I recently proposed two improvements to the city of Tempe's bike ways via email.
http://www.tempe.gov/tim/
1) Add 1-2 new north-south bike routes across the railroad that runs east-west half way between Apache and Broadway through much of the city. As it stands now there are no N/S bike worthy routes that cross this railroad blockade to the east of college avenue (a 3 mile stretch all the way to Mesa). Thus, cyclists must leave bike routed streets and travel the sidewalks of McClintock or Rural Road to continue north from routes on Dorsey and Country Club. This is unacceptable, especially in an otherwise bike-friendly city such as Tempe. The city employee that I communicated with is very sympathetic to this problem. Unfortunately, the railroad which controls the land around the tracks will not allow any more crossings, even for bikes only - like the one across the tracks parallel to Mill Ave on Alameda. This moratorium will eventually cost the city ~ 1 million dollars as they do plan to add a bike way in the long term, but it will have to either be an over or underpass of the railroad.
I see this railroad issue as quite a silly conundrum. A million dollars seems like a large price to pay for a single pedestrian/bike route. I am relatively sure there would be few to no additional accidents with an additional pedestrian railroad crossing and such a crossing could be constructed with a 6 people a couple sledge hammers and some concrete in a weekend's time. At every rail road crossing there is nothing preventing people and bikes from entering the tracks while a train is coming, so adding one more of these places would do little to the overall chance of an accident. Even where these proposed crossings are located people can find there way to those spots by traveling inward from one of the major streets. So it is not like it is opening up some pandora's box to add another crossing. Moreover, The mile long corridor of rail tracks between streets such as Rural and McClintock have no openings to the neighborhoods. This is currently a potential area of vulnerability where bad things could happen because it is so isolated. This past fall I had to report a brush fire burning along these tracks. Opening it up would make the area seem much less unsightly and people would be able to hold each other accountable for their actions. Oh yes, and we would have bike/walking routes connecting parks, neighborhoods, and shopping areas thereby reducing car trips and hazardous bike trips on main streets!
2) The one other problem with Tempe bike routes is the timing of lights at the intersections of these routes with major mile x mile streets. The lights at these intersection are timed for the passage of approximately 2 cars during a single light. Hardly enough time for a cyclist to cross the street from a standing stop. Especially, if they forgot to shift prior to stopping or are just simply not an avid cyclist. The city states that there are buttons on the side of the intersections to get longer crossing lights, which is true. However, sometimes the light turns just as you have stopped, before you can press the button, or when you are just approaching the intersection. This is a dangerous situation, because the yellow is so short you can get caught in the intersection when the other direction gets the green. Thus, there is the possibility of getting mowed over by a bad driver not paying attention. While, those drivers would be at fault for not yielding to a vehicle that has entered an intersection legally. That is no consolation for the cyclists that get hit (I was with a friend who had this happen to her just this past month - fortunately she did not get killed!).
Traffic lights should be timed for the most vulnerable legal users. If the intersection is on a bike route then the lights should be timed to accommodate cyclists (thus they should last long enough for more than one cyclist to cross). It is legal for a bike to go on green, therefore the lights should not be timed as a trap for cyclists! That is discrimination and pandering to whiny drivers.
Drivers in this city have no complaining to do. Every street is as wide or wider than the major highways of 95% of other cities and the speed limits match those of back country roads (of course drivers exceed those limits by 10 mph). These streets are some of the most unwelcoming I have seen for pedestrians and cyclists, but they are the smoothest and best marked I have every seen for cars. Thus we need to do what we can to make the good biking streets better and safer! Moreover, when there is traffic in town, adding a longer wait at the half mile intersections might actually be better for not accumulating very long lines at the major intersections and keeping drivers to the actual speed limits. In turn, possibly reducing overall idle time and traffic accidents.
Just my thoughts!
If you support Tempe's strides toward improving cycling and multimodal transport than write in and tell you city representatives about it! http://www.tempe.gov/elected/ They want to hear about it because they too enjoy it and want the positive comments to outweigh the negatives received by intolerant car drivers.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The biggest problems our world is facing from the eyes of the 7th Grade: What can science and engineering help solve?
As a part of my NSF GK-12 Fellowship program I administered an anonymous survey to approximately one hundred 7th Grade students on their first day in a formal middle school science class. The survey was administered prior to any content was discussed and therefore represents the students’ preconceptions. This survey is part of a larger project and I will not give away too much of the information here, but rather provide a synopsis of what 7th Graders worry about and think can be approached through science discoveries and engineering solutions. The data (words and sentences) were coded by theme and sub theme by me over one morning so there has been no communication with collaborators and therefore these results should be considered preliminary and incomplete as they do not even represent the entire survey population (only those students at my particular school). I did this analysis for my own curiosity and preparedness as I am preparing lessons in this class. I am making this summary public on this blog for the possible benefit of other teachers or researchers as they think about issues of science, engineering, and education at all levels.
We asked the students to “list 3-5 problems/tasks that the world is facing that could be solved by the application of science, engineering and technology.” and to “list another 3-5 problems/tasks that your community/neighborhood/town is facing that could be solved by the application of the science, engineering, and technology.” Many ideas were single words or partial sentences so some of the coding was subjective as I had to make inferences about the significance. Some students (~10%) did not answer the question or put “I don’t know”. Many students only provided 1-2 ideas.
As I read the listed ideas I grouped them by categories and then by general themes. The final themes were: Discover, Natural Disasters, Ecosystem health, Pollution, Global Warming and Climate Change, Oil Spills, Societal Functioning, Energy and Transportation, and Building and Design. Themes contained 1-9 subcategories.
SUMMARY
SUMMARY
Energy, Transportation, Fuels, and related problems
21 respondents referred to either oil spills in general or the specific gulf oil spill which has been in the news. This was one of the larger response categories and probably reflects the impact of current news events on student’s thinking. This category could also be linked to others including finding new fossil fuels, using and finding new green energy sources, or improve transportation systems and cat efficiency. But I lumped those three categories separately under the theme Energy and Transportation. This theme received 53 responses, 4 were related to finding new fossil fuel sources. This idea was vastly overwhelmed by somewhat contrary ideas about improving transportation systems including busses, roads, car efficiency, car use (28 responses) and ideas about improving energy efficiency and finding new green energy sources such as solar (21 responses). Students appear to be highly concerned over energy consumption especially for transportation and they are hopeful that science and engineering will produce new greener solutions for energy and transportation!
Pollution
62 student responses referred to air pollution, water pollution, or access to clean water. Water and air responses were divided equally and were tied for the highest single response category (31 responses). Clearly pollution is near the top of 7th graders’ concerns for the world. The high rate of responses relating to these categories could be related to local air pollution problems or the recent linkage established to count CO2 as air pollution. Or perhaps students have discussed this problem at length in previous curriculum. I don’t know where it is coming from, but it is clearly a large problem in the world and they are aware. This category is also highly linked to responses about global warming and climate change (24 responses) and ecosystem health (24 responses). Within ecosystems students were only slightly more concerned over animal wellbeing (13 responses) rather than plant health (11 responses). This may indicate a sophisticated understanding of the systems that make up ecosystems?
Discovery
Some, but a minority of students put scientific discovery high on the agenda for the world (14 responses). Of these students either mentioned pure science discoveries (9 responses), space exploration (2 responses), or engineering science tools (3 responses).
Buildings, design
38 respondents referred to building/construction (10 responses), fixing and improving things in general (12 responses), and creating new improved electronics and computers (16 responses).
Natural Disasters
Natural Disasters were not very high on the students’ list of concerns with only four more responses than basic discovery (18 total responses). Of these they were quite spread out with students referring to landslides, fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, meteorite impacts, etc. Interestingly the only real repeat categories here were earthquakes and meteorite impacts which are heavily focused on by entertainment and educational TV.
Societal Functioning
Social function was very high on the list of concerns by students (111 responses). Responses were spread out among 9 categories suggesting that students are very concerned over these issues, but with slightly differing priorities. The most important categories included trash and liter (23 responses) which is also linked to ideas of overuse and pollution. Recycling, reducing, and reusing was brought up as a prominent concern, that it was not being done enough (14 responses). Improving health through preventing and curing diseases was prominent (18 responses) and crime and violence was also high on the students’ minds (17 responses). Other interesting ideas included improved park space, eradicating hunger and homelessness as well as improving the economy. The smaller response categories included war (both prevention and improved weapons), pest control (e.g. mosquitos), and immigration issues. It is interesting to me that students make the link between science, engineering and improving social functioning. This is a similar approach as the grand challenges of engineering. This may mean students have a sophisticated understanding of links between economy and technology and ideas about how science will help us fight disease. I also wonder what students are thinking when they imply that science and technology can improve trash and liter problems. I imagine they are linking back to efficiencies or recycling technologies, but I do not know.
Generally, social functioning was the most pressing response theme and probably represents the anthropocentric way that we as humans see ourselves within the world. However, it is balanced by issues of pollution, ecosystem functioning, and problems such as climate change. So there is at least a duality or perhaps even integration in how students see that we need to change and improve the world. I believe that this survey will be interesting to compare on the whole with science standards, NSF funding priorities, and AAAS grand challenges and I am looking forward to see how things change or don’t change after having taken this science course.
-Nathan A. Toke
Ph.D. Candidate in Geological Sciences and GK-12 Fellow
ASU 2010-2011
ASU 2010-2011
Monday, July 12, 2010
Grand Challenges of Engineering and Science
As a part of ASU's 2010 NSF GK-12 program I am now thinking of ways to bring some of the National Academy of Engineering's "Grand Challenges for Engineering" to the 7th grade earth science classroom (http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/). I anticipate this will be a very interesting, valuable, and challenging task. However, reading through some of these challenges, I cannot help but ask are these really Engineering's Grand Challenges? I think in some cases these challenges could be better addressed with social change rather than technological or at least an interdisciplinary approach.
The two most obvious cases are Advancing Personalized Learning and Preventing Nuclear Terrorist Attacks. I do see the value in computer aided learning, but I hardly would classify that as advancing personalized learning. Personalized learning, I believe, should involve more interpersonal attention rather than machine intrapersonal activities. Nuclear Terrorist Attacks might be averted through some specialized technologies, but this is only a band aid and to truly prevent suck attacks we need to change the global social issues that are leading toward social unrest and hatred - not to mention cleaning up the nuclear materials that are out there.
Some of the Grand Challenges are not, in my opinion, high on the list of things the world needs for improved quality of life or sustainability. Providing additional energy from fission would certainly add new energy to the market, but this would likely compound issues of overconsumption. Similarly carbon sequestration is only a patch and does not solve issue of unsustainable usage of oil. If we don't curb this problem we will undoubtedly find ourselves out of energy with too many energy reliant people to support which will likely lead to warfare and the downfall of our economy and society.
High on my list of engineering grand challenges are finding ways to better harness solar energy, energy stored in tides, and providing access to clean water and better managing the nitrogen cycle. For both of the later challenges equal efforts will need to be made in practice and social values as are made in pushing the engineering to fix these issues.
Once we solve the energy problems, curb overconsumption, protect our soils and water, then I think we will be free to focus on engineering issues that are more intrapersonal such as personalized healthcare/medicine, learning, and enhancing virtual reality. I guess my main points are:
1) there is certainly a hierarchy of these issues and I think they should be prioritized because time is of concern for the most important ones.
2) engineering should be coupled with social change so that we are not simply applying technological band aides for issues of that require major social surgery.
3) finally, there has always been a tension between rapid progress and engineering for efficiency and the idea of proceeding cautiously as to not over consume and waste resources. These things need to be balanced and we need to ensure that future technologies are not adding to our main problems.
The two most obvious cases are Advancing Personalized Learning and Preventing Nuclear Terrorist Attacks. I do see the value in computer aided learning, but I hardly would classify that as advancing personalized learning. Personalized learning, I believe, should involve more interpersonal attention rather than machine intrapersonal activities. Nuclear Terrorist Attacks might be averted through some specialized technologies, but this is only a band aid and to truly prevent suck attacks we need to change the global social issues that are leading toward social unrest and hatred - not to mention cleaning up the nuclear materials that are out there.
Some of the Grand Challenges are not, in my opinion, high on the list of things the world needs for improved quality of life or sustainability. Providing additional energy from fission would certainly add new energy to the market, but this would likely compound issues of overconsumption. Similarly carbon sequestration is only a patch and does not solve issue of unsustainable usage of oil. If we don't curb this problem we will undoubtedly find ourselves out of energy with too many energy reliant people to support which will likely lead to warfare and the downfall of our economy and society.
High on my list of engineering grand challenges are finding ways to better harness solar energy, energy stored in tides, and providing access to clean water and better managing the nitrogen cycle. For both of the later challenges equal efforts will need to be made in practice and social values as are made in pushing the engineering to fix these issues.
Once we solve the energy problems, curb overconsumption, protect our soils and water, then I think we will be free to focus on engineering issues that are more intrapersonal such as personalized healthcare/medicine, learning, and enhancing virtual reality. I guess my main points are:
1) there is certainly a hierarchy of these issues and I think they should be prioritized because time is of concern for the most important ones.
2) engineering should be coupled with social change so that we are not simply applying technological band aides for issues of that require major social surgery.
3) finally, there has always been a tension between rapid progress and engineering for efficiency and the idea of proceeding cautiously as to not over consume and waste resources. These things need to be balanced and we need to ensure that future technologies are not adding to our main problems.
Friday, March 19, 2010
NCAA Tournament Seedings and a Reorganization Proposal.
Okay so a simple look at this year's bracket as of 11:25am PST shows a lot of upsets. In fact if we isolate match ups between teams not in the 1-16, 2-15, and 8-9 games the record of underdogs vs top dogs is 5 wins to 5 losses. Complete parody. As I look at the scoreboard now Cornell a 12 seed is up big on #5 Temple and #6 Xavier is about to beat #11 Minnesota. So the records will remain the same. Every year 14,13,12,11,and 10 seeds do very well in their first round match ups. Almost always these seedings are reserved for the best of the Mid-majors and a few of those who just got into the tournament from major conferences.
So what does it mean that these underdogs (ranked 40-56 in the tournament) are even with the teams that would are ranked 9-25 by the tournament selection committee? I think it simply means that beyond the top 10 programs in any given year there is very little separation in terms of talent and coaching. Today, top programs get to keep top players for only 1-2 years while lower ranked programs get good players who are able to develop over 4 years and can often outsmart and outwork their younger more talented counterparts from major conferences. This is good for college basketball and certainly makes it more enjoyable for me to watch. However what it does argue for is less weight on "power conference" teams.
Okay so in light of my conservative consumption bent in this blog I have some tournament set up suggestions. Today the tournament is set up into regions (west, midwest, east, south, or whatever...). It would be a much more sustainable solution and more profitable solution if geographically-named regions really meant something. The West region bracket should include only west region teams. That way travel itineraries are shorted, less wasteful, and the fans a the games will remain interested in the match ups outside of the team they came to follow. Additionally, teams could take pride and say we won the western region championship this year. Then western region fans might cheer for their champion as they play in the final 4.
Who would get into the regional round of 16 teams? It cannot be for instance 8 Pac-10 teams in the hypothetical western region tournament. Each region would have to be divided up well enough to make a rule that each conference champion would get a bid plus a few at-large bigs. The at-large bigs could be decided similarly to how they are now, but only compared with other teams from your region. Clearly this is just one of many ideas. Tournament organizers are now considering a mega tournament with 96 teams. This would not be a more sustainable solution. We can see that as we get past the 56th "best" teams each year the quality of the product declines somewhat. However, by keeping things regional perhaps each region could make different rules and decide their own bracket qualifications and sizes.
I wonder what the tournament organizers would think of this idea?
So what does it mean that these underdogs (ranked 40-56 in the tournament) are even with the teams that would are ranked 9-25 by the tournament selection committee? I think it simply means that beyond the top 10 programs in any given year there is very little separation in terms of talent and coaching. Today, top programs get to keep top players for only 1-2 years while lower ranked programs get good players who are able to develop over 4 years and can often outsmart and outwork their younger more talented counterparts from major conferences. This is good for college basketball and certainly makes it more enjoyable for me to watch. However what it does argue for is less weight on "power conference" teams.
Okay so in light of my conservative consumption bent in this blog I have some tournament set up suggestions. Today the tournament is set up into regions (west, midwest, east, south, or whatever...). It would be a much more sustainable solution and more profitable solution if geographically-named regions really meant something. The West region bracket should include only west region teams. That way travel itineraries are shorted, less wasteful, and the fans a the games will remain interested in the match ups outside of the team they came to follow. Additionally, teams could take pride and say we won the western region championship this year. Then western region fans might cheer for their champion as they play in the final 4.
Who would get into the regional round of 16 teams? It cannot be for instance 8 Pac-10 teams in the hypothetical western region tournament. Each region would have to be divided up well enough to make a rule that each conference champion would get a bid plus a few at-large bigs. The at-large bigs could be decided similarly to how they are now, but only compared with other teams from your region. Clearly this is just one of many ideas. Tournament organizers are now considering a mega tournament with 96 teams. This would not be a more sustainable solution. We can see that as we get past the 56th "best" teams each year the quality of the product declines somewhat. However, by keeping things regional perhaps each region could make different rules and decide their own bracket qualifications and sizes.
I wonder what the tournament organizers would think of this idea?
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Relationship Commitment
During my entire adulthood the issue of marriage and partnerships has been a highly politicized issue. The primary issue has been reconciling the lack of equality extended to non-heterosexual couples --- or for some the idea of preventing this from happening because of their religious or personal viewpoints. Today, many large companies and local governments circumvent the unequal distribution of marriage rights by providing partnership benefits. In some cases states are passing laws to allow gay marriage while others are banning it even if it is passed nationally. In my personal view, I would be happier if marriage was retitled something with less of a root in paternal ownership and intertwinement with religion. However, tradition is hard to break and indeed many marriages today are based more upon wholesome commitment and love and have nothing to do with male ownership or religion. For many people marriage is one of the most important parts of their life and rightly so. However, it perplexes me how people that enjoy something so much would deny it to so many others.
Life partnerships or marriage is an important social institution. It affords participants community validity, financial benefits, health security benefits, and important informational rights of privilege during times of health emergencies. More than that it is a symbolic bit of identity for the couple within the relationship. In my somewhat independent mind, I have liked believing that it is unnecessary to involve the government or other other institutions to validate a relationship. However, the reality is that we do need the social privileges associated with these cultural institutions. A situation lacking institutional validity might work with universal health care security and use of alternative legal paperwork to afford partners the rights to care for one another. However, marriage links all the benefits together in one simple package. Additionally, while it is an annoying hassle to deal with all the paperwork and legal issues of a marriage perhaps the symbolic bond and legal hoops are also an important part of the process. They provide a level of trust and disincentive to giving in to the many difficulties that can drain on a modern day partnership.
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