Latest news with #OlinCollege
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
You're More Likely to Die From an Asteroid Than Rabies, Scientists Find
If you ever lie awake at night wondering just how likely you are to die from an asteroid impact within your lifetime, a new paper has you covered. A team led by physicist Carrie Nugent of the Olin College of Engineering in the US has calculated not just how likely it is that an asteroid will hit Earth during an average human lifespan, but how likely that impact is to cause human deaths when compared to a selection of other rare, preventable ways to die. The bad news is that death by asteroid impact is more likely to happen to you than death by rabies. The worse news is that death from a car accident is more likely than death by asteroid impact. The great news is that all of these likelihoods are pretty low, and you can probably live your life without too much worry (although you might want to wear a seat belt). Related: Forget Your Troubles by Looking at These Weird But Totally Real Science Illustrations There are good reasons to compare the risk of death by asteroid impact with the risk of death by other preventable mechanisms. Although it's difficult to calculate exactly what the risk is – there could be a lot more potentially hazardous asteroids out there than we've found to date – an asteroid impact could very well be preventable too. NASA demonstrated this back in 2022, when the space agency deliberately crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid to try to knock it off course. The mission was more successful than expected, with the asteroid in question showing a much greater change in its orbit than anticipated. Such missions are quite costly, and require a lot of planning. By placing the risk of an asteroid impact in context with other risks, scientists can compare the potential expenditure involved with the expenditure of, say, a rabies vaccine program, or car safety features. So, Nugent and her colleagues collected available data on the population of near-Earth objects, as well as models of these populations and previous risk assessments for asteroids more than 140 meters (460 feet) in size. From this, they calculated the impact frequency for this kind of object. The next step was to collect available data on different kinds of deaths and compare the probability of each event occurring during the average global human lifetime of 71 years. "Chapman and Morrison (1994) previously placed an asteroid impact in context with other causes of death such as murder, fireworks accidents, and botulism. In that work, they considered the chance of death due to an impact alongside the chance of death due to other factors," the researchers write. "This work addresses a slightly different question; we place the chance of an impact occurring anywhere on Earth relative to the chance of other events of concern happening to an individual. This work is therefore intended to provide context to those who wish to know the probability that a greater-than-140-meter impact will occur, anywhere on Earth, in their lifetime." They collected data on nine other potentially fatal events: dry sand hole collapse (that's when a person digging a hole, on a beach for example, has the sand collapse on them); elephant attack; lightning strike; skydiving accidents; carbon monoxide poisoning; injury-causing car crash; rabies; and influenza illness. They then calculated how likely a person would be to experience one of these events; and then how likely the person would be to die of the same (many people, for example, catch the flu without dying). This is obviously regionally variable; someone in Australia is far less likely than someone in the US to die of coyote attack or rabies. You can see the results for yourself in the graph. Flu is similarly deadly to an asteroid impact, but far more likely to occur; the law of averages therefore suggests that it's going to kill more people than an asteroid does. Dry sand hole collapse is almost always fatal, but has almost a one in 1 million chance of occurring within a human lifetime. Of course, translating risk assessments like these to the real world requires some context. After all, more than three people die per year of dry sand hole collapse, tragically with an average age of 12. As far as we know, no humans have ever died from an asteroid impact. As the dinosaurs might tell you, the toll from a single strike could more than make up for a history of misses. So the question is, is Earth overdue for another asteroid? Is caution and prevention warranted, or are we worrying unnecessarily? Does the above information comfort you, or make things worse? It's a bit hard to tell, really. But at least we know to stay away from sand holes. The research will soon appear in the Planetary Science Journal. In the meantime, it's available on preprint server arXiv. Related News Scientists Have Brewed a 'Super Alcohol' Theorized to Exist in Deep Space Earth Spun Faster Today. Here's How We Know. Dark Mirror of Our Own Universe Could Explain Quirks in Gravity Solve the daily Crossword
Daily Mail
5 days ago
- Science
- Daily Mail
How will you die? Scientists reveal the odds of being killed by everything from an asteroid strike to an elephant attack
From asteroid impacts to elephant attacks, there are plenty of nasty ways to die that might keep you up at night. Now, scientists have revealed just how much you need to worry about each of these potential disasters. The bad news is that death by asteroid strike is much more likely than you might have thought. According to physicists from the Olin College of Engineering, the average person is significantly more likely to be killed by a space rock than to be struck by lightning. Using the latest NASA data, physicists from the Olin College of Engineering found that there are 22,800 near-earth objects (NEOs) measuring 140 metres or larger. Assuming that an impact will kill one in 1,000 people, your odds of being dying in a collision with a space rock are one in 156,000. By contrast, the odds of being killed by a lightning strike are just one in 163,000. However, if it is any comfort, scientists say you are far more likely to be killed in a car crash long before that ever happens. Scientists have worked out exactly how likely you are to die to everything from asteroid impacts to elephant attacks. This table shows how likely these events are to happen, and how likely you are to die as a result The bad news is that you are much more likely to be killed by an asteroid impact than by a lightning strike. Although car crashes are far more deadly on average According to the researchers, each year there is a 0.0091 per cent chance that a 140-metre or larger asteroid will slam into the Earth. That means there is a staggeringly high one in 156 chance of the Earth being struck by an asteroid within any given person's lifetime. If that were to happen, the blast could be thousands of times larger than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. In the worst-case scenario, a large enough asteroid could produce global events on a civilisation-ending scale. In their pre-print paper, soon to be published in the Planetary Science Journal, the researchers write: 'The dust lofting alone has the potential, in some cases, to obscure the sun to the point of stopping photosynthesis, which would then cause a mass extinction.' However, a 140-metre asteroid might land harmlessly in the ocean and cause no deaths, or slam into a populated city and kill up to one million people. To reflect this, the researchers say that the risk of death by asteroid ranges from essentially zero to near certainty based on a number of factors. To help put the odds of an asteroid death in perspective, the researchers also worked out how likely you are to die in a host of other ways. In their study, the researchers calculated both how likely it is that these events will happen to someone in their lifetime and how likely they are to die in that scenario. Their calculations suggest that the odds of being struck by lightning are just one in 16,300, which is only fatal in around one in 10 cases. Likewise, according to a study conducted in Nepal, the odds of being attacked by an elephant are about one in 14,000. Since those attacks are fatal around two-thirds of the time, your odds of being killed by an elephant are a surprisingly high one in 21,000. This analysis also reveals that, compared to the risk of an asteroid impact, many parts of our everyday lives are absurdly dangerous. The researchers found that the average person has a roughly one in 66 chance of suffering carbon monoxide poisoning, and a one in 714 chance of dying as a result. Likewise, the flu is much more likely to kill you than an asteroid impact, lightning strike, or elephant attack. Killing roughly one in 1,000 people, the flu is about as deadly as an impact from a 140-metre asteroid, but you are almost guaranteed to catch it at some point in your life. How likely is it that someone will be killed by space junk? Researchers calculated that the chance of a piece of rocket body hitting a plane was one in 430,000 each year. Given that there are around 200 people per plane, this gives a fatality risk of one in 2,200. Previous studies have estimated a higher risk due to debris breaking up and satellites falling to Earth. The Aerospace Corporation says the risk of someone being killed by space debris while on a plane is one in 1,000. Other studies estimate that the chances of one or more people being killed on the ground by falling space debris in the next ten years is one in 10. Yet it is driving that turns out to be one of the biggest risks to our lives, with a third of people being involved in an injury-causing crash at some point in their lives. Given that those crashes are deadly in around one in 100 cases, the odds of being killed in a car crash are roughly one in 273. You are, therefore, more than 500 times more likely to be killed in a traffic accident than by a deadly asteroid. On the other hand, some seemingly terrifying risks turn out to be hardly a threat at all. Death by rabies, for example, is almost entirely preventable through a vaccine called post-exposure prophylaxis. Of the 800,000 Americans who sought treatment for rabies following an animal bite, only five died - four of whom did not seek rabies post-exposure prophylaxis treatment. Of course, these probabilities are dependent on where you live and what kind of life you lead. If you don't live near elephants or refuse to jump out of a plane, you are very unlikely to die in an elephant attack or skydiving accident. Likewise, the researchers point out that someone who regularly checks their carbon monoxide alarms has a much lower chance of being killed by carbon monoxide poisoning. The point of doing these morbid calculations is that asteroid impacts are, like rabies deaths, entirely avoidable in theory. The researchers write: 'The asteroid impact is the only natural disaster that is technologically preventable.' In 2022, NASA's DART mission showed that humanity can knock an approaching asteroid off course by hitting it with a fast-moving satellite. However, these missions require years of planning and huge amounts of investment. By comparing the risk posed by asteroids to threats we face every day, we can decide if it is worth investing millions in a new space defence program or whether we should be more worried about improving road safety. WHAT COULD WE DO TO STOP AN ASTEROID COLLIDING WITH EARTH? Currently, NASA would not be able to deflect an asteroid if it were heading for Earth but it could mitigate the impact and take measures that would protect lives and property. This would include evacuating the impact area and moving key infrastructure. Finding out about the orbit trajectory, size, shape, mass, composition and rotational dynamics would help experts determine the severity of a potential impact. However, the key to mitigating damage is to find any potential threat as early as possible. NASA and the European Space Agency completed a test which slammed a refrigerator-sized spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos. The test is to see whether small satellites are capable of preventing asteroids from colliding with Earth. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) used what is known as a kinetic impactor technique—striking the asteroid to shift its orbit. The impact could change the speed of a threatening asteroid by a small fraction of its total velocity, but by doing so well before the predicted impact, this small nudge will add up over time to a big shift of the asteroid's path away from Earth. This was the first-ever mission to demonstrate an asteroid deflection technique for planetary defence. The results of the trial are expected to be confirmed by the Hera mission in December 2026.
Forbes
24-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The Greenway Institute – Making Transformative Engineering Education Affordable
Aerial View of the Greeway Institute Campus in Montpelier, Vermont The Greenway Institute - a new university in Vermont - is making engineering education more affordable. Several other new engineering and STEM-focused institutions have recently been founded across the US, but without the same focus on revolutionizing the business model of higher education. Olin College of Engineering, founded in 1997 with gifts of $460 million from the F. W. Olin Foundation, was one of the first of these new institutions and developed a new curriculum centered on project-based learning and user-centered design. The Roux Institute at Northeastern University launched in Portland, Maine in 2020, backed by tech entrepreneur David Roux and by the Harold Alfond Foundation, who each contributed $100-million gifts. The Roux Institute focuses on graduate education infused with AI, and in 2024 opened its new campus at the former B&M Beans Factory to be a base for co-op work-study projects that can help transform the local economy. The newest addition is a STEM-focused higher education institution planned for Bentonville, Arkansas, announced at the 2025 Heartland Summit by members of the Walton family, and will offer an education that integrates STEM and business for its planned 500 students in its first undergraduate class, with tuition fully covered in the initial years. Building a University Economically Another new entrant in this space is The Greenway Institute. In contrast with Olin, Roux, and Walton, Greenway was founded without a large endowment or major gift and provides a case study of how engineering education can more efficiently and economically serve students and society. The initial seed funding for investigating the concept of Greenway came from corporate sponsors and a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation in collaboration with Elizabethtown College to develop and launch the Greenway Center for Equity and Sustainability (GCES) in Engineering in Vermont. The NSF grant enabled Elizabethtown and Greenway to pilot new educational approaches within an ABET-accredited engineering program and have set the stage for the opening of a standalone engineering college in Vermont. Greenway Founders and their Vision Greenway's founders include Troy McBride, Rebecca Holcombe and Mark Somerville. Troy McBride, a Greentech entrepreneur and former engineering professor at Elizabethtown College, began thinking about Greenway College over a decade ago. Rebecca Holcombe, a former Secretary of Education of Vermont, brought extensive experience in educational policy and a commitment to better serve historically marginalized students. In 2024, Mark Somerville, former Provost of Olin College of Engineering, was appointed as the founding president and co-founder. As a former founding faculty member, dean of faculty, and provost at Olin College, he brings 23 years of experience in transforming undergraduate engineering education. Somerville also brings a deep knowledge of engineering with a bachelor's degree from the University of Texas at Austin, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from MIT, and from studying physics at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. The Greenway Model Greenway's approach addresses three key problems in engineering education: affordability, engagement, and connection to real-world engineering work. Two years of Greenway education are centered on hands-on engineering projects that target learning objectives across multiple courses simultaneously, acquiring math, science, and engineering skills while discovering real-world applications. Mark Somerville, in an interview, pointed out that 'learning engineering by practicing engineering is both much more effective and a whole lot more fun.' Greenway's model also includes two years of 'work-integrated learning' in which students work in engineering jobs, while simultaneously receiving high-touch mentoring and support from Greenway faculty. Somerville observed that 'instead of just sitting on a campus, students are actually out working and doing real things that matter to real people – and if you couple that with intentional reflection, you get incredibly powerful learning.' This structure also makes the Greenway education 'radically affordable,' both because it drives down cost and simultaneously enables student earnings. At the same time, it ensures alignment between Greenway's curriculum and current work in industry. Building Maturity and Professionalism in Students Greenway's approach is intended to help students develop interpersonal and workplace skills usually only found after graduating from college. Somerville notes that 'while there's enormous growth that happens in the first two years of residential education, we do our students a disservice when we cloister them for four years.' Drawing on and expanding the idea of 'co-op' internships pioneered at the University of Waterloo, Northeastern University, and the new Iron Range Engineering program in Minnesota, Greenway's model has students living in the world and working for two years during their education, while simultaneously getting support from mentors from Greenway. This is more of an intentional transition to the 'real world', and it produces 'the kinds of outcomes that only come from an authentic work environment with coaching and mentoring,' according to Somerville. The common 'drink from a fire hose' form of engineering education is not only 'a sadistic metaphor,' says Somerville, but also 'assumes that the most important outcome of an engineering degree is to acquire a whole bunch of specific technical content knowledge. That doesn't make sense in a post-AI world.' Greenway's approach posits that 'content knowledge acquisition may not be nearly as important as learning to learn, habits of mind, and the processes and ways of approaching things that engineers employ.' A Vermont Prototype Greenway plans to admit its first class in the Fall of 2027, on the former Vermont College of Fine Arts campus in Montpelier, Vermont. According to Somerville, 'Vermont's a great place to prototype - there's the necessary infrastructure, a growing Greentech sector that's hungry for employees, and a real need to create more attractive educational options.' Somerville notes, though, this is just the start: he frames the Vermont campus as 'a first full prototype.' Greenway's intent is to scale to multiple locations across the US, once the model is proven. A More Sustainable Business Model for Higher Education The rising cost of higher education, the student debt crisis, and the increasing numbers of colleges closing were all important factors in developing the Greenway model. According to Somerville, 'The key move with Greenway is asking the question, how might you design the education to be synergistic with the business model?' Greenway's new business model 'really changes your value proposition and your cost structure.' 'Between making the education 50% out in the real world, and questioning the idea of the amenities arms race, the institution is simply a lot cheaper to run.' Somerville says that at the same time, the model helps students' bottom lines as well: since they are working for two full years while at college, 'instead of students waiting four years before any real earnings, they'll be making good money for half of their program – about a hundred thousand dollars on average,' according to Somerville. The result is 'something that both is unlike anything that is out there and that at the same time builds out of a set of ideas and components that are actually proven in the world,' says Somerville, who says Greenway asks the question, 'how can we maintain the humanity of education, but do so in a way that actually is affordable?' With the arrival of the Greenway Institute and other new engineering institutions, we will see how these questions are answered in the coming years.
The Star
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Star
Singapore inventor builds lightsabers, web-shooters in bedroom; sells movie gadgets to over 1,000 customers
With a 3D printer, LED strips, and thread, content creator Jacob Uy built fully-working replicas of movie gadgets like a web-shooter and a lightsaber. - ST SINGAPORE: Lightsabers and web-shooters have long been in the realms of science fiction, but 25-year-old inventor Jacob Uy has turned these ideas into reality on a workbench in his bedroom. With a 3D printer, light-emitting diode (LED) strips, some thread and a vivid imagination, the Singaporean has built fully working replicas of iconic movie gadgets: a Spider-Man-style web-shooter that launches a retractable cord, and a lightsaber that extends and retracts. Uy's bedroom desk – cluttered with cables, cutters, soldering tools and dismantled parts from earlier prototypes – is where the magic has been taking shape over the last six years. He is now working on the sixth iteration of the lightsaber prototype, a project that started three years ago. With each upgrade, the lightsaber prototypes have become sturdier, more compact and retract faster to more closely resemble its look and feel in the films. He uses a magician's cane – a narrow spring-steel strip that folds into a lightsaber hilt and extends out to full length within three seconds using a small motor. The cane is lined with ultra-bright teal LED strips, which fold and extend with the retracting cane to create the look of Cal Kestis' lightsaber from the Star Wars video games. Uy's homemade lightsaber goes beyond most toys found on department store shelves. The usual versions are plastic cylinders that collapse into the hilt, and the sturdier replicas used by lightsaber martial-arts enthusiasts do not retract at all. Work on the lightsaber started as a passion project among movie geeks whom Uy met in Olin College in Needham, Massachusetts, in 2022. They responded to his e-mail calling for peers in the engineering school to work with him to build a real-life lightsaber. Uy, a movie fanatic since his childhood, said building a lightsaber was 'a dream come true'. He has long built movie-inspired gadgets and structures out of Lego as a child, and takes inspiration from his favourite movie characters, who have all been inventors of sorts. Uy said: 'Spider-Man makes his own web-shooters. Tony Stark builds his own suit, and even Luke Skywalker built his own lightsaber... You can describe engineering in many different ways, but for me, engineering is the bridge between science fiction and reality.' Also on his workbench is a Spider-Man inspired web-shooter. The watch-sized gadget houses a cartridge holding a spring-loaded thread that launches up to 3m when a string is pulled to release its stopper. A magnet fastened to the end of the string attaches to magnetic surfaces, allowing users to channel their inner Spidey and yank items towards them. Uy said he is working on a refined version of the web-shooter with a mechanism to retract the string, saving users the trouble of coiling it into the cartridge. A 2018 video of his early web-shooter prototype drew roughly 41 million views, launching Uy's career as a full-time content creator. Topping 300,000 subscribers, his channel supplies most of the income for his company, HeroTech, which he has since registered in Singapore. Aware of copyright issues, Uy is mindful of what he lists for sale. Over the past six years, more than 1,000 customers have purchased versions of the US$349 (S$450) thread-shooter – one of the few prototypes he lists for sale as it is unlikely to infringe copyright. 'There's no copyright over things that shoot out string,' he said. But he is more careful with the lightsaber, which he is not planning to sell for now. Uy said he identifies first and foremost as a YouTube content creator, who makes videos about how sci-fi gadgets can be brought to life safely. Earnings from the thread-shooter are channelled back into keeping his company afloat and on materials to improve upon his prototypes. Soon, he plans to hire engineering interns to assist with building more gadgets. 'HeroTech's main thing is about making these designs and sharing the process on social media so that other people can learn from it,' said Uy. - The Straits Times/ANN
Straits Times
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Straits Times
Inventor builds lightsabers, web-shooters in bedroom; sells movie gadgets to over 1,000 customers
With a 3D printer, LED strips, and thread, content creator Jacob Uy built fully-working replicas of movie gadgets like a web-shooter and a lightsaber. ST PHOTO: KEVIN LIM SINGAPORE – Lightsabers and web-shooters have long been in the realms of science fiction, but 25-year-old inventor Jacob Uy has turned these ideas into reality on a workbench in his bedroom. With a 3D printer, light-emitting diode (LED) strips, some thread and a vivid imagination, the Singaporean has built fully working replicas of iconic movie gadgets: a Spider-Man-style web-shooter that launches a retractable cord, and a lightsaber that extends and retracts. Mr Uy's bedroom desk – cluttered with cables, cutters, soldering tools and dismantled parts from earlier prototypes – is where the magic has been taking shape over the last six years. He is now working on the sixth iteration of the lightsaber prototype, a project that started three years ago. With each upgrade, the lightsaber prototypes have become sturdier, more compact and retract faster to more closely resemble its look and feel in the films. Mr Jacob Uy working on a lightsaber prototype at his desk, which is cluttered with cables, cutters, soldering tools and dismantled parts. ST PHOTO: KEVIN LIM He uses a magician's cane – a narrow spring-steel strip that folds into a lightsaber hilt and extends out to full length within three seconds using a small motor. The cane is lined with ultra-bright teal LED strips, which fold and extend with the retracting cane to create the look of Cal Kestis' lightsaber from the Star Wars video games. Mr Uy's homemade lightsaber goes beyond most toys found on department store shelves. The usual versions are plastic cylinders that collapse into the hilt, and the sturdier replicas used by lightsaber martial-arts enthusiasts do n ot retract at all. Mr Jacob Uy is working on the sixth iteration of the lightsaber prototype, a project which started three years ago. ST PHOTO: KEVIN LIM Work on the lightsaber started as a passion project among movie geeks whom Mr Uy met in Olin College in Needham, Massachusetts, in 2022. They responded to his e-mail calling for peers in the engineering school to work with him to build a real-life lightsaber. Mr Uy, a movie fanatic since his childhood, said building a lightsaber was 'a dream come true'. He has long built movie-inspired gadgets and structures out of Lego as a child, and takes inspiration from his favourite movie characters, who have all been inventors of sorts. As a child, Mr Jacob Uy has long built movie-inspired gadgets and structures out of Lego, and takes inspiration from his favourite movie characters, who have all been inventors of sorts. PHOTO: COURTESY OF JACOB UY Mr Uy said: 'Spider-Man makes his own web-shooters. Tony Stark builds his own suit, and even Luke Skywalker built his own lightsaber... You can describe engineering in many different ways, but for me, engineering is the bridge between science fiction and reality.' Also on his workbench is a Spider-Man inspired web-shooter. The watch-sized gadget houses a cartridge holding a spring-loaded thread that launches up to 3m when a string is pulled to release its stopper. Watch‑sized gadgets house a cartridge holding a spring‑loaded thread that launches up to 3m when a string is pulled to release its stopper. ST PHOTO: KEVIN LIM A magnet fastened to the end of the string attaches to magnetic surfaces, allowing users to channel their inner Spidey and yank items towards them. Mr Uy said he is working on a refined version of the web-shooter with a mechanism to retract the string, saving users the trouble of coiling it into the cartridge. A 2018 video of his early web-shooter prototype drew roughly 41 million views, launching Mr Uy's career as a full-time content creator. Topping 300,000 subscribers, his channel supplies most of the income for his company, HeroTech, which he has since registered in Singapore. Aware of copyright issues, Mr Uy is mindful of what he lists for sale. Over the past six years, more than 1,000 customers have purchased versions of the US$349 (S$450) thread-shooter – one of the few prototypes he lists for sale as it is unlikely to infringe copyright. 'There's no copyright over things that shoot out string,' he said. But he is more careful with the lightsaber, which he is not planning to sell for now. Mr Uy said he identifies first and foremost as a YouTube content creator, who makes videos about how sci-fi gadgets can be brought to life safely. Earnings from the thread-shooter are channelled back into keeping his company afloat and on materials to improve upon his prototypes. Soon, he plans to hire engineering interns to assist with building more gadgets. 'HeroTech's main thing is about making these designs and sharing the process on social media so that other people can learn from it,' said Mr Uy. Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
