September-October 2008 July-August 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008
March 2008 February 2008
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.
10/28/2008
Hunting the Hidden Dimension
PBS NOVA
Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies Ron Eglash appeared in a NOVA episode about fractal geometry. Invented by mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot in the 1960s and 1970s, fractals have changed the way we see the world and opened up a vast new territory to scientific analysis and understanding. Mandelbrot coined the term fractals to suggest "fractured" and "fractional," a nod to the new geometry's focus on broken, wrinkled, and otherwise "rough" shapes. Hunting the Hidden Dimension tells the dramatic story of a group of pioneering mathematicians who took Mandelbrot's invention from a mathematical curiosity that few took seriously to an approach that is touching nearly every branch of science and technology today, from cell phones to cardiac medicine to the study of tropical forests.
Watch the program featuring Professor Eglash, who appears in multiple times in Chapter 2: The Mandelbrot Set.
10/27/2008
Are You Evil? Profiling That Which Is Truly Wicked
Scientific American
The hallowed halls of academia are not the place you would expect to find someone obsessed with evil (although some students might disagree). But it is indeed evil—or rather trying to get to the roots of evil — that fascinates Selmer Bringsjord, a logician, philosopher and chairman of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Department of Cognitive Science here. He's so intrigued, in fact, that he has developed a sort of checklist for determining whether someone is demonic, and is working with a team of graduate students to create a computerized representation of a purely sinister person. "I've been working on what is evil and how to formally define it," says Bringsjord, who is also director of the Rensselaer AI & Reasoning Lab (RAIR). "It's creepy, I know it is."
Read the story.
10/24/2008
Reaping a Sad Harvest
Scientific American
From 1935 to 1975, just about everyone busted for drugs in the U.S. was sent to the United States Narcotic Farm outside Lexington, Ky. Equal parts federal prison, treatment center, research laboratory and farm, this controversial institution was designed not only to rehabilitate addicts, but to discover a cure for drug addiction. Now a new documentary, The Narcotic Farm, reveals the lost world of this institution, based on rare film footage, numerous documents, dozens of interviews of former staff, inmates and volunteer patients, and more than 2,000 photographs unearthed from archives across the country. . . . Its most important contribution might be how it transformed the way society views addicts — "as people suffering from a chronic, relapsing disorder that affects public health," says book co-author Nancy Campbell, an associate professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., who studies the history of drug addiction research.
Read the story.
10/14/2008
RPI grads' mushroom idea wins top global prize
Times Union
Housed in RPI's incubator center at its Troy campus, Ecovative Design got the top prize at last month's PICNIC Green Challenge in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where more than 230 'green' innovations from around the world were judged. Company co-founder Eben Bayer said the cash will help the fledgling company have its packing material product ready for sale starting next year. The 23-year-old, who graduated from RPI in 2007, has developed a lightweight, biodegradable insulation produced from mushroom spores. It is being marketed under the name Greensulate.
Read the story.
10/13/2008
Beyond WiFi: Connecting by light
Boston Globe
[The] research is part of a five-year, $18.5 million research project on LED smart lighting funded by the National Science Foundation. BU will receive $1 million a year. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., and the University of New Mexico are participating in the project, which will work with corporations to turn their discoveries into commercial products. . . . E. Fred Schubert, a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic and director of the Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center, said 22 percent of the world's electricity is used for lighting, but it could be reduced to 11 percent if all existing lamps were replaced with LEDs. 'This is the only technology that can make a huge dent in electricity consumption,' he said.But for now, at least, it doesn't come cheaply. While a 100-watt bulb costs less than $1, an equivalent LED lamp can cost as much as $80.
Read the story, which was also covered by the Troy Record and the Times Union.
Read the Rensselaer news release.
10/08/2008
A New Concert Hall Plays Up the Sound and Celebrates the Science
New York Times
The concert hall of the 21st century has arrived. And the building that encases it would be remarkable if it had only that. The 1,200-seat hall in the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute here (Empac, to its friends), which opened over the weekend, seemed a notable acoustical success on brief early exposures. . . . But in addition, the huge building, laid out on a hillside, houses a 400-seat theater with comparable versatility; two black-box studios, one geared more toward sound, the other toward sight; and space for rehearsals and other uses. And for their electronic and data needs, all these components have access to one of the world’s biggest supercomputers.
Read the story.
10/08/2008
NY university unveils new media and arts center
Associated Press
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is unveiling a new media and arts facility that features cutting-edge technology, a project that took $200 million and almost eight years to complete. The Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center officially opens Friday, kicking off a three-week celebration that includes video installations, musical performances and multimedia presentations. Officials at the nation's oldest technological university claim EMPAC is unlike anything else in the way it will put art and science together to allow for innovative new ways of learning, researching and creating.
Read the AP story, which was picked up by more than 50 outlets across the country, ranging from the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun to the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News.
Read the Rensselaer news release.
10/05/2008
Nuclear renewal spurs demand for engineers
Associated Press
[Shirley Ann Jackson, president of upstate New York's Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a past chairman of the NRC] said the long slump in nuclear training and research at U.S. universities has put the country's ability to design and build new plants in question, and she predicts the first to come online will likely be joint ventures involving companies from Europe and Asia, where nuclear power has a receptive audience. . . . RPI hired eight new faculty in the past two years and plans to add four more in the next three to five years, said Tim Wei, dean of its School of Engineering. . . . "We get e-mails all the time about internships and job opportunities," said Rian Bahran, a graduate student at RPI who started his studies in 2003, before there was talk of a nuclear renaissance and a surge of new enrollments.
Read the AP story, which was picked up by a wide variety of outlets ranging from BusinessWeek to Forbes magazine to the Boston Globe.
09/28/2008
EMPAC promises experimentation and performance
Times Union
"Open up your mind. Open up your senses," says Johannes Goebel. "You've got to be open to new things." As director of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Goebel promises plenty of "new things" are headed our way when the ribbon is cut and the doors are opened to the brand spanking new $200 million facility on Friday. . . . The massive building houses four world-class, state-of-the-art, high-tech performance spaces — a 1,200-seat concert hall, an intimate 400-seat theater and two highly flexible black-box performance venues. . . . Of course, EMPAC is much more than just a performing arts center. In addition to the four major performance spaces, the building also houses four work studios for artists in residence, a rehearsal hall, a cafe, professional audio and video production studios, and a research suite.
Read the story.
09/26/2008
Sound forces liquid lenses into faster focus
New Scientist
Using sound to manipulate low-cost liquid lenses could improve the small cameras built into mobile phones, say U.S. researchers. . . . Amir Hirsa at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, points out that the Varioptic lens and other existing liquid lens technologies must use brute force to overcome surface tension and refocus a liquid lens. The force involved sends ripples through the droplet that must dissipate before a clear image can be taken. That means liquid lenses aren't suitable for fast focusing. To get around this problem, Hirsa and Carlos Lopez, also at Rensselaer, tried using sound to quickly focus liquid lenses instead.
Read the story, which was also covered by Yahoo! India, Technology Review, Scientific American, United Press International, Electronics Weekly, and Gizmodo.
Read the Rensselaer news release.
09/23/2008
Art and Science, Virtual and Real, Under One Big Roof
New York Times
On a hillside overlooking this college town on the banks of the Hudson, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has erected a technological pleasure dome for the mind and senses. Eight years and $200 million in the making, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, or Empac, resembles an enormous 1950s-era television set. But inside are not old-fashioned vacuum tubes but the stuff of 21st-century high-tech dreams dedicated to the marriage of art and science as it has never been done before, its creators say — 220,000 square feet of theaters, studios and work spaces hooked to supercomputers.
Read the story.
09/16/2008
Seeking the power to heal
Times Union
When researchers combined the anticoagulant drug heparin with cellulose, they came up with a membrane that could be used in kidney dialysis or other filtering applications. It was also a step toward developing what has become known as a 'paper battery,' basically the membrane strengthened with carbon nanotubes that, when folded over, could function as a capacitor or battery, once an electrolyte was added. Robert Linhardt, a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, credited students at the school with the observations that led to the device. Linhardt delivered the opening address at NanoBioTech 2008, a conference held Monday at RPI.
Read the story.
09/15/2008
Blues busters
The Edmonton Journal
To maximize the benefits of natural light, the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., suggests opening the blinds as wide as possible when you wake. If it's still dark, head for the brightest light in the house to boost your body's natural alarm clock. Natural light encourages the production of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that decreases aggression and improves mood. It also suppresses the production of melatonin, a hormone that makes us feel sleepy.
Read the story.
09/15/2008
The Capital Region makes, the world takes
Times Union
An artistic ferment is taking place at the grass-roots level. . . . The creative platforms of
the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at RPI and the Contemporary Arts Center at Woodside in Troy/Riverspark will soon network our region with the rest of the world. EMPAC, scheduled to open in October, is like no other performing arts center in the world. Its concert hall, theater and two studios are designed as first-class performance venues but they have supporting features that will attract artists, researchers, engineers and others from around the world to develop new artworks and innovations for the 21st century. The connection between arts and technology is happening at RPI in new and exciting ways. Troy is likely to become the Silicon Valley of arts, embracing a wide number emerging technologies that can be applied creatively.
Read the story.
09/11/2008
Nanotechnology coming soon to IMAX
ZDNet.com
This winter, nanotechnology will be coming to an IMAX theater near you. A 40-minute movie, ‘Molecules to the MAX,’ will start its career on giant screens. This movie has very peculiar characteristics. First, it has been produced at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) by the director of the university’s nanotechnology center. . . . At least, you can be sure that the screen appearances of the Oxy, Hydro, Hydra and other molecules will be scientifically accurate. And this new movie has used lots of computer time as it took 50 hours to render a frame in the high-definition IMAX format. With 24 frames per second, this represents almost 3 million hours of computer time — more that 300 years.
Read the story.
Read the Rensselaer news release.
09/10/2008
Interdisciplinary by design
Mechanical Engineering Magazine
Design is ubiquitous. Engineers, architects, and industrial designers all practice it, but who studies design — the verb, not just the noun? . . . In terms of valuing design, Dean Nieusma, assistant professor of science, technology, and society at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, stressed the importance of recognizing and understanding how power is manifested through disciplinarity when planning interdisciplinary endeavors. Since different knowledge domains grant different levels of authority to the various approaches to design, we must recognize and confront problems that can arise when striving for equal partnerships with disciplines where design is more marginalized (i.e., has less authority).
Read the story.
09/10/2008
Shining a light on how much light is too much light
R&D Magazine
Scientists in the Lighting Research Center (LRC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed the first ever comprehensive method for predicting and measuring various aspects of light pollution. The method, called Outdoor Site-Lighting Performance (OSP), allows users to quantify — and thus optimize — the performance of existing and planned lighting designs and applications to minimize excessive or obtrusive light leaving the boundaries of a property. Until now the conversation about light pollution has been just that — a lot of talk with no data, says Mark Rea, LRC director and principal investigator on the project.
Read the story.
Read the Rensselaer news release.
09/08/2008
Energy action plan for the next president
Minnesota Public Radio
Shirley Ann Jackson, President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Vice Chair of the Council on Competitiveness, will speak before a live audience at the National Press Club about an energy action plan for the next president, which includes ideas about how the U.S. can reach energy security, stimulate job growth and protect the environment.
Listen to the broadcast.
Read the Rensselaer news release.
09/08/2008
A mind of its own
Times Union
Unlike most 4-year-olds, Edd Hifeng is, to be honest, pretty dull. He's not much for conversation, and he doesn't play, giggle, sing or daydream. But to those eager for the day when artificial intelligence is more than a topic for far-fetched movies, young Edd is fascinating indeed. See, Edd is an invention of researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He thinks like a 4-year-old boy, at least in some respects, but he's not a 4-year-old boy. He's a virtual child with reasoning ability — and he's a noteworthy advance toward the development of real artificial intelligence. "He's a step toward this kind of dream," said Selmer Bringsjord, director of the Rensselaer Artificial Intelligence and Reasoning Lab. "But not the first step."
Read the story.
Read the Rensselaer news release.
