Multitasking Not Necessarily The Smartest Way To Work

There is a growing body of evidence that indicates heavy multitasking or loading employees with a large number of tasks reduces their efficiency.  It appears that while technology can help to organize work the brain has  a limited capacity to work efficiently on more than one task at a time.   This is at odds with the seemingly constant demand for individuals within a corporation to do more with less.  In addition at least one study shows that older workers performance is less impacted by mobile phone and instant messages than younger workers.   The results imply that in a busy environment younger workers loose nearly all the advantage they may have in terms of cognitive speed.   Readers should take a look at the following articles to judge for themselves.

Older People Adapt Better To Technology Created Interruptions

Media multitaskers pay mental price, Stanford study shows

Slow Down, Brave Multitasker, and Don’t Read This in Traffic

The Switching Gears Factor

The Top 20 Schools Graduating B.S. Biomedical Engineering Classes for 2008

Top 20 schools which offer B.S. Biomedical Engineering degrees by graduating class size.  These schools represent 1650 graduates.  They represent about half the total number of B.S. BME graduates for 2008.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects approximately 300 new Biomedical Engineering jobs every year between 2006 and 2016.   As can be seen there is a significant mismatch  between the actual number of graduates and the projected number of jobs.  Anyone interested in these programs should note that the size of a department does not necessarily indicate a high level of quality when it comes to preparing a student for a corporate  career.

How to increase your odds;

Experience Will Help Get You That Biomedical Engineering Position

School	Total	Male	Female
University of California-San Diego	83	47	130
Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus	83	39	122
Duke University	73	37	110
Washington University in St Louis	61	32	93
Arizona State University	54	38	92
Vanderbilt University	56	35	91
University of California-Davis	60	27	87
The University of Texas at Austin	54	29	83
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute	44	37	81
University of California-Irvine	53	28	81
Rutgers University-New Brunswick	58	21	79
University of California-Berkeley	44	34	78
Boston University	53	25	78
Case Western Reserve University	52	24	76
Johns Hopkins University	45	27	72
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities	41	22	63
Northwestern University	38	24	62
University of Virginia-Main Campus	29	30	59
University of Southern California	35	22	57
Texas A & M University	32	24	56

Technology: Algal Film May Advance Battery Technology

Cladophora algae is a pest unless you want to make a better battery.  Typically gunking up the Baltic Sea this organisms nanostructure has been found to increase charge density significantly for cellulose-polymer batteries.  At 25 and 33 mAh /gm this technology appears to be within striking distance of NiCD and NiMH. Unfortunately it appears to still be a laboratory curiosity. It will take a while before we see this technology available.

Troublesome green algae serve as coating substrate in record-setting battery

Ultrafast All-Polymer Paper-Based Batteries

New Approval:REPEL-CV Bioresorbable Adhesion Barrier

Creating an implantable device is a challenging engineering problem which, with time, usually yields to the engineer’s and scientist’s efforts. Getting one of these product on the market under time constraints can lead to trade offs and is always a delicate balance between the improvement of medical care and the profit motive. Finally approving one is clearly a great responsibility since it unleashes the product on the public. It’s interesting to note the clinical data on this product. Why would a membrane that presumably physically separates the pericardium from the chest wall produce only a 50% reduction in adhesions? Is it because of the mediastinitus it causes?

REPEL-CV Bioresorbable Adhesion Barrier – P070005

Technology: Nitrogen Impregnated Diamond May Be Next Big Thing In MRI

The potential magnetic field sensing system improves on current technology by working at room temperature. The inclusion of the nitrogen, which also occurs naturally, creates a transducer which when impinged by an appropriate wavelength of green light flouresces red.  Plus or minus spin can be detected by minor variations in the amplitude of the flourescence. The finding is a byproduct of work by researchers working at the Joint Quantum Institute, MIT and Texas A&M University.

Diamonds May Be the Ultimate MRI Probe, Say Quantum Physicists