“In the News” August 2009
Following is a selection of news media stories about Rensselaer people and programs. The stories are listed by date, with the most recent articles first. Note that some publications may require subscriptions or logins to access individual articles online. Additionally, archived links may change or be available online for a limited time.
08/27/09
Cities turn off streetlights to save money
USA Today
Most cities use more light than they need, at least in some places, says scientist John Bullough of the Light Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Towns should be careful about removing lights, he says. "It's not something you want to do by throwing darts at the map." There's little evidence to support the belief that streetlights reduce crime, he says. However, lighting does reduce traffic accidents, especially at intersections.
Read the story.
08/26/09
Collaboration, Innovation Conference Set For Purdue
Inside Indiana Business
The conference will feature two keynote speakers. Orlando Ashford is senior vice president of human resources at Marsh & McLennan Companies Inc., and was formerly vice president of human resources at Coca Cola. Gina O'Connor is director for the Radical Innovation Research Project and associate director of the Severino Center for Technological Entrepreneurship at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is author of "Grabbing Lightning: Building a Capability for Breakthrough Innovation.
Read the story.
08/21/09
RPI scientist found atom-bomb fallout
Times Union
Herbert M. Clark, a scientist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute who discovered a rainstorm had dropped atomic-bomb fallout on the Collar City, died Thursday. He was 90.
Read the story.
08/20/09
Woodstock rocked a nation
The Troy Record
This summer, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s radio station, 91.5 WRPI, will mark the 40th anniversary with a two-hour block of live performances from the festival every Sunday night, at 8 p.m., through September.
Read the story.
08/20/09
Summer of '69: Civil Rights
The Troy Record
Protests took place right on Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s campus with hundreds of students marching to protest the Vietnam War and the possible role Rensselaer played in supporting it, said Rick Hartt, director of the college’s student union who graduated from there in 1970.“ It was an exciting time at Rensselaer,” he reminisced. “There was a change in the political nature and in student politics. Students recognized something needed to change in the power structure. They focused on peace, cultural, and social issues at the time,” he added.
Read the story.
08/18/09
Agora Games Acquired
The Business Review
New York City-based Major League Gaming Inc. said today it has acquired Agora Games Inc. of Troy, N.Y. Agora Games was founded in 2003 by Michael DelPrete as Agora Studios Inc. It was born out of a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute project to create and maintain www.incubator.com, a site that links incubators with venture capitalists. Agora licensed the technology from the RPI site and opened its offices in the RPI incubator.
Read the story.
08/17/09
Conference to focus on lighting opportunities
The Business Review
A half-day workshop will be held from 8 a.m. to noon on Sept. 29 at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Lighting Research Center in Troy, N.Y., to discuss innovations in lighting design. The free event is designed for lighting manufacturers, energy-efficiency program designers and governmental and nongovernmental entities that want to learn about the latest lighting opportunities.
Read the story.
08/17/09
O's First-Ever Power List
O, the Oprah Magazine
Quick — think of a woman whose name is synonymous with science. For a century, the only option was Marie Curie, but the name on the lips of future generations may well be Shirley Ann Jackson. Her résumé is a catalog of firsts: first African-American woman to earn a doctorate from MIT. First woman and first African-American to chair the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. First African-American woman to lead a national research university (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where applications have doubled in the past four years).
Read the story, which was also found in the Post Chronicle.
08/16/09
What price loyalty?
The Times Union
Price Chopper has offered its AdvantEdge membership program, with discounts for grocery items, for more than two decades, but the breaks on gasoline prices it began offering this summer sent card usage jumping. Jeff Durgee, associate professor of marketing at the Lally School of Management & Technology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, said programs that aren't well-designed are soon history.
Read the story.
08/11/2009
Avalon Files Amended S-1 Registration
Business Wire
Avalon Oil & Gas Inc., Minneapolis, said that its majority-owned subsidiary, Oiltek Inc., has filed a sixth amendment to the Form S-1 Registration Statement originally filed Oct. 22, 2007. Avalon plans for Oiltek's shares to be listed on the OTC Bulletin Board. One of the technologies licensed to Oiltek from Avalon performs hazardous leak detection in gas pipelines. This patented technology provides reliable and continuous monitoring of buried pipelines to detect smaller leaks than possible with currently available methods. The system uses a series of acoustic sensors to monitor gas pipeline emission changes. The technology has been successfully fielded with a large gas company, and was originally developed by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Read the story.
08/10/09
Moving Data.gov towards the Semantic Web
ZDNET
Paul Miller discusses moves toward government transparency. The trend incorporate proposals to surface Government data for use and re-use by third parties. Given the complex and varied nature of the data involved, and the obvious linkages between the entities described in numerous different databases, there’s a clear opportunity for technologies and approaches from the Semantic Web community to play a significant role in simplifying the whole process of moving these legacy databases online. He discusses these thoughts in podcast conversation with Professor Jim Hendler and Dr. Li Ding of the Tetherless World Constellation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. The team at Rensselaer have been working with some of the US Federal Government’s data sets on Data.gov.
Read the story.
Listen to the podcast.
08/06/09
Israel reveals the face of cyber war
Fudzilla
An attack on Iran's nuclear research programme has revealed the future face of cyber war. James Hendler a professor of computer science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute told the Washington Post that Mosad's attacks against Iran's nuclear program may give greater insight into how cyberwar actually will work.
Read the story.
08/05/09
Riding an Energy Beam to Space
MIT Technology Today
One topic being examined this week at the 45th Joint Propulsion Conference and Exhibit in Denver is beam-energy propulsion- Leik Myrabo, an associate professor of mechanical, aerospace and nuclear engineering a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., says the last three to five years have brought these systems closer to reality because energy-beaming technology like laser beams and millimeter wavelength systems have dropped in cost.
Read the story.
08/03/09
H1N1 Part 3: When vaccines fail
Examiner.Com
Flu drugs on the market currently affect certain proteins of the target virus. For example, take H1N1, where H and N stand for hemagglutinin and neuraminidase respectively. Until now, treatment affects only the common virus component neuraminidase, which allows the virus to escape an infected cell after reproduction and further sicken an organism. Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) have found a new way to attack both the H and N components of a virus. Not only does this new method (which is a chemical compound or “drug”) work in a previously unutilized manner, but it’s operation in the traditional manner is just as effective as any other treatment, such as Tamiflu. This newly discovered compound not only prevents a virus from leaving an infected cell, but prevents a virus from entering a cell in the first place.
Read the story.
08/03/09
On the Bright Side: Software conference to attract many to SUNY Delhi
Oneonta Daily Star
Institutions to be represented include Yale University, Penn State, Duke University, Tufts University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and nearly 20 SUNY campuses. Gary Schwartz of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will introduce Bedework, the open-source calendaring system for higher education.
Read the story.
08/01/09
Organelle Simulated on Microchip for First Time
Scientific American
To better dissect how the Golgi apparatus works, Linhardt and his colleagues tried creating a synthetic version of it, designing a square-millimeter-sized lab-on-a-chip to mimic the assembly line of enzymes within the Golgi apparatus that modify a biomolecule.
Read the story, which was also featured in the Economist, PharmTechTalk, and Softpedia.
