Science And Technology

Minutes before their motorized robot made of Legos was to be judged in a competition, the students from Cecil Elementary School ran into a big problem. The front-loader plow that enabled the robot to push objects over a tabletop course had disappeared, temporarily removed, then nowhere to be found amid a high school cafeteria overflowing with Lego pieces. The timing could hardly have been worse. But it proved a temporary setback for the Cecil fourth- and fifth-graders, among 10 teams of elementary and middle school students competing Saturday at Digital Harbor High School in an opening round of FIRST Lego League of Maryland's annual competition.

The federal government and the nation's universities should invest $150 million annually to double the number of minorities pursuing science and engineering degrees, says a report released this week from the National Academies. The federal government and the nation's universities should invest $150 million annually to double the number of minorities pursuing science and engineering degrees, says a report released from the National Academies. The report came from a committee chaired by Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Shoppers Food & Pharmacy said Tuesday that it plans to relocate its corporate headquarters from Lanham to Bowie in October. The company will move to the new Maryland Science and Technology Center near Routes 50 and 301. The 466-acre business campus that when complete, will include 3 million-square-feet of office space, retail stores, shops and restaurants. Shoppers will be one of the first tenants in the second of two newly constructed office towers. The company will occupy close to 25,000 square feet of office space and 2,520 square feet to be used for the distribution of sales materials to the grocer's stores.

H. Guyford Stever, who served as university president when the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the Mellon Institute of Research became Carnegie Mellon University in 1967, died Friday, April 9, 2010 in Gaithersburg. He was 93. Mr. Stever became president of Carnegie Tech in 1965 and left CMU in 1972 to accept President Richard M. Nixon's nomination as director of the National Science Foundation. He served as presidential science adviser to Gerald Ford. Carnegie Mellon will fly its flag at half-staff on Monday because of Mr. Stever's passing, CMU president Jared L. Cohon said.

In 1979, a science and technology agreement between the United States and China paved the way for bilateral scientific cooperation that continues to benefit American science and society more broadly. Now, science diplomacy may help America open a door toward improved relations with Pyongyang, too. In December, six Americans representing leading scientific organizations sat down with their North Korean counterparts. The meeting took place on the heels of U.S. Special Envoy Stephen Bosworth's first official bilateral meeting with North Korea.

Team 888 from Glenelg High School gathered at 7 a.m. Thursday in the school's parking lot, a bit sleep-deprived perhaps, but definitely pumped up. The night before, 12 students had checked off 1,500 pounds of supplies on a lengthy packing list in preparation for their 10-hour journey to the Indiana Robotics Invitational, an elite competition for the top 72 teams in the world. Along with the robot they designed and built, their team was transporting tools, spare parts, extension cords, 12-volt gel batteries and chargers - anything members might possibly need during the two-day event that ended Saturday.

Is the future of a new East Baltimore becoming evident on Washington Street just north of Johns Hopkins Hospital? On a long walk through this decimated and emptied neighborhood, it was easy to see where nearly 1,200 houses (on 100 acres) were knocked down. The empty space created by all that demolition provokes strong emotions. I thought of how the Inner Harbor looked in the mid-1970s or the Charles Center in the 1960s.

So mayoral ex-boyfriend Ron Lipscomb gets a piece of the huge Uplands housing development even though, as The Sun's John Fritze reports, a city review panel recommended another team. And that's surprising? I was more surprised to see Michael Cryor is in on the deal. Cryor is chairman of the Maryland Democratic Party. It's not the moonlighting that gets me. In a true-blue state like Maryland, maybe selling the Democratic dream isn't full-time work. Little wonder if Cryor also has time to run a company, the Cryor Group, which has a 1.5 percent interest in the $200 million Uplands project.

Facing continued challenges to evolutionary science from religious conservatives who insist that public schools teach alternative explanations, the National Academy of Sciences has issued a new book that outlines the scientific evidence for evolution. "Evolution is one of the bedrock theories in all of modern science, and we are coming to understand better and better as to why that is," said NAS President Ralph Cicerone at a panel discussion of the 86-page booklet, called Science, Evolution and Creationism.