July 16, 2008


CAMPUS NEWS

RIT and Monroe County announce sustainability partnership
An alliance between Monroe County and the New York State Pollution Prevention Institute, part of RIT's Golisano Institute for Sustainability, will create a comprehensive sustainability program to guide the county in the pursuit of green initiatives.

U.S. National Research Council taps RIT professor for transportation study group
James Winebrake, professor of science, technology and society/public policy, has joined a committee of experts examining strategies and policies for reducing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. transportation sector.

RIT psychologist explores the power of hearsay
Rumor expert Nicholas DiFonzo, assistant professor of psychology, explores ideas about rumors in a new book, The Watercooler Effect: A Psychologist Explores the Extraordinary Power of Rumors, due out this September.

Peres honored for achievement in graphic communication
Michael Peres, professor of photographic arts and sciences, has received the Gitner Family Prize for Outstanding Professional Achievement in Graphic Communication, awarded annually to a faculty member from RIT's College of Imaging Arts and Sciences who makes outstanding contributions to his or her profession.

RIT alumnus describes discovery of 18th century Lake Ontario shipwreck
Dan Scoville celebrated Independence Day earlier than most. The Greece, N.Y., man and RIT alumnus last month found an 18th century shipwreck--and a relic of the Revolutionary War--in Lake Ontario.

More News & Events

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


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 (July 1-15, 2008):

Year 2020 to see end in decline of print runs

Renaissance for the small printer due to innovations in workflow and technology

Diminishing print runs forcing print industry to expand value-add services

Canon Europe launched its Insight Report: Digital Printing Directions at Drupa, an independent study into the future of Professional Print. Commissioned by Canon, the report was researched and written by Professor emeritus at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), Frank Romano, and a team of graduate students.

The report interviewed 600 printers globally, and looked at the professional print marketplace now, and in the future. A key finding was that digital printing looks set to lead the market by 2020, as it suits the continuing trend towards short-run volumes and print-on-demand. In addition, the report predicts good news for small print businesses, as they will undergo a renaissance due to advances in workflow and technology including an increased acceptance of Web-to-print technologies and hybrid workflows.

Not only that, but new, easy-to-operate machinery, investment in IT training and infrastructure, as well as hybrid workflow will lead to a mini revolution in the way that printers approach their craft. Copy shops and quick printers will, as a result, evolve their range of services to adapt to a new digital age, according to the key findings.

Not only is the year 2020 the era of digital, it is also significant as the year that print runs finally finish declining. This will settle as threats posed by global competition and electronic media, including the Internet, finally reach an end. Professional printers will see a stabilisation of the market, as the print volumes that can be substituted electronically will have been replaced by 2020. To date, some Western print companies have seen a decline of up to 40 per cent in print volumes in less than five years, due to global competition and 'new media' substitution that has eaten away at their traditional customer base.

Said Professor Romano, Not since the 1950s, when letterpress was first threatened by offset printing, has the industry faced such as radical shift in workflow processes and the traditional skills base. In 1951, an article in a British magazine said that offset lithography was 'only good for quick and dirty printing'. There were plenty of articles published in the 1990s that echo this sentiment when digital printing was first introduced. Now, a little more than 10 years later, there is an awful lot more respect being shown for the technology.

The report also highlights that as many as one-in-five print jobs will be for run lengths as low as one copy, again by the year 2020. More than half of all print jobs today are for less than 2,000 copies.

David Preskett, European marketing director, professional solutions, Canon Europe said, With the changing dynamics of the modern working environment, printers have been forced to rethink their positioning in the Professional Print market. Whilst many printers report rising revenues, their costs are rising even faster. In a market where resources are becoming scarcer, they will have limited control on how to reduce their overheads. The Insight Report finds that the new landscape demands a new way of working. As printers make less money from ink on paper they, of necessity, are adopting new revenue opportunities, primarily in digital printing, finishing and fulfilment.

The key findings of the report include:

Value added services

The Insight Report found that 80 per cent of print service providers worldwide expect the highest revenue growth over the next two to five years to come from digital full-colour printing.

It is neither run length nor time that is the primary factor in printing company revenue - it is job complexity. Print buyers place a premium on jobs with complex binding, finishing or other services. Simple jobs (mostly simple sheets) may be higher in number but they are lower in revenue, and far lower in profitability. To cope with the competitive trends in the industry, printers worldwide are investigating and developing new revenue streams based on value added services.

The demise of time

In the past printers were in business to sell one major service - time. Printers once required months, then weeks and now days - and, in some cases, hours - for print production. There was once a time when print buyers paid a premium for rush service. That is no longer the case and many printers often win printing jobs because they have available capacity to handle the demanding schedules of customers.

Training

Much of the hiring remains in the area of legacy skills - about 40 per cent if printers count customer service, estimating, planning, prepress and printing. If some printers continue to retain older equipment, they will continue to face shortages of operators for that equipment and these shortages will exacerbate over time. Without the automation and quality-enhancing features of newer systems, skilled people will no longer be around to operate legacy equipment.

Print providers indicated a mean training budget of Euro 1,198 per employee per year in 2007. High profit printers invested almost twice that amount (Euro 2,368).

Market and innovate

In the Insight Report, 54 per cent of all respondents indicated they will move towards becoming a business communications service provider. This represents a fundamental strategic change and an important trend towards specialisation - ten percent of the respondents indicated future plans to add a range of non-print services including facilities management, IT functions, design mailing, and fulfilment, amongst others.

Further information about Canon Europa is available at:

A copy of the Report can be downloaded in PDF format by using the Adobe link in our Downloads section. Click here to take you to this same article - you'll find the Adobe link at the bottom of the page...

© Graphic Repro On-line, 15 July 2008

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From hall monitors to personal injury lawyers: Parents send a message by forcing bullies from the schoolhouse to the courthouse.

Mathew Mumbauer, 11, never saw it coming. One moment in early March, he was walking down the stairs at Brickett Elementary School in Lynn, Mass. The next moment he was lying at the bottom of the stairs. He was left paralyzed and on a ventilator. Mathew's parents blame bullies who had been hounding Mathew for most of the year.

Mathew is only the latest victim of bullying in our schools, and some parents are turning from the schoolhouse to the courthouse to seek relief. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of students are anxiously counting down the days left in summer and the approach of another bullying season.

With the advent of the Internet, YouTube and MySpace, bullying is becoming more prevalent and more lethal -- allowing bullies to move from playgrounds to cyberspace in pursuit of their prey. While the number of bullying lawsuits is unknown, some high-profile cases are focusing attention on the national problem.

Dealing with bullies has long been treated as just part of "growing up," a natural and even maturing element of childhood. Encounters with the ubiquitous bully in movies and literature are treated as a type of rite of passage, particularly for boys. From "the Ogre" in Revenge of the Nerds to Scut Farkas in A Christmas Story, the bullies always lose when you simply stand up to them, right?

Perhaps, or you can end up dead. Across the country, schoolchildren have been killed after standing up to bullies in places as wide-ranging as West Paducah, Ky., Edinboro, Pa., and Jonesboro, Ark.

A video hunt

Being a bully remains a popular choice for students, particularly in middle schools, where bullying often peaks. A 2004 survey by KidsHealth found that 40% of children from 9- to 13-years-old admitted to bullying. Another recent study prepared for the American Psychological Association showed that 80% of middle school students admitted to bullying behavior in the prior 30 days. Like Piggy in Lord of the Flies, a child can become a collective target -- the object of a natural juvenile inclination to subordinate and isolate individuals. Just ask 15-year-old Billy Wolfe in Fayetteville, Ark.

At some point, high school bullies made him a type of collective sport prey. They even filmed the hunt. One video shows a boy spontaneously announcing that he is going to beat up Billy Wolfe in front of Billy's younger sister, walking up and punching him at a bus stop.

Billy's beatings were triggered years ago after his mom complained to the parents of a bully. The next day, the boy presented Billy with a list of 20 names of boys who signed up to beat him up. Attacks would occur at any time and any place -- the bathroom, shop class, the school bus -- with one requiring that Billy receive medical treatment.

This is not the first lawsuit involving Fayetteville and bullying. The district was previously sued after a student was savagely beaten for being gay. In a similar case in Kansas City, Kan., a jury awarded Dylan Theno $250,000 against the Tonganoxie School District for years of bullying due to the false rumor that he was gay.

As the suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier showed the nation, Internet sites such as MySpace have opened up new opportunities for cyberbullying. Megan's suicide was allegedly triggered by an adult neighbor, Lori Drew, pretending to be a 16-year-old boy who not only dumped her but also initiated a cyberpile-on by other kids. A 2008 study of more than 40,000 adolescents by the Rochester Institute of Technology revealed that 59% of cybervictims in grades seven to nine were bullied by kids whom they knew.

The underlying costs

The social costs of bullying are often ignored. A federal study found that 60% of boys who were bullies in middle school had at least one criminal conviction by the age of 24. Bullying is also routinely tied to suicide attempts, drug abuse, and drop-outs or worse, violence by the victims.

In Littleton, Colo., the killers at Columbine High School in 1999 had complained about being bullied. In Hoover, La., Felicia Reynolds sued the school district after her son, Ricky, stood up to an alleged bully named Sean Joyner after years of complaints to officials at Hoover High School. After being removed from the school due to a separate incident, Sean was allowed to return and fought with Ricky. Sean died from a knife wound, and Ricky was put away for 20 years. Unlike the Hollywood formula of bully movies, when the Karate Kid in real life stands up to bully Johnny Lawrence, he ends up doing one to five years in the county jail.

While many will chafe at the notion of moving from hall monitors to personal injury lawyers, litigation could succeed in forcing schools to take bullying more seriously.

The first step, however, is to dispense with the image of bullies as mere Scut Farkases waiting to be challenged and conquered. Bullies are not adverse object lessons for an educational system; they are the very antithesis of education. They are no more a natural part of learning than is parental abuse a natural part of growing up. That is one lesson Mathew Mumbauer learned all too well.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.

Copyright © 2008 USA TODAY

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It's generally known as the thinking person's magazine, but yesterday a lot of people wondered just what The New Yorker was thinking when it published a "satirical" cover of Sen. Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, on its July 21 issue.

The illustration by artist Barry Blitt shows the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and his wife standing in the Oval Office. He's in Muslim garb; she's a gun-toting terrorist. There's a portrait of Osama bin Laden behind them, and an American flag burning in the fireplace.

And they're fist-bumping.

The magazine cover -- titled "The Politics of Fear" -- was meant to mock the "absurdity" of rumors that have swirled relentlessly around Mr. Obama during the campaign, New Yorker Editor David Remnick said.

"What I think it does is hold up a mirror to the prejudice and dark imaginings about Barack Obama's -- both Obamas' -- past, and their politics," Mr. Remnick told The Huffington Post, adding that the July 21 issue also contains commentary and a substantial 15,000-word piece on the candidate's political education and rise in Chicago.

"I wouldn't have run a cover just to get attention," he said. "I ran the cover because I thought it had something to say."

Nonetheless, reaction in political circles and the news media was overwhelmingly negative.

"Tasteless and offensive," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

"Totally inappropriate," said Mr. Obama's opponent, Sen. John McCain.

While the magazine's subscribers -- Upper East Side liberals and their ilk -- may "get" the magazine's cover, one expert said it's unclear if it will ultimately serve to defuse the false rumors about Mr. Obama or merely reinforce them.

"What this cover will do is at least maintain the uncertainty that some people may feel about his religion, family history or other issues," said Nicholas DiFonzo, a professor at Rochester Institute of Technology and author of "Rumor Psychology" and "The Watercooler Effect."

"The stereotype of people who read The New Yorker is that they are more cosmopolitan and they'll look at this and understand the irony, but for some people the irony will be lost on them," he said. "That's not to say they're backwards or unintelligent or anything like that, but had the magazine published a cover showing Mr. Obama shaking the pope's hand, it would have been more beneficial to him."

Even professional satirists -- at least those of a liberal bent -- said they weren't amused. Writing in The Huffington Post, a widely read political blog, Trey Ellis said he bridles at "any and all PC constraints, and of course coming from a venerable, legendary and reliably center-left magazine, I get the intended joke, but dressing up perhaps the next president of the United States as the new millennium equivalent of Adolf Hitler is just gross and dumb."

Jeffrey Goldberg, a blogger at The Atlantic, begged to differ.

"The New Yorker cover this week is exceedingly funny," he wrote in a piece titled "Obama, The New Yorker, and the Death of Humor."

"It's not a magazine's job to protect presidential candidates from misinterpreted satire. As someone who appreciates a good joke, as well as bad joke, it bothers me that people are reacting so dyspeptically to the cover, and it's a shame Obama's campaign couldn't have laughed it off."

Within 24 hours, the controversy had crossed the Atlantic to England, with readers of The Guardian debating whether Americans really understand satire, a staple in the British press.

"Look, the average American doesn't get satire or 'nuanced' message," wrote a poster, identified as Concerned1. "They will see this cover for what it is and believe he is a Muslim, when he is not."

The magazine hit the newsstands on the same day that a USA Today/Gallup poll of 2,000 Americans found that a majority of blacks, whites and Hispanics think Mr. Obama's election would improve race relations.

The firestorm over The New Yorker cover actually may present an opportunity for the Illinois senator, said Drew Westen, a political scientist at Emory University and author of "The Political Brain."

"If I were the Obama campaign, I wouldn't attack The New Yorker, but I would use this as an opportunity once again to talk about how the right is trying to paint him and his wife as 'foreign, different, not like us, and, by the way, did I mention that they're black?' I don't think the cover does much other than give the Obama campaign what they need."

Some months ago, Obama staffers decided to confront the Internet-generated rumors about the candidate and his family head-on, with a Web site "rumor clearinghouse" -- fightthesmears.com -- to debunk all the stories about Obama's faith, upbringing, family and friendships.

It's not clear if the Web site has had an effect, but a recent study by the Pew Research Center found that the Obama-is-a-Muslim rumor was believed by only 10 percent of registered voters, although some subgroups -- conservative Republicans, conservative Democrats, those who did not attend college, voters from the South and Midwest, rural voters, and white evangelical Protestants -- were more likely to believe it.

"People who may not have the time or energy to find out the truth may see this kind of picture and say, 'Oh my goodness, I've seen [Obama's] picture in African garb, there must be something to this,'" Mr. DiFonzo said. "But for that segment of the population who want to believe it, the evidence won't affect their views one way or the other. This cover is really a wash for them."

Still, mocking a rumor isn't the best way to eliminate it, he said, noting that when corporate giant Procter & Gamble was beset by rumors that Satanists ran the company, they did exactly the right thing.

"They got Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell to urge Christians and religious people not to spread this rumor," he said.

"What they didn't do was come out with a cartoon with a picture of a Procter & Gamble CEO dressed as Satan."

Copyright © 2008 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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With off-shoring and outsourcing making waves in todays technology, software programmers and engineers are trying to figure out if their jobs are safe. Others are dropping out of the professions altogether and searching for alternative careers. Some are even forming unions to protect themselves from off-shore competition. Even educators are examining how the new trends will affect their students job prospects.

Enrollments and even applications for enrollment have dropped precipitously in electrical engineering and computer science, the two technology disciplines that have been among the first to move overseas, said Ron Hira, assistant professor, Rochester Institute of Technology, in Rochester, N.Y. and Anil Hira, international economic development specialist and professor of political science in Latin American studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, in their book, Outsourcing America.

As engineering and computer science educators grapple with the realities of off-shoring and offshore outsourcing, it is less clear what education in other at-risk fields are doing, they said. Engineering educators in the U.S. are considering changes to the curricula to ensure their graduates are employable. Their ideas include adding courses that emphasize team work, such as management and leadership, and teaching technical skills that cannot be easily compartmentalized and outsourced.

Most economists agree that because of increased off-shoring, the U.S. will have a different set of occupations. That means certain occupations will disappear altogether and others will change significantly, they said.

Researchers crunch fuzzy numbers

In their research paper, Framing the Engineering Outsourcing Debate: Comparing the Quantity and Quality of Engineering Graduates in the United States, India, and China, Duke professor of sociology, Gary Gereffi, director at the Center on Globalization, Governance and Competitiveness; Vivek Wadhwa, and Ben Rissing, both of the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke, said interviews with students, faculty, and colleagues revealed rising undergraduate engineers had real concerns regarding the possibility of having their engineering jobs outsourced in the future. Engineering students wanted to know what jobs were outsourcing-proof and what coursework or practical experiences would better prepare them for a more global working environment. Some engineering students saw more opportunity and expected better starting salaries in non-engineering fields, they said.

The researchers assembled a multidisciplinary team of domestic and international engineering students at Duke University to identify the number of four-year engineering bachelors degrees awarded in China, India, and the U.S. They wanted to study how these graduation profiles have changed with time. The research showed the commonly cited statistics for these countries were incorrect.

The Chinese Ministry of Education (MoE) and the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) in India represent sources of engineering graduation data within their respective countries. Yet the statistics released by these organization have included not only four-year degrees, but also three-year degrees and diploma holders, they said. They compared the numbers against the annual production of accredited four-year engineering degrees in the U.S. In some cases, these exaggerated numbers included not only individuals in traditional engineering disciplines, but information technology specialists and technicians, they said.

Postdocs gain popularity

The Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology reported in the May/June 2008 issue that postdoctoral degrees are becoming more common as stepping stones in science and engineering career paths. The National Science Foundation released data from the 2006 Survey of Doctorate Recipients, a sample survey of over 40,000 persons who earned their doctorate in science, engineering, or health (SEH) from a U.S. university and still lived in the U.S. in April 2006 when the survey was conducted.

Of the most recent Ph.D. graduatesdefined as those who earned their degrees within the five years preceding the survey data45% had held a postdoc appointment, up from 39% for the next older cohort (those who were 5-10 years after the doctorate award).

The percent of recent Ph.D. graduates who had a postdoc position was highest for those who earned doctorates in the life sciences and the physical sciences (59%). However, the postdoc participation rate for engineering significantly increased to 31% for recent computer sciences/mathematics Ph.D.s, up from a rate of 22% for the next older five-year cohort of Ph.D. recipients.

The major reasons for taking a postdoc included to gain additional training in the doctoral field (34%), followed by working with a specific person or place (19%), and general expectations of a postdoc for a career in this field (19%). The primary reason noted for 23% of engineering doctorate recipients was other employment was not available. This proportion was much higher than the reasons for those earning doctorates in other fields.

SOURCE: Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology Analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics household data, annual averages.

Copyright © 2008 ISA

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For the average computer user, choosing a font from the drop-down menu in Microsoft Word is akin to picking out a brand of windshield wiper. You want it to fit, you want it to function, and if you're really picky, you might want it to complement the color of your car. Beyond that, who cares?

Lots of people, it turns out.

At least 400 typographic aficionados involved in the creation, meaning and marketing of typefaces (or fonts in computer terminology) will converge in Buffalo starting Tuesday for a weeklong conference called Typecon 2008.

For them -- along with thousands of designers, artists and fans of visual culture around the world -- typography is more than just an offhanded choice between Times New Roman and Arial. It's an ancient art form that reflects culture and history as well as painting, sculpture or music.

"The number of people who have heard of fonts and use fonts and see them has been multiplied a thousandfold, ten-thousandfold, compared to 50 years ago," said Charles Bigelow, a professor of typography at Rochester Institute of Technology, who co-designed the family of typefaces called Lucida, which pops up on the font menu of nearly every computer in existence.

"If you're writing something, the goal is to communicate the idea that you want somebody else to understand and the typeface is kind of an afterthought," Bigelow said. "But to a book designer or a newspaper designer, a typeface is an exceedingly important choice."

Take, for instance, the design choices of the 2008 presidential candidates. Sen. Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination, among other reasons, on a promise of change and a sense of possibility. To represent this idealism, his campaign chose the typeface Gotham, designed just seven years ago by a New York company and lauded by typophiles for its ability to look simultaneously refined and progressive.

Sen. Hillary Clinton's losing campaign used the more conservative New Baskerville, which is based on a typeface from the mid-1700s. Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, took the middle road by using a cool-hued, popular typeface called Optima, designed in the late '50s by the famed type designer Hermann Zapf, Bigelow's former professor at RIT.

"Types are kind of like Rorschach tests," Bigelow said. "One of the great things about type is that [it] doesn't do anything until you make words out of it, and yet the shapes connote ideas."

For Richard Kegler, a Buffalo resident who founded and runs the typeface production house P22 Type Foundry with his wife Carima El-Behairy, typefaces themselves contain as much history as the books they're used to write. His own company began by reproducing the handwriting of artists like Paul Cezanne and Paul Gauguin and has created about 1,000 typefaces that are now used heavily around the world. P22's work has shown up on dozens of album covers (Brian Wilson's "Smile," The Pretenders' "Viva El Amor") along with countless magazine articles, advertisements and posters.

"A lot of typefaces have historical baggage," Kegler said. He pointed to German Blackletter, a form of type used throughout Europe since 1100 A.D. and into the 20th century. "It kind of became associated with Nazism, but then the Nazis embraced Futura, and that totally changed things. Now Blackletter has connotations with gang culture. You see a lot of tattoos and rap albums with Blackletter, which is this Teutonic, European style. The conquistadors brought Blackletter with them [to Latin America]."

The typeface used in this newspaper, Miller, was designed by regular Typecon attendee Matthew Carter, who is also known for designing the so-called "screen fonts" used by most Web sites and Bell Centennial, a landmark typeface which is used in phone books.

Today's type designers are forging new directions, often opting for a freer and more expressive approach to typography that contains notions of post-grunge, punk and contemporary artistic culture that often eschews traditional typographical rules in favor of the titillating or even unsettling.

One of those designers, the Austrian artist Stefan Sagmeister, will speak at the Karpeles Manuscript Library (220 North St.) on Wednesday at 8 p.m. The presentation, called "Things I Have Learned in My Life," will document Sagmeister's quirky ascendance to the position he now holds as one of the few designers who are accorded rock-star status. He has collaborated with musicians like David Byrne and Lou Reed, for whom he designed iconic album covers, as well as poster and advertising designs that push the boundaries of what design can accomplish.

One, an advertisement for a speech in Detroit, features Sagmeister's bare torso with the type actually cut into his skin by an intern. "Yes," his Web site says of the project, "it did hurt real bad."

And with new Web applications and sites developing every day, those boundaries are expanding rapidly.

For Jose Rodriguez, who runs the local Web design firm JRVisuals, treating typography as an art form is a no-brainer. His newly retooled interactive Web project, Type Is Art (www.typeisart.com), allows users to create their own abstract artworks from elements of typography and submit those designs to an online database. He pointed to the ubiquity of the Internet for making more people aware of type and the powerful effects it has on modern design.

"I think this whole digital renaissance has really pushed type to the forefront," Rodriguez said. "Everybody can tell an ugly Web page from a good-looking Web page and a lot of times it's typography that'll make the difference."

For Bigelow, type is much like language, clothing or anything else that most of society takes for granted and treats simply as utilitarian. Type, Bigelow said, has always managed to serve a purpose higher than simply spelling out words.

"We try to make things more beautiful, more wonderful than mere function," Bigelow said. "And that's the same of typefaces."

Copyright © 2008 The Buffalo News

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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - Every year, thousands of young people go to college to discover who they are and who they want to be.

For Staten Islander Lakshmi "Sasha" Ponappa, self-realization meant finding her true voice - which she accomplished without being able to hear others speak.

Ms. Ponappa, born deaf, recently received her master's degree in social work from Gallaudet University in Washington, a renowned school for the deaf and hard-of-hearing.

At 25, she is searching for a job, just like so many others fresh out of graduate school, but she is also taking pride in her accomplishments: Most notably, she was chosen by her class to deliver the commencement address.

"I came to Gallaudet with an insular understanding of things, but ... my understanding of ... empowerment, advocacy and social change has widened," Ponappa said in her speech. Life, she said later, "is not so much the choices that we can make, as much as it is the freedom to make choices and the freedom to be heard."

These themes reflect her experiences growing up, and growing from being deaf in a hearing world. Her words were poignant, delivered through American Sign Language (ASL), her preferred method of communication, which she first learned at college.

No one knew that Ms. Ponappa was deaf until she was 2 years old, after her family moved to Staten Island from Bangalore, India. From then on, her education was focused on teaching her how to communicate through speaking and interpreting other people's speech.

Though the Board of Education provided services that helped her thrive academically in mainstream classrooms, they did not help her socially: "It was difficult to learn social cues, to freely participate in conversations."

Her confidence took flight when she left home for college at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester (N.Y.) Institute for Technology, a school with more than 1,000 deaf and hard-of-hearing students within the larger university.

"Not until college did I ever consider myself a part of a deaf community [or feel a] connection to the history of challenges ... that deaf people have gone through to get us where we are today," Ms. Ponappa said.

Her integration was made possible, in large part, through learning ASL, which she calls "a real language, with its own grammar, syntax, facial expressions, and gestures."

On a basic level, communication became easier: With sign language, words and their meanings no longer fell through the cracks, as they often did in lip-reading. The worry of being lost - or losing someone else - in translation was also a burden lifted from Ms. Ponappa's shoulders.

On a deeper level, ASL provided a jolt of empowerment. It led her to question the environment in which she was raised and the way she was educated.

"Ninety-five percent of deaf children are born into hearing families, so we do not have adults who understand what it's like," Ms. Ponappa explained. "In the deaf community, there's respect for the need to be a holistic human being. For many people, being deaf in the hearing world is fine because they are mainstreamed like everyone else, but it's not fine for everyone. Any person involved in a deaf child's life needs to be open to offering that child different options for communication."

According to Gallaudet University, roughly two to four out of every 1,000 Americans are "functionally deaf," which means that Ms. Ponappa joins approximately 1,000 to 2,000 Staten Islanders faced with the disability.

Back home for the time being, she visited the Advance office for this interview, where she was asked questions through an interpreter's signed translations. Though she made a passing reference to a "speech impediment," her voice was remarkably clear and expressive as she spoke her responses.

When asked about her postgraduate plans, Ms. Ponappa said she hopes to continue the kind of work she has done in her internships, incorporating her passions for social justice and deaf activism. She is especially committed to advocating on behalf of deaf individuals - primarily women - who have been victims of domestic and sexual violence.

"There is a great deal of need for advocacy, to break down barriers, to help these people reclaim their lives," Ms. Ponappa said. She pointed out that domestic violence is as prevalent in the deaf community as it is in the hearing community, but dealing with it needs more attention and funding.

Having experienced her own awakening, Ms. Ponappa is now inspired to help others: "In the deaf culture movement, the older generation helped get us where we are today," she said. "Now it's up to us to make changes happen."

Copyright © 2008 Staten Island Advance

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Rochester, N.Y. - The interplay of reality and artifice, of image and self-image, of how people view and portray themselves - those are among themes with which artists have long dealt.

In addressing those issues, Rochester photographer Susan Lakin chose to focus on a central feature of contemporary life that has impacted, in ways overt and subtle, how we view and frame ourselves: the television set.

In her "Television Series," Lakin photographed individuals, couples and families, reflected in the screens of their TVs so that they, essentially, are the televised image. She was interested in how the people choose to pose and compose themselves; as well as how rooms are arranged around the TV set and the compositional possibilities that allowed her. It became "reality TV" in a sense - and, as with that programming phenomenon, what's real and what's contrived isn't so clear.

Lakin, associate professor of photography and digital imaging at Rochester Institute of Technology, had become intrigued with what the rise and success of reality TV says about us - "how we're so transfixed with watching other lives - as well as "the ubiquitous nature of the television in our society."

Fifteen of Lakin's images will be included in the 3rd Rochester Biennial, an invitational exhibit showcasing the work of six regional artists in varied media. The Biennial runs July 13 through Sept. 14 at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, preceded by an opening party 8-11 p.m. Saturday, July 12. The party will include performances by Rochester R&B band Blue Avengers, the Monroe County Bluegrass Ramblers, the Airplay Comedy Juggling Show and a cappella group On Call.

Beginning with a self-portrait, Lakin first began photographing friends, then friends of friends and so forth. The people featured varied: an older woman, a single dad, a young couple, families of various sizes and makeups (and, often, their pets). So, too, did the TV sets, from large, flat-screen, modern wall-mounted models to a portable kitchen set to three large wooden consoles of a previous generation. (She got lucky, she says: Since she's photographed those three sets, two of the owners have gotten rid of them in favor of LCDs, and the third is soon to go.)

"The way they pose - I tend to first just ask people how they interact in the room, how they sit," she said. "I find that people, especially the younger kids - they've already been programmed a bit of how to pose in front of a camera. ... I started off with traditional portrait poses, in which people are consciously looking in the screen." She has moved away from that - and "since then I've started to notice how much the audience looks at them like a voyeur, interacting with the environment."

As the concept developed, so did the compositional possibilities. The original tight crops used the TV essentially as a frame; since then she pulled back to get more of the surroundings, the environment, the revelatory trappings. As in a piece that shows an angular view of the screen with a man playing guitar, reflected in the bottom of the screen. Above him in the screen is a vast emptiness - but atop the console are photographs of a child. It's an exploration of the life of a single father.

Lakin will give a gallery lecture about her exhibit at 11 a.m. July 24 at the gallery.

Other artists in the Biennial (information courtesy of Memorial Art Gallery):
- Ronald Gonzalez of Johnson City, who transforms found objects into surreal figures that inhabit a universe at once playful and grotesque.

- Sue Huggins Leopard of Rochester, who creates artist's books using different formats, media and binding processes. Distinguished by an extraordinary sense of color, her works have their source in dreams, found objects, family photographs, Emily Dickinson verse and more.

- Sculptor Todd McGrain of Ovid, who created the Lost Bird Project to immortalize in bronze five North American birds driven to extinction in modern times. (Lecture: July 17, 11 a.m.)

- Juan Perdiguero of Oswego, who creates meticulous chiaroscuro portraits of magnificent animals bred for competition but kept in relative confinement, prompting metaphorical comparisons to the human race. He blurs the boundaries between painting, drawing and photography by selectively exposing sheets of photo paper and manipulating ink, asphaltum and linseed oil into freehand renderings. (Lecture: Sept. 4, 11 a.m.)

- Melissa Sarat of Preble, whose highly detailed paintings, infused with what she calls the "jambalaya of symbolic imagery," explore universal themes of excess, circumstance, life choices, spirit guides, environmental disasters, maternity, family and death. (Lecture: Sept. 11, 11 a.m.)

The Rochester Biennial is underwritten by the Elaine P. And Richard U. Wilson Foundation and by gifts in memory of Diane Holahan Grosso.

If you go:
WHAT: 3rd Rochester Biennial, invitational exhibit of six regional artists' work
WHEN: Sunday , July 13 through Sunday, Sept. 14, with an opening party 8-11 p.m. Saturday, July 12. (Tickets for the party are $17, at door or at Wegmans.)
WHERE: Memorial Art Gallery, 500 University Ave., Rochester
HOURS/ADMISSION: Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. (Until 9 p.m. Thursdays) General admission $10, college students with ID and senior citizens $6, children 6-18 $4, free for members, University of Rochester students, children 5 and younger.
ALSO: Guided exhibit tours, free with gallery admission, will be 1 p.m. Sunday, July 13; 2 p.m. Friday, Sept. 12; and 1 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 14.

Copyright © 2008 GateHouse Media Inc.

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The winners of Microsoft's Imagine Cup competition were announced Monday night in Paris. The cup is a global contest intended to spur students to innovations in technology. The theme this year was the environment and conservation. U.S. teams did well:

First place in the Interface Design category went to a team from Indiana University, which built an application to get students on the campus to reduce energy and water consumption.

First place in the Photography category went to a team from Wayne State University, whose photos displayed the role that technology plays in improving the environment.

The Engineering Excellence Achievement Award went to a team from the Rochester Institute of Technology, which designed a system of environmental sensors that could be accessed by cell phones.

The winners will get a share of the cash prize of $240,000.

Copyright © 2008 by The Chronicle of Higher Education

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Joe Gonzalez of Rochester and his wife, Robin Annlot are quick to brush off their tiny, organic garden as nothing more than an experiment - but it's one they hope will help them save money at the grocery store.

"If you think about half a ping-pong table, that's literally how big it is," Gonzalez said, calling the garden "one of the smallest on the face of the planet."

With rising costs of food and fuel making headlines daily, Gonzalez and Annlot are just two of many people across the country who are trying their hand at tilling the soil and growing a green thumb.

"Historically, when the economy is not doing so well and especially when food and energy prices go up, people typically do go back to edible gardening in an attempt to offset costs," said Charlie Nardozzi, horticulturist for the National Gardening Association.

Whether people can save money gardening depends on the amount of time a person has to devote to the activity, said Amit Batabyal, who has a doctorate in agricultural and resource economics and is a professor at Rochester Institute of Technology.

"You're typically going to be getting things much cheaper, and I emphasize much cheaper, because you have removed the middleman," Batabyal said.

But Batabyal said he believes gardening is not a reasonable alternative for most people because of the time needed to have a successful garden.

Still, increasing numbers of people are trying it - whether at home or through community gardens and community-supported agriculture. And it is a pastime that is attracting increasing numbers of young people.

Rochester-based Harris Seeds, a national supplier that focuses on the Great-Lakes region, reported a sales increase of about 11 percent so far this year on its home garden vegetable seeds, said Mark Willis, vegetable seed manager.

Gro-Moore Farms in Henrietta estimated it has sold 30 to 40 percent more vegetable plants so far this year than in previous years at this time.

Some also cite the recent cold spell as one reason for the increased sales.

"We had such a warm beginning this year, so people bought their (vegetables) and planted them early on, and then it got cold, so I think a lot of it has been weather-based," said Bevin Green, manager of Village Garden Store in Mendon.

But Jack Moore, owner of Gro-Moore Farms, said he anticipated higher vegetable sales earlier in the year based on the increasing prices of commodities. Moore said he believes it is possible, but not implicit, that home vegetable gardeners can save money on food. He added that there are educational benefits to be reaped.

"People need to know where their food comes from," Moore said.

Saving money

John Colagrosso, 73, of Henrietta said he has been gardening for 30 years but has "pretty much given up on everything except tomatoes," explaining that he only sticks with those because they taste better than the store-bought ones - not because they are any cheaper. "They're expensive in December; they're dirt cheap in August when I'm harvesting my tomatoes," Colagrosso said.

After years of watching critters such as rabbits and deer destroy his vegetable garden, Colagrosso prefers planting flowers and trees, although he recently purchased six eggplants. If they yield 12 fruit, it will be a good harvest, but Colagrosso said his family consumes about five times that amount each year.

"The plants themselves weren't expensive, but it takes a certain amount of space to plant these things and you're only going to get one or two fruits off of each plant, so that by the time you pamper these plants over the months, it's just the idea of growing your own vegetables," Colagrosso said. "You're not going to save anything significant."

Pests, poor soil and a lack of experience can all contribute to rising gardening costs, but experts say there are plenty of ways for gardeners to keep their vegetables as economical as possible.

Batabyal said the smaller the garden, the less cost-effective it will be.

Marcy McCall, 44, of Scottsville has been gardening for most of her life.

"It's definitely more economical if you grow everything from seed," said McCall, who raises organic fruits and vegetables in a garden about the size of a tennis court.

Colagrosso conceded that a larger garden would mean he could harvest vegetables nearly half the year, or grow them in a greenhouse. "But most people don't have that kind of space."

And Willis said he is anticipating a rise in the cost of seed next year as many farmers within the United States opt to grow more profitable crops such as corn and soybeans instead of seed.

McCall also freezes and cans what her garden produces to make it last year round. Beginning gardeners, she said, are initially going to have to invest a significant amount in tools and equipment.

"If you want to have organic food for your family, it's definitely a savings," McCall said. "But of course you have to put a lot of work into it."

Young hobby

Gonzalez, 39, and Annlot, 32, represent another trend that is just beginning: a younger demographic of aspiring growers.

Shannon Consaul, customer service representative at The Garden Factory in Gates, said a shift from the over-50 crowd is a change she has noticed within the last two years.

Nardozzi also said he has increasingly heard talk about the possible phenomenon.

"(People in their 20s and 30s) have more of a philosophical approach to gardening," Nardozzi said. "Their reasons being things like global warming, reducing their carbon footprint, eating locally and trying to save money."

Community gardens and community supported agriculture are also increasingly popular alternatives to the grocery store.

Charles Knerr, 30, owner of Black Creek Farm in Chili, organically raises fruits, vegetables and pigs - among other things - on his 74-acre farm.

Knerr offers 20 community supported agriculture opportunities for families to purchase. This means they pay between $190 to $400 dollars a year and work in the garden three afternoons in exchange for produce. All of Knerr's have been sold out for months.

"I get about four times more interest than I can produce," said Knerr, who is also a full-time software engineer.

First-year resident doctors at Highland Family Medical Center in Rochester have started a new community garden in Star Alley on South Avenue.

All the garden beds were adopted by South Wedge residents as soon as they were available, said Chris Jones, president of the Business Association of the South Wedge Area which is also involved in the project.

Gonzalez and Annlot said if everything with this year's garden of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and hops goes well, they plan on doubling or tripling the size of it next year.

But many people, such as second-year gardener Nella Neeck of Perinton, said they have reasons other than money for growing their own vegetables.

"I am gardening for the pure and simple satisfaction of watching something grow, of creating something out of nothing," Neeck said.

Copyright © 2008 Rochester Democrat & Chronicle

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Randy Scully was a kid who liked to build things. You could generally find him in the basement putting together a model plane or boat - the only requests on his Christmas wish list.

But as the child of a financier dad growing up in the affluent suburb of Summit, N.J., Scully didn't dare dream about the idea of someday working with his hands.

His high school didn't even offer shop. The closest he came to studying woodworking in school was building scale models in the architecture and mechanical drawing classes that counted as vocational training.

Today, as the owner of RP Scully Furniture in Peekskill, Scully is doing what he once considered out of reach - making a living as a craftsman whose hands are more accustomed to the feel of a chisel than a computer mouse.

'I always thought this would be something I would do as a hobby,' he said.

Scully is far from the typical hobbyist with a workbench in the garage who might make a bookcase on the weekend.

His finely crafted beds, dining tables, desks and bureaus - carved from walnut, cherry, maple and mahogany - sell for $4,000 to $15,000.

Like generations of artisans before him, Scully relies on wealthy customers with an artistic eye.

'My clients have disposable income. They want something unique and something different,' he said.

It took Scully most of his 20s to realize that a market for his talent was out there among the kind of people he grew up with in New Jersey.

And if it weren't for a German-born craftsman his parents hired the summer he turned 16, Scully might never have found a role model who made a living that didn't involve sitting at a desk.

But after 'following him around' a lot during the work at his parents' home, Scully persuaded the craftsman to give him a chance to work on jobs like small additions and bath renovations. That experience - rewarding as it was - wasn't enough to get Scully off the career track set by his surroundings and encouraged by his peers.

A student who started in business and finished with a degree in psychology from Lake Forest College in Illinois, Scully got a job pushing paper at a container shipping company after graduating.

'When I got out of college, I knew I had this passion for woodworking, but I didn't think I could make a go of it or make a business out of it,' he said. 'A friend talked me into working for this shipping company, and that's when I realized a desk job was not for me. I did well, but I was always escaping out of the city to my parents' garage to do a little project here and there.'

His first success was making Adirondack chairs based on a design he saw on the PBS TV show 'The New Yankee Workshop.'

'A few people started seeing them, and I started selling Adirondack chairs on the weekends out of my parents' garage,' he said. 'It was a nice business.'

Despite this thrill, to please his dad, Scully gave a desk job one more shot when he did an internship at a financial clearinghouse.

'It became clear to me this was something I was not interested in pursuing,' he said.

He turned to a family friend, Peter Brough, who left New Jersey to start a woodworking business in Vermont, for advice.

Brough invited Scully up to give the craft a try. 'He was serious about learning about woodworking,' said Brough, who has been making custom furniture in Calais, Vt., since the 1970s.

'I make high-end stuff, and I don't really advertise. It's all been word of mouth, and by and large, I've been quite busy,' Brough said. 'There are people who have money and who will always have money.'

Scully said he found examples of other furniture makers turning out high-end pieces, including Thomas Moser in Maine, Charles Shackleton in Vermont and Jeffrey Greene in Pennsylvania.

'It became apparent to me that if they can do it, why can't I do it?' he said.

Scully signed up for a one-year apprenticeship under craftsman William Sayre in Massachusetts, where he learned to make furniture using hand tools the way it was done 100 years ago.

Joinery techniques that employed shapes cut into wood rather than nails and screws were the rule.

'Our process is a little different than others. It's a little more labor intensive, which means it will be a little more expensive, but at the end of the day, you're going to have a piece of furniture that will last,' Scully said.

Scully founded his Peekskill workshop in 1999, investing about $10,000 on his first tools, which were reconditioned machines that in some cases were 50 years old.

He began soliciting business among family friends and acquaintances and joined a local hockey team as a way to meet people.

'Word of mouth makes a big difference getting that first job, and doing a quality job means just going from there,' Scully said.

Today, at age 39, Scully has lost track of how many pieces he's churned out. His most popular design is the Manchester Cannonball Bed, which features beaded rails and an arched headboard. He's made about nine of them.

Many of Scully's orders come from interior designers, such as Mary Kendrick of Bedford, who has hired Scully to make furniture for her family and clients.

He made a dining room table and sideboard for Kendrick in American walnut as well as end tables made from a more exotic timber called pao ferro. She collaborated with him on the designs.

'What you get is exactly what you want, which is hard to find in the marketplace,' Kendrick said. 'This is custom from the get-go. You discuss what you want, you show photographs, you work up dimensions. Drawings are made. You can see it part way through the finish. You have something that's totally unique.'

Kendrick said she enjoys working with Scully because she is supporting craftsmanship that's on the decline as more furniture is made in Asia.

While the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 23,470 people in the United States and 1,300 in New York make a living as furniture finishers, there is no breakdown for people who make the kind of fine pieces Scully does.

Scully himself sometimes calls it a dying art - particularly lately since he's having a hard time hiring workers. The expense of living in Westchester makes even his $30 an hour wage for a skilled craftsman less than enticing.

'I've gone in probably every direction except for opening my own school to find people,' he said.

He estimates that in the years since he opened, he's gone through 30 employees. Many leave to work for big custom homebuilders. One just quit to take a job building a $100,000 closet in Greenwich, Conn.

As a solo craftsman, Scully said he's finding his career less enjoyable than he would with a crew of four employees and a showroom.

'It's very rewarding to create something, and it's even more rewarding to sell it and make a living at it. But it's a hard road. It takes patience, and it takes a little courage, too,' he said. 'I think the problem is some kids will shy away from it because it's not a rich industry. It's not retire early and move to the Hamptons and live on the beach. You work at it.'

Rich Tannen, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology's School for American Crafts, said the 30 or so students in the furniture-making program are paying $27,624 a year in tuition to learn a trade that will pay them $15 to $20 after graduation.

'The people who endure in the field have a passion for the work,' he said. 'You have to love the work, love the process. There is a trade off between the personal satisfaction that comes from the work and the financial rewards that are not the same as you would get from investment banking.'

Most people who become furniture-makers find their way to the process through a roundabout process, much like Scully, Tannen said.

'It's not an easy way to make a living. It's definitely a decision that requires soul searching. There are obviously the quality of life issues. It offers many things that many jobs in our economy don't, one of which is you actually create a tangible object,' Tannen said.

Scully said he might start a second business restoring homes if he isn't able to find skilled craftsman to join his workshop.

In the meantime, he's so backed up with work that he hasn't found time to make much furniture for his own home in Katonah, which he shares with his wife, Meredith, and baby daughter - who is not yet sleeping in a bed of her dad's design.

'I've built cradles in the past, but I'm a little shorthanded on people right now, and with a backlog of work, I can only do so much,' he said.

Copyright ©2008 The Journal News

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Ron Hira is a well-known expert on offshore outsourcing and has testified before the US Congress twice on its implications. He is also co-author of the book, Outsourcing America, which has generated a lot of debate. And Dr Hira is a man who many Indian and American companies love to hate.

Of course, he does not agree with the view that he's anti-outsourcing. He feels that the discussion on offshoring should be much more nuanced to more faithfully reflect reality.

"Our book originates from how the nature of work and the economy and politics in America has transformed over the past 20 years. What's good for America is no longer good for IBM (or take your pick of major US corporation) and vice versa. But IBM has enormous influence over the political process, ensuring that it gains even at America's expense. So, offshoring has been - falsely- framed as America against the countries gaining from outsourcing, such as India. I am genuinely ecstatic that India as a country has the opportunity to improve the lives of its citizens. My concern is that America's policymakers are working against what's in the interest of the majority of Americans, making their lives worse. The problem isn't about what India, or other low-cost countries, have done, it's about what the US has not done in response to this economic change," Dr Hira told ET.

He feels that Indian Americans are not monolithic on the issue of outsourcing. "Those who are most vocal in the discussion on outsourcing are benefitting the most - by being liaisons within corporations or by taking advantage as entrepreneurs. Since they are making a ton of money from offshoring it should be no surprise that they are promoting it. But just because the vocal portion of the Indian American community supports outsourcing doesn't mean that a majority of the community supports it. I have received many emails from Indians in America who are being squeezed by outsourcing. Second, what is good for India isn't automatically good for the Indian American community or vice versa," says Dr Hira who is an assistant professor of public policy at Rochester Institute of Technology where he specialises in engineering workforce issues, high-skill immigration, and innovation policy.

He feels that Indian American organisations should go in for a major makeover, so that they represent the interests of Indian Americans rather than the interests of the narrow and deep pocketed corporates.

Dr Hira who recently served as a consultant to the US House of Representatives committee on science & technology and helped organise a series of hearings on the 'globalisation of innovation & R&D', feels that in the run-up to the US Presidential elections, the US electorate is considering economy as clearly one of the most, if not most, important issues.

"I think most of the discussion is rhetorical so far. Job creation has been weak for this whole decade and people are rightfully feeling uneasy, even if it hasn't showed up in traditional metrics like unemployment and inflation. Much of the presidential rhetoric has focused on free trade agreements such as NAFTA, yet even if NAFTA was renegotiated it would have zero effect on white-collar outsourcing," he feels.

The first step, for him, would be to recognise that high-wage jobs for US workers don't simply fall from the sky.

"The notion that more education will automatically generate success for US workers and for the US economy is downright dangerous. Not because more education is a bad thing, but because it gives us a false sense that we will be okay as long as we have more/better education. US workers are losing due to offshoring yet they have no voice in Washington policy-making. We know that outsourcing results in job loss and lower wages for US workers, yet we have no policies to redress this inequity," he says.

As for immigration policy reforms, Dr Hira feels that while permanent immigration is good for Americans, guest worker programmes are vulnerable to abuse.

Copyright © 2008 Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd.

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When the Writers Guild of America -- the union representing U.S. film and television writers -- announced it would introduce a new 'Best Videogame Writing' category to its 2008 Awards, it felt like a move long overdue.

After all, game writing has evolved since the days of Wolfenstein and Tetris. We've moved past the point where storytelling in games was about as sophisticated as the writing in porn -- plot as excuse for the action. These days, games offer rich settings, complex characters, and intricate narratives. Surely the WGA's award meant the mainstream writing community finally saw games as a new medium, a form of modern literature just like film or television.

But then the WGA released its list of nominees.

The list shocked gamers -- not so much for what it included, but what it left out. Sure, The Witcher and were written well enough, and certainly had its fair share of good jokes. But how did -- the 14th Crash Bandicoot game -- and PSP no-name end up on the list when Portal and BioShock, two of the best-written games ever to hit PCs, didn't?

'[Creating the award] was the right move, but if you look at the nominees, you go, 'Huh?'' says Stephen Jacobs, executive board member of the International Game Developers Association's Game Writers' Special Interest Group and professor of game design and development at Rochester Institute of Technology.

The logic behind the list, explains Jacobs, is that writers had to be members of the WGA's New Media Caucus to be nominated. But few writers in the industry currently belong to the WGA, much less the Caucus.

'I'd never even heard of it,' says Ken Levine, creative director of 2K Boston and writer of games like BioShock and . 'I don't even know where to start to get involved.'

The Numbers Game

Recently, the gaming industry realized something: Well-written games sell. BioShock sold nearly half a million copies in its first month of release. For months, (which, with Portal and Half Life 2: Episode Two, offers some of the best narrative in gaming today) has held steady on PC bestseller lists. Even WGA nominees and The Witcher sold well. So while not every well-written game becomes commercially successful, quality writing has increasingly become part of that elusive formula for blockbuster magic.

Part of that comes down to shifting demographics. According to the Entertainment Software Association, the average gamer is now 33 years old, and almost 40 percent are women. The stereotypical gamer isn't a teenage boy but a harried father, a working mom, an ambitious professional -- someone with limited time 'who wants more out of the time they do get to play their games,' says Jacobs.

'If they're going to devote the time to gaming, they want something rich, something that has depth to it,' he says. 'That something is better served by better writing.'

Of course, what makes writing 'good' is as difficult to define for games as it is for a poem. 'This is a medium in its infancy,' says Levine. 'It's like going back in time to 1923 and asking, 'What are the great screenplays?'' Case Studies in Game Writing Culturing the FPS

Story continues at http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3168432

Copyright © 2008 Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc.

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A Rochester Institute of Technology professor has been invited to sit on a U.S. National Research Council committee formed to study ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transportation.

James Winebrake, professor of science, technology and public policy at RIT, has joined a committee of 10 to 12 experts from around the country to examine alternative strategies and policies for reducing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. transportation sector. The National Research Council is part of the U.S. National Academies, which also includes the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine.

Winebrake, an internationally recognized expert in the transportation field, has published several papers related to the energy and environmental impacts of freight transportation, alternative fuels and human health, university officials said.

The study will be conducted over the next 12 months.

This is critically important research, Winebrake said in a statement. The transportation sector is one of the fastest growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Our dependence on foreign petroleum to meet our transportation needs has created economic and political problems for our nation.

The study will help to decipher the types of technologies and policies that can be used to reduce the transportation sectors petroleum dependence and greenhouse gas emissions.

Winebrake is chairman of the department of science technology and society/public policy at RIT and co-directs the RIT Laboratory for Environmental Computing and Decision Making.

Copyright © 2008 Rochester Business Journal

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The KCM 39 digital aerial camera is nothing much to look at, just a softball-sized box with a large optical lens sticking out of it.

But the 15-pound, 39-megapixel camera and accompanying control system - with a premium price tag of about $250,000 - have helped push rapid growth at a small aerial imagery company.

Henrietta-based Geospatial Systems Inc. in the past year has turned a profit for the first time, added workers and moved into larger space as it readies for even more employees this year. That growth comes as the company is trying to expand from mapping and surveying markets into real-time aerial surveillance for military and homeland security, said President and Chief Executive Maxime Elbaz.

Geospatial was formed in late 2004 by the merger of optical imaging companies Pixel Physics of Rochester and AnaLux Inc. of Pittsburgh and radar systems company ANRO Engineering of Florida.

Today, Geospatial offers an array of products, including aerial digital cameras for both day and night use and ground-based radar systems. Its technology and products are developed in house, Elbaz said. The company has patents pending on technology such as an athermal lens that isn't affected by changing temperatures and environments and a shutter that can be replaced without the pilot having to land.

Product assembly is done in a couple of rooms in the company's offices at the Lennox Tech Enterprise Center.

According to Greater Rochester Enterprise, the economic development organization, the Rochester region has more than 50 companies involved in the optics and imaging industry. An analysis of the industry by University of Rochester Professor Duncan Moore found strengths, including the fact that the area's imaging companies cover a wide spectrum from biomedical optics to defense.

With optics programs at UR and Rochester Institute of Technology and with the area's established industry, including growing Henrietta aerial imagery company Pictometry International Corp., Elbaz said, 'The next big development from Rochester might be coming from Geospatial. We have a lot of expertise.'

The company's target markets include both pilots who do aerial imagery work and aerial imaging companies.

Geospatial posted its first profit in 2007 and moved to the Lennox Center from RIT's incubator because of a need for more space. The same year, it grew from 12 workers to 17 and expects to be at 20 to 25 employees by the end of 2008, Elbaz said.

Much of the company's growth so far has been organic, paid for out of its own income. Now Geospatial is trying to find venture capital to let it grow more rapidly so as to tap into other potential applications, such as with the military.

'You just cannot grow beyond a certain size by bootstrapping,' Elbaz said.

Copyright ©2008 Rochester Democrat & Chronicle

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MICHELE NORRIS, host:

Beyond the markets, beyond the mortgage crisis, here's another sign of the strained economy: people are having a harder time paying those credit card bills, delinquencies are creeping upward, and banks are jacking up interest rates, lowering credit limits and introducing new fees.

To find out more about this, we called Robert Manning. He's the director of the Center for Consumer Financial Services at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He's also the author of the book, "Credit Card Nation."

Mr. ROBERT MANNING (Director of the Center for Consumer Financial Services, Rochester Institute of Technology): American consumers are, in many cases, now because they don't have access to credit and the asset value of their homes, the one source of credit that's available to them at higher and higher interest rates is credit cards.

On the other hand, what we're seeing also is that foreign investors that are seeking to purchase credit cards are looking at them more and more in terms of credit card debt portfolios as another form of a subprime loan product, and they're shying away increasingly at a period in time when American banks desperately needed infusion of outside capital.

NORRIS: How are the problems in the credit card sector related to the mortgage mess? And, could we possibly be looking at a rerun of the subprime mortgage meltdown?

Mr. MANNING: Well, what has concerned me over the last six or seven years of people who were qualified for higher lines of credit on their credit cards because they had a house that they owned and the perception was the bank would encourage people to pay off their credit cards or the home equity loan.

With that option over, what we're going to see now is more and more people that are less and less credit-worthy and more and more facing the risk of losing a job during a recession that will have no other recourse - when they hit the maximum on their credit cards - but to seek some form bankruptcy protection. What we've clearly seen is that foreclosure of the home is soon going to follow the default on the credit card. And this is a double whammy that the American banking system is much, much less capable of withstanding today.

NORRIS: What's surprising is banks are raising rates, lowering limits, taking steps to protect themselves from losses. But in some cases, they're raising interest rates on customers who have good credit, people who have no late payments, no blotches on their credit histories, how can they do that?

Mr. MANNING: You know - and that's something that's especially troubling in this period of time, is we have to understand that a major credit card issuer also is assuming huge losses on their subprime and other mortgage and fixed equity investments, that's putting pressure on the credit card divisions to return higher profits.

So as a result, what we're seeing is more and more Americans who've completely played by the rules of the game and paid on time, finding that their interest rate is jumping, 5, 10, 15 percent, and so many of these decisions now are a product of the information economy, because it's a relatively new expense of the poor credit reports, and some credit card companies actually monitor what you purchase on your credit card. If the company doesn't like it and they decided that makes that person more at risk, simply making purchases and paying on time could still trigger an increase in the cost of credit.

NORRIS: So the credit card companies are monitoring purchases. If someone is using their credit card to pay off a mortgage or to buy essentials like bread or milk or something like that, could that be a trigger?

Mr. MANNING: Oh absolutely. There's a lot of concern, for example, of somebody who bought new tires, and they didn't like the fact that they purchased retread tires and that triggered somebody in the risk management office of the credit card company to say, this person was falling into a period of financial distrust, and they re-priced and raised the interest rate on that account holder.

NORRIS: Mr. Manning, if we're looking at rough waters ahead in the credit card sector, what can or should consumers do right now to protect themselves?

Mr. MANNING: Well, that's really, really important that, in fact, consumers monitor their monthly statements and call and complain at any increase in their interest rates, question any fees that have been incurred. And also, it's incredibly important today that people pay their monthly payments earlier than the due date so that they don't fall into a re-pricing scrutiny of the credit card industry, so that they have one late fee that could trigger hundreds of dollars of higher interest rates with their other financial accounts.

NORRIS: Mr. Manning, thanks for talking to us.

Mr. MANNING: Always.

NORRIS: Robert Manning is the author of "Credit Card Nation." He's also the director of the Center for Consumer Financial Services, that's a research center at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Copyright © 2008 National Public Radio

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