Nifty Fifty
USA Science and Engineering Festival: The Blog
Category archives for Nifty Fifty
Nifty Fifty Speaker & “Nerd Girls” Founder Dr. Karen Panetta Honored at the Oval Office
Posted by carlyo of USA Science & Engineering Festival on February 15, 2012 This past December, AT&T sponsored Nifty Fifty program speaker Dr. Karen Panetta received a Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring from President Barack Obama! Dr. Panetta is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Tufts University and Director of the Simulation Research Laboratory at Tufts University. She is also the…
Nifty Fifty Speaker Carol Reiley is on the Cover of MAKE Magazine!
Posted by carlyo of USA Science & Engineering Festival on January 13, 2012 AT&T Sponsored Nifty Fifty Program Speaker and Surgical Roboticist Carol Reiley made the recent cover of MAKE Magazine! She is the first female engineer to make the cover of the magazine. Volume 29 of MAKE features an interview and two articles co-authored by Carol. Carol, a Ph.D. student at Johns Hopkins University’s Computational Interaction and…
Beauty Encapsulated
Posted by Kandy Collins on December 30, 2011 By Joe Schwarcz PhD, Author, USASEF Expo Performer, AT&T Sponsored Nifty Fifty Program Speaker They sold out after just four hours. And they weren’t even hotcakes. They were just little capsules. But these capsules came with a nifty promise. Pop some, and wrinkles, those fearsome hallmarks of aging, would be ironed out from the inside!…
“Liquid Silver” Can Tarnish Life
Posted by Kandy Collins on December 13, 2011 By Joe Schwarcz PhD, Author, USASEF Expo Performer, AT&T Sponsored Nifty Fifty Program Speaker Physicians today are unlikely to encounter “Gilder’s palsy.” Nor are they likely to diagnose a patient with “hatter’s shakes.” But prior to the twentieth century these ailments had to be considered when a patient presented with tremors, irritability, increased salivation and…
Beep..beeep….It’s Moscow calling!
Posted by Kandy Collins on November 29, 2011 By Joe Schwarcz PhD, Author, USASEF Expo Performer, AT&T Sponsored Nifty Fifty Program Speaker The “beep..beep..beep” sounded innocent enough, but it shook America to its very core. Why? Because it was coming from outer space! No, the military personnel monitoring radio signals did not pick up a transmission from aliens. This beep was coming from…
A New Science Video Series From Nifty Fifty Speaker Ainissa Ramirez
Posted by Kandy Collins on November 7, 2011 AT&T sponsored Nifty Fifty program speaker and Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science at Yale University Ainissa Ramirez has created a new YouTube video series entitled Material Marvels from her lab at Yale on some pretty cool materials used in space, robots and even in your mouth! Her titles to date are Space…
Synthetic Colours Are Dazzling But Disturbing
Posted by Kandy Collins on November 4, 2011 By Joe Schwarcz, Author, USASEF Expo Performer, AT&T sponsored Nifty Fifty program speaker & Director, McGill University Office for Science and Society – Montreal, QC, Canada Thanks to chemical ingenuity we lead a colourful life. Synthetic dyes have served up a feast for the eyes but they may leave us starving for good health. Our…
Swallowing Blueberries, Apples and Hype
Posted by Kandy Collins on October 17, 2011 By: Joe Schwarcz PhD Author, USASEF Expo Performer and AT&T Sponsored Nifty Fifty Program Speaker Blueberries may reduce the growth of breast cancer! Apples and pears reduce the chance of stroke! I bet I have your attention now. But those are not my words, they’re recent newspaper headlines. It seems that virtually every day some…
Our Posthumous Footprint
Posted by Kandy Collins on October 7, 2011 by Joe Schwarcz PhD, Author, Expo Performer and AT&T sponsored Nifty Fifty program speaker They say you can’t take it with you. Actually that isn’t quite true. Your earthly possessions stay behind, but there is something that you do take with you. Your body! And decisions have to be made about what is to become…
Be Glad They’re Asking About Liquids and Gels
Posted by Kandy Collins on September 30, 2011 By: Joe Schwarcz PhD Author, USASEF Expo Performer and AT&T Sponsored Nifty Fifty Program Speaker “Do you have any liquids, gels or powdered fruit drinks?” Except for the powdered fruit drinks, such questions have become routine at airports. But back on July 10, 2006 I had no idea why I was being asked this bizarre…