Science Logic
Read Time : 1 Minutes

Windsor Park recognized in nation for computer science competition

Israel Budz

For the fifth consecutive year, Windsor Park Elementary School been recognized as top in the nation in the National Continental Math League Computer Science competition.

Additionally, four students were recognized as National Student Leaders for scoring perfect 18/18 individual scores. They include third graders Aiden Kim and Ishaan Debchoudhury, fourth grader Katherine Xu and fifth grader Berea Klaus.

Technology applications teacher and computer science team advisor Gary Henicke said while it is the fifth year the school has had at least one team place first, Windsor Park has won nationally 13 times since 2015, the year the contest started. He said the school has three computer science academic teams for third, fourth and fifth grade.

Third graders Aiden Kim (left) and Ishaan Debchoudhury, fourth grader Katherine Xu and fifth grader Berea Klaus were recognized as National Student Leaders for correctly answering all 18 questions at the National Continental Math League Computer Science competition.

“It is an academic team that students try out for to qualify,” Henicke said. “It is not a ‘computer club.’ Students compete here at school and our assistant principal Catarino Rodriguez submits our scores.”

Henicke

… Read More
Science Logic
Read Time : 1 Minutes

Bill Nye Is Still Having Fun With Science

Israel Budz

Bill Nye was geeking out in his sunny apartment in uptown Manhattan.

“I can’t do anything without thinking about the science,” Mr. Nye said in early April, waving his arms around to make his point. “Look at this scene. We are on a Zoom call, which involves literally millions of transistors that somebody figured out how to manufacture.”

His voice got louder and more excited as he went on: “Then they got the T.T.L., the transistor-transistor logic, figured out so that we can make pictures and form words, and transmit them across the electric internet.”

Wearing his trademark short-sleeved white shirt, clear horn-rimmed glasses and a purple bow tie, Mr. Nye, 65, still looked like the former mechanical engineer who became America’s favorite science teacher during the 1990s, as the host of the PBS show “Bill Nye the Science Guy.”

Watched by millions of schoolchildren (and more than

… Read More
Science Logic
Read Time : 1 Minutes

Trying To Disprove Free Will Shows That Materialism Doesn’t Work

Israel Budz

Biologist Jerry Coyne, who is also an atheist activist, offers another post denying free will. Journalist Oliver Burkeman published an essay at the The Guardian last week, asking, “The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?”, quoting Coyne among others. Coyne, who believes that free will is indeed an illusion, offers support at his blog. Read at your leisure but note: He ignores critical science issues around free will, including the following:

1. Nature is not deterministic. The fact that nature is not predetermined in detail has been shown quite convincingly by the experimental confirmation of Bell’s theorem in quantum mechanics. Succinctly, over the past 50 years, at least 17 teams of researchers have asked and answered the question: does the state of a system immediately prior to a quantum change determine the state of the system immediately after the quantum change? The clear answer: it does not.

In more

… Read More
Science Logic
Read Time : 1 Minutes

ORNL Using AI, Big Data Research Tools to Enable Materials Science Discoveries

Israel Budz

May 5, 2021 — At the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, scientists use artificial intelligence, or AI, to accelerate the discovery and development of materials for energy and information technologies.

“AI gives scientists the ability to extract insights from an ever-expanding volume of data,” said David Womble, ORNL’s AI program director. “New AI tools, together with world-class computing capabilities, are critical to maintaining scientific leadership.”

AI uses computers to mine mountains of data for scientific and engineering insights. Starting with high-quality data matters. Well-characterized materials create a strong knowledge foundation for the design of new materials that launch technologies and expand economies. ORNL has a history of materials development dating back to World War II and a rich archive of data generated on world-class instruments by expert researchers. Increasingly, researchers generate high-resolution materials data at a volume, variety and velocity they never before have had to tackle.

“Ten

… Read More