11/30/2008
How America Got Game
Parade magazine
“Now games allow for diverse skills,” says Katherine Isbister, a professor of digital media at NYU-Poly. “It’s not just about the good hand-eye coordination that you have to start mastering at a young age.” James Watt, director of the Social and Behavioral Research Laboratory at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, credits the Nintendo Wii—a gaming system that uses a wandlike “ Wii-mote” instead of a traditional button-operated game controller—with expanding the gaming horizon. “All they had to do was take away the button-pushing and substitute something that was a little more natural, and all of a sudden you’ve got a device that appeals to people in nursing homes as well as in preschools,” Watt says.
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11/25/2008
University opens research center devoted to extraterrestrial life
Associated Press
With a $7.5 million grant from NASA, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is opening the New York Center for Astrobiology. The center will be part of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, a virtual institute of collaborating universities. Faculty and student researchers at the RPI center will seek to understand the chemical, physical and geological conditions of early earth that set the stage for life on our planet. They'll also investigate whether those processes could be replicated elsewhere within the universe. RPI physics and astronomy professor Douglas Whittet will lead the center, which will have regional partners at the University of Albany and Syracuse University.
Read the story, which also was featured in a Times Union editorial.
Read the Rensselaer news release.
11/25/2008
Mystery of dolphins' speed solved
BBC News
New research has shown how dolphins achieve their blinding speeds. . . . [R]esearchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the US have now studied the movement of water around dolphins as they swim. The results show that dolphins can exert as much as 180kg (400lb) of force with their tails. . . . 'For the first time, I think we can safely say the puzzle is solved,' said Tim Wei, the Rensselaer scientist who led the study. 'The short answer is that dolphins are simply much stronger than Gray or many other people ever imagined.' To determine this, Professor Wei used a new method of measuring the movement of water that he originally developed to track Olympic swimmers.
Read the story, which also was covered by Discover magazine, the Scotsman, and an Associated Press story that was picked up by news outlets across the globe, from ABC News to the People’s Daily in China.
Read the Rensselaer news release.
11/19/2008
Obama: Oratory and Originality
BBC News
What is the secret of his success - the words themselves, the way he delivers them, or the historical change he represents? "I believe Barack Obama embodies, more than any other politician, the ideals of American eloquence," says Ekaterina Haskins, professor of rhetoric at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. His speeches, she argues, are shaded with subtle echoes of great speeches past, consciously creating a sense of history, purpose and continuity.
Read the story.
11/16/2008
Fighting Traffic Jams With Data
Wall Street Journal
Researchers from different universities are working on ways for cars to better communicate with each other and relay crucial driver information such as traffic speed, weather and road conditions. The data could be used to decipher faster routes. . . . A joint project between Boston University, the University of New Mexico and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is focused on the delivery of traffic and car information through flashing headlights, brake lights and traffic signals.
Read the story.
Read the Rensselaer news release.
11/15/2008
Green Buildings for the Real World
New York Times
Yet in the real world, practicing architects generally cannot take the chance on untested technology. And academics typically dont have actual construction sites on which to test their sustainable ideas. That is why the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill has joined with the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to establish a collaborative practice known as the Center for Architecture Science and Ecology, or CASE. . . . Anna Dyson, an associate professor at Rensselaer and the director of CASE, said, “Its really important to connect with professionals who are working with complex problems on a day-to-day basis.”
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Read the Rensselaer news release.
11/15/2008
Generation Text finds dating a challenge
Toronto Star
Texting is so important to teens that if it were no longer an option, 47 per cent of teens said in a September 2008 Harris Interactive poll that their social life would end or suffer. 'They use texting as a kind of continual community that reaffirms friendships and group alliances,' said Jim Watt, professor of communication and director of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's social and behavioural research laboratory. 'The fact that you're communicating with someone, that's the message, not the content of the message itself,' he said.
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11/12/2008
From robots, inspiration
Times Union
Intel Corp. will give Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute $30,000 to make certain the high school students of tomorrow have their hearts and minds set on math and science. The money is being used by RPI to run the 2008 FIRST Lego League Tech Valley Challenge, a local robotics tournament for school children ages 9 to 14. . . . RPI mathematics professor Lester Rubenfeld, who is director of RPI's Center for Initiatives in Pre-College Education, said high school is too late to get students interested in math and science. So regions that want to create a technical work force have to target education at middle school students.'If you do not have a work force that is ready to play a role, you're not going to attract industry,' Rubenfeld said, 'And that becomes the larger issue.
Read the story.
Read the Rensselaer news release.
11/09/2008
New nano coating boosts solar efficiency
CNN
Scientists from the Future Chips Constellation (FCC) at the
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York have created the coating using nanotechnology (engineering devices on a molecular scale). They are hopeful that it can transform the solar energy market in the coming years. . . .
Professor of physics at Rensselaer, and head of the FCC research team, Shawn-Yu Lin said: 'To get maximum efficiency when converting solar power into electricity, you want a solar panel that can absorb nearly every single photon of light, regardless of the sun's position in the sky. Our new anti-reflective coating makes this possible.'
Read the story, which also was covered by New Scientist, Reuters, TreeHugger, and Gizmodo,
Read the Rensselaer news release.
11/09/2008
IMAX Filmmakers Push Scientists To The Max
ScienCentral
If you’ve ever wanted to talk to a nitrogen atom, or sing-a-long with a water molecule, then ‘Molecules to the Max’ is for you. The upcoming IMAX film lets you experience the subatomic world up close. But it also takes you where no scientist has gone before. "This is a very exciting turning point, for science visualization, and education, that really has not been available before," says Dick Siegel. Siegel is the film’s executive producer, as well as the director of the Nanotechnology Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY . He, along with fellow producers and RPI researchers Linda Schadler and Shekhar Garde, began developing the film three years ago.
Watch the video.
Read the Rensselaer news release.
11/04/2008
Heparin Scare
Scientific American
Robert Linhardt, a professor of biology, chemistry and chemical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., in February received a phone call that validated his five-year quest to develop heparin in the lab. Linhardt says he listened intently as a Baxter researcher told him about a report of severe allergic reactions to heparin-based blood thinners in dialysis patients, including children. 'I was then asked if I was available to help with discovering the cause of this contamination,' he says. 'I responded affirmatively and then asked if it were not simply a bacterial contamination in the [heparin] vial-filling process. When I was assured that this was one of the first things tested for and ruled out, I realized that this would be a very interesting investigation, and I was hooked.'
Read the story.
11/01/2008
America's First Drug-Treatment Prison Revisited
All Things Considered - National Public Radio (NPR)
The Narcotic Farm was one of America's most ambitious drug-treatment institutions. It was located in Lexington, Ky., and housed addicts from the famous, like writer William S. Burroughs, to the forgotten. Documentarian JP Olsen and drug policy expert Nancy Campbell collaborated on a new book and a PBS documentary titled The Narcotic Farm: The Rise and Fall of America's First Prison for Drug Addicts. They talk about the institution.
Listen to the story.
