News

Shorebird’s beak inspires researchers to design new water collection strategy

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The shorebird's beak is more interesting than you might think
The shorebird’s beak is more interesting than you might think

Dr. Fazale Rana of Reasons to Believe tweeted this cool example of biomimetics from Science Daily.

Excerpt:

A UT Arlington engineering professor and his doctoral student have designed a device based on a shorebird’s beak that can accumulate water collected from fog and dew.

The device could provide water in drought-stricken areas of the world or deserts around the globe.

Xin Heng… a doctoral student in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and Cheng Luo, MAE professor, have made a device that can use fog and dew to collect water.

Cheng Luo, professor in the Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Department, and Xin Heng, PhD candidate in the same College of Engineering department, published “Bioinspired Plate-Based Fog Collectors” in the Aug. 25 edition of ACS’ (American Chemical Society) Applied Materials & Interfaces journal.

The idea began when Heng saw an article that explained the physical mechanism shorebirds use to collect their food — driving food sources into their throats by opening and closing their beaks. Luo said that inspired the team to try to replicate the natural beak in the lab.

“We wanted to see if we could do that first,” Luo said. “When we made the artificial beaks, we saw that multiple water drops were transported by narrow, beak-like glass plates. That made us think of whether we could harvest the water from fog and dew.”

Their experiments were successful. They found out they could harvest about four tablespoons of water in a couple of hours from glass plates that were about 26 centimeters long by 10 centimeters wide.

Now, if we are lifting designs out of nature, then shouldn’t we give honor to God for putting the designs in there in the first place? I really think it’s important to give God credit where due for his clever designs, even if you’re not a big fan of the shorebird. I also think it’s interesting that it’s engineers who made this application of something in nature, not biologists.  Also, I feel I have to mention that the birdy is also cute, which is not insignificant, if you like birds as much as I do.

Humor

SATIRE: Unemployed Gender Studies Major Sues ‘The Patriarchy’

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From the Daily Currant.

Excerpt:

An unemployed gender studies major from Eugene, Ore. sued “The Patriarchy” today in federal court for refusing to give her a job.

In a 25-page brief, attorneys for Sarah Miller-Jones, 24, argue that gender discrimination from the patriarchy has prevented their client from finding gainful employment since she graduated from university three years ago.

The suit seeks $2 million in compensation and $139 million in punitive damages, which together equal $1 from every adult man in America.

“Despite the fact that Ms. Miller-Jones graduated with a 2.8 GPA from the prestigious University of Oregon, she has been unable to find a job fitting her qualifications,” the document reads.

“Ms. Miller-Jones has been on unemployment benefits for 18 months. And despite extensive coursework in Zambian feminist hip-hop she has only received six job offers — all of which were for entry-level call center and health care positions.

“It is outrageous that the patriarchy refuses to offer our client a decent career. She has applied for over 20 positions in the recording, publishing and television industries and has been rejected every single time.

“We all know that terms like ‘no experience’ and ‘lack of relevant education’ are codewords the patriarchy uses to keep keep women in their place. But Ms. Miller-Jones refuses to be a housewife or a nurse. She deserves a real job.”

Millions of young Americans who recently graduated from university are finding themselves working in jobs below their educational level.

Media reports have tended to blame the slow recovery from the Great Recession for the trend. However, an equally important factor is the fact that the American university system turns out too few graduates with employable skills.

There are an estimated 3 million open jobs in the United States that go unfilled due to a lack of qualified candidates. Many of these  jobs are in science and engineering, while the most popular majors for U.S. college graduates are in psychology and the liberal arts.

According to a former employer, Miller-Jones’ gender studies degree actually hurt her employability. Gilbert Grass manages a call center for a local credit union in Eugene and says he regrets hiring her straight out of college.

“She refused to use the words ‘he’ or ‘she’ when talking to customers,” he says. “That lead to a lot of confusion. And she once gave a customer who called to check her bank balance a 20-minute lecture on how the film Toy Story perpetuated gender-specific archetypes of heroism.

I’m sorry, but this just makes me laugh so hard. I just want to remind everyone that this is satire. Not real! Not real!

News

Study of elementary school children finds entrenched discrimination against boys

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The study is here (PDF), and Susan Walsh writes about the study on her blog. (H/T Stuart Schneiderman)

Excerpt:

A new study of nearly 6,000 elementary school children has found that boys are discriminated against beginning in kindergarten. Christopher Cornwell, an economics professor at the University of Georgia, says that ”gender disparities in teacher grades start early and uniformly favor girls.”

Despite having higher scores on standardized tests, boys get lower grades than girls. Why? Because teachers are basing grades at least partly on classroom behavior, and the standards are very much geared to female norms.

[…]Here’s what the disparity looks like for kindergarten boys:

Std. Deviation Test Scores Grades
Reading -.017 -.27
Math +.02 -.15
Science +.035 -.14

(Note: Values are approx., gauged visually from study graphic.)

Another interesting finding was that boys who adhere to female norms on non-cognitive skills were not penalized. Effectively, the more female behavior was rewarded with a grade “bonus” for males.

The implications of this are obvious. Masculinity, even normal maleness, is being punished in schools from a very young age. Only the most female-acting boys are rewarded with a fair assessment.

I found this story on Stuart Schnederman’s blog, and this is what he had to say about it:

The results demonstrated that schoolteachers are prejudiced against boys. When teachers do not just grade on performance, but include a number of intangible qualities that girls are more likely to possess, they are acting as bigots.

I recommend that everyone pick up a copy of “The War Against Boys” by AEI scholar Christina Hoff Sommers to learn more about this anti-male discrimination problem.

I see a lot of people raving at men to “man up” these days. Many of those people are pastors who remain ignorant about the real, systemic causes of male underachievement. Even very obvious factors – like the dominance of female teachers and administrators in schools – are ignored by the blame-men crowd. Boys generally learn better when they learn from male teachers in all-male classrooms. But unfortunately for boys, there are people who don’t want to do what works for men, especially when it doesn’t fit with feminist ideology.