Aug. 18, 2008


CAMPUS NEWS

Osher Foundation endows $2 million to RIT
The Bernard Osher Foundation has given $2 million to the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at RIT and the Reentry Scholars Program in the Center for Multidisciplinary Studies.

RIT launches doctoral program in astrophysical sciences and technology
RIT will begin a Ph.D. program in astrophysical sciences and technology this fall. The university's fifth doctoral program brings together scientists from various disciplines within the College of Science.

'Futurist' kicks off Gannett Project lectures
Ray Kurzweil, inventor, futurist and innovator in the development of artificial intelligence and radical life extension, begins the 2008-2009 Caroline Werner Gannet Project Sept. 17 with his presentation, "The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology."

Economist examines tension between sustainability and environmental policies
In his new book, Dynamic and Stochastic Approaches to the Environment and Economic Development, Amit Batabyal, RIT's Arthur J. Gosnell Professor of Economics, explores the environmental policies of developing countries.

More News & Events

For additional updates, visit the Dateline: RIT Web site and Dateline: RIT Facebook Group.


PHOTO GALLERY

RIT trustees 'go west'


RIT IN THE NEWS

Highlights of media coverage of RIT news and RIT people in the news. For more RIT In the News, visit the University News Web site.

Click "Text" or scroll down to read story | Click "View Clip" to go to media outlet's Web site

Selected stories Aug. 1-16, 2008):

Henrietta, N.Y. - When Stefi Baum was a little girl, her father, a mathematician, would have her solve calculus problems at the dinner table, but she didn't mind — too much.

Her mother, in turn, sent her to electronics classes at Princeton University. Little did her parents know how much these choices would influence the rest of her life.

Baum, 49, of Pittsford, helped develop the Hubble telescope and is now the director of Rochester Institute of Technology's Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science and co-chair of the new Astrophysical Sciences and Technology graduate program.

She is one of only four women out of about 40 people in these programs. Baum has balanced a successful career inside and outside academia with the domestic demands of being the mother of four children.

No one talks about it much, but if you're a woman scientist, you're faced with it everyday — the challenge of being a serious scientist and an ideal mother. Those who haven't made the choice must decide what they can live with — foregoing motherhood for a career in science or a career in science for motherhood, or finding a way to meld the two, which is what Baum has done.

“Time is your biggest enemy,” said Baum. “Trying to set aside enough time for both family and work takes a lot of practice.”

Baum contributed her insights in her essay, “The Accidental Astronomer,” detailing the career and family choices she made at the outset of her career in the 1980s.

Baum's essay is one of a collection published in the book, “Motherhood, the Elephant in the Laboratory: Women Scientists Speak Out.” In the book, Baum and 33 other “mother-scientists” share their stories and insights on achieving balance and defining success.

In her essay, Baum reflects on timing her pregnancies “so as not to be visibly pregnant” during her early job interviews — giving birth to her first child in a small village in Holland while on a joint post-doctoral fellowship with her husband at the Netherlands Foundation for Radio Astronomy. She returned to work only one week after having her first son.

“Critical to being able to juggle a scientific career and a young family was having the perfect collaborator — a husband who shared all aspects with me from scientific discovery to baby trips to the doctor,” Baum said.

Her husband, Chris O'Dea, is also an accomplished astronomer and a physics professor at RIT.
Prior to joining RIT, Baum worked at the Space Telescope Science Institute, researching galaxies and developing the Hubble Space Telescope. She eventually headed the engineering division supporting the Hubble ground systems and supervised 140 engineers, scientists and support staff.

“It was a male-dominated environment when I first arrived there,” Baum writes. “I remember clearly how all astronomers were spoken of as ‘he' and never ‘she.' And there were no family leave policies or tenure-clock-stop policies at the time to support young scientists and engineers as they started families.”

Baum also lead the team that worked on a new instrument to be placed on Hubble called the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph. Baum and her husband took the family to Cape Canaveral, Fla., to watch the launch of the shuttle carrying the instrument Baum had helped develop.

As director of the Center for Imaging Science, Baum has sought ways to increase the representation of girls in science and women in academia. She started a series of annual programs with the Girl Scouts of Genesee Valley through the center to encourage young girls to get involved in science.

For many years, Maria Helguera was the only woman faculty member at the Center for Imaging Science Center and said when Baum joined the center, it was like a breeze of fresh air.

“Stefi is a very compassionate person — ready to listen to each and everyone of us and accommodate our needs,” said Helguera. “She has an unending reservoir of energy and was able to stamp her particular leadership style pretty soon after she joined the Center.”

Helguera said even with all the responsibilities that being the director of the center implies, Baum is an excellent mother, a great cook and always has a smile on her face, approaching everything with humor.

“I'm a single mom and like Stefi, I understand the extra effort that is required to carry on with our academic duties while helping our kids to grow up and be responsible citizens,” said Helguera. “I'm not sure this is something that our male colleagues understand fully.”

Copyright © 2008 GateHouse Media Inc.

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SILICON OASIS FOUNDED: One of the latest entrants in the race of U.S. colleges and universities to start new campuses in the Middle East is the Rochester Institute of Technology, which has created a new institution, RIT Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.

The project is the brainchild of Mustafa A.G. Abushagur, 57, director of the institute's microsystems-engineering program, who has been named the first president of the new campus.

RIT Dubai will be a central element in the Dubai Silicon Oasis, a technology park that will focus on microelectronics and semiconductor research.

Mr. Abushagur says that he had the idea for the new campus three years ago, when he heard that the UAE was creating the center.

"Immediately, I thought, If they want to get into this industry, these people will need training," he recalls. "And [RIT] has the only undergraduate degree in microelectronics manufacturing. So clearly we are in a position to help them train their people."

A late start in announcing the opening and the need to build housing for students mean that the campus may not hit its initial goal of 100 students, he says. "If we make 50," he adds, "we'll be happy."

Before arriving at RIT, Mr. Abushagur was a professor of electrical and computer engineering and a professor of optical science and engineering at the University of Alabama at Huntsville. He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology.

http://chronicle.com
Section: The Faculty
Volume 54, Issue 49, Page A18

Copyright © 2008 by The Chronicle of Higher Education

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Back in the early 1990s, Christopher Klamm took a course at Mohawk Valley Community College that, little did he know then, would set his career in motion.

The course was desktop publishing, and it taught Klamm how to design logos, calendars and a bunch of other things -- all on a computer.

Until then, Klamm's college studies in graphic design focused on the traditional way of drawing things -- by hand.

"I kind of realized that computers were going to take over," said Klamm, now director of production for the Syracuse office of San Francisco-based Page 44 Studios, a video game maker. "I said, "All right, I want to do this. I want to get into these computers.'"

Not only did that course help to launch Klamm into the business of video game production, it started what the managers of the Syracuse Technology Garden hope will launch a video game industry in Syracuse.

Page 44 Studios' Syracuse office opened in October in the Tech Garden, a downtown incubator operated by the Greater Syracuse Chamber of Commerce for technology startups.

Paul Brooks, executive director of the facility, said it accepted Page 44 Studios as a tenant because of the potential for launching Syracuse as place for companies to make video games.

"We're hoping this will be the beginning of a cluster of video game developers," said Brooks. "Video games are a $1.5 billion business in retail sales. It is a big business."

Cornell University in Ithaca and the Rochester Institute of Technology offer courses on video game production, so a talent pool exists Upstate for the industry, Brooks said. And Syracuse's lower cost of living in comparison to cities such as San Francisco make it a good business proposition, he said.

Klamm, 34, a 1991 West Genesee High School graduate, headed off to California after graduating from Mohawk Valley Community College in 1993 and began further studies in graphic and digital design at the Academy of Art in San Francisco.

An internship with Sega led to a full-time job as a production artist for the video game maker. He later went to work for Radical Entertainment, another game maker, and in 1999 joined a new company, Page 44 Studios.

California is the capital of video game production in the United States, and that was the place for Klamm to start his career. At Page 44 Studios, he has been able to work on major game titles for Wii, PlayStation 2, PSP and other game consoles. The games include "Gretzky NHL '06" and "Gretzky NHL 2005," "The Godfather," "Freekstyle" and "Tony Hawk's Proving Ground."

As a digital artist, Klamm creates the three-dimensional modeling of the characters in the games -- the look, colors, clothing, hair and textures that make characters look like real people.

Though he loved San Francisco, Klamm said he and his wife, Christine, a 1994 graduate of West Genesee High, decided in 2003 they wanted to move back to Central New York to be closer to family. Page 44 Studios agreed to let him work from home in Syracuse.

"I love it there, but it's just too expensive," he said of San Francisco.

After working out of his house for four years, Klamm subleased office space in the Delavan Center on West Fayette Street in February last year and hired two employees to work with him. He moved to the Technology Garden in October after deciding the studio needed its own office.

Klamm and his staff have spent most of this year working on another major video game title, "High School Musical 3 Senior Dance!", which is scheduled to be released in October to coincide with the theatrical release of Disney's "High School Musical 3: Senior Year" movie.

Page 44 Studios created the game for Disney. It will be available for Wii, PlayStation 2, Xbox 360 and PSP consoles.

Klamm and his staff did much of the 3-D modeling for the game's characters, which include all the major characters in the upcoming movie and characters that players of the game can create using the game's built-in menu. Players, using their console's controls, get to dance with the game's characters to songs from all three "High School Musical" movies.

"I think everyone from Disney on down is really happy about it," Klamm said of the game.

Klamm said he's hoping to grow the studio's work in Syracuse. One challenge he has run into is finding enough skilled digital artists. "My goal is to bring more work to this office," he said. "I want to continue to live in Syracuse, and I'm going to do whatever it takes to do that."

Copyright © 2008 The Post-Standard

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The creators of digsby - the instant messaging organizer with the little green mascot - are working on a new version of the online communication software that has met with a flurry of encouraging reviews since its test release to the public in March.

The application is the product of dotSyntax LLC, a company created in the Rochester Institute of Technology business incubator by graduate student Steven Shapiro. It is designed to allow users to access and manage multiple instant messaging, e-mail and social network communications through one interface.

With the expansion in the number of instant message providers, social networks and the use of e-mail communications, digsby is getting attention by computer tech bloggers and writers on the Internet.

'I think we have hit on something here,' Shapiro said. 'The reviews have been 99 percent positive.'

Digsby was featured with similar programs Meebo and Adium in a column last week by technology writer Katherine Boehret in The Wall Street Journal.

'These consolidated communication programs saved me many extra clicks on my computer over a weekend, and I easily chatted with friends while checking messages,' she wrote about digsby.

Digsby is still in the testing stage. The program is a free download off the company's Web site (www.digsby.com) and plans about how to turn a profit from the application have not been announced.

Shapiro said his team, made up of RIT students, is working to improve the program. A new version is expected that addresses bugs and problems. One complaint is that digsby uses too much RAM. Another issue is connecting to some networks through restrictive firewalls.

The new version of digsby will address these problems, Shapiro said.

'After a blazing fast release cycle right after launch, where we pushed new builds weekly, we decided to take the time to really solidify the product,' he said. 'We've been working a lot of late nights and weekends.'

Copyright © 2008 Rochester Democrat & Chronicle

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ROCHESTER, N.Y., Aug. 11 (UPI) -- A U.S. study foresees robots as improving both the quality and flexibility of the lives of people with disabilities that affect the use of their limbs.

The robotics engineering research, sponsored by The National Science Foundation, utilized physiological information -- called bio-signals -- produced by the human body to improve external assistive devices called orthoses that help stroke or spinal cord injury patients regain the use of their arms and legs.

'The data collected through this project will assist designers and engineers in developing more sophisticated assistive aids for individuals suffering from various neuromuscular diseases and musculoskeletal injuries,' said Rochester Institute of Technology Assistant Professor Edward Brown.

He said a robotic orthosis can take advantage of an individual's residual strength and any remaining physiological information in their limbs, such as an electromyographic signal produced in muscles. That could ultimately assist muscular dystrophy patients in regaining significant use of there limbs.

'Better orthotic technologies could ultimately help people suffering from this disease (to) greatly enhance the quality of their life,' Brown says.

The project also included scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Georgetown University.

Copyright © United Press International Inc.

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WASHINGTON -- As the fall semester beckons and financial aid from parents and the government runs dry, more college students are turning to credit cards to pay not only for their textbooks, meals and transportation but also for tuition.

A recent survey by U.S. Public Interest Research Groups found that two-thirds of college students have at least one card, 70 percent pay their own monthly bills and 24 percent have used their cards to help pay tuition.

That helps explain why the average survey respondent will graduate with more than $2,600 in credit-card debt, and those with student loans will owe nearly $3,000.

Andrew Kunka charged $4,000 to his credit card several years ago to help pay tuition at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Now a first-year law student at Rutgers University's Newark, N.J., campus, Kunka struggles to make the minimum payment on the card, which is nearly maxed out.

''I feel like credit-card companies target us because we really have no financial awareness,'' said Kunka, 22. ''We're barely out of our homes, barely having experiences as adults, and they throw these things at us and they don't make you aware of what you're signing into.''

In recent congressional testimony, a card industry representative said stories such as Kunka's were aberrations and that two out of three students paid their card balances in full each month.

MARKETING TACTICS

However, concern about college students' credit-card debt has led regulators, lawmakers and consumer advocates to question whether schools are making it too easy for companies to market their plastic to students.

Of particular concern are exclusive agreements in which card companies and banks pay millions of dollars to schools or alumni associations for preferential treatment with their card-marketing efforts. The perks can include prime marketing space in high-traffic areas on campus or the use of a school's name and logo on their cards.

Three hundred of the nation's largest universities collectively pocket more than $1 billion a year on these marketing deals, said Robert D. Manning, the director of the Center for Consumer Financial Services at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, N.Y.

The New York Attorney General's Office is investigating the practice nationally, but Benjamin Lawsky, a deputy counselor with that office, provided few details of the probe in recent congressional testimony.

''I think when those provisions in these agreements become public, sometime relatively soon, I think it will shock many people, the kinds of relationships that some of these credit-card companies have with the schools,'' Lawsky testified.

The agreements are usually confidential and often require the school to provide students' personal contact information, such as phone numbers, e-mail addresses and home addresses.

This can lead to a deluge of card offers. While most issuers frown on applicants with shallow earnings and sparse credit histories, college students with similar attributes are coveted as potential long-term customers whose earnings will increase with time.

So students face aggressive card promotions on campus, where they're vulnerable to a host of marketing tactics.

One company offered free rides in a bicycle taxi if students watched a video pitch for its credit cards. Others set up tables around campus and offer free T-shirts, movie rentals, music downloads, Frisbees and even food if students fill out applications.

TOO TEMPTING?

Experts say these temptations can make an already difficult decision even harder for young adults with little financial know-how.

''It's practically impossible to be a decent consumer and have a normal thought process when you're staring at a steaming hot piece of pizza,'' said Christine Lindstrom, the higher education program director with U.S. Public Interest Research Groups.

John Velasco never had such conflicts. Velasco, 22, was a sophomore at West Virginia University when ads drew him to a promotion offering pizza to students who took part in a five-minute survey. ''The [ads] never said a word about credit cards,'' Velasco recalled.

It wasn't until he reached the front of a long line that he realized that the ''survey'' was a credit-card application, and he couldn't get pizza unless he filled it out.

'I said, 'No way.' I'm not going for that. It was ridiculous,'' said Velasco, who now attends State University of New York's Albany campus. '

ACTING RESPONSIBLY'

Card industry representatives say most college students share Velasco's discerning judgment.

''Certainly there are examples of students who took on more debt than they were ultimately able to manage, but in the vast majority of cases, students are acting responsibly in meeting their obligations,'' said Kenneth Clayton, senior vice president of the card policy council of the American Bankers Association.

In testimony before Congress, Clayton said credit cards helped cash-strapped students stay in school, build credit histories and provide a safety net in emergencies. He said that imposing new restrictions on marketing cards to college students would hurt many responsible students who need them.

Besides the two-thirds of college cardholders who pay their balances in full each month, the rest keep an average balance of $452, down from $559 last year, according to a recent survey of students by Student Monitor, a market research firm.

The survey found that the number of students with credit cards in their names is declining because of increasing use of debit and ATM cards, that more than half of respondents had cards before college and that 82 percent thought they were responsible enough to have cards.

But 42 percent said they needed more credit education from their first card issuers.

Copyright © 2008 The Miami Herald Company

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After more than 20 years of repairing and servicing Apple Macintosh computers as an employee of various technology businesses, Christine Cormack decided to go into business for herself as an authorized service provider.

Cormack admitted that the idea of being her own boss worried her a little. She was concerned about the income she would earn and whether she would have time for her 8-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son.

She prepared a business plan and sought advice from friends and family, including her older sister, Carolyn 'Carrie' Perry, who runs Creative Plastics, a sign-making company founded by their late father.

'The encouragement from everyone gave me the confidence,' said the 41-year-old Rochester resident.

In January 2007, after receiving certification from Apple, Cormack opened CoreMac, at 129 Liberty Pole Way in downtown Rochester.

'I learned a lot in college, but nothing compares to the hands-on experience,' said Cormack, who earned an associate's degree in computer science from Rochester Institute of Technology's School of Applied Industrial Studies.

Her first job was at the former Leon's Typewriter and Supply, followed by jobs at several technology retailers and service companies where she repaired Apple and Windows machines.

CoreMac's customer base includes businesses, schools and individuals, many of whom knew Cormack from her days of providing Mac support at other companies. She declined to disclose annual sales.

For now, CoreMac is a one-person operation. Perry, Cormack's sister, whose business is located next door, helps out when customers drop off or pick up computers while Cormack is on a service call. During the first two quarters of this year, Apple recognized Cormack for providing outstanding customer service and support.

Cormack is a critical support person at RIT's College of Imaging Arts and Sciences, according to Bob Fleck, lead systems administrator.

Fleck said Cormack provides support for more than 750 Macintosh personal computers used by videographers, photographers, graphic designers and print staff.

When a faculty member's laptop needs repair, Fleck said Cormack expedites the service. 'She understands the critical nature of our business. She has a proven track record.'

Copyright © 2008 Rochester Democrat & Chronicle

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Last November, Luke Stodola, 22, started Small World Bakery with nothing more than the desire to bake quality, whole-grain bread made from healthful, local ingredients.

Not that Stodola had much experience. A graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology with a bachelor's in Applied Art and Science, Stodola had been paying the bills doing roofing jobs and working at a coffee shop.

But Stodola, who has lived at the Ant Hill Cooperative, a shared house, for two years, had grown increasingly interested in learning about bread and trying out different recipes on his housemates.

Now, Stodola's organic, artisan bakery is operating out of his home in Rochester. By selling freshly baked bread at local farmers markets and making custom deliveries, Small World is cultivating a following.

Stodola founded the bakery as a worker collective. Everyone who works there owns equal shares in the company, and decisions are made democratically.

'Everybody contributes what they know,' Stodola said. 'So if somebody has no experience at all, then people here will train them, but sometimes people come with more experience than us.'

Knowing he couldn't reach his goals alone, Stodola first began baking with two friends of his. The group rented the kitchen at New Health Cafe at 133 Gregory St., where they could bake at night when the kitchen wasn't in use. But soon, the group began purchasing used equipment to create a bakery in one of the cooperative's two houses.

The more efficiently each individual works, the bigger their paychecks will be. Most of the bakers are just passing through Rochester or are students home for a break.

'Part of our goal is to spread good baking, even if it's not at our bakery,' he said. 'I think it's beginning to stabilize a little bit, but I think we're always going to have people that are home for the summer from college that want to help out, and ... it's still worth having them.'

There are generally seven bakers in a given month. Stodola meets most of them at farmers markets, and nearly all of them have other jobs.

The bakers sell up to 100 loaves of bread a day, and any leftovers get made into bread pudding. So far, Small World has made $13,000 in sales. Stodola does odd jobs on the side, but said the bakery is enough to cover his living expenses.

Two of the markets Small World sells at are the Westside Farmers Market at St. Monica's Church and the South Wedge Farmers Market in Rochester.

Both are run by South Wedge residents Chris and Vicki Hartman. Vicki Hartman said she is impressed with Stodola's ideals, and the way his business has grown so far:

'Success for Luke right now is getting people to eat really high-quality, local food that's made with a lot of love and care.'

Copyright © 2008 Rochester Democrat & Chronicle

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While some students were grossed out by the thought of dissecting a cows eyeball, Casey Analco donned safety glasses, rubber gloves and an apron to take a closer look at how the organ works.

Analco, 17, from Indiana, was among hundreds of deaf and hard-of-hearing students from 40 states and Canada learning at the Explore Your Future career exploration camp at Rochester Institute of Technologys National Technical Institute for the Deaf.

We want them to make friends and meet people like themselves, said Heather Emerson Jeremy, assistant director of Pre-College Outreach for NTID. Sometimes they might feel like they are the only ones like them but they are not. Many of the students will end up applying to RIT/NTID for college.

Students are divided into groups of eight or 10 with others who share their communication preferences. Some only use sign language. Others dont know sign language and use their voices to speak. Others use a combination. Interpreters and captionists make sure all events are accessible.

During the Explore camp, students take a hands-on approach to find out a little bit about themselves and what careers might interest them. They took personality tests to discover if they are introverts or extroverts, whether they prefer working alone or with other people, and participated in class activities such as writing a business plan for a lemonade stand, making telescopes and examining that cow eye.

The purpose of many of these activities, including making a telescope and dissecting an eyeball, is not only to see if the students are interested in a particular career field but also to get them to understand just how an eye works, said RIT/NTID science instructor Dr. Robert Nutt.

Sight is very important to a deaf or hard-of-hearing person and by showing students how a cows eye functions, they can relate that information to their own physiology.

Isaac Olvey, 18, also from Indiana, enjoyed the dissection.

It was very interesting to see the inside of an eyeball, he said. Its very complex once you get past the surface.

Laura Kieliszak, 15, of Irondequoit, said she has dissected a worm but called the eyeball dissection a little bit disgusting.

Being a scientist isnt top on her list of career choices. Laura, a two-time Odyssey of the Mind world champion, enjoys making things with her hands.

I might want to open up a bakery, she said. I like making brownies.

Danica Metlay, 16, of Rochester, wants to attend RIT after she graduates high school to major in business or hospitality management. Her career goal is to be a wedding planner

This has been a lot of fun, said Metlay. You can really find activities that fit your personality and interests.

Daniel Andrews, a second-year student at RIT/NTID, attended the Explore camp when he was in high school in Missouri City, Texas, where he was the only deaf student in his school. Today, hes working as an orientation assistant during the Explore camp. He sees himself in a lot of the students.

When I first came to EYF, I wanted to make friends I wanted to have fun, he said. I wanted to pick up signs that I didnt know before.

Andrews ended up making lasting friendships during his experience and encourages todays students to do the same. He even has some advice to offer: Remember to keep a balance with academic and social life. Choose your dream and do the best you can.

Copyright © 2008 GateHouse Media Inc.

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Like many middle schoolers, participants in the local TechGirlz Camp spent part of Wednesday morning tweaking their MySpace pages and watching videos on YouTube.

Unlike most of their peers, these young women were using computers that they had built themselves.

Building a PC tower is one of the science and technology related activities planned for the 20 young women who are attending TechGirlz Camp, which is sponsored by the Rochester Institute of Technology's National Technical Institute for the Deaf. The week-long residential program is open to seventh-, eighth- and ninth-graders and has attracted participants who are hearing-impaired from around the country.

The camp is in its third year. 'We want to have them see the options that are open for girls, especially with hearing loss,' said Heather Emerson Jeremy, assistant director of pre-college outreach for NTID.

Cortney Sawyer, 13, said she's having a good time. She came from Swan Lake, Sullivan County. 'There are a lot of activities I like,' said Cortney, who is considering being a scientist, and also an archeologist, fashion designer and horseback rider.

Jasmine Simmons, 14, came from Pickerington, Ohio, and said the camp offered her her first opportunity to build a computer. 'It's confusing, but it's fun,' she said.

Brian Trager, a member of the information and computing studies faculty at NTID, helped the young women install Windows programs and security and anti-virus software on their computers. 'It's a good experience for them,' he said. 'They're very excited to see whether their computers work.'

Activities include workshops on polymerase chain reaction and microbiology, Web page building and a deaf women professional panel. Classes are taught in English and in sign language.

Elissa Olsen, the NTID department chairperson for Information and Computing Studies, noted that such camps were not available when she was growing up as a young deaf woman in Wisconsin. She hopes the young women go home with a sense that they can succeed in traditionally male dominated fields. 'Girls can do anything,' she said. 'It's OK to be interested in math and technology.

Copyright © 2008 Rochester Democrat & Chronicle

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A San Francisco-based startup called 12seconds is a video version of Twitter, but how useful will it be?

In late July, a startup called 12seconds launched an early version of a product that lets people publicly post 12-second-long videos on the Internet about what they are doing. Using a Web camera or a cell-phone video camera, people record themselves doing anything--watching a football game at a bar, telling jokes, buying new shoes, playing with their child--and can upload it immediately to the Web, where others who subscribe to their videos get the update.

12seconds borrows heavily from the concepts of Twitter, an increasingly popular tool for so-called microblogging, in which people write pithy, 140-character updates on the status of their daily lives. A posted 'tweet' can be published on Twitter's main page and sent directly to people who are following the person who posted. While initially laughed off as a waste of time, Twitter, founded in 2006, has slowly been gaining traction as more and more people and companies are finding it a useful way to quickly share information with a broad audience.

'Microblogging is really starting to take off,' says Sol Lipman, founder of 12seconds. But in some instances, he says, short text updates just aren't as compelling as video. 'I think video as a medium is significantly more engaging than text,' Lipman notes. 'If I'm at the bar with my friends, I want to show us having fun at the bar, not just text it.'

The startup, based in San Francisco, was founded about five months ago and has no outside funding. Its ranks fluctuate between seven and ten people, depending on the workload, and about five of those employees work part time, says Lipman. 12seconds launched its "alpha" version of the product (alpha versions typically have fewer features than beta versions) on July 24, by providing four popular blogs, including TechCrunch, with 500 invitations to give out to their readers. Those invitations were snapped up quickly, says Lipman, leading to 7000 video uploads in just the first few days. In the coming weeks, the company will dole out additional invitations to the long queue of people turned away from the first round.

It's unsurprising that 12seconds has had such immediate small-scale success. Millions of people use Twitter, and many of them are interested in testing out new ways to update their status. Liz Lawley, a Twitter user and director of the Lab of Social Computing at Rochester Institute of Technology, says that she has seen a growing number of Twitter posts with links to 12seconds videos.

"I find it intriguing . . . I love the idea of enforced constraints," Lawley says, referring to the 140-character limit on Twitter and the 12-second limit on 12seconds. "I think constraints bring out wonderful creativity. Without constraints, what we do and think isn't as interesting."

But, Lawley notes, video microblogging isn't necessarily the next phase of microblogging. 12seconds suffers from the same problem that has kept video blogs from usurping the popularity of text blogs: it simply takes too long to get to the point. Lawley says that she can scan a page of 25 tweets in about six seconds and have a good idea of what they're about. Additionally, she can scan tweets while she's occupied with other tasks, such as sitting in a meeting or attending a talk at a conference. Video, however, requires that a viewer focus her aural and visual attention, and it's impossible to quickly scan large numbers of videos. "This is where video and audio really fall apart," Lawley says. "That 12 seconds is much more of a commitment. It's something we might be willing to do for our most intimate ties, but it's unscalable."

Lipman hopes that the early interest in 12seconds will translate into continued growth for the company. In the coming weeks, 12seconds will offer software that will let outside programmers build applications using its technology. Allowing programmers to use its platform is one of the important reasons that Twitter caught on as it has: the more people write programs for the service, the more visible it becomes. And visibility leads to more users, which is the name of the game in the social Web industry.

Another lesson learned from Twitter, says Lipman, is to be aware, from the beginning, of the challenges of adding more users to the service. Over the past year, Twitter's service has crashed innumerable times. One of the culprits is the programming language in which it was written, Ruby on Rails--it simply isn't designed to operate the large-scale e-scale communication infrastructure that Twitter has become. Lipman says that his team has picked a different programming language that scales well for the application that 12seconds intends, but this still doesn't mean that the service will be without its hiccups. "That's why we have this alpha stage," he says. "As we're going through this, we're watching what causes problems."

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The 750 tons of radioactive sludge that Waste Management agreed to accept at its local municipal landfills would expose the public to less radiation annually than watching TV, according to a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission assessment.

Workers who remove and transport the contaminated material from a Montgomery County wastewater treatment plant face a potential maximum exposure that is less than the standard chest X-ray - the same exposure level if the sludge remains at the plant property, according to the agency.

But are those exposure levels safe? The scientific evidence is unclear about potential health risks associated with small doses of ionized radiation, health and environmental radiation experts say.

Some experts say the general public does not understand that radiation and radioactivity are found in nature, we're constantly exposed to them and our biochemistry can repair DNA damage that radiation causes.

"People start thinking of the Hulk or Spider-Man and mutant babies," said Andrew Karam, health physicist and radiation safety expert at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. "I think part of it is people know radiation comes from nuclear bombs."

Others, though, argue that national and international studies suggest there is no such thing as a safe radiation dose and additional exposure no matter how small increases health risks.

Concerns about radiation safety recently emerged after it was revealed Waste Management received state approval to accept sludge contaminated from cobalt-60 and cesium-137 at its landfills in Tullytown and Falls. The company has since suspended its plans to accept the waste.

The radioactive material is located on the Royersford wastewater plant property, where it ended up after it was released in wastewater from a local laundromat that is NRC licensed to treat the uniforms of nuclear plant workers.

The NRC did the exposure risk analysis last year at the request of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, which outlined three possible scenarios involving the contaminated material.

RISK STANDARD

The federal agency estimated the maximum annual radiation emissions for the public and workers would be less than 10 millirem (a unit of absorbed radiation) if the contaminated sludge remains at the Royersford site, less than11 millirem if it's removed and transported and less than 1 millirem if it's disposed of in an industrial landfill.

Federal law requires that low-level radioactive waste be disposed of in one of three NRC-designated landfills, located in Washington, Utah and South Carolina. These centers are designed, operated and controlled after closure so the public is not exposed to more than 25 millirem of radioactivity annually, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, which handles radiation disposal issues.

But the Royersford waste plant is not NRC licensed as accepting radioactive materials. That means the NRC and the DEP, which in March assumed oversight responsibility for the state's low-level radioactive waste material, have no jurisdiction. Royersford is solely responsible for the sludge and it's not required to dispose of it in an NRC-regulated low-level radiation landfill, DEP director of radiation protection David Allard said.

Moreover, since the sludge was technically generated at an unlicensed treatment plant, legally it is not considered low-level radioactive waste, which would automatically subject it to the stringent federal disposal requirements, Allard and Neil Sheehan, spokesman for the NRC, said.

The reason, Allard explained, is the laundromat wastewater met acceptable radiation concentration levels when it was released into the public sewer system, but the radioactive material accumulated and reconcentrated at the treatment plant.

Nonetheless, Sheehan and Allard insist the NRC evaluations of residual radioactivity in the Royersford sludge poses no public health risk. "Regulatory insignificant" is the way Sheehan described it.

"You'd probably get more [exposure] from your granite kitchen countertop," Allard added.

The annual maximum exposure limit for someone living next to a nuclear power plant is 100 millirem, Sheehan said; he added that recent testing outside a Vermont nuclear power plant revealed radiation emissions at 18 millirem.

Allard added that the DEP doesn't plan to conduct ongoing monitoring of the sludge if it is disposed in a regular landfill such as Waste Management's, since the emission would not pose a potential health hazard.

LANDFILLS COMMON DISPOSAL SITE

While municipal landfills are forbidden from accepting low-level radioactivity waste, in reality radioactive materials end up in landfills all the time, said Karam, also a member of the Health Physics Society, which specializes in radiation safety.

Federal low-level radiation disposal laws were developed to describe manmade radioactivity at a nuclear power plant, but the laws failed to realize the possibility of a low concentration of radiation that doesn't present a health or safety hazard, Karam explained.

"It would be like requiring us to throw away our banana peels, unused orange juice or salt substitute as radioactive waste," he explained. "It makes little sense to regulate something that is less radioactive than a banana or kitty litter; doing so only forces people to pay a ton of money to dispose of something that poses no risk to anyone."

The average American's annual radiation exposure is about 360 millirem. Roughly 300 millirem come from natural sources of radiation, and 60 millirem come from manmade sources, according to experts.

But the only documented scientific evidence of radiation harm involves exposures of 5,000 millirem in a matter of seconds or minutes, not over the course of a year or a lifetime, experts said. With smaller doses, accurately projecting long-term health effects are less clear.

Take the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reaction accident, the worst in history, Karam said. Initially scientists estimated that as many as 10,000 people would die of a result of radiation exposure, but 20 years later there have been only 56 deaths from thyroid cancer or radiation sickness.

Long-established radiation dose assessment models suggest a 10,000-millirem radiation exposure (one-time or cumulative) increases the lifetime cancer risk about a half-percent, Karam said.

"I can't worry about something that low," he added. "It is not until we get to fairly high levels of exposure that we really have to be concerned about the health effects. I feel very safe in saying that 1 millirem yearly is not going to hurt anybody at any time."

But Judith Johnsrud doesn't believe it. She is an expert in the geography of nuclear energy and a member of the Sierra Club's National Nuclear Waste Task Force.

She contends that evidence shows any exposure to radiation carries an increased health risk for leukemia, latent cancers and heart disease as well as genetic damage. The risk increases with more exposures.

In the 1990s, the National Academy of Science published a report that concluded there is no safe radiation dose, Johnsrud said. A 2005 International Radiation Commission report reached the same conclusion.

"The industry always seems willing and able to deny that this has anything to do with the presence of a nuclear facility because the [exposure levels] are too small to be valid," she added.

Did you know?

Gamma radiation, which is admitted by cobalt-60 and cesium-137, is highly penetrating electromagnetic radiation able to travel many feet in the air and many inches in human tissue.

The size or weight of a quantity of material does not indicate how much radioactivity is present. A large quantity of material can contain a very small amount of radioactivity, or a very small amount of material can have a lot of radioactivity.

Like alcohol intoxication levels, levels of exposure to radioactivity (due to radioactivity deposited in the body) depend on a person's weight. Heavier people absorb less radiation than thinner people, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Web site.

Copyright © 2008 Calkins Media Inc.

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A BLACK hole ejected from its host galaxy could be detected by bright flares emitted by a retinue of captured stars.

When two supermassive black holes collide, one or both may be hurled from the centre of the galaxy. Some such "recoiling" black holes can be detected by their accretion discs of swirling, glowing hot gas.

However, most black holes are stripped of their accretion discs as they are thrown into exile. And even if they keep their discs, the black holes can consume them within tens of millions of years, leaving nothing behind but a naked, invisible black hole.

New calculations by David Merritt at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York and colleagues show that all recoiling black holes should be followed by a swarm of captured stars, and that some of these stellar escorts will be torn apart by the gravity of the black hole. These mangled stars should emit bright flares, mainly at X-ray wavelengths but also as ultraviolet and visible light. These beacons could be used to locate the black holes. The work will appear in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

© Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

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This fall, hundreds of Middle Eastern, South Asian and East Asian students will begin work on graduate degrees from Carnegie Mellon, Cornell Medical School, Georgetown, Northwestern, Texas A&M and Virginia Commonwealth University. Yet none will travel to the U.S. Instead, these eager young people will head for Qatar, to a brand-new complex called Education City.

Qatar is not the only Persian Gulf kingdom developing state-of-the-art campuses. In Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, a similar effort is under way. Shimmering in the desert heat, these new facilities hark back to the golden age of Islamic civilization, when the scholars of Damascus, Baghdad, Alexandria, Cairo and Cordoba translated ancient Greek and Persian texts while also blazing new paths in mathematics and science. Yet they also offer the gold standard of modernity: American higher education.

Funded entirely by their billionaire royal sponsors, these branch campuses promise the same quality of faculty and curricula as their universities do at home. Admirers claim that they will also become oases of free inquiry in a region still lacking some basic liberties. Skeptics wonder whether this can really happen, and some deride the new ventures as a mirage conjured by petrodollars and rhetorical hot air.

Wherever living standards are rising, higher education is seen as the key to middle-class status. So ever since 1995, when the GATS rules of the World Trade Organization defined 'educational goods and services' as a commodity, business has boomed in places like Dubai's Knowledge Village, a tax-free zone where more than 450 Australian, Belgian, Canadian, Indian, Iranian, Irish, Pakistani, Russian and British institutions, ranging from reputable universities to fly-by-night diploma mills, peddle their wares.

Knowledge Village boasts many brands, including the International Institute of Coffee and Barista Training (IICBT). But not many are American, doubtless because, unlike Hollywood moguls, who are content to see their products defined as commodities, American educators are divided on the issue. According to Philip Altbach, director of the Center for the Study of International Education at Boston College, for-profit entities (textbook publishers, testing services, distance learning companies) favor the GATS approach; but the educational establishment (accrediting organizations, unions, the majority of universities and colleges) reject the idea that education is a product and fear a loss of autonomy.

These fears are well understood by the emir of Dubai, Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Rather than ask Michigan State and the Rochester Institute of Technology to hang a shingle next to the IICBT, he's building a whole new complex for these and other respected institutions, called International Academic City. The reluctance of American universities to 'sell their name' is reflected in another Dubai undertaking: a Harvard-assisted medical training program in nearby Healthcare City. Significantly, this program will not be run by Harvard Medical School, but rather by Partners Harvard Medical International, a for-profit company that owns several Boston hospitals. And the word 'Harvard' will be dropped from that company's name in 2012.

By contrast, New York University is boldly launching a full-scale liberal-arts college in Abu Dhabi. In return for a $50 million gift from Abu Dhabi's crown prince, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, NYU will soon join the Sorbonne, the Guggenheim, the Louvre and several other distinguished institutions on Saadiyat Island, a $28 billion complex still under construction near Doha.

Will other universities follow NYU's example? Probably not. One reason may be the memory of a rush to establish branch campuses in Japan back in the 1980s, when the Japanese economy was soaring. Recalls Peggy Blumenthal, executive vice president of the Institute of International Education (IIE): 'The Japanese government sank a huge amount of money into a hundred or so campuses. But due to unrealistic expectations on both sides, only a couple were left standing a decade later.'

One unrealistic expectation was that all courses would be taught by Americans. 'The demand is great,' says IIE's president, Allen Goodman, 'and so is the need for faculty to know more about the rest of the world. But it is stunning how few are willing to go overseas, even for their own university.' Despite high salaries and perks, many faculty see overseas teaching as a risky step off the career ladder. Hence Mr. Goodman's admiration for Carnegie-Mellon and Texas A&M, which he says 'incentivize' it, and for NYU's Dr. Sexton, who 'is talking about sending every professor and student to Doha.' The question no one seems to be asking is what will happen if these incentives work, and American professors and students flock to these Gulf kingdoms. Will their presence enhance or diminish the luster of American higher education (and of America) in the region?

The first thing to note is the potential cultural clash. 'Emiratis are not fundamentalist,' says Abdulakhaleq Abdullah, a professor at Emirates University. 'But they are very guarded about their language, customs and families.' This guardedness, which is shared by the South and East Asian populations, enhances the appeal of branch campuses. If the permissiveness found at many colleges in the U.S. shocks American parents, how much more shocking must it be to Arabs and Asians? That's why many who can afford to send their children to study in America now prefer that they get the same education closer to home. Along with such oft-cited reasons as difficulty obtaining visas and fears of harassment, parents also cite the desirability of a campus where the sexes do not live together and there is zero tolerance for binge drinking and 'hooking up.'

The challenge for overseas branch campuses, then, is to distinguish between two kinds of freedom: the libertinism of American undergraduate life, in which too many students major in 'partying'; and the liberty of thought, inquiry and expression that makes American universities the envy of the world.

Despite political correctness and other restraints, it is still true (quoting David Waterbury, president of the American University of Beirut) that 'the word 'American' is to education what 'Swiss' is to watches.' Openness and critical thinking are deeply ingrained in U.S. higher education and contrast dramatically with foreign systems that still adhere to the medieval model of knowledge being poured from one vessel into another. Equally ingrained, and popular, is the American style of wielding authority: casual, approachable, eliciting questions and opinions rather than suppressing them.

Yet if the glittering new campuses of the Gulf are to become true centers of learning, we Americans must relearn, and try to teach, the difference between license and liberty. Otherwise our efforts and those of the branches' royal sponsors will founder in the sands of mutual misunderstanding.

Ms. Bayles's book about the global image of American culture will be published by Yale University Press next year.

Copyright © 2008 Dow Jones & Company Inc.

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Ron Hira and Margaret Bailey - Guest essayists

Technology has become the major driver of political, social and economic change. It is the key to solving, or aggravating, society's most pressing problems - global warming, national economic competitiveness, high-quality job growth, or national security.

Yet as a society we are not coming close to our potential in unleashing technology's upside, and harnessing its downsides, to make the world and our lives better. The culprit for not achieving our potential: an intellectual gulf between engineers who shape technology and policymakers who make the public decisions that affect societal and economic change.

Few people involved in making critical public policy decisions have any formal training in engineering.

Only 11 of the 535 members of Congress have engineering degrees. As a result of their techno-naivet, policymakers often have distorted views about what technology can and cannot realistically achieve.

Similarly, few engineers have any formal training in the policy process. So, engineers shaping the direction of technology often incorrectly see policymaking as an irrational process driven solely by ignorance and political influence.

However, by properly channeling the idealism of today's students, we can train new leaders who are just as comfortable with the fundamental concepts of thermodynamics as with identifying policy goals.

In response to a challenge issued by President Bill Destler, the Colleges of Engineering and Liberal Arts at the Rochester Institute of Technology developed an integrated program whereby students can receive a bachelor's degreee in mechanical engineering and a master's in science technology and public policy.

In this program, the first of its kind in the nation, an engineering and public policy class, for example, requires students to work in cross-disciplinary teams to study contemporary policy issues through case studies. In one case, students examined which alternative-fuel vehicle type warranted government support and subsidies.

The class produced ideas that may not have been possible in a single-discipline setting and allowed students and faculty greater understanding of how both engineers and policymakers approach a problem.

Given the success of our initial efforts, we believe the continued fusion of engineering and public policy is key to unlocking a better tomorrow.

Hira is assistant professor of public policy and Bailey is the Kate Gleason Endowed Chair and associate professor of mechanical engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology.

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