3 Ways to Overcome an Organizational Crisis

February 12th, 2010 by

Numerous memos but no communication. Inconsistent and reactive leadership. Crisis following crisis with no relief in sight. Does that scenario sound all-too-familiar? If so, there is hope – and help. Discover the three tools that pulled the Margaret George School from the brink of collapse and transformed it in less than a year into one of the “Best Places to Work” with: Improved management and staff communications. Streamlined day-to-day operations. Consistent, constructive employee performance feedback. Renewed vision and corporate direction. If your company is struggling with stress, inefficiency, and frustration, “3 Ways to Overcome an Organizational Crisis” is your guide to positive change! Download your copy today! Request Free!

Original post: 
3 Ways to Overcome an Organizational Crisis

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Read the rest »

TagsTags: , , , , , , ,

Posted in Free Magazines   Add a comment

Engineering Degree Schools

December 28th, 2009 by engineering magazines
The practical application of science into industrial use is called engineering. Engineering is a vast industry. There are numerous engineering degree colleges spread across the world. Choosing the right university is the first and foremost tasks of the individual. There are many branches of engineering. They are biomedical engineering, civil engineering, or electrical engineering, IT engineering and others.



Biomedical Engineering: The Biomedical Engineering degree is required by students who have a knack for biology and engineering at the same time. Since genetic engineering is the prime requires for the students in the forensic department, it is the primary requirement for them to get an admission into these institutions. They are not only very prestigious but also extremely profitable for the student since the salary in these sectors is quite high.





Civil engineering: In the field of civil engineering, the student can also make considerable progress. In this field the student is required to make the outline for the roads and houses apart from other planning. This is also a very prestigious job and the salary in this sector is also more than what the student can expect. For this the student is required to make a good result so that he or she can get an appointment in reputed institutions.





Information Technology: Recently the Information Technology field is growing and it has received a boost due to global dependence on computers. Since human beings are always dependant on computers, it is extremely important for them to keep these computers in proper order with constant innovation to upgrade the style and variety of programs. For this purpose, IT engineers are produced every year. They are computer specialists and they excel in hardware and software skills.





Chemical engineering is also a very respectable field of engineering. Here in this field the student is required to know the chemical processes of most market materials and if their results are good enough they get quite interesting jobs in the cosmetics industry. In the job sector the chemical engineers gets respectable jobs in their own fields.



Some engineering degree colleges are the following:



Colorado Technical University: It prepares a student on business technology in the relevant field.

DeVry Institute of Technology: It offers associated bachelor’s degree in the relevant field.





ECPI College of Technology: It also offers degree courses in various engineering fields.





Louisville Technical Institute: This University offers diverse technical degrees.





New England Institute of Technology: It offers different degrees in the field of engineering.

Read the rest »

TagsTags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted in College And University   Add a comment

Anatomy Of An Internet Search Engine

December 21st, 2009 by engineering magazines
For some unfortunate souls SEO is simply the learning of tricks and techniques that, according to their understanding, should propel their site into the top rankings on the major search engines. This understanding of the way SEO works can be effective for a time however it contains one basic flaw … the rules change. Search engines are in a constant state of evolution in order to keep up with the SEO’s in much the same way that Norton, McAfee, AVG or any of the other anti-virus software companies are constantly trying to keep up with the virus writers.

Basing your entire websites future on one simple set of rules (read: tricks) about how the search engines will rank your site contains an additional flaw, there are more factors being considered than any SEO is aware of and can confirm. That’s right, I will freely admit that there are factors at work that I may not be aware of and even those that I am aware of I cannot with 100% accuracy give you the exact weight they are given in the overall algorithm. Even if I could, the algorithm would change a few weeks later and what’s more, hold your hats for this one; there is more than one search engine.

So if we cannot base our optimization on a set of hard-and-fast rules what can we do? The key my friends, is not to understand the tricks but rather what they accomplish. Reflecting back on my high school math teach Mr. Barry Nicholl I recall a silly story that had a great impact. One weekend he had the entire class watch Dumbo The Flying Elephant (there was actually going to be a question about it on our test). Why? The lesson we were to get from it is that formulas (like tricks) are the feather in the story. They are unnecessary and yet we hold on to them in the false belief that it is the feather that works and not the logic. Indeed, the tricks and techniques are not what works but rather the logic they follow and that is their shortcoming.

And So What Is Necessary?

To rank a website highly and keep it ranking over time one must optimize it with one primary understanding, that a search engine is a living thing. Obviously this is not to say that search engines have brains, I will leave those tales to Orson Scott Card and other science fiction writers, however their very nature results in a lifelike being with far more storage capacity.

If we consider for a moment how a search engine functions; it goes out into the world, follows the road signs and paths to get where it’s going, and collects all of the information in its path. From this point, the information is sent back to a group of servers where algorithms are applied in order to determine the importance of specific documents. How are these algorithms generated? They are created by human beings who have a great deal of experience in understanding the fundamentals of the Internet and the documents it contains and who also have the capacity to learn from their mistakes, and update the algorithms accordingly. Essentially we have an entity that collects data, stores it, and then sorts through it to determine what’s important which it’s happy to share with others and what’s unimportant which it keeps tucked away.

So Let’s Break It Down …

To gain a true understanding of what a search engine is, it’s simple enough to compare it to the human anatomy as, though not breathing, it contains many of the same core functions required for life. And these are:

The Lungs & Other Vital Organs – The lungs of a search engine and indeed the vast majority of vital organs are contained within the datacenters in which they are housed. Be it in the form of power, Internet connectivity, etc. As with the human body, we do not generally consider these important in defining who we are, however we’re certainly grateful to have them and need them all to function properly.

The Arms & Legs – Think of the links from the engine itself as the arms and legs. These are the vehicles by which we get where we need to go and retrieve what needs to be accessed. While we don’t commonly think of these as functions when we’re considering SEO these are the purpose of the entire thing. Much as the human body is designed primarily to keep you mobile and able to access other things, so too is the entire search engine designed primarily to access the outside world.

The Eyes – The eyes of the search engine are the spiders (AKA robots or crawlers). These are the 1s and 0s that the search engines send out over the Internet to retrieve documents. In the case of all the major search engines the spiders crawl from one page to another following the links, as you would look down various paths along your way. Fortunately for the spiders they are traveling mainly over fiber optic connections and so their ability to travel at light speed enables them to visit all the paths they come across whereas we as mere humans have to be a bit more selective.

The Brain – The brain of a search engine, like the human brain, is the most complex of its functions and components. The brain must have instinct, must know, and must learn in order to function properly. A search engine (and by search engine we mean the natural listings of the major engines) must also include these critical three components in order to survive.



The Instinct – The instinct of a search engines is defined in it’s core functions, that is the crawling of sites and either the inability to read specific types of data, or the programmed response to ignore files meeting a specific criteria. Even the programmed responses become automated by the engines and thus fall under the category of instinct much the same as the westernized human instinct to jump from a large spider is learned. An infant would probably watch the spider or even eat it meaning this is not an automatic human reaction.

The instinct of a search engines is important to understand however once one understands what can and cannot be read and how the spiders will crawl a site this will become instinct for you too and can then safely be stored in the “autopilot” part of your brain.

The Knowing – Search engines know by crawling. What they know goes far beyond what is commonly perceived by most users, webmasters and SEOs. While the vast storehouse we call the Internet provides billions upon billions of pages of data for the search engines to know they also pick up more than that. Search engines know a number of different methods for storing data, presenting data, prioritizing data and of course, way of tricking the engines themselves.

While the search engine spiders are crawling the web they are grabbing the stores of data that exist and sending it back to the datacenters, where that information is processed through existing algorithms and sp@m filters where it will attain a ranking based on the engine’s current understanding of the way the Internet and the documents contained within it work.

Similar to the way we process an article from a newspaper based on our current understanding of the world, the search engines process and rank documents based on what they understand to be true in the way documents are organized on the Internet.

The Learning – Once it is understood that search engines rank documents based on a specific understanding of the way the Internet functions, it then follows that in order to insure that new document types and technologies are able to be read and that the algorithm be changed as new understandings of the functionality of the Internet are uncovered a search engine must have the ability to “learn”.

Aside from a search engine needing the ability to properly spider documents stored in newer technologies, search engines must also have the ability to detect and accurately penalize sp@m and as well as accurately rank websites based on new understandings of the way documents are organized and links arranged. Examples of areas where search engines must learn in an ongoing basis include but are most certainly not limited to:

Understanding the relevancy of the content between sites where a link is found Attaining the ability to view the content on documents contained within new technologies such as database types, Flash, etc. Understanding the various methods used to hide text, links, etc. in order to penalize sites engaging in these tactics Learning from current results and any shortcoming in them, what tweaks to current algorithms or what additional considerations must be taken into account to improve the relevancy of the results in the future.

The learning of a search engine generally comes from the uber-geeks hired by and the users of the search engines. Once a factor is taken into account and programmed into the algorithm it them moves into the “knowing” category until the next round of updates.



How This Helps in SEO

This is the point at which you may be asking yourself, “This is all well-and-good but exactly how does this help ME?” An understanding of how search engines function, how they learn, and how they live is one of the most important understandings you can have in optimizing a website. This understanding will insure that you don’t simply apply random tricks in hopes that you’ve listened to the right person in the forums that day but rather that you consider what is the search engine trying to do and does this tactic fit with the long term goals of the engine.

For a while keyword density sp@mming was all the rage among the less ethical SEOs as was building networks of websites to link together in order to boost link popularity. Neither of these tactics work today and why? They do not fit with the long-term goals of the search engine. Search engines, like humans, want to survive. If the results they provide are poor then the engine will die a slow but steady death and so they evolve.

When considering any tactic you must consider, does this fit with the long-term goals of the engine? Does this tactic in general serve to provide better results for the largest number of searches? If the answer is yes then the tactic is sound.

For example, the overall relevancy of your website (i.e. does the majority of your content focus on a single subject) has become more important over the past year or so. Does this help the searcher? The searcher will find more content on the subject they have searched on larger sites with larger amounts of related content and thus this shift does help the searcher overall. A tactic that includes the addition of more content to your site is thus a solid one as it helps build the overall relevancy of your website and gives the visitor more and updated information at their disposal once they get there.

Another example would be in link building. Reciprocal links are becoming less relevant and reciprocal-links between unrelated sites are virtually irrelevant. If you are engaging in reciprocal link building insure that the sites you link to are related to your site’s content. As a search engine I would want to know that a site in my results also provided links to other related sites thus increasing the chance that the searcher was going to find the information that they are looking for one way or another without having to switch to a different search engine.

In Short

In short, think ahead. Understand that search engines are organic beings that will continue to evolve. Help feed them when they visit your site and they will return often and reward your efforts. Use unethical tactics and you may hold a good position for a while but in the end, if you do not use tactics that provide for good overall results, you will not hold your position for long. They will learn.

Read the rest »

TagsTags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted in Seo   Add a comment

Time Warner Cable Connects Students Across Texas with Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

December 14th, 2009 by engineering magazines

Research shows the next generation of Texas youth is not prepared to take on the challenges of the 21st century. Eighty percent of jobs created in the next decade will require math and science skills. However, today’s students show declining interest in the subjects, with 84 percent of middle school students saying they would rather clean their room, eat their vegetables, go to the dentist or take out the garbage than learn math or science.

This is an issue that threatens the United States’ and the state of Texas’ ability to compete in the global marketplace as a leader in innovation. Which is why Time Warner Cable has launched Connect a Million Minds, a $100 million initiative over five years to address America’s continuing decline in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

With launch events in Waco, San Antonio and Austin the company is kicking off the initiative by giving students opportunities for hands-on learning about science and technology in their own backyards.

Middle school students in Austin toured Darrel K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium to learn about the science, technology and engineering behind the 134-foot jumbotron, the recent stadium expansion and the technologically-advanced field turf.

“This initiative is all about instilling a passion in our young people for science, math, technology and engineering,” said DeLoss Dodds, Athletic Director at the University of Texas at Austin and participant in the Austin Connect a Million Minds launch.

Students from the Girls Inc. program in San Antonio attended a three-day STEM camp sponsored by Time Warner Cable that included a range of hands-on learning activities. Students learned about the chemical reaction needed to make ice cream, toured Time Warner Cable to learn the engineering behind television and participated in a variety of other tasks to grow their interest in and passion for science, technology, engineering and math.

“The more than 4.5 million students in Texas all have the potential to be the next great scientist or engineer if they receive support and opportunities,” said Jon Gary Herrera, Time Warner Cable regional vice president of communication in Texas. “This is why Time Warner Cable is dedicating its resources toward instilling in students across Texas a passion for the science and math skills that will make them the problem solvers of tomorrow.”

Students in Waco had the opportunity to learn first-hand about the future of environmentally-sensitive construction when touring the Waco Chamber of Commerce Building, the first “green” chamber building in the U.S. The group also learned about the engineering behind the city’s more-than 100-year-old suspension bridge and the television studio all while on a tour of Waco.

The city’s mayor, Virginia DuPuy, proclaimed the day Connect a Million Minds Day, stating, “As we all strive to be a positive influence in the lives of young people, the Citizens of Waco express their appreciation to Time Warner Cable for its public commitment to making a true difference in the lives of children in Waco and across Texas and the United States.”

Connect a Million Minds is intended to inspire youth to pursue STEM by connecting them to out-of-school learning opportunities in their community. Through a dedicated Web site, local video on-demand content, public service announcements and more, Time Warner Cable is raising awareness among youth and parents that the pursuit of out-of-school science, technology, engineering and math education can be fun and engaging.

ConnectAMillionMinds.com is the first-of-its-kind national aggregator of afterschool opportunities for youth in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). This tool will provide parents in the community with a free and easy way to find fun, hands-on learning opportunities for their kids. Organizations have the ability to register their programs to help get the word out to parents and students in a simple way.

The tour of Texas will continue in the coming months with stops in El Paso, Dallas and the Rio Grande Valley.

Read the rest »

TagsTags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted in College And University   Add a comment

Anatomy of a Search Engine

December 4th, 2009 by engineering magazines
For some unfortunate souls SEO is simply the learning of tricks and techniques that, according to their understanding, should propel their site into the top rankings on the major search engines. This understanding of the way SEO works can be effective for a time however it contains one basic flaw: the rules change. Search engines are in a constant state of evolution in order to keep up with the SEO’s in much the same way that Norton, McAfee, AVG or any of the other anti-virus software companies are constantly trying to keep up with the virus writers.

Basing your entire websites future on one simple set of rules (read: tricks) about how the search engines will rank your site contains an additional flaw, there are more factors being considered than any SEO is aware of and can confirm. That’s right, I will freely admit that there are factors at work that I may not be aware of and even those that I am aware of I cannot with 100 percent accuracy give you the exact weight they are given in the overall algorithm. Even if I could, the algorithm would change a few weeks later and what’s more, hold your hats for this one: there is more than one search engine.

So if we cannot base our optimization on a set of hard-and-fast rules what can we do? The key my friends, is not to understand the tricks but rather what they accomplish. Reflecting back on my high school math teach Mr. Barry Nicholl I recall a silly story that had a great impact. One weekend he had the entire class watch Dumbo The Flying Elephant (there was actually going to be a question about it on our test). Why? The lesson we were to get from it is that formulas (like tricks) are the feather in the story. They are unnecessary and yet we hold on to them in the false belief that it is the feather that works and not the logic. Indeed, the tricks and techniques are not what works but rather the logic they follow and that is their shortcoming. And So What Is Necessary?

To rank a website highly and keep it ranking over time one must optimize it with one primary understanding, that a search engine is a living thing. Obviously this is not to say that search engines have brains, I will leave those tales to Orson Scott Card and other science fiction writers, however their very nature results in a lifelike being with far more storage capacity.

If we consider for a moment how a search engine functions; it goes out into the world, follows the road signs and paths to get where it’s going, and collects all of the information in its path. From this point, the information is sent back to a group of servers where algorithms are applied in order to determine the importance of specific documents. How are these algorithms generated? They are created by human beings who have a great deal of experience in understanding the fundamentals of the Internet and the documents it contains and who also have the capacity to learn from their mistakes, and update the algorithms accordingly. Essentially we have an entity that collects data, stores it, and then sorts through it to determine what’s important which it’s happy to share with others and what’s unimportant which it keeps tucked away. So Let’s Break It Down

To gain a true understanding of what a search engine is, it’s simple enough to compare it to the human anatomy as, though not breathing, it contains many of the same core functions required for life. And these are:

The Lungs & Other Vital Organs – The lungs of a search engine and indeed the vast majority of vital organs are contained within the datacenters in which they are housed. Be it in the form of power, Internet connectivity, etc. As with the human body, we do not generally consider these important in defining who we are, however we’re certainly grateful to have them and need them all to function properly.

The Arms & Legs – Think of the links from the engine itself as the arms and legs. These are the vehicles by which we get where we need to go and retrieve what needs to be accessed. While we don’t commonly think of these as functions when we’re considering SEO these are the purpose of the entire thing. Much as the human body is designed primarily to keep you mobile and able to access other things, so too is the entire search engine designed primarily to access the outside world.

The Eyes – The eyes of the search engine are the spiders (AKA robots or crawlers). These are the 1s and 0s that the search engines send out over the Internet to retrieve documents. In the case of all the major search engines the spiders crawl from one page to another following the links, as you would look down various paths along your way. Fortunately for the spiders they are traveling mainly over fiber optic connections and so their ability to travel at light speed enables them to visit all the paths they come across whereas we as mere humans have to be a bit more selective.

The Brain – The brain of a search engine, like the human brain, is the most complex of its functions and components. The brain must have instinct, must know, and must learn in order to function properly. A search engine (and by search engine we mean the natural listings of the major engines) must also include these critical three components in order to survive.

The Instinct – The instinct of a search engines is defined in it’s core functions, that is the crawling of sites and either the inability to read specific types of data, or the programmed response to ignore files meeting a specific criteria. Even the programmed responses become automated by the engines and thus fall under the category of instinct much the same as the westernized human instinct to jump from a large spider is learned. An infant would probably watch the spider or even eat it meaning this is not an automatic human reaction.

The instinct of a search engines is important to understand however once one understands what can and cannot be read and how the spiders will crawl a site this will become instinct for you too and can then safely be stored in the “autopilot” part of your brain.

The Knowing – Search engines know by crawling. What they know goes far beyond what is commonly perceived by most users, webmasters and SEOs. While the vast storehouse we call the Internet provides billions upon billions of pages of data for the search engines to know they also pick up more than that. Search engines know a number of different methods for storing data, presenting data, prioritizing data and of course, way of tricking the engines themselves.

While the search engine spiders are crawling the web they are grabbing the stores of data that exist and sending it back to the datacenters, where that information is processed through existing algorithms and spam filters where it will attain a ranking based on the engine’s current understanding of the way the Internet and the documents contained within it work.

Similar to the way we process an article from a newspaper based on our current understanding of the world, the search engines process and rank documents based on what they understand to be true in the way documents are organized on the Internet.

The Learning – Once it is understood that search engines rank documents based on a specific understanding of the way the Internet functions, it then follows that in order to insure that new document types and technologies are able to be read and that the algorithm be changed as new understandings of the functionality of the Internet are uncovered a search engine must have the ability to “learn”.

Aside from a search engine needing the ability to properly spider documents stored in newer technologies, search engines must also have the ability to detect and accurately penalize spam and as well as accurately rank websites based on new understandings of the way documents are organized and links arranged. Examples of areas where search engines must learn in an ongoing basis include but are most certainly not limited to:

* Understanding the relevancy of the content between sites where a link is found * Attaining the ability to view the content on documents contained within new technologies such as database types, Flash, etc. * Understanding the various methods used to hide text, links, etc. in order to penalize sites engaging in these tactics * Learning from current results and any shortcoming in them, what tweaks to current algorithms or what additional considerations must be taken into account to improve the relevancy of the results in the future.

The learning of a search engine generally comes from the uber-geeks hired by and the users of the search engines. Once a factor is taken into account and programmed into the algorithm it them moves into the “knowing” category until the next round of updates. How This Helps in SEO

This is the point at which you may be asking yourself, “This is all well-and-good but exactly how does this help ME?” An understanding of how search engines function, how they learn, and how they live is one of the most important understandings you can have in optimizing a website. This understanding will insure that you don’t simply apply random tricks in hopes that you’ve listened to the right person in the forums that day but rather that you consider what is the search engine trying to do and does this tactic fit with the long term goals of the engine.

For a while keyword density spamming was all the rage among the less ethical SEOs as was building networks of websites to link together in order to boost link popularity. Neither of these tactics work today and why? They do not fit with the long-term goals of the search engine. Search engines, like humans, want to survive. If the results they provide are poor then the engine will die a slow but steady death and so they evolve.

When considering any tactic you must consider, does this fit with the long-term goals of the engine? Does this tactic in general serve to provide better results for the largest number of searches? If the answer is yes then the tactic is sound.

For example, the overall relevancy of your website (i.e. does the majority of your content focus on a single subject) has become more important over the past year or so. Does this help the searcher? The searcher will find more content on the subject they have searched on larger sites with larger amounts of related content and thus this shift does help the searcher overall. A tactic that includes the addition of more content to your site is thus a solid one as it helps build the overall relevancy of your website and gives the visitor more and updated information at their disposal once they get there.

Another example would be in link building. Reciprocal links are becoming less relevant and reciprocal-links between unrelated sites are virtually irrelevant. If you are engaging in reciprocal link building insure that the sites you link to are related to your site’s content. As a search engine I would want to know that a site in my results also provided links to other related sites thus increasing the chance that the searcher was going to find the information that they are looking for one way or another without having to switch to a different search engine

Read the rest »

TagsTags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted in Seo   Add a comment

Materials Science and Mathematics Research Honored at Nation’s Premier High School Science Competition

November 16th, 2009 by engineering magazines

2009 Siemens Competition Regional Winners Announced at The University of Texas at Austin; Will Move on to National Finals for Chance at $100,000 Peter Hu Wins Top Individual Prize; Sean Karson, Dan Liu and Kevin Chen Win Top Team Prize.

Research projects in the areas of materials science and mathematics scored top marks this evening, as Peter Hu of Denton, Texas and the team of Sean Karson of Winter Park, Florida, Dan Liu of Austin, Texas and Kevin Chen of Missouri City, Texas received the highest honors at the Region Two Finals of the 2009 Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology, the nation’s premier high school science competition.

Tonight’s winners will receive thousands of dollars in college scholarships and be invited to compete at the National Finals in New York City on December 3-7, where the winners of six regional competitions across the United States will vie for scholarships ranging from $10,000 to the top prize of $100,000. The Siemens Competition, a signature program of the Siemens Foundation, is administered by the College Board.

“These students have just earned their place among the nation’s greatest high school scientists,” said James Whaley, President of the Siemens Foundation, based in Iselin, New Jersey. “Each year, the students’ work becomes more impressive, and in a record-setting year such as this one, their achievements become even more outstanding. We are proud to welcome them into our family of Siemens Scholars and look forward to their participation at the national finals in New York City.”

The students presented their research this weekend to a panel of judges from The University of Texas at Austin, host of the Siemens Competition Region Two Finals.

Individual Winner

Peter Hu, a senior at the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science in Denton, Texas, won the individual category and a $3,000 college scholarship for his materials science project that aimed to develop a novel and biologically compatible material for protein drug delivery. While similar delivery systems for therapeutic proteins are known in scientific literature, many of these materials were found to be carcinogenic. Mr. Hu’s research, titled Novel Thermogelling Dispersions of Polymer Nanoparticles for Controlled Drug Delivery, focused on an alternative FDA-approved material to mimic the behavior of these previous delivery systems, effectively avoiding prior toxicity issues.

“While all of the projects were very impressive today, Mr. Hu’s research was successful on many levels,” said Dr. Christopher Bielawski, Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at The University of Texas at Austin. “This research project established a key proof of concept in the laboratory and the materials presented are poised for examination in living systems. Mr. Hu’s work is very advanced and comparable to that of a second or third year graduate student; with minimal tweaks, this research project stands an excellent chance at being published in a top-tier scientific journal and will likely make quite a splash in many scientific communities.”

Mr. Hu is a senior who aspires to one day lead a research team at a university or facility, such as the National Cancer Institute. Currently, he is the Vice President of the Junior Engineering Technical Society, and is organizing a science demonstration team in order to promote interest in math and science among elementary and middle school students. Mr. Hu is also a member of his school’s Research Organization.

Both of Mr. Hu’s parents are physicists, spurring his interest in science at a young age. In addition to his academic pursuits, Mr. Hu plays piano and violin, as well as basketball and table tennis in his free time. His mentor for this research project was Professor Liping Tang of the Department of Bioengineering at The University of Texas at Arlington.

Team Winners

Sean Karson, a senior at Trinity Prepatory High School in Winter Park, Florida; Dan Liu, a junior at the Liberal Arts and Science Academy High School in Austin, Texas; and Kevin Chen, a junior at William P. Clements High School in Sugar Land, Texas, won the team category and will share a $6,000 college scholarship for their mathematics project entitled Relating Missing and Decycling Edges in Directed Graphs. The team’s mathematics project has the potential to increase efficiency in real world networks by establishing an upper bound on the minimum number of connections that must be removed to destroy all cyclic pathways in systems like the World Wide Web and transcontinental trade routes.

“The team’s work was truly impressive in that it focused on a topic in pure mathematics,” said Dr. Haskell Rosenthal, John T. Stuart III Centennial Professor Emeritus in Mathematics at The University of Texas at Austin. “With new and delicate techniques, they have advanced the infrastructure and knowledge of graph theory by providing better bounds, which is of fundamental importance to the mathematics community. Their depth of knowledge was remarkable, and their work was on the same level of that of a Ph.D.”

Mr. Karson is a senior who has received Excellence Awards for Honors Computer Programming C++, Graphics I, Honors Chemistry, Honors Precalculus, AP JAVA and AP Chemistry. He has also received the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Math & Science Award, and is recognized as a National Merit Semifinalist. Mr. Karson is Captain of the Quiz Bowl Team, President of Mu Alpha Theta, a member of the Spanish Honor Society and the National Honor Society and volunteers for the Center of Math, Arts and Science Achievement. He has also received the Varsity Baseball Coach’s Award and the Most Valuable Defensive Player Award, and has been the starting third baseman on the Varsity Baseball Team since his sophomore year. Mr. Karson has also leveraged his love of puzzles to create a club called Rubik’s Revenge, aimed to teach middle school students how to solve Rubik’s Cubes.

Mr. Liu is a junior who aspires to one day become a computer or electronics engineer or programmer. He is currently Vice President of the InvenTeams Club, Co-Director of his school’s Math Team, and a member of the Liberal Arts and Science Academy’s (LASA) National Honor Society Chapter. Mr. Liu is also a part of the LASA Camerata Orchestra and Science Olympiad Team. He is a part of the Circle C Swim Team, and also plays badminton and ping-pong.

Mr. Chen is a junior and is a member of his school’s Mu Alpha Theta, Junior Engineering Technical Society and Computer Science Team.  He is also an active volunteer at a local middle school Math Club. Mr. Chen’s dad is a computer engineer and has taught mathematics and physics in the past, playing a large role in sparking his interest in math when he was young. His mother is also very encouraging and supportive of his passion for math and science, helping to foster his current academic interests. He enjoys practicing piano, playing tennis and programming games in his free time.

The team’s mentor was Dr. Jian Shen, Professor of Mathematics at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas.

Regional Finalists
Regional Finalists each received a $1,000 scholarship.

Regional Finalists in the individual category were:
–  Sai Achi, Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science, Denton, TX
–  Somak Das, Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science, Denton, TX
–  Prianka Ghoshal, Westlake High School, Austin, TX

–  Sahil Khetpal, Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science, Denton, TX

Regional Finalists in the team category were:
–  Fayen Bastani and Jonathan Lin, Jasper High School, Plano, TX
–  Sumit Gogia and Patrick Kim, The Science Academy of South Texas,
Mercedes, TX; and Vincent Yu, Sha Tin College, Sha Tin, Hong Kong
–  Sunil Pai, The Kinkaid School, Houston TX; and Aneesh Sampath, Ward
Melville High School, East Setauket, NY

–  Tianjiao (Tom) Zhang and Liang Gu, Bellaire High School, Bellaire, TX

The Siemens Competition

The Siemens Competition was launched in 1998 to recognize America’s best and brightest math and science students. In another record-setting year, 2,151 students registered to enter the Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology in 2009 – more than ever before – for a total of 1,348 project submissions – a 14% increase in project submissions over 2008 figures and more than a 12% increase in the number of registrations.

Entries are judged at the regional level by esteemed scientists at six leading research universities which host the regional competitions: California Institute of Technology; Carnegie Mellon University; Georgia Institute of Technology; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; University of Notre Dame; and The University of Texas at Austin.

Winners of the regional events are invited to compete at the National Finals at New York University in New York City, December 3 – December 7, 2009. Visit www.siemens-foundation.org on December 7, 2009 at 9:30 am EST to view a live webcast of the National Finalist Award Presentation. You can also log into and follow the Siemens Foundation on Twitter (http://twitter.com/SFoundation) for the latest information and announcements throughout this year’s competition.

About the Siemens Foundation

The Siemens Foundation provides more than $7 million annually in support of educational initiatives in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math in the United States. Its signature programs, the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology and Siemens Awards for Advanced Placement, reward exceptional achievement in science, math and technology. The newest program, The Siemens We Can Change the World Challenge, encourages K-12 students to develop innovative green solutions for environmental issues. By supporting outstanding students today, and recognizing the teachers and schools that inspire their excellence, the Foundation helps nurture tomorrow’s scientists and engineers. The Foundation’s mission is based on the culture of innovation, research and educational support that is the hallmark of Siemens’ U.S. companies and its parent company, Siemens AG.

For further information, visit www.siemens-foundation.org.

The College Board

The College Board is a not-for-profit membership association whose mission is to connect students to college success and opportunity. Founded in 1900, the College Board is composed of more than 5,700 schools, colleges, universities and other educational organizations. Each year, the College Board serves seven million students and their parents, 23,000 high schools, and 3,800 colleges through major programs and services in college readiness, college admission, guidance, assessment, financial aid, enrollment, and teaching and learning. Among its best-known programs are the SAT®, the PSAT/NMSQT® and the Advanced Placement Program® (AP®). The College Board is committed to the principles of excellence and equity, and that commitment is embodied in all of its programs, services, activities and concerns.

For further information, visit www.collegeboard.com.

Read the rest »

TagsTags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted in Science and Engineering 1 Comment
« Previous Entries

Most Popular Search Terms for All Articles: