, we quickly learned that it was not going to go as planned at all.

On day two, Sarno and Daugherty learned that the sediment tank wasnt working, there were multiple bypasses in the system, and water wasnt even reaching some places in the village all of the time. They knew they had to pivot.

We thought we could get our shopping [for supplies] done in one day, Lekha Joy, a first-year student, said. We had to go almost every day.

Despite the initial roadblocks, the team got to work on their three initiatives: building a chlorinator, establishing new pressure reducing valves (PRVs) in the distribution line and putting a sediment filter screen at the intake. All are improvements that provide community members with cleaner, safer drinking water.

The work often required late nights and early morningsand building the sediment filter at the intake involved a two-mile hike both ways.

The main goal for the sediment filter was to reduce the amount of labor that was initially required, Sarno said. Before our trip, they had two 70-plus-year-old community members going up to clean out the sedimentation tank and doing this strenuous hike twice a week. The goal is that the sediment filter screen reduces that.

Some initiatives are still ongoing. During their preparation in the U.S., the CWRU students determined the correct places to install the PRVsusing hydraulic calculationsbut when they learned the system was different than they thought, they scaled back their plans, placing three out of the four PRVs. Incoming co-team leads Nash and Isabel Meltzer are still communicating with community leaders to facilitate the completion of this part of the project to ensure all homes are receiving water.

Finally, the team built the chlorinator. After taking their time to source the safest and easiest-to-use chlorine for the system, they put on their headlamps and worked after dark on their final night, alongside community members, to complete the structure.

Learn more about the efforts of Engineers Without Borders.

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Engineering students work to provide clean water to residents of the ... - The Daily | Case Western Reserve University

‘We do not do the end of life well’ in America: How hospice can help … – Morningstar

March 25, 2023 | Author: admin

By Jessica Hall

Jimmy Carter's use of hospice is shining a light on end-of-life care

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter's decision to seek hospice care and spend his remaining time in care at home has helped bring awareness to an industry that quietly serves people at the end of their lives.

Hospice, which provides care and support services for patients who are terminally ill with a life expectancy of six months or less, offers care at the end of life -- something that people often are uncomfortable talking about.

"People have been trying for years to raise awareness of hospice. But it's marketing something no one wants to buy -- or at least talk about," said Amy Tucci, president of the Hospice Foundation of America. "President Carter has done more for hospice care than anyone I can remember. He raised awareness more in a day than the industry has in 10 years."

Read:Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter in hospice care

'To live well at the end of life'

The hospice industry has been growing, fueled by an aging U.S. population, as well as an increased awareness of what hospice provides. Hospice admissions grew to 1.7 million, up 42%, from 2011 to 2021, according to MedPAC. Half of all Medicare beneficiaries who die each year do so in hospice, with dementia as the primary diagnosis, Tucci said.

"There has been an awakening in America that we do not do the end of life well," said Elliott Wood, president and CEO of Medalogix, a healthcare data-analytics company that serves the hospice industry. "Physicians are trained to heal. And there's a massive lack of understanding and accountability about who should be having these end-of-life conversations."

Medalogix's Muse technology can predict, with an accuracy greater than 90%, whether a hospice patient will die within 10 days of the last hospice visit. Muse compares individual patient data with that of more than 60,000 active hospice patients, as well as with millions of records for patients who have since died, in order to predict a person's final days.

That prediction can allow caretakers to strategize a plan for the final days of care -- and give them time to talk to the family and the patient about death and what any wishes may be for final arrangements.

"Conversations about dying are very uncomfortable. Jimmy Carter seeking hospice created space for people to have an end-of-life conversation, and an openness for the general public to learn more about hospice," Wood said.

"There's a huge misnomer of hospice. It's an end-of-life benefit -- to live well at the end of life. It's not the patient giving up," Wood said. "It's a chance to make sure there's a will in place, that spiritual needs are being met and end-of-life wishes are met."

The art and science of healthcare

There are four levels of hospice care. Routine care is the most common level of care, usually provided in the home for a stable patient with controllable symptoms like pain or nausea. General inpatient care provides crisis-level care for short-term management of acute symptoms and is usually provided in a hospital or nursing home. Continuous home care is crisis-level care provided on a short-term basis at home. Meanwhile, respite care provides temporary care so a family member can get a break from caregiving.

Medalogix's Muse product serves 50 hospice-care providers or customers that represent one out of five hospice patients in the U.S.

An additional benefit of predicting the final days of a patient's life is that it helps the hospice providers plan their staffing needs better at a time of a labor shortage in the medical field, Wood said.

"The purpose of Muse is to ensure that patients are having the right care at the right time," Wood said.

"It's transformational. It's a mix of the art and science of healthcare. It combines the sacred calling of care -- which is why I got into it -- with a partner on the data-science piece," said Charlotte Mather, vice president of nursing-hospice at care provider AccentCare Inc., a home-health and hospice company that uses the Muse technology.

"Before we had this tool, we didn't have as much confidence as we do now. This gives us a different lens to see the patient's care," Mather said. "We can do a better job with the quality of their life in those final days. Whether it's saying it's time to have the family say their goodbyes, to looking at the cultural beliefs or needs, this gives us the time to help them on their journey," she said.

"It allows you to have a conversation from a place of confidence that this is what we expect to see in the next week or the next few days. It helps us anticipate what they will need from us," Mather said.

Muse also helps the hospice provider meet the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) requirements for an additional payment called a service intensity adjustment, which requires that a registered nurse or social worker must visit the patient on two of the last three days of their life.

"CMS shaped the payment to drive behavior to provide the appropriate care," Wood said.

Without having the proper personnel visiting a hospice patient in the final days, families can be ill-prepared for the end. As a result, they might panic and call an ambulance, putting the patient in the emergency room or hospital to die in a facility instead of at home where they wanted, Wood said.

That's also a more costly outcome.

"The role of hospice is to avoid that very bad outcome and provide care and comfort in the final days," Wood said.

Do you have questions about retirement, Social Security, where to live or how to afford it at all? Write to HelpMeRetire@marketwatch.com and we may use your question in a future story.

-Jessica Hall

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

03-25-23 1440ET

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The science of sailing: inside the race across the worlds most remote ocean – The Guardian

March 25, 2023 | Author: admin

After a long hiatus, the epic Ocean Race is back but this year, as well as dodging icebergs, cracking masts and suffering the occasional hull sandwich failure, the teams are gathering crucial data from places even research vessels rarely reach

Yvonne Gordon

Sat 25 Mar 2023 09.00 EDT

The Southern Ocean is not somewhere most people choose to spend an hour, let alone a month. Circling the icy continent of Antarctica, it is the planets wildest and most remote ocean. Point Nemo just to the north in the South Pacific is the farthest location from land on Earth, 1,670 miles (2,688km) away from the closest shore. The nearest humans are generally those in the International Space Station when it passes overhead.

But on 21 March, four sailing teams came through here part of a marathon race round the bottom of the Earth, from Cape Town in South Africa to Itaja in Brazil.

By the time these 18-metre (60ft) Imoca monohull sailing yachts neared Point Nemo, the five sailors on each boat had already been at sea for 23 days, with another two weeks to go before they reach port in early April. And this is just leg three, the longest portion of the even longer Ocean Race, a 32,000-nautical-mile dash around the world that started in January and finishes in July.

Competition is fierce and racing is close, even after three weeks at sea. Boat speeds on leg three so far have been up to 40.5 knots the equivalent of gale force winds and the vessels have, subject to ratification, broken the 24-hour distance record multiple times. The crews survive on freeze-dried food (rehydrated with hot water from a kettle theres no kitchen), and operate a four-hour alternating watch system. Nobody gets much sleep. The toilet is a bucket.

The dangers are unpredictable. Winds in the Southern Ocean can reach up to 70 knots and hitting an iceberg at speed would be catastrophic, so the boats have to steer clear of an ice exclusion zone around Antarctica. On 1 March, the Team Malizia crew discovered a crack at the top of the mast, requiring one of them to climb up 28 metres in rough seas to patch it over in the middle of the night. Guyot Environnement Team Europe had to abandon leg three completely after suffering a hull sandwich failure, spending three nervous days sailing 600 nautical miles back to Cape Town for repairs. The last time Team Holcim-PRBs skipper Kevin Escoffier raced here, his boat broke in half and sank and he was rescued from his life raft.

But while the Ocean Race is sometimes known as the toughest, and certainly the longest, professional sporting event in the world an event that began in 1973 as the Whitbread Round the World Race then became the Volvo OceanRace, and which attracts professional sailors of the highest level who join mixed crews every few years on sponsored teams to vie for an overall trophy (there is no cash prize) this year scientists have smelled an opportunity for them to benefit as well.

Because the boats visit the most remote part of the ocean, which even scientific vessels struggle to access, this year the crews will seed scientific instruments all around Antarctica, aiming to measure 15 different types of environmental data from ocean temperature and atmospheric indicators to concentrations of microplastic.

Information from the devices will help with everything from weather forecasting to insights into the climate emergency. The Southern Ocean is one of the planets largest carbon dioxide sinks, for example, but its inaccessibility has meant that there is relatively little CO2 data available.

The Southern Ocean is a very important driver of climate on a global scale [but] there is very little data, says Toste Tanhua, chemical oceanographer at Geomar Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany. Data from the sailing races in the Southern Ocean is very important for us to understand the uptake of carbon dioxide by the ocean.

Each boat is equipped with weather sensors on board that measure wind speed and direction, barometric pressure and air temperature. Each team will drop two surface drifter buoys provided by organisations such as Mto-France and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which capture data to help the World Meteorological Organization study ocean currents and forecast extreme weather events such as hurricanes.

A second type of buoy, the Argo profiler, deployed by Team Malizia in leg two, operates below the surface at depths of up to 2km, moving slowly with deep currents and transmitting information every 10 days. The data is used for climate analysis as well as for long-range weather forecasts.

Meanwhile, 11th Hour Racing Team and Team Malizia are using OceanPacks to take regular water samples to measure the levels of carbon dioxide, oxygen, salinity and temperature, to be analysed in Germany and fed to Socat, the Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas. Live dashboards give snapshots of the data as it is collected out at sea.

Tanhua says the fresh data reveals new patterns. For example, it shows how carbon dioxide varies over a year higher when the water warms up in summer, lower during a phytoplankton bloom. It also shows how the ocean takes carbon from the surface and transports it into the depths. In the Southern Ocean, you have three major frontal systems where water is either going down vertically (sinking) or coming up, Toste says. That has very different carbon levels. Eddies also transport carbon up and down. Scientists will now be able to observe these fronts and eddies up close, compare with satellite data and fill in the gaps.

The boats are also sampling trace elements such as iron, zinc, copper, cadmium, nickel and manganese, which are essential for the growth of plankton. Not only is plankton the base of the food chain, but phytoplankton are responsible for most of the transfer of CO2 from the atmosphere to the ocean.

This data is extremely important, says Dr Arne Bratki, environmental biogeochemist at the University of Lleida, Spain, who analyses the trace element results. It is important to know how much food is available for animals that will feed on phytoplankton eventually, and how much CO2 the phytoplankton is going to absorb from the atmosphere.

Bratki says that sampling such as this normally requires dedicated scientific voyages, on which places are limited and expensive. The Ocean Race is a way of testing investigations on non-scientific platforms at sea. We are paying attention to the design of the samplers what works and what does not, says Bratki. Its really exciting.

To add to the plankton study, Team Biotherm is working with the Tara Ocean Foundation to study ocean biodiversity, and the sailors have an automated onboard microscope to record images and provide insights into the diversity of phytoplankton species.

They are also studying oxygen. Dr Vronique Garon, senior scientist for Frances National Centre for Scientific Research at the Observatoire Midi-Pyrnes at the University of Toulouse, France, wants to better understand ocean deoxygenation, which is being caused by global heating.

Boats sail through remote parts of the world ocean where observations are really scarce, she says. Getting more oxygen data is invaluable to yield a better estimate of the ocean oxygen inventory and thus of the oceanic oxygen loss.

The more data we have, the more accurately we can understand the oceans capacity to cope with climate change and predict what will happen to the climate in future.

The 2017-18 race made headlines after samples taken near Point Nemo showed that even these remote waters are polluted with microplastics. This year, two teams, Holcim-PRB and Guyot Environnement, are again taking water samples to test for microplastics but can now also analyse them to determine their product source (for example, a bottle or plastic bag).

We still have a very poor understanding of the abundance and distribution of very small microplastics in the ocean, and its quite difficult to collect them, according to Dr Katsiaryna Pabortsava, a biogeochemist at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton who is helping analyse the samples.

The Ocean Race will be delivering samples from places that otherwise wed have difficulty getting samples from, Pabortsava says. The other thing is the ease of collection of those samples. You dont need trained personnel, as you would have with research vessels. The hope is that this type of sampling could eventually be employed on other non-scientific ships, such as cruises or ferries.

The sailors benefit, too: in such a close and dangerous race (Team Holcim-PRB had a lead of 600 nautical miles at one stage, but light winds brought the pack together again and by 20 March just 5.1 nautical miles separated the four boats), every piece of information is vital.

Its a win-win situation, because six hours [after dropping the buoys], the sailors will download a new weather bulletin, using data from the buoys, says Martin Kramp, ship coordinator at OceanOPS, the monitoring, coordination and implementation support centre of the Global Ocean Observing System.

In such data-sparse areas as the Southern Ocean, [that] can make a significant difference the forecast will be much better.

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The science of sailing: inside the race across the worlds most remote ocean - The Guardian

Local teams design out of this world projects in regional engineering contest – Mankato Free Press

March 25, 2023 | Author: admin

Its a contest that asks students to come up with a machine that shows how different types of energy work such as electrical, chemical or kinetic, among others and relate their project back to a theme.

This year, the Engineering Machine Design Contests theme is Transforming Space Technology, and Blue Earth Area high school students were among several local teams to create engineering projects that were out of this world.

Junior Gustavo Chavero said their project follows the story of a prisoner in outer space trying to escape.

We thought of it as a prison break from outer space, and we have a marble that is the prisoner, and he tries to escape through a series of courses and ends up leaving the planet hes currently on, he said.

The project runs mostly on gravity until the end, where a lever and a trebuchet help the prisoner escape.

Ninth grader Dane Sohn said the idea for the project came from a lot of brainstorming.

Each person had different ideas that we could start with, and we ended up on the prison break. At first we didnt have a final ending, but then we figured we could just have him escape, he said.

Lake Crystal Wellcome Memorial high school students also participated.

Their Rube Goldberg machine-style entry focused on NASA, said 10th grader Destiny Alberty, and involved uses of gravity, levers, motors and even hydraulics.

We wanted to focus on NASA and how its very clean. It doesnt necessarily look pretty, but its effective and it gets things done, Alberty said. We mainly wanted to focus on the technology part of the space technology. Thats why we picked NASA.

Minnesota State Universitys College of Science, Engineering and Technology hosted the Minnesota State Engineering Center of Excellences regional contest Friday afternoon.

A combination of both middle and high school teams from across the state competed, said College of Science, Engineering and Technology Acting Dean Aaron Budge.

The junior division consisted of teams from St. Paul, Cottage Grove and more.

The senior division, meanwhile, featured teams from Blue Earth, Iowa, Owatonna, Lake Crystal and more.

Awards are given out in part to teams with projects that are durable, extensively use household items, best display the competition theme, are the crowd favorite and more.

Finalists in both divisions also get the chance to advance to the championship, held at Anoka Technical College.

Projects are judged on a combination of requirements, said Budge.

They give a presentation about what their machine is and does and how they came up with that theme. Part of it relates to that oral presentation that they do. Part of it relates to how well the machine actually works. Does it require them to intervene? he said.

Projects are also limited in size and have to have a certain number of steps along the way.

Otherwise, the creativity is up to the students.

Budge said the contest gives an opportunity for students to get involved in STEM.

That type of excitement is really what were hoping to have, to get the students excited about science, engineering, mathematics and other things that can really see them through moving forward in their career, he said.

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Local teams design out of this world projects in regional engineering contest - Mankato Free Press

Honey, the 3D printI mean, dessertis ready! – Columbia University

March 25, 2023 | Author: admin

New York, NYMarch 21, 2023Cooking devices that incorporate three-dimensional (3D) printers, lasers, or other software-driven processes may soon replace conventional cooking appliances such as ovens, stovetops, and microwaves. But will people want to use a 3D printer--even one as beautifully designed as a high-end coffee maker--on their kitchen counters to calibrate the exact micro- and macro-nutrients they need to stay healthy? Will 3D food printing improve the ways we nourish ourselves? What sorts of hurdles will need to be overcome to commercialize such a technology?

Columbia mechanical engineers are working to address these challenges in Professor Hod Lipsons Creative Machines Lab. In a new Perspective article published today bynpj Science of Food, lead author Jonathan Blutinger, a postdoctoral fellow in the lab, explores these questions and more, discussing with Professor Christen Cooper, Pace University Nutrition and Dietetics, the benefits and drawbacks of 3D-printed food technology, how 3D-printed food compares to the normal food we eat, and the future landscape of our kitchens.

Food printing technology has existed since Lipsons lab first introduced it in 2005, but to date the technology has been limited to a small number of uncooked ingredients, resulting in what many perceive as less than appetizing dishes. Blutingers team broke away from this limitation by printing a dish comprising seven ingredients, cooked in situ using a laser. For the paper, the researchers designed a 3D-printing system that constructs cheesecake from edible food inks including peanut butter, Nutella, and strawberry jam. The authors note that precision printing of multi-layered food items could produce more customizable foods, improve food safety, and enable users to control the nutrient content of meals more easily.

Because 3D food printing is still a nascent technology, it needs an ecosystem of supporting industries such as food cartridge manufacturers, downloadable recipe files, and an environment in which to create and share these recipes. Its customizability makes it particularly practical for the plant-based meat market, where texture and flavor need to be carefully formulated to mimic real meats, Blutinger said.

To demonstrate the potential of 3D food printing, the team tested various cheesecake designs, consisting of seven key ingredients: graham cracker, peanut butter, Nutella, banana puree, strawberry jam, cherry drizzle, and frosting. They found that the most successful design used a graham cracker as the foundational ingredient for each layer of the cake. Peanut butter and Nutella proved to be best used as supporting layers that formed pools to hold the softer ingredients: banana and jam. Multi-ingredient designs evolved into multi-tiered structures that followed similar principles to building architectures; more structural elements were needed to support softer substrates for a successful multi-ingredient layered print.

We have an enormous problem with the low-nutrient value of processed foods, Cooper said. 3D food printing will still turn out processed foods, but perhaps the silver lining will be, for some people, better control and tailoring of nutrition--personalized nutrition. It may also be useful in making food more appealing to those with swallowing disorders by mimicking the shapes of real foods with the pureed texture foods that these patients--millions in the U.S. alone--require.

Laser cooking and 3D food printing could allow chefs to localize flavors and textures on a millimeter scale to create new food experiences. People with dietary restrictions, parents of young children, nursing home dieticians, and athletes alike could find these personalized techniques very useful and convenient in planning meals. And, because the system uses high-energy targeted light for high-resolution tailored heating, cooking could become more cost-effective and more sustainable.

The study also highlights that printed food dishes will likely require novel ingredient compositions and structures, due to the different way by which the food is assembled, said Lipson. Much work is still needed to collect data, model, and optimize these processes.

Blutinger added, And, with more emphasis on food safety following the COVID-19 pandemic, food prepared with less human handling could lower the risk of foodborne illness and disease transmission. This seems like a win-win concept for all of us.

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Honey, the 3D printI mean, dessertis ready! - Columbia University

Connected vehicles the latest tool to give engineers real-time insight … – Purdue University

March 25, 2023 | Author: admin

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. Purdue University researchers have developed techniques to harness big data from connected vehicles to monitor congestion caused by crashes, weather and construction. As part of their work, they analyzed over 503 billion records in December 2022 to monitor the national impact of a large winter storm.

The team is led by Darcy Bullock, the Lyles Family Professor of Civil Engineering in Purdues Lyles School of Civil Engineering, and focuses on developing scalable techniques for measuring and graphically visualizing traffic congestion.

For many years, the U.S. Department of Transportation, universities and private sector companies have published annual congestion reports and rankings of states and cities. However, Bullock believes the new frontier is to develop techniques that use connected vehicle data to map out the time, location and severity of congestion in a uniform manner across all 50 states. This will provide a more robust systemwide characterization of interstate congestion to prioritize national infrastructure investments as well as monitor the resiliency of our network during large weather events such as winter storms or hurricanes.

There are three key ingredients in this analysis: data, cloud platforms and graphic visualization methods. The combination enables decision makers to quickly understand how traffic is moving, said Howell Li, principal research analyst, who has worked with Wejo Data Services Inc. to analyze the data systematically in real time using Googles BigQuery. On a typical Friday afternoon, Purdue ingests approximately 600,000 records per minute on just Indiana roads. At a national level, there are over 25 million connected vehicle records generated every minute.

Transportation research engineers Jairaj Desai and Jijo Mathew and PhD candidate Rahul Sakhare have developed analytical techniques for processing that data in real time to create graphical maps showing week-at-a-glance charts depicting the time, location and severity of traffic congestion. These same techniques could also be used to show how usage of electric vehicles and hybrid electric vehicles varied by states and interstate routes.

Privacy is very important for all of our public and private sector partners, Bullock said. Our connected vehicle data provider employs consented, deidentified and anonymized data that is consistent with both U.S. and EU general data protection regulations.

The Purdue team produced two major reports in 2022, one for August and the other for December. Although both reports used similar analysis techniques, the August report is a great tool to see the impact of construction work zones on mobility. The December report provides an example of the impact of a large winter storm moving across the U.S. and the subsequent state-by-state recovery. A video illustrating the national impact of that storm on I-80 can be seen at https://youtu.be/YrYz9CovAuA. State-by-state impact on all interstate routes can be found at https://doi.org/10.5703/1288284317591.

From a national perspective, this is really valuable, Bullock said. Data like this can show us our overall interstate network resiliency as well as provide insights to support operational decisions and long-term national infrastructure investments.

About Purdue University

Purdue University is a top public research institution developing practical solutions to todays toughest challenges. Ranked in each of the last five years as one of the nations 10 Most Innovative universities by U.S. News & World Report, Purdue delivers world-changing research and out-of-this-world discovery. Committed to hands-on and online, real-world learning, Purdue offers a transformative education to all. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue has frozen tuition and most fees at 2012-13 levels, enabling more students than ever to graduate debt-free. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap at https://stories.purdue.edu.

Media contact: Brian Huchel, bhuchel@purdue.edu

Source: Darcy Bullock

https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/imr/

Connected vehicles the latest tool to give engineers real-time insight ... - Purdue University

Patti Engineering to Showcase Siemens and Digitalization Expertise at Manufacturing in America Conference April 12-13, 2023 in Detroit – Yahoo Finance

March 25, 2023 | Author: admin

Patti Engineering will exhibit at booth #402 during the 2023 Manufacturing in America event, co-hosted by Siemens and Electro-Matic Products, to collaborate with manufacturing professionals and industry leaders.

AUBURN HILLS, Mich., March 24, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Patti Engineering, Inc., a leading control system integration company with offices in Michigan, Texas, and Indiana, is pleased to announce its participation in the upcoming Manufacturing in America 2023 event, hosted by Siemens and Electro-Matic Products. The event will take place at Ford Field in downtown Detroit from April 12-13, 2023, where Patti Engineering will be available at exhibit #402 to discuss control systems integration and Industry 4.0 digitalization with attendees.

"The Manufacturing in America conference is a perfect environment to collaborate with and learn from industry leaders and other professionals in the manufacturing community. At our exhibit, our engineers and staff look forward to sharing how we have helped manufacturers leverage digitalization and automation technology to achieve their business goals," said Sam Hoff, founder and CEO of Patti Engineering. "We can discuss using digital tools such as IoT devices, AI, simulation and edge/cloud computing to gain better visibility into processes and outcomes. We can also discuss increasing OEE by upgrading legacy control systems, identifying automation and robotic opportunities for improvement."

The Manufacturing in America (MiA) event brings together more than 3,700 executives, engineers, and enthusiasts from the manufacturing community to network with industry leaders, showcase technological advancements, highlight best practices, and encourage collaboration to drive the future of manufacturing. Attendees can participate in over 100 technical seminars and visit more than 50 exhibits dedicated to emerging automation, digitalization, controls, and drive technologies in the dynamic manufacturing industry.

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MiA opens the two day event with The Summit, a three-hour seminar that features thought-provoking presentations and discussions with leading U.S. manufacturing industry experts. The 2023 program will center on how organizations can realize their digital transformation through discussions on growing industrial digital ecosystems of data-driven, automated, and connected technologies.

Patti Engineering's continued participation at MiA underscores their commitment to innovation and excellence in control systems integration. "After a three-year hiatus due to the pandemic, we are excited to once again participate and support our partners Siemens and Electro-Matic Products in the return of this event." said Hoff.

Sam Hoff will lead a presentation at the event on Thursday, April 13th, entitled "Digitalization: A Practical Guide," discussing the most impactful steps you can take on your digitalization journey.

To learn more and register, visit http://www.attendmia.com.

About Patti Engineering, Inc. Patti Engineering, Inc. is a CSIA Certified control systems integration company offering high-caliber engineering and software development services. Patti Engineering's technical expertise in electrical control and information systems provides turnkey control systems integration for design/build, upgrade/retrofit and asset/energy management projects. Industrial automation, production intelligence and shop floor IT solutions services include: project management, electrical engineering, hardware design, hardware procurement, software development, installation, calibration, start-up testing, verification, documentation, training and warranty support. Customer satisfaction and project success earned the company placement in the Control Engineering Magazine's Hall of Fame. For more information, visit our website, Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.

Media Contact

Georgia Whalen, Patti Engineering, +1 (978) 697-2664, gwhalen@pattieng.com

SOURCE Patti Engineering

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Patti Engineering to Showcase Siemens and Digitalization Expertise at Manufacturing in America Conference April 12-13, 2023 in Detroit - Yahoo Finance

Engineering Faculty Travel to North Carolina to Connect With … – University of Arkansas Newswire

March 25, 2023 | Author: admin

Submitted

From left, U of A professor Ed Pohl; Om Yadav, chair of the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department at North Carolina A&T State University; and U of A professor Burak Eksioglu.

Two professors from the Department of Industrial Engineering recently traveled to Greensboro, North Carolina, to visit North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. Burak Eksioglu, professor and graduate program chair, and Ed Pohl, professor and department head, met with undergraduate students in an effort to recruit graduate students.

The team gave a presentation covering the opportunities available with the Department of Industrial Engineering at the U of A to undergraduate seniors. They also attended the Freshman Innovation Challenge while on campus. The overarching goal for trips of this nature is to reach out and recruit some of the top students from underrepresented schools into the U of A College of Engineering.

About the Department of Industrial Engineering: The Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Arkansas was founded in 1950, led by department head John L. Imhoff who believed deeply in the global impact of industrial engineering. Today, the department averages over 200 undergraduate students and over 40 doctoral and master's students. In addition, the department has three online master's degrees: the Master of Science in Operations Management, Master of Science in Engineering Management and Master of Science in Operations Analytics. These three programs alone enroll over 600 students each academic year. To learn more about the Department of Industrial Engineering please visit our website.

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Engineering Faculty Travel to North Carolina to Connect With … – University of Arkansas Newswire

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