03/15/2008
How to Counter the Effects
U.S. News & World Report
Should light exposure be minimized at night? Experts think that's probably a good idea, though you certainly don't need to go to extremes, like wandering around a darkened house after sundown. You should, though, try to avoid bright lights, the kind you need for knitting, jigsaw puzzles, or other hobbies within three hours of bedtime, recommends Mark Rea, director of the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. And keep computer time at night to no more than 15 minutes. Sitting in the glare from the screen for prolonged periods of time could suppress the release of melatonin. On the other hand, he says, watching TV is fine since the amount of light exposure you get sitting several feet away is minimal.
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03/14/2008
Carbon vs copper
Scenta
The most powerful university-based supercomputer in the world is making comparisons between carbon nanotubes and copper nanowires to bring academia and the semiconductor industry closer to alleviating the bottleneck of information that limits the development of the next generation of smaller computer chips. Researchers at
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York, crunched numbers for months on the advanced quantum-mechanical computer to run extensive simulations to study copper nanowire and carbon nanotubes using quantum mechanics rather than empirical laws.
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Read the Rensselaer news release.
03/13/2008
MIND OPENER: Childhood's End
Times of India
Artificial Intelligence scientists at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the United States have succeeded in creating a 'virtual' four-year-old boy capable of reasoning. Right now his logic's not high-end analytical stuff as demonstrated by mature adults but Eddie, as he's named, can reason about his own beliefs to draw conclusions in a manner that matches human children his age. . . . Also, Eddie currently requires the back-up of one of the most powerful supercomputing systems in the world so that he's able to possess memories, believe or want things and remember. But that's exactly how humans too rely on something that's even better - their brains - to develop into post four-year-olds ultimately. As supercomputers start sprouting and begin getting exponentially more powerful, expect many more grown-up Eddies to come along.
Read the story, which was also covered by New Scientist, Wired, Slashdot, EETimes, The Inquirer (France), and The Edmonton Sun.
Read the Rensselaer news release.
03/13/2008
RPI adds student aid funds
Times Union
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on Wednesday became the latest college to increase financial aid for low- to middle-income students. RPI plans to dole out more than $10 million in new aid to undergraduates during the 2008-09 year. The school will boost scholarships for students with family incomes below $60,000. It will also allow RPI to offer aid to families in the $60,000 to $160,000 bracket who might not have qualified for it in the past, said James Nondorf, vice president for enrollment.
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Read the Rensselaer news release.
03/11/2008
Obituary: Martin Pawley
Guardian Unlimited
Martin Pawley, who has died aged 69 after suffering from Lewy body dementia, was one of the most insightful and provocative commentators on contemporary architecture and design. . . . After that he became a consultant to the UN, advising on the use of waste materials in low-cost construction; and subsequently a visiting professor, first at Cornell University, and then at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York. 'Waste can be good,' he told his students at Rensselaer and, with characteristic elan, constructed the Dora Crouch House using reclaimed bottles and steel cans.
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03/08/2008
Innovations improve 'performance' of buildings
The Vancouver Sun
Leave it to a couple of enterprising students to discover some of the hidden talents of mushrooms. Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre, who both graduated last year from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York state with dual degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Product Design and Innovation, found that mushroom spores could offer a renewable source of sustainable insulation. Expected to be commercially available sometime in 2009 under the label Greensulate, Bayer told CCNews last year that 'the insulation is created by pouring a mixture of insulating particles, hydrogen peroxide, starch, and water into a panel mold. Mushroom cells are then injected into the mold, where they digest the starch producing a tightly meshed network of insulating particles and mycelium.' The result is an organic composite board that has a competitive R-Value (a measurement of insulation value) that can also serve as a firewall.
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Read the Rensselaer news release.
03/04/2008
Washington Technology Digest
IEEE-USA Today's Engineer
Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Rice University have created a new material consisting of a thin coating comprised of low-density arrays of loosely vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes, which absorbs more than 99.9 percent of light. The new techonlogy is projected to one day boost the effectiveness and efficiency of solar energy conversion, infrared sensors, and other devices. The researchers who developed the material have applied for a Guinness World Record for their efforts.
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Read the Rensselaer news release.
03/03/2008
Big Blue Goes for the Big Win
BusinessWeek
It's a snowy February day at IBM's office in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., and
John E. Kelly III drops by a cramped conference room to talk about his plans for IBM Research. The organization is already considered one of the world's best corporate research labs. Yet Kelly, a 27-year IBM veteran who took over as research director in July, is planning surprisingly dramatic changes. 'We have to do bolder things, bigger things,' he says, speaking about his plans publicly for the first time. 'If we don't fail a third of the time, we're not stretching enough. On the other hand, when we win, we need to win big.' . . . Kelly, the seventh director since IBM established its labs in 1945, has research in his blood. His father worked as a technician at General Electric (GE)'s lab in Niskayuna, N.Y., where Kelly would visit regularly as a boy and watch him work with vacuum tubes.
Kelly got a PhD in materials engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, just outside of Albany.
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03/03/2008
Hundreds Across, Few Down at Crossword Meet
The New York Sun
For some, the thought of taking a timed test under exam pressure is enough to rattle nerves. Over the weekend, several hundred verbally inclined enthusiasts gathered to do so for fun at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, which had its largest attendance in its 31-year history. . . . In the tournament's most talked-about match, Tyler Hinman,
sporting a red Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute baseball cap, clinched the top 'A' division title for a recordbreaking fourth time, after a Floridian, Trip Payne, completed his puzzle first but had two letters wrong. 'The puzzle was incredibly hard but fair,' Mr. Hinman said.
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03/02/2008
Nanotech companies pushing Congress to spring for research
San Francisco Chronicle
Lawmakers are expected to get down to the nitty gritty. But lately, they've been focusing on the tiniest forms of matter - the subject of nanotechnology. Roughly two dozen nanotechnology companies and other experts came to Capitol Hill last week to show off their wares and send Congress a message: Nanotechnology is about a whole lot more than computer chips. . . . In August, researchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., said they had created a thin, flexible battery by embedding carbon nanotubes in a sheet of paper. 'It looks like a black sheet of paper,' said Robert Linhardt, acting director of the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies at the institute. But the paper battery can store power and potentially be placed under someone's skin to power biomechanical devices, such as pacemakers. . . . 'These are technologies that are all going to be enabled by the nano revolution,' Linhardt said.
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03/01/2008
Student Develops First Polarized LED
Treehugger
Behold the future of LEDs (light emitting diodes): the polarized LED - a technological breakthrough that could usher in a new generation of super-efficient LEDs adapted for use in LCDs on a variety of consumer electronics. Martin Schubert, a graduate student at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, was awarded the prestigious Lemelson-Rensselaer Student Prize for his work - the culmination of several years' research. His polarized LED is a step up from existing technologies; it allows for much better control of the direction and polarization of the emitted light, resulting in less wasted energy from scattered light and optimal light placement. According to Schubert, this should make it suitable as a backlighting component for a range of LCD screens, such as those found in televisions, cameras and cell phones - providing crisper, more lifelike images.
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Read the Rensselaer news release.
