• As Baby Boomers retire, nuclear industry faces manpower shortages

    Many nuclear power plants in the United States are facing an employment and training crisis as their largely Baby Boomer-generation (1946-64) workforce begins to retire. The nuclear industry is making an effort to usher in new and better-trained workers — many from university programs and former military service — to fill in the gaps created by retirement-aged engineers.

  • Carnegie Mellon recognized for excellence in cybersecurity education, research

    The NSA and DHS have designated Carnegie Mellon University as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance/Cyber Defense Education and a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance/Cyber Defense Research for academic years 2014 through 2021. As a CAE, Carnegie Mellon will continue to be eligible to participate in federal scholarship and research opportunities.

  • New, more effective teaching approach for engineering education

    Purdue University researchers who developed a new approach more effectively to teach large numbers of engineering students are recommending that the approach be considered for adoption by universities globally. The system, called the Purdue Mechanics Freeform Classroom, allows students to interact with each other and faculty online while accessing hundreds of instructional videos and animations. The approach also might be used for any large STEM-related courses.

  • Security guard industry lacks standards, training

    Despite playing a more important role in the wake of 9/11, the security guard industry remains plagued by inadequate training and standards in many states, new study of the $7 billion-a-year industry finds. Formal training of the nation’s one million-plus private security officers is widely neglected, a surprising finding when contrasted with other private occupations such as paramedics, childcare workers, and even cosmetologists.

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  • Scientists urge U.S. to do more to detect, prevent use of bioweapons

    Carefully targeted biological weapons could be as dangerous as nuclear weapons, so the United States should invest more resources in developing technologies to detect them, scientists say. What is especially worrisome is that “The advent of modern molecular genetic technologies is making it increasingly feasible to engineer bioweapons,” says one expert. “It’s making people with even moderate skills able to create threats they couldn’t before.” There is another worry: “A high-tech bioweapon could cost only $1 million to build,” the expert adds. “That’s thousands of times cheaper than going nuclear. Iran’s centrifuges alone cost them billions.”

  • Foreign graduate enrollment in science and engineering continues to rise

    The number of citizens and permanent residents enrolled in science and engineering (S&E) graduate programs in the United States declined in 2012, while the number of foreign students studying on temporary visas increased, according to new data from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

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  • Research reconfirms that public investment in scientific research promotes growth

    New and independent research has reconfirmed and quantified some of the economic and societal benefits of public investment in scientific research. The report says that for every £1 spent by the U.K. government on R&D, private sector R&D output rises by 20p per year in perpetuity, by raising the level of the U.K. knowledge base.

  • Teams from U.S. service academies demonstrate potentially transformative technologies

    DARPA’s mission is to ensure the technological superiority of U.S. military forces, and the agency continually seeks new sources of talent to accomplish that goal. The U.S. three military service academies are a promising source of that talent. The U.S. Air Force Academy team wins new competition — DARPA Service Academies Innovation Challenge — designed to encourage students at U.S. military academies to develop groundbreaking solutions to challenges facing the U.S. armed forces.

  • Public schools must accept children regardless of citizenship, immigration status: DOJ

    Last week, the Obama administration reaffirmed its position on public school education for children, regardless of their citizenship or immigration status. The state and district obligations regarding school enrollment are influenced by the result of the 1982 Supreme Court decision in Plyler V. Doe, which discarded a Texas law that denied education funding for undocumented children. Some states like Alabama and Arizona have passed their own education laws, but these have been superseded by the 1982 Supreme Court ruling.

  • FAA grants NJIT permission to test UAVs

    On 8 May the FAA awarded the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) a Certificate of Waiver/Authorization (COA), making it the first New Jersey university and first public institution in the state granted permission to test the unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). NJIT will use the airstrip on the U.S. Coast Guard Training Center in Cape May to test the systems.

  • Active learning of STEM subjects improves grades, reduces failure

    A significantly greater number of students fail science, engineering, and math (STEM) courses which are taught lecture-style than fail in classes incorporating so-called active learning that expects them to participate in discussions and problem-solving beyond what they have memorized. Active learning also improves exam performance — in some cases enough to change grades by half a letter or more so a B-plus, for example, becomes an A-minus. The researchers found that, on average, in a STEM course with 100 students signed up, about 34 fail if they get lectured to but only 22 fail if they do active learning. If the failure rates of 34 percent for lecturing and 22 percent in classes with some active learning were applied to the seven million U.S. undergraduates who say they want to pursue STEM majors, some 2.38 million students would fail lecture-style courses vs. 1.54 million with active learning. This 840,000 additional students failing under lecturing, a difference of 55 percent compared to the failure rate of active learning.

  • Sandia offers free classes to high school students at the Lab’s Cyber Technologies Academy

    In the rapidly changing world of cybersecurity, who better to learn from than the professionals who live in that world every day? High school students are getting just that opportunity through Sandia National Laboratories’ Cyber Technologies Academy, free classes for high school students interested in computer science and cybersecurity.

  • One in ten American schoolchildren in school near risky chemical facility

    One year after the fertilizer facility explosion in West, Texas, which destroyed and severely damaged nearby schools, nearly one in ten American schoolchildren live and study within one mile of a potentially dangerous chemical facility. A new study shows that 4.6 million children at nearly 10,000 schools across the country are within a mile of a facility which produces, uses, or stores significant quantities of hazardous chemicals identified by EPA as particularly risky to human health or the environment if they are spilled, released into the air, or are involved in an explosion or fire.

  • Four former teaching assistants from Birmingham's “Trojan Horse”-plot school arrested

    The alleged Trojan Horse school take-over plot in Birmingham, U.K., has taken another twist last Thursday when four women connected to a school mentioned as part of the alleged Islamist plot were arrested in connection with an ongoing fraud investigation at the school. Adderley primary school was discussed in detail in the original document outlining the supposed Trojan Horse conspiracy. The document is a how-to guide for hardline Islamists wanting to advance the cause of jihad by overthrowing headmasters and senior teachers at state schools in Birmingham.

  • NC State awarded $25 million NNSA grant to launch nuclear proliferation detection effort

    North Carolina State University was awarded a 5-year, $25 million grant by the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) to develop the next generation of leaders with practical experience in technical fields relevant to nuclear nonproliferation. The new Consortium for Nonproliferation Enabling Capabilities, or CNEC, aims to be the pre-eminent research and education hub dedicated to the development of enabling technologies and technical talent for meeting the challenges of nuclear nonproliferation in the next decade.