Today in History – February 3, 1958 -  Rachael Carson publishes the Silent Spring. Rachel Carson, a writer, scientist and ecologist, worked seventeen years for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, where she learned about the problems of pesticides on the environment. She is best known for her book called Silent Spring, which is often credited with shifting public consciousness about the environment and providing the foundation for today’s environmental movement. Carson faced much hostility from chemical companies due to her criticism of the over use of pesticides and the lack of scientific and public oversight.

The Engineering Pathway has a number of resources on Rachel Carson and environmental ethics. I am particularly impressed with the ethics module hosted by the National Academy of Engineering titled Rachel Carson – Silent Springs. For more educational resources, see our agricultural engineering education, environmental engineering education and chemical engineering education community pages. The Engineering Pathway also hosts Engineering Education communities in all ABET-accredited disciplines.

Carson was an engaging writer and some of her observations were hypotheses that did not stand the test of time after more thorough scientific analyses were conducted, making her the object of criticism even today. Yet one must understand that she was writing at a time that full scientific scrutiny was not available and it was “early days” of public disclosure of the effects of pesticides and other commonly used chemicals. I find John Tierney’s editorial in the New York Times, for example, to be unmindful of this context. He makes a good point that pesticides have had positive effects as well, such as greatly increasing yield of agricultural products and reducing the spread of diseases spread by insects; I agree, there are always tradeoffs in the implementation of any technology.

On the other hand, I find myself questioning Teirney’s own scientific integrity (no educational credentials in science that I know of) and have found his criticisms to often be out of context and misleading. I have been at the wrong end of his criticism for a report I co-authored with the National Academies titled: Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering. I suppose it helps sell newspapers, but for someone claiming the scientific high ground, he really seems to miss the point and loves to blow up controversial subjects in misleading ways. The Presidents of the National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Science and The Institute of Medicine immediately wrote an excellent response to Tierney’s criticism. Interested readers might also be interested in the editorial by two of the report’s co-authors as well, Jo Handelsman and Robert Birgeneau. I can only imagine the attacks Carson must have lived through a half decade ago, with most of the chemical industry using their vast resources to discredit her and the environmental movement she inspired. Fortunately, these same companies have come to recognize the importance of the environmental impact and sustainability of their products, not to mention, the market sensitivities.

Today in History – January 28, 1986 – Space Shuttle Challenger explodes after launch, killing the entire crew. American’s stared in shock at their televisions watching the Challenger accident in full motion video. The 35th Challenger’s flight had been previously scheduled for January 22, but delayed because of bad weather, high winds and icicles on the launch apparatus. Never had there been a launch approved in freezing weather conditions, but NASA had assured the public that the conditions were safe. They were anxious to launch due to economic considerations and scheduling backlogs. Political pressure has been suggested as well due to NASA’s heavy publicizing of Christa McAuliffe as the first school teacher in space. She had been selected under a highly competitive process from among 10,000 entries for the opportunity. The Challenger disaster was a severe blow to the American space program, bringing manned flights to a halt for many years. It was also a blow to the American public who had come to think of the Space Shuttle as an important symbol of national identify.

Speaking before the launch, Christa McAuliffe said: “One of the things I hope to bring back into the classroom is to make that connection with the students that they too are part of history, the space program belongs to them and to try to bring them up with the space age.”

Morton-Thiokol, one of the contractors for the Solid Rocket Motor was convinced that the cold weather would cause problems and had briefed NASA about their concerns. Two engineers, Robert Ebeling and Roger Boisjoly had previously urged a redesign on the booster rockets due to O-ring erosion in the booster field joints. The lowest temperature experienced by the O-rings in any previous mission was 53°F in the January 24, 1985 flight; the temperature predicted for Florida on January 28th was much lower, in the low 20′s °F.

The Rogers commission confirmed the cause of the Challenger disaster explosion to have been caused by a leak through the faulty O-ring seal in one of the solid rocket boosters. According to testimony by Morton-Thiokol engineer Boisjoly, management put pressure on the engineers to OK the launch saying: “Take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat.” The recommendation was reversed, discounting the concern about the O-rings as being “inconclusive” and launch was recommended, “based on their engineering assessment”, even though the engineers had no part in this recommendation. In spite of concerns expressed by others, NASA managers decided to approve the boosters for launch despite the fact that the predicted launch temperature was outside of their operational specifications and any test conditions.

Engineers must learn from both the technical and organizational failures that led to the tragic Challenger accident. The Engineering Pathway digital library has information on several excellent case studies, lesson plans and other curricular materials that can be used in the classroom. The Texas A&M case, for example, leads to these discussions questions:

• “What could NASA management have done differently?
• What should Roger Boisjoly have done differently (if anything)? In answering this question, keep in mind that at his age, the prospect of finding a new job if he was fired was slim. He also had a family to support.
• What do you (the students) see as your future engineering professional responsibilities in relation to both being loyal to management and protecting the public welfare?”

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on the Challenger accident or engineering ethics.

January 20, 1986 – First federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King. Through fifteen years of the persistent efforts of Congress Members John Conyers (Michigan), Shirley Chisholm (New York) and an army of other supports, Martin Luther King Day legislation was passed in 1983. A number of changes were required for it to be acceptable as a federal holiday. The date was changed to the third Monday in January, rather than his birthday of January 15, so as to distance it from Christmas and New Years. Several states resisted celebrating the holiday for various reasons. Several southern states included celebrations for various Confederate generals on that day. Arizona voters didn’t approve the holiday until 1992 after pressure from a tourist boycott. Only recently in 2000 was it first officially observed in all 50 states.

Ironically in 2008, the original Martin Luther King Day of January 20 fell on the inauguration of the first acknowledged African American President. Barack Obama’s “This is your victory” election day speech spoke of a nation of hope “where all things are possible”. “Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a bit better than the one we inhabit today”.

Advocates of Martin Luther King Day promote it as a day to focus on service activities using the motto “make it a Day ON, Not a Day Off!”. In fact, the 1994 King Holiday and Service Act designates the holiday as a national day of volunteer service, asking “Americans of all backgrounds and ages to celebrate Dr. King’s legacy by turning community concerns into citizen action.”

Martin Luther King brought together a diverse cross-section of the American citizenry to break down barriers and join forces in a common cause of justice and equity. Unfortunately, we still have much further to go in achieving diversity and inclusion in engineering. Community service learning projects have been proven to be an effective tool in developing integrative thinking and societal context in engineering education, as well as a means of attracting and motivating underrepresented engineers. One of the most successful efforts is the EPICS (Engineering Projects for Community Service) program originated in the College of Engineering at Purdue and the 2005 winner of the National Academy of Engineering‘s prestigious Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on Martin Luther King and community service learning. Or view our Engineering Diversity or our Computing Diversity educational community sites. View Michael Smith’s December 10th Engineering Education blog on the anniversary of his Nobel Peace Prize. The title of his Nobel lecture was “The Quest for Peace and Justice”.

Today is Martin Luther King Day. The first one was on January 20, 1986 as a federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King. Through fifteen years of the persistent efforts of Congress Members John Conyers (Michigan), Shirley Chisholm (New York) and an army of other supports, Martin Luther King Day legislation was passed in 1983. A number of changes were required for it to be acceptable as a federal holiday. The date was changed to the third Monday in January, rather than his birthday of January 15, so as to distance it from Christmas and New Years. Several states resisted celebrating the holiday for various reasons. Several southern states included celebrations for various Confederate generals on that day. Arizona voters didn’t approve the holiday until 1992 after pressure from a tourist boycott. Only recently in 2000 was it first officially observed in all 50 states.

Ironically in 2008, the original Martin Luther King Day of January 20 fell on the inauguration of the first acknowledged African American President. Barack Obama’s “This is your victory” election day speech spoke of a nation of hope “where all things are possible”. “Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a bit better than the one we inhabit today”.

Advocates of Martin Luther King Day promote it as a day to focus on service activities using the motto “make it a Day ON, Not a Day Off!”. In fact, the 1994 King Holiday and Service Act designates the holiday as a national day of volunteer service, asking “Americans of all backgrounds and ages to celebrate Dr. King’s legacy by turning community concerns into citizen action.”

Martin Luther King brought together a diverse cross-section of the American citizenry to break down barriers and join forces in a common cause of justice and equity. Unfortunately, we still have much further to go in achieving diversity and inclusion in engineering. Community service learning projects have been proven to be an effective tool in developing integrative thinking and societal context in engineering education, as well as a means of attracting and motivating underrepresented engineers. One of the most successful efforts is the EPICS (Engineering Projects for Community Service) program originated in the College of Engineering at Purdue and the 2005 winner of the National Academy of Engineering‘s prestigious Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on Martin Luther King and community service learning. Or view our Engineering Diversity or our Computing Diversity educational community sites. View Michael Smith’s December 10th Engineering Education blog on the anniversary of his Nobel Peace Prize. The title of his Nobel lecture was “The Quest for Peace and Justice”.

Today in History – January 12, 2010 – 7.0 Magnitude Earthquake in Haiti. The earthquake struck a highly populated region of this impoverished Caribbean island approximately 17 km from the capital city of Port-au-Prince. Hundreds of thousands died,  many more injured, many buildings were destroyed or seriously damaged, infrastructures collapsed and millions became homeless and without food.

The Haiti earthquake created a level of human tragedy that makes it difficult to examine, but it is imperative that we learn everything we can from this disaster. What lessons will engineers find in the ruins? What role will engineers have in restoring the country? Can engineers limit the structural and societal damages of similar, future catastrophes around the world?

Another critical question is: How can engineering technology be applied to solve current and future problems in Haiti? As the news unfolded about the Haiti earthquake on the evening of January 12th, I was horrified by the thought that one of my doctoral students was there, along with another UC Berkeley student, to work on one of her socially-responsible design projects. Their goal of their project was to transform carbonized agricultural waste into charcoal briquettes that could  be used for cooking fuel. This kind of fuel would reduce deforestation in wood-fuel dependent areas such as Haiti as well as providing a business opportunity for this impoverished nation. I cried in relief when we were able to get hold of her by cell phone and internet. She and her colleague decided to stay as long as they could at the request of the United Nations to help build human-powered ambulances based on another one of her designs in Zambia.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on earthquakes and seismic hazards. For related educational resources, visit the Civil Engineering Education, Geological Engineering Education, Construction Engineering Education, or Architectural Engineering Education community sites.

Also on this date the Space Shuttle Columbia carries the first Hispanic astronaut into space.

Today in History – December 14, 1967 – DNA was first created in a test tube. Working with a variety of bacteria, Arthur Kornberg synthesized genetically active DNA. He used very small bacterial viruses (phages), such as the phi X174 and M13 viruses of E. coli, for his study. Their relatively comparatively short DNA strands made these viruses easier to keep intact during handling and easier to observe their biological activity.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on Kornberg and DNA. For related educational resources, visit the Biological Engineering Education or the Biomedical Engineering Education disciplinary communities.

Today in History- December 9, 1953 – General Electric announces it will fire all Communist employees. McCarthy’s Un-American hearings had huge impact across the United States in political, industrial and academic spheres. By the early fifties, many powerful employers (General Electric, Westinghouse, R.C.A., Bethlehem Steel, U.S. Steel, to name only a very few), and indeed, whole industries, proclaimed a new ground for automatic discharge or suspension — being an uncooperative witness, or a variant thereof.” General Electric’s announcement was part of larger trend. At the University of California, faculty were required to sign a “loyalty oath” and those who refused to sign were fired. Lawrence Berkeley Lab’s Robert Oppenheimer’s politics were brought into question and led to his undoing at the hands of the Atomic Energy Commission this year. Vannevar Bush, a leader in engineering education and civilian military research, testified in defense of Oppenheimer and warned that: the hearing ran the danger of “being interpreted as placing a man on trial because he held opinions, which is quite contrary to the American system.” He continued, “If you want to try that case, you can try me. I have expressed strong opinions many times. They have been unpopular opinions at times. When a man is pilloried for doing that, this country is in a severe state. Excuse me, gentlemen, if I become stirred, but I am.”

These events in the 1950s illustrate how a climate of hysteria can challenge the principles of civil liberties, privacy, free speech and tolerance that we hold of value in the United States. No one would argue against the need to protect a citizenry against terrorism, but McCarthyism shows us that the line between patriotism and panic is easily crossed. Today many are concerned that the “Patriot Act” is taking us down the road to McCarthyism and has the potential to stifle open inquiry with Internet monitoring and electronic surveillance. Founded in 1990, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)’s mission is to defend free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights. In particular, they have been on the cutting edge of championing the public interest in every critical battle affecting digital rights.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on the Oppenheimer or free speech and academic freedom. Or browse our educational resources on ethics and social implications of technology.

Readers may be interested in our November 9th blog on Ernest Lawrence awarded Nobel Prize in physics for the cyclotron. Or the December 3rd blog on Social Implications of Technology.

Today in History – December 7, 1988 – 6.9 earthquake destroys Armenia, Spitak and kills over 60,000. It is reported that the entire population of Spitak died in this devastating earthquake, making it one of the most deadly earthquakes in human history. Partial blame was placed on the substandard infrastructure in Soviet-era buildings. The Soviet response was to outlaw construction of any buildings higher than five stories in the area, but little was done in terms improving construction standards or retrofitting existing buildings in the area. According to the World Global Seismic Hazard Map (left image) organized by the United Nations, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Iran, Turkey and Georgia are situated in one of the most seismically active zones in the world. In August 199, Istanbul was hit by an earthquake of 7.4 magnitude, killing over 17,000 and injuring approximately 250,000. In December 2003, a 6.6 magnitude earthquake hit Bam, Iran with an estimated death tally of near 50,000. More recently an earthquake on October 2005, the Kashmir region in Pakistan and India lost over 75,00 lives and displaced millions. Historical records suggest the deadliest earthquake in history killed approximately 1.1 million people in Egypt and Syria. Alas, a comprehensive strategy for urban planning is still lacking in much of these area, according to Architect Pirouz Khanlou.

Observe from the worldwide earthquake hazard map (second from left, above) that the entire west coast of the Americas and areas of China and Japan are also in the “red hot zone” for earthquakes on the planet. It is estimated that in 1556 a quake hit the Chinese province of Shansi, killing over 830,000 people. More recently in 1976, a deadly earthquake of a magnitude 8.0 hit Tianjin, China. The official casualty figure issued by the Chinese government was 255,000 people.

Sometimes the deaths are due to the immediate earthquake movement, but to the secondary forces unleashed, such as mudslides, avalanches or tsunamis. For example, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake at Mount Huascaran, Peru, on May 21, 1970, caused a rock and snow avalanche that buried 2 towns, killing as many as 20,000 people. Fortunately, these disasters are not daily events. But this does lull us into a false sense of security. How many of us living in earthquake zones are adequately prepared? Have we retrofitted our homes up to the latest building code standards? Do we have a home emergency plan? Professionally, engineers play a major role in better understanding the prediction and impact of earthquakes, as well as developing safety standards, building guidelines, inspection technologies and urban plans for emergency response.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on earthquakes and seismic hazards. For related educational resources, visit the Civil Engineering Education, Geological Engineering Education, Construction Engineering Education, or Architectural Engineering Education community sites.

Also today in 1972, the first color photograph of Earth was captured (left photo above). I recall when these “blue marble” photos from Apollo 17 were made public. I was struck by the interconnectedness for all beings and countries on our planet. It was the first time that the south polar ice cap was made visible from space. Today these photos from space are being used for commercial applications, such as Google Earth, as well as for monitoring global warming and environmental concerns. Coincidentally, also launched today was the new map of the Antarctica from the LIMA (Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica) initiative in support of International Polar Year. For more information, see the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on earth photos, Landsat, Antarctica and global warming. For related educational resources, visit the Environmental Engineering Education or the Geological Engineering Education community sites.

Also on this day in 1926, the gas refrigerator was patented. Browse are related resources on refrigerators and industrial design.

Today in History – December 6, 1989 – Fourteen women, mostly engineering students, were killed by an anti-feminist gunman at the Ecole Polytechnique of Montreal. The university, located on the north slope of Mont Royal in Montreal,  was the largest engineering school in Canada, with about 5,000 students enrolled at that time. The suicidal gunman was Marc Lepine. He stormed into a classroom and ordered the men to leave and then shot the remaining women in the room. He went on a rampage shooting more women, and some men, in the halls and other rooms before turning the gun on himself. One woman was savagely knifed as well as shot. The gunman had been unsuccessful in a computer programming course he had taken and was later rejected by the Ecole Polytechnique, blaming his failure on affirmative action that favored women for slots that were rightfully his. He left a suicide note in his pockets. Here is an excerpt that was posted in Katherine Ramsland’ article titled “Gendercide: The Montreal Massacre“:

“Because I decided to send Ad Patres [to the fathers] the feminists who have always ruined my life,” he wrote. “For seven years my life has brought me no joy, and being utterly weary of the world, I have decided to stop those shrews dead in their tracks… The feminists always have a talent for enraging me. They want to retain the advantages of being women…while trying to grab those of men… They are so opportunistic that they neglect to profit from the knowledge accumulated by men throughout the ages. They always try to misrepresent them every time they can.”

Feminsits and domestic abuse centers highlighted this as an example of gendercide by men who are threatened by the accomplishments of women. Even those who do not kill, abuse women to control them.

Canada commemorates the Montreal Massacre as part of a the  National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, otherwise known as “December 6th. During this annual event, participants don white ribbons and  honor the victims with fourteen white roses:  Genevieve Bergeron, Helene Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganiere, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michelle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte and Barbara Klucznik Widajewicz.

It is with heavy heart that I write this blog; I decided to do so to remind us that not all men and women believe in equal opportunities for women. Although the National Academies recent study -  Beyond Bias and Barriers – concluded that most discrimination of women in STEM disciplines is due to unconscious bias, let us not forget that explicit conscious bias gender discrimination still exists. Lepine’s father was of Algerian Muslim roots and had a history of domestic violence. He came from a tradition that had much different views of the roles of women. In today’s “Flat World” it is imperative to explicitly face these clashes of cultures and make them a part of our public education and ethics policy.

To counter this depressing story, I highlight below some of our blogs on women’s contributions to engineering, computer science and entrepreneurship.

Patricia Galloway, first female president of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), blogs on Elsie Eaves – first female engineer in ASCE to be elected as a full member on March 14, 1927.

Lucy Sanders, CEO of the Center for Women in Information Technology blogs on the unveiling of the ENIAC on February 14, 1946, the world’s first digital electronic computer, as well as on the contributions of women in computing.

Jasmina Vujic, Chair of the Nuclear Engineering Department at the University of California at Berkeley, blogs on Lise Meitner and her groundbreaking publication that first introduced the world to nuclear fission on February 11, 1939.

Chad-Eric Montgommery blogs on two African American women. On March 1, 1864, Rebecca Lee Crumpler became the first African American woman to receive a medical degree. Also see the blog on Sara Breedlove Walker, the first self-made millionairess hair product inventions for African American women.

The October 18th blog on the discovery and structure of DNA comments on the pivot work of Rosalind Franklin’s in the development of the understanding the structure of DNA through X-ray crystallographies.

Pediatric cardiologist, Dr. Helen Taussig, was one of the doctors at Johns Hopkins who performed the first open heart surgery on November 29, 1944.

I enjoyed researching the blog for November 13, 1913 – Mary Phelps Jacobs invents modern bra. And also for the one on Dr. Mary Walker, the first female army surgeon to be awarded the Medal of Honor on November 11, 1875.

Check out the Engineering Pathway‘s many educational resources on women in engineering, women in information technology, women inventors and gender equity. One of my favorite resources is FairerScience, with practical advice on how to develop gender equitable classrooms and practices in math, science and engineering. Or visit our Engineering Diversity or our Broadening Participation in Computing community sites.

For a more indepth analysis of the issues associated with gender equity in our faculties and recommended solutions, read our “most commented” resource – the National Academies’ Beyond Bias and Barriers report. My editorial on the report was published in ASEE Prism, November 2006, vol. 16 (3). We’d love to hear your comments and suggestions as well.

Today in History – December 4th, 1952 – Killer fog begins in London England and the word “smog” is coined. A dense fog mixed with sooty black coal smoke killed over 12,000 Londoners in four days, remaining one of the deadliest environmental tragedies in recent history. As many of the initial deaths were elderly or ill people, the medical staff who treated patients at the time did not realize the cause and extent of the impact. It was the shortage of coffins and high sales of flowers were the first indications that many people were being killed. The effect of carbon emissions on the the environment remains today and is the major contributor to global warming.

During the period of Friday 5th to Tuesday 9th December 1952 a thick, dense mixture of smoke and fog settled over London, for which the term “smog” was coined. Today this event is seen as one of the most significant pollution episodes in history, since it led directly to new ways of thinking about man’s impact on the environment and raised public awareness of the relationship between air quality and health. The huge number of deaths (initially reported as 4000, nowadays considered to be closer to 12,000) and other casualties (an estimated 100,000 people were affected by respiratory illnesses) directly attributed to the smog demonstrated its lethal potential and gave impetus to the modern environmental movement and the rethinking of air pollution and the need to control it.

In the years following the Great Smog, new laws were implemented in the UK, the Clean Air Acts of 1956 and 1968, and the City of London (Various Powers) Act 1954, to greatly restrict air pollution and improve air quality. This led to the closures of the coal-fired power stations at Battersea and other places within London and the moving of power plants to central locations in England away from the cities. These acts, and others like them across the developed world, have helped to improve air quality, but now a modern variation of the London Smog, known as photochemical smog, blights our cities, and, whereas the Great Smog was stationary and sat for several days over a windless London, this new fog travels with the wind and, hence, can affect populations well away from the cities themselves.

The London Smog was made up of black soot and tar particles and sulfur dioxide emitted mainly by the coal-fired power stations dotted around and within London. Mixed with the smoke from domestic chimneys, vehicle exhausts (particularly those from the diesel engines of the London Buses that had just replaced the more environmentally friendly trams!) and combining with the fog caused by an anticyclone settling over London, a thick “pea soup” smog (the presence of the tarry particles of soot gave the smog its yellow-back colour which led to its nickname of “peasouper”) developed and settled close to the ground, remaining motionless for several days and leading to severe breathing difficulties for those living and working within it.

In contrast, with coal-fired power stations largely removed from our cities and, in any case, in most countries now fitted with air pollution control measures to remove particulates and sulfurous oxides, the modern day version of smog is formed due to the chemical reaction of nitrogen oxides (formed in vehicle exhausts) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs, emitted from, for instance, gasoline, solvents, paints), catalysed by sunlight. This results in airborne particles that are highly reactive and oxidising and in ground-level ozone. Exposure to these pollutants can either cause or exacerbate acute respiratory diseases, decreased lung function in children, asthma and other serious health problems. It is this phenomenon that we can often see as a dirty brown stain hanging over our cities on sunny, warm and dry days. For those cities still dependent on local coal-fired power stations, such as Beijing, and combined with the soot emitted from diesel engines, the problem is even more acute. Modern-day versions of the first Clean Air Acts have significantly reduced soot emissions from coal-fired power stations and vehicle exhausts in the United States and Europe.

Scientists now believe that global warming will only add to the problem of air pollution in our cities. Higher temperatures over the coming decades are expected to cause more smoggy days and heat waves, resulting in a greater number of illnesses and deaths. However, the interactions between smog and global warming are extremely complex and are not fully understood. For instance, it is now known that aerosols, which are gaseous suspensions of very fine particles, including soot, are known to increase global warming, whereas sulfates have a cooling effect. What happens when you remove one or the other or both from emissions to the atmosphere is not known for certain. Recent studies estimate that soot in the atmosphere is responsible for 18 per cent of the planet’s global warming, compared with 40 per cent for carbon dioxide. Hence, it is believed that measures to control the emissions of soot from, for example, wood-burning stoves, could be a relatively cheap and quick way of significantly reducing global warming. Unlike carbon dioxide, soot does not linger for long in the atmosphere, but travels immense distances to deposit on snow-capped mountains and polar ice caps, significantly reducing the ability of the snow and ice to reflect the sun’s energy. It is from Asia and Africa where most of the soot emanates.

There are over 700 million wood-burning stoves in use in the World today. Several initiatives are underway to encourage communities in India and Africa to use new stoves that do not emit soot. One such project has come up with an innovative stove for use in the war-torn region of Darfur. Known as the Darfur Stoves project and led by scientists from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (http://darfurstoves.org/), the new stove requires only one quarter of the amount of firewood needed to cook using the traditional three-stone fires. Because of its fuel efficiency, use of the new stove limits the amount of time the women in Darfur need to spend outside the safety of the displaced persons camps to gather fuel for cooking. This decreases their exposure to possible violent attacks, whilst also limiting deforestation and the release of toxic indoor smoke. However, in common with a similar initiative in Kohlua, India (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/science/earth/16degrees.html) there is a reluctance from the communities involved to use these new stoves, partly because the food prepared on them tastes very different to what they are used to (and happy with) and partly because of cultural and traditional values. This is a lesson that must be learnt. If we are to encourage people to change their behaviours to combat global warming, we must work with them to develop technologies appropriate to their needs.

I am Director of the the Centre for CO₂ Technology at University College London, established in response to the Kyoto Protocol and the recognition that existing technologies will not be able to meet the emission targets agreed upon for carbon dioxide (as the main greenhouse gas). Thus, the Centre focuses on developing breakthrough technologies for the large scale reduction (e.g. alternative, low carbon, energy sources), removal (e.g. gas separation from flue emissions) and sequestration (e.g. long term storage in materials) of carbon dioxide.

My personal research interests lie in the development of technologies that radically change the ways that chemicals are made today, so that the energy demand from the chemicals sector is massively reduced. I am also interested in looking into ways to involve all stakeholders in the development of low carbon technologies, in order to encourage deployment of said technologies, a process known as Open Innovation. See http://www.ucl.ac.uk/climate-change/ for the work UCL is doing on climate change. My piece is available at the link “The Next Industrial Revolution”.

For more information, see the EEngineering Pathway’s educational resources on global warming and smog and air pollution. For related curricula, visit the Chemical Engineering Education or Environmental Engineering Education disciplinary communities.

Also on this date in 1996, NASA’s Mars Pathfinder and Sojourner rover launched from Cape Canaveral.