NASA Internship Benefits USF Student

To those small children dreaming of spaceships and walking on the moon, University of South Florida student Marie Chenowith has one thing to say: keep dreaming big.

The mechanical engineering student just completed a semester-long internship in the robotics department of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Tx. and is back at USF to finish her last semester for her bachelors degree.

It hasn't been an easy journey, Chenowith said.

Numerical Methods - A Real-World Application on Open Courses

"Build it, and they will come." Autar Kaw, professor of mechanical engineering has not built a baseball diamond in his cornfield. Instead, he has plowed under the dried cornstalks of a traditional advanced mathematics course and created an open source Internet-based Numerical Methods class that receives hundreds of thousands of visits a year. The site is the model for the Computational Methods classes at the University of South Florida. It is also a comprehensive reference base for anyone looking for mathematical models used in situations where approximations are needed.

SAE Students Have Lofty Goals

In the middle of the University of South Florida campus, inside one of the school's original structures, a group of dedicated young engineering students are having the time of their lives. There are 20-30 of them - bright minds form a close-knit team with vision, ambition, common goals and core beliefs.

They are the members of the Society of Automotive Engineers, another team from the USF campus that is not as famous and well-known as the football team, but every bit as driven, every bit as hungry to push their limits. Over the next eight months they will build their own formula race car. From scratch.

The Topsy-turvy Factor in College Football

Discussing and disputing the games of the season against the games of the past is a time-honored tradition of sports fans. Passions are born and beer consumed when reminiscing about a particular season being "wild" or "topsy-turvy". Sportscasters become increasingly apoplectic each week in their attempts to describe this situation. Maybe this increases ratings. But what is it, exactly, that makes one season a ho-hummer (except if your team wins, of course) and another season turns into a chaos of triumph and tragedy. In these seasons of upsets and missed field goals, we are mesmerized by watching the mighty fall, over and over again, to the underdogs of Backwater U.

Is it Really Green, or Just Marketing?

What can your humble dishwasher tell you about being green? Once considered an extravagance of electricity and hot water, can a dishwasher point the way to sustainability? Enter the laboratory of Dr. Delcie Durham, professor of mechanical engineering, for an applied lesson in cutting through the, ah, grease and getting down to the shine.

Ovarian Cancer Early Detection Home Test

More than 30 years ago the first home pregnancy kits became available. In 1977 ten dollars got you a test tube containing red blood cells from sheep, a clear plastic test tube stand with a mirror on the bottom and a medicine dropper. Add some urine and results appeared in two hours. This revolutionized pre-natal care, giving women the opportunity to discontinue drugs, alcohol, smoking, or avoid X-rays.