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Sunday, November 22, 2015

MSU Engineering Blog Synthesis Post : Engineering is the future


From the typewriter to the Apple watch, from steam-driven trains to magnetic trains, from a 40 ounces mobile phone to 4.97 ounces smart phone, from the telephone to the Internet, some of the world’s greatest accomplishments are the work of engineers finding solutions to the world’s biggest problems. The world’s problems will never come to pass rather they are continuously changing  and we will always call on engineers to bring new solutions. With the world’s population increasing by 1.13% per year and estimated to be 9.6 billion by 2050, engineers are posed with the task to match the demand for resources such a water, infrastructure, communication, health care, waste disposal in the near future.Engineers will remain relevant today and beyond. Engineers are investing untiring efforts to make the world a better place and will continue to do so. Engineering is the future.
A main reason engineering is such a popular field is because of the demand that comes along with the profession. As we all know, our world is always coming up with new ideas so engineers are always a necessity. The demand for engineering is what leads many students to become engineers because they know that if they can make it through college, a road of success will already be paved when they graduate. Instead of looking for a company to work with out of college, companies are looking for them so this is a huge reason teens have the motivation to go into the field. Demand for engineers is high because not everybody can do the job. If being an engineer was easy, everyone would become one and there would be no reason for the profession but with the difficulty of some jobs, engineers are needed. A previous blog post written a few weeks ago talked about the top five engineering jobs in demand and after doing research on all of them the entire semester, it was crazy to see the differences. We learned that no matter what type of engineering a student goes into, getting a job will not be a problem. Yes, some engineering jobs have higher demand than others but that does not mean the lower demand engineering job should be out of the equation. We all are engineering majors because we love what engineers do and we all help the world in different ways. The demand for a job should not be the reason a student goes into the field because as adults, doing something you love is much better than having the money. A good engineering job does pay well but if you don't love what you are doing, you shouldn't be in the field. Engineers must have passion to be in the field and although the demand is high, to succeed they must truly enjoy the job they are trying to get.
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Since the beginning of civilization, humans have been using engineering to make their lives easier. Early humans created things like spears, bows and arrows, and other tools to make hunting prey easier. Later on, they began building houses to protect themselves from the harsh elements. The industrial revolution was sparked when people began discovering how to power things using steam or water, and the way we produced goods was forever changed. These are examples of engineering throughout history that has been used to improve the lives of everyone in society, and this is still going on today. Take a cell phone for example. The first cell phones were massive, heavy, and many were called “car phones”, simply because they were too inconvenient to carry around. Gradually, they have become smaller, lighter, and exponentially more useful. On a modern cell phone, you can send text messages, play games with your friends, check the weather, watch movies, make purchases, and have access to an amount of information that was unfathomable to people just decades ago. Today, it’s strange that we still call them “phones”. This trend can be seen in all aspects of engineering and technology in our society. 100 years ago, factories were filled with many human workers working with a limited amount of machines in generally unsafe environments. Today, the machines outnumber the humans in most factories, and as a result they are safer and less prone to error. This kind of progression will continue in the future, as new technologies that are science fiction today will be the science fact of tomorrow. In the 1997 movie Starship Troopers, communication with others via video was a futuristic technology depicted in the movie. In 2015, we communicate in this way all the time, via technologies like Skype, FaceTime, and Google Hangouts. As we move forward, the work of engineers will allow for more technologies to be created that are better, faster, lighter, and safer than what exists today.
Engineering has been around forever. Ever since cavemen were around, we were building and designing new things. After humans have developed further and had gotten smarter they could design and create more with what knowledge they received. Human minds are only getting smarter and smarter, technology is getting more and more advanced, and we learn more and more as our lives go on. Everything we use in our daily lives can relate to engineering. Computers, phones, bikes, cars, shoes, etc. everything is designed, planned and created. Engineers design and create solutions to everyday problems. Not every engineer will design computers, phones, bikes, cars, shoes, etc. though there is an engineer or someone doing something related to what an engineer does to design, and create these items. Biomaterials is a major part of advancement in technology, along with advancement in engineering and medicine. Biomaterials is important in many people’s daily lives. As we know from the earlier blog post about Biomaterials in Materials Engineering, Biomaterials are a synthetic or natural material suitable for use in constructing artificial organs or to replace bone or tissue. Advancements in Biomaterials can help many people. People who need a new organ or need a repair to tissue or bone or a skin graft. Biomaterials helps save people’s lives and being able to help people and even able to save a person’s life is incredible. Biomaterials isn’t the only kind of engineering that helps people. Every other type of engineering can help people, some design ways to make daily activities easier, some design and create new medicine and things to help people, and some can design and create things that we use every day that we take for granted. Engineering is a very important major, and it’s a very important thing in everyone’s life.
Engineering plays a very important role in the world because it enable us to transform the images into tangible forms. Looking back into the past, a lot of the things we are using now was invented during the industrial revolution. An age in which engineering played one of the most important roles.Without engineering, our life would be without many important things such as computers, televisions and so on, which would make a life without all these pleasures. Without engineering we wouldn’t be able to do many things we all take for granted, such as take plane to travel from one country to another country. Like the past, engineers will continue to play a large role for the future as well. Our world keeps changing and for that reason, engineers will always be significant to society. As soon to be engineers, we look forward to the jobs that lie ahead of us and we will continue to help our world with all the new things that arise in the years to come.
-Engineering Blog Group

Biomedical Engineering

        I read an article about the engineering of the future. It's about the new kind of engineering of the future. Most of them are medical related engineering. One of the most important engineering is biomedical engineering. It use engineering principles and conceptions to design medicine and medical equipments. Since the human life become much longer than before, people must meet many new health issues. It includes tissue engineering, genetic engineering, neural engineering and pharmaceutical engineering.

What biomedical engineers do?

  1. Design medical device such as the artificial body parts.
  2. Install, test and adjust the medical equipment.
  3. Evaluate the safety, efficiency and effectiveness of biomedical devices. 
  4. Work with scientists, doctors and medical scientists to study the human body system.
        I think biomedical engineering will become the major engineering during next several decades because our world will transform from construction to maintenance. All the people want their life become as long as possible, which is the main reason to promote the development of biomedical engineering. It also can promote the economy.

-Hongyuan Xue

"Summary." U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, n.d. Web. 22 Nov. 2015.

Prompt 5 : Observing Community

An educational research study found out that, “both adults and teens strongly connect engineering to mathematics and science skills but do not as readily associate engineering with problem-solving, creativity, or having a positive impact on the world.” The public perceives engineers to be less engaged with societal and community concerns and to play a lesser role in saving lives. After coming across this research, l was so heartbroken that l had flown for about 24 hours from Zimbabwe, to earn an MSU engineering degree that had no positive impact in the world at all, as many people thought. I did not want to believe it and my instincts turned out to be right when l attended the MSU Engineers Without Borders(EWB-MSU) 's general meeting.

Engineers Without Borders -MSU mission statement as shown on the website.
During the meeting, students discussed how they were working towards building a rainwater collection system on a new school being constructed in Tanzania. The aim was to provide safe drinking water for children. I learnt that many communities in Tanzania lack the infrastructure necessary to maintain a steady supply of water. Rainfall occurs, but the water may quickly run off. Rainwater harvesting was an economically feasible way to quickly improve the water supply. I was amazed at how the members were so excited to use their technical skills to serve the Tanzanian community. They also mentioned the El Salvador project where the EWB-MSU members built 33 composting latrines in a community that suffered from health-related issues that were attributed to improper sanitation. The one-hour session got me thinking about public perception versus the truth about engineering.

EWB-MSU proved to me that engineers were innovators and society leaders. It opened my eyes to engineering not as the profession but as a collection of technical knowledge and diverse educational experience: a link between technology and society.

Panashe, M- 

Sources
"Public (Mis)Understanding of Engineering." News Rss. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.

Neural Networks in Computer Science



Machine learning is a sub-field of Computer Science that mainly deals with computational learning and pattern recognition in computers. It is essentially a way of teaching computers how to do different things, and they learn how to do these tasks on their own. This is either done through genetic programming, which is where the software is able to go back and edit its own code to improve itself, or via a neural network, which is the focus of this blog post.

As the name implies, a neural network is somewhat similar to a brain. It is a type of software that is able to learn on its own and improve itself. For example, say you have an AI that’s job is to get through a maze. If the AI operates using a neural network, it would have no idea how to solve the maze at first. Gradually, it would slowly learn how to get closer and closer to the end of the maze, and after a lot of trial and error it would be able to solve the maze every time.

Neural networks are becoming more and more common in computer science today, and there are increasingly more areas they can be applied. If you’ve ever used sites like Amazon or Netflix, the movies/items that are recommended to you are a result of a neural network knowing what you’ve been looking at and learning what your interests are. In order to learn how to drive like humans, the Google self-driving car had to slowly learn over time to drive using its neural network. 

Not only does Google use neural networks in their self-driving cars and their search engine, they have also started to use it in images. Google has created a program called “DeepDream” that is capable of recognizing patterns and features in images using a process called algorithmic pareidolia. For example, if you show it an image of a golden retriever, it will analyze the image and be able to tell there’s a dog in the picture. This is an innovative development in computer science, as it is the first AI of its kind that can do something like this.

An unintended but very interesting side effect of this is the interesting images DeepDream is able to produce. Because the software in DeepDream looks for patterns and images in absolutely everything, it will sometimes see patterns and images that aren’t actually present in the image given to it. This has led to the creation of very hallucinogenic images created by DeepDream that can be found online, and there are even websites that allow you to upload pictures to process through DeepDream to create these kinds of psychedelic pictures.

A picture I took camping up north, before and after being put through DeepDream (Click to enlarge).


Another interesting application of neural networks is in gaming. In April 2013, Tom Murphy wrote the paper “The First Level of Super Mario Bros. is Easy with Lexicographic Orderings and Time Travel . . . after that it gets a little tricky”. In it, he details a piece of software he wrote that is able to learn how to play NES video games on its own through trial and error. It works very well playing games like Super Mario Bros., but when he tried to get it to play Pac-Man and Tetris it was not able to play it correctly. YouTube user SethBling created his own version of a similar technology, but instead of being taught how to play the game it uses an evolutionary algorithm, which allows it to “evolve” much in the way biological species do over time and slowly become better at playing the game on its own without human supervision.



This kind of technology, like many things in Computer Science, is still in its infancy. As technology in Computer Science advances, we see computers doing things previously thought only humans could do. The use of neural networks is continuing to be applied to more and more aspects of our lives, and the continued development of this will only serve to benefit us all in the future.

-Erik B.

Sources:

Murphy, Tom, VII Ph.D. "The First Level of Super Mario Bros. Is Easy with Lexicographic Orderings and Time Travel . . . after That It Gets a Little Tricky." Carnegie Mellon University (2012): n. pag. Web. 22 Nov. 2015.  

SethBling. "MarI/O - Machine Learning for Video Games." YouTube. YouTube, 13 June 2015. Web. 22 Nov. 2015.  

Evolution of Apple's iPhone



iPhone

  • Released June 29, 2007 
  • 3.5 inch diagonal screen
  • 320x480 pixel


iPhone 3G
  • Released July 11, 2008
  • Built in GPS
  • Connects faster with 3G
  • Price: 16GB- $299
iPhone 3Gs
  • Released June 19, 2009
  • Twice as fast as regular 3G
  • Price: 16GB- $199
iPhone 4
  • June 24, 2010
  • FaceTime was added
  • Retina 640x920 pixel screen
  • Price: 16GB- $199
iPhone 4s
  • Released October 14, 2011
  • New duel core processor
  • First iPhone with option of 64GB
  • Price: 16GB- $199
iPhone 5
  • Released September 21, 2012
  • Slimmer and faster
  • 4 inch diagonal screen
  • Price: 16GB- $199
iPhone 5s/5c
  • Released September 20, 2013
  • 5c was first iPhones made in more than black and white
  • 5s had finger print screening to unlock
  • Both had new motion data processor
  • Price: 5c 16GB- $99 
  • Price: 5s 16GB- $199
iPhone 6/6 Plus
  • Released September 12, 2014
  • iPhone 6- 4.7 inch screen
  • iPhone 6 Plus-5.5 inch screen
  • Touch ID security
  • Improved camera
  • On/Off button moved
  • Price: 16GB- $549
iPhone 6s
  • Released September 12, 2015
  • A9 chip inserted
  • Live Photos
  • Faster LTE/Wifi
  • 12MP sensor
  • Front camera flash
  • Price: 16GB- $399


All of these statistics show that along with the people, our technology is evolving. Every time a new iPhone comes out, society ask what more can possibly be done with the iPhone but creators keep finding new things. They never run out of ideas and before one iPhone is even finished, the already have ideas for the next one. It is crazy to look at pictures from the first ever iPhone and then look at the latest one and compare them. Engineers continue to impress the world and right when people think the improvements are maxed out, they come out with something more impressive.

-Dominic W.

Source
  • http://www.computerworld.com/article/2604020/smartphones/the-evolution-of-apples-iphone.html#slide10
  • http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/09/09/apple-iphone-6s-features/71924182/

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Impact of Materials Engineering On Society

All types of engineering have a specific impact on the society. From mechanical to chemical, they all effect society in different ways. Being a materials engineering major, I've learned more and more about what materials engineers do, and how their work impacts our society. New materials, new ways to use materials and new technology is discovered and created every day. Materials engineers use their knowledge to develop, process, and test materials used in a variety products. Products that are used in society today. Materials engineers try to make what we do every day easier, they try to develop ways to make things we use stronger and have different properties, so that when we use them they work perfect without flaw. Everything we use today is made out of some sort of material. Whether it's ceramic, metal, composite, polymer, plastic, etc. Everything is made out of some type of material. Everything is made how it is for a reason. Cars are made out of mostly metals and plastics, because they are then lighter weight, but still strong enough so if an accident happens the car can still protect you inside. Scientists are still trying to find ways to make cars safer, and stronger, and with the help of materials scientists and materials engineers, they might be able to do just that.
Image Source: Materials Engineering

Like all types of engineering, materials engineering has it's own purpose. All types of engineering are important, and all types impact the society, and help create things that are used in our daily lives.

-Alex Brown

Sources:
Primartomo, Adhi, PhD. "Mme 323 Materials Science Week 1 - Intro to Materials Science & Eng..." Mme 323 Materials Science Week 1. SlideShare, 18 Jan. 2015. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.

"Summary." U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.

"Impact of Materials Engineering." UBC Materials Engineering. The University of British Colombia, n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.

"Impact of Materials on Society Subcommittee Goals." Impact of Materials on Society Subcommittee Goals. Materials Research Society, n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.