March 17, 2010
Hail to future innovators
By
Nicolas
Mokhoff
MANHASSET, NY — The 2010 Intel Science Talent Search has announced the ten top awards from the 40 high school senior finalists in the yearly talent search event.
Erika DeBenedictis, 18, of Albuquerque, N.M., won $100,000 for the top award for developing a software navigation system to help improve spacecraft travel through the solar system.
The Intel Foundation honored DeBenedictis for describing how the gravity and movement of planets create "easy transit routes," which will ultimately help spacecraft move faster and with less fuel.
David Liu, 18, of Saratoga, Calif., won second place and $75,000 for his work to develop a system to recognize and understand digital images. Aerial images have already been examined using his system to identify hazards to buried oil pipelines and could also be used to enable unmanned aerial vehicles and Web-based image searches.
Third place honors and $50,000 went to Akhil Mathew, 18, of Madison, N.J., for his math project on Deligne categories, a setting for studying a wide range of algebraic structures with ties to theoretical physics.
Other top honors from the competition include:
Fourth Place: Lynnelle Ye, 18, Palo Alto, Calif., received a $40,000 award for her project that provided strategies for winning at a computer game titled "Graph Chomp."
Fifth Place: Eric Brooks, 16, Hewlett, N.Y., received a $30,000 award for his research studying racial genetic factors that may affect the spread of prostate cancer.
Sixth Place: John Capodilupo, 18, of Grand Rapids, Mich., received a $25,000 award for his project that used cluster analysis of objects in the night sky to study the structure and evolution of the early universe.
Seventh Place: Benjamen Sun, 17, of Grand Forks, N.D., received a $25,000 award for his work studying how sand, dust and other debris on city streets can adsorb pollutants from rain and, thus, contaminate city water sources.
Eighth Place: Katherine Rudolph, 18, of Naperville, Ill., received a $20,000 award for her math project that investigated dense packing of identical spheres, the results of which can be used in fields from chemistry to cryptology.
Ninth Place: Yale Fan, 18, of Beaverton, Ore., received a $20,000 award for his research that demonstrated the advantages of quantum computing in performing difficult computations.
Tenth Place: Linda Zhou, 18, of River Edge, N.J., received a $20,000 award for her project that researched how to reverse drug resistance in breast cancer cells.
Of the 1,736 high school seniors who entered the Intel Science Talent Search 2010, 300 were announced as semifinalists in January. Of those, 40 were chosen as finalists and invited to Washington, D.C., to compete for the top 10 awards.
The remaining 30 finalists each received at least $7,500 in awards.
Ongoing updates about the Intel Science Talent Search 2010 can be followed on the Facebook group.
"These 40 Intel Science Talent Search finalists demonstrate that we have the capability in this country to cultivate the next generation of innovators, scientists and entrepreneurs," said Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini, in a statement.
Indeed!
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March 09, 2010
WSNs: a top-down approach is needed
By
Nicolas
Mokhoff
At the upcoming Embedded Systems Conference next month a panel will debate wireless sensor networks. Why?
A reader sent the following letter to EE Times:
"With regard to ESC: Panel to debate wireless sensor networks:
I'm fascinated by wireless sensor networks and I believe they are the next revolution after the internet.
Based on the fact that most current sensor networks are not mature, I just have a general question: what is the overall blueprint for sensor networks?
We can discuss all of the details of power consumption, RF interference, cost, performance, but I believe there should be a top-down effort rather than a bottom-up effort. Different applications have different requirements and if we don't have a big picture from the top it is not meaningful to discuss the details.
I also believe this should be a coordinated effort involving nanotechnology, biotechnology, new energy such as solar panel, DSP, networking, power management, etc. Applications can be divided by industries and then probably a roadmap should first be rolled out. "
The reader, Xiaoyauan Qi, is an engineer located in San Antonio, Texas.
Here in Manhasset, we agree.
What do you think?
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March 05, 2010
Two ESCs, one 'Max'
By
Nicolas
Mokhoff
Clive "Max" Maxfield is on the road again to explore and to pontificate about embedded design choices at ESC and ESC India.
Max is an avid reader, fair reviewer of others' books and an author.
He will be part of the program at Silicon Valley Embedded Systems Conference next month.
Then in July he is off to ESC India for more of the same.
If you're smart you'll be at both venues.
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March 03, 2010
Corporate citizens wanted
By
Nicolas
Mokhoff
Texas Instruments put out a press release that the company has been recognized among the world's 100 best corporate citizens.
TI was ranked 33rd on Corporate Responsibility Magazine's annual "100 Best Corporate Citizens" list.
The list is based on more than 360 data points of publicly-available information and ranks the large-cap Russell 1000 companies on their performance in seven categories: environment, climate change, human rights, philanthropy, employee relations, financial performance and governance.
Among other hi-tech companies in the list is HP (1), Intel (2), and IBM (4).
The complete 100 Best Corporate Citizens list is here.
No matter what the subjective criteria for picking the companies, here ought to be more hi-tech companies on lists like this one. TI is on the right path.
STMicroelectronics has aspired to be a corporate citizen for awhile.
Do you have other hi-tech companies you would place on such a list?
Send me your candidates.
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