Science & Technology: What will they think of next?

I'm still in Atlanta but I had a few minutes to read this afternoon...so here we go.
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First, WE ARE NOT ALONE.
Check out this deep space image from the Goddard Space Flight Center. Then, do the math.
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The Microsoft Surface: Behind-the-Scenes First Look (with Video)
The software giant has built a new multi-touchscreen computer—like a coffee table. Go inside its top-secret development with PopularMechanics.com, then forget the keyboard and mouse: The next generation of computer interfaces will be hands-on.


Thanks to Myra Engle for the tip.
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Mr. Wizard Gives a Last Interview

Don Herbert was known to his fans as Mr. Wizard, star of the Watch Mr. Wizard show. Long before Mythbusters, Herbert made common household items seem magical every Saturday at noon on NBC, from 1951 to 1964.

Herbert died on Tuesday after a long struggle with multiple myeloma, the Los Angeles Times reported. His legacy is the thousands of children he inspired to get involved in science. Many of them, myself included, are practicing scientists today.

This interview, his last, from Wired Magazine.
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MIT Researchers Transmit Wireless Electricity
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have figured out a way to transmit electric power over the air, meaning one day your cell phone could recharge itself without your having to plug it in. They're calling it Wi-tricity — short for "wireless electricity."
Listen to the story from National Public Radio.

Resume lies a major concern for employers

MSNBC reports:

As dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Marilee Jones was responsible for ensuring that applicants represented their academic backgrounds honestly. So it was more than a shock when the 55-year-old resigned Thursday, admitting that she had misled school officials over a 28-year period into believing that she held three degrees from New York institutions. In fact, she had never received even an undergraduate degree from any school.

While Jones's case is extreme, it points to a major concern for any corporation or institution that hires employees: embellishments and outright lies on résumés. Sue Murphy, association manager of the Human Resources Association, says... "We used to try to have the applicant provide two or three business references. But now … employers are being much more aggressive about checking applicants' backgrounds, and if they can afford it they are even hiring third parties to do background checks."

One of those third parties, ADP Screening and Selection Services, said it conducted 5.8 million background checks in 2006, a 20 percent increase from 2005. Out of nearly 500,000 reference verifications ADP did last year, 41 percent came back with some sort of discrepancy between the employment, education or credentials information provided by the applicant and what the source reported...

But if an employer doesn't catch the falsehoods, how does an employee live with such a big lie..?

...Psychologist Paul Ekman from the University of California Medical School in San Francisco (who has not spoken with Jones, and only knows of her situation from media reports) speculates that Jones's case is likely related to self-esteem...

Ekman says many people are tempted to exaggerate their credentials for the same reason a kid exaggerates his father's strength, but that most people resist. "They either know from past experience that they could never get away with it—perhaps because they are bad liars, they don't like taking risks—some people are risk takers so it attracts them to lying, or they are religiously observant," Ekman says...

But while Ekman says everyone tells little white lies, which don't have any serious repercussions, the potential damages caused by hiring a poorly qualified employee are serious for companies. In fact, citing an example where a man lied on an application for a job as a bridge engineer (his dishonesty was discovered before any bridges were built), Murphy says there is serious liability for employers. "We live in a much more litigious society, so employers are trying to protect themselves against liability," Murphy says. "In today's hiring process it is very rare that employers are not going above and beyond trying to verify people's backgrounds."

...With such diligence, it's much riskier for today's job hunters to lie than it was 30 years ago when Jones filled out her first application at MIT, Murphy says. "When she moved up, she may not have had the degrees but she had the work experience to be good at her job, so were we cheated?" Ekman asks. "The real issue here is what does she represent to young people. Clearly she's not a good role model on how to get ahead in the world, so at least you could say she is a good lesson."

M.I.T. Dean Who Resigned Has a Degree After All

In an odd twist to an already strange story, Marilee Jones, the former admissions dean at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who resigned last week after admitting that she had lied about her academic credentials, turns out to have a bachelor’s degree, but not from the institutions she had named on her résumé.

Instead, M.I.T. officials said, Ms. Jones earned a B.A. in biology at the College of Saint Rose, an independent college in Albany, where she grew up. Officials at the College of Saint Rose confirmed that they had awarded a bachelor’s degree to a Marilee Jones in 1973, when Ms. Jones would have been 21.

This from the New York Times.

Resume Indiscretions Remain Widespread

It seemed somehow sadly ironic that Marilee Jones' title at MIT was dean of admissions.Her owning up this week to misrepresenting the qualifications on her résumé more than a quarter-century ago will have struck a chord among more people than you might think. And at a higher level than you might imagine.

Human resources surveys regularly show that anything upward of a third of résumés may be knowingly incorrect, from "padding"--or overplaying qualifications or previous work experience--to outright falsehoods, while companies generally are spending more time conducting background checks and verifying claims.

In a survey by CareerBuilder.com last October, over half of HR managers said they had flagged a lie on an applicant's résumé - 93% of them did not hire the candidate.

A 2004 report by the Government Accountability Office found that 463 government employees in eight federal agencies had listed bogus academic credentials on their résumés.

In February 2006, the CEO of Radio Shack resigned after 11 years at the helm when an investigation by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram had turned up overstated qualifications on his academic record.

Michael Brown, the former head of FEMA, much-criticized in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, found himself at the sharp end of an investigation by Time magazine, which indicated that he had padded his experience in emergency management prior to his appointment.

Notre Dame football coach George O'Leary resigned just five days after his appointment in 2001, over academic discrepancies.

This from Forbes.com.

MIT Creates Incredible Learning Resources, Online and Free

In 2001, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology began posting material from its courses for free; 1,550 of 1,800 are already available. Anne Margulies, executive director of Open CourseWare, said that in January alone, the site had had 1.5 million visits, and the figure rose to two million if visits to language translated sites were included. Overseas visitors– from China and India in particular – dominate usage traffic, with 60% of visits originating outside the US.

Margulies said that MIT had seen little potential for making money from putting materials online and had decided to give them away. She said that about half of the Open CourseWare users were teaching themselves with the materials, 35% were students at other institutions, and 15% were teachers.

See the article from Information World Review, Europe's leading newspaper for the information industry.