July 17, 2009


CAMPUS NEWS

Cary Graphic Arts Collection gets $1M for digital-assets management
The Cary Graphic Arts Collection has received a $1 million endowment from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust to fund the development of outreach programs and the management of the collection's growing digital assets.

Alumnus to lead board of trustees
Donald Boyce '67 (business administration) will become the 17th chair of the RIT Board of Trustees in November, replacing Michael Morley '69 (business administration), who has served as board chairman for four years.

Professor's book offers solutions to decline in U.S. manufacturing
Manufacturing a Better Future for America, by Ron Hira, associate professor of public policy, includes an analysis of the current state of U.S.-based producers and industry trends, a history of U.S. trade and industrial policies and the impact of those policies on workers, research and development and national security.

School of Informatics created
The B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences has launched a new school housing the departments of information sciences and technologies; networking, security and systems administration; and interactive games and media.

Graduate student recognized for outstanding research
Young Sam Yu, a doctoral candidate in imaging science, recently won the Astronomical Society of New York Graduate Student Award for a paper advancing knowledge of stellar evolution.

More News & Events

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


LATEST PODCASTS

Studio 86: The Fabric of American Literary Realism
Babak Elahi, associate professor of English and author of The Fabric of American Literary Realism: Readymade Clothing, Social Mobility and Assimilation, discusses the impact of garment-industry industrialization on the development of realist theory, and he touches on his hobby as a member of a local blues and folk band.
Listen to audio (15:00) | Read summary


PHOTO GALLERY

RIT Track Camp


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, 2009):

Rochester Institute of Technology alumnus Donald Boyce will take the helm of the RIT board of trustees later this year.

At its July meeting last Friday, the college's board of trustees elected Boyce the board's 17th chairman. Michael Morley, who served as board chairman for the last four years, will leave the position at the conclusion of the November board meeting.

Boyce, a member of RIT's Board of Trustees since 1999, will be the fourth alumnus chairman. He has served as chairman of the presidential search committee and a member of the hospitality and service management national advisory board, and assumed a leadership role in the Campaign for RIT, which concluded in 2006.

Boyce is a recipient of RIT's Outstanding Alumnus Award as well as the Distinguished Alumni Award for RIT's College of Applied Science and Technology. In 2008, Boyce and wife Jeris received RIT's Nathaniel Rochester Society Award.

Before retiring in 2000, Boyce was chair and CEO of Idex Corp., a diversified manufacturing firm. He has been a board member of numerous publicly traded companies and is currently director of Muller Water Products in Atlanta.

A native of Oakfield in Genesee County, Boyce lives in Lake Forest, Ill.

Copyright © 2009 Rochester Business Journal

Return to Top

The RIT men's hockey team will play 34 games this coming season, including the season opener against Colgate on Oct. 10 at Blue Cross Arena at the Community War Memorial.

Rochester Institute of Technology will play 15 games at Ritter Arena, its home rink. The first game at Ritter is Friday, Oct. 30 against the University of Connecticut.

The Tigers set a Division I team record with 23 wins last season and advanced to the Atlantic Hockey Association tournament semifinals.

RIT and Air Force, who split the AHA regular-season title last spring, will play two games in Colorado Springs to open up conference action Oct. 23-24. The two teams meet at Ritter Arena on February 19-20.

The regular-season schedule:

Oct. 3, Orange and White Game*

Oct. 4, York University (Exhibition)*

Oct. 10, vs. Colgate at Blue Cross Arena

Oct. 16, at St Lawrence

Oct. 17, at Clarkson

Oct. 23, at Air Force

Oct. 24, at Air Force

Oct. 30, UConn*

Oct. 31, UConn*

Nov. 6, Army*

Nov. 7, Army*

Nov. 13, at Mercyhurst

Nov. 14, at Mercyhurst

Nov. 20, Sacred Heart*

Nov. 21, Sacred Heart*

Dec. 4, at Holy Cross

Dec. 5, at Holy Cross

Dec. 12, Niagara*

Jan. 1, at Minnesota State

Jan. 2, at Minnesota State

Jan. 8, Holy Cross*

Jan. 9, Holy Cross*

Jan. 15, at U Conn

Jan. 16, at U Conn

Jan. 22, at AIC

Jan. 23, at AIC

Jan. 29, Bentley*

Jan. 30, Bentley*

Feb. 5, at Sacred Heart

Feb. 6, at Sacred Heart

Feb. 12, at Army

Feb. 13, at Army

Feb. 19, Air Force*

Feb. 20, Air Force*

Feb. 26, Canisius*

Feb. 27, Canisius*

Copyright © 2009 Rochester Democrat & Chronicle

Return to Top

VIRUSES may spread quickly on the Internet, but hoaxes can be pretty contagious, too. In the same week that Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson died, the Web became a hotbed of made-up death reports about various celebrities.

Jeff Goldblum was the first to go. A headline on Google News read, ''Jeff Goldblum Has Died, Falls to Death on Set!'' Details were murky, but just specific enough to sound plausible. The story went that Mr. Goldblum, 56, had plummeted off the 60-foot Kauri Cliffs in New Zealand while filming a movie.

What started out as a prank soon took on a life of its own. Twitter users retweeted the item, and the community became an echo chamber. Facebook members chimed in.

By the week's end, the celebrity death toll had turned into a conga line. Harrison Ford had gone down in a capsized yacht in St-Tropez; George Clooney's private plane had nose-dived somewhere in Colorado. Miley Cyrus? Car accident. Natalie Portman? That tricky cliff in New Zealand. Ellen DeGeneres, Britney Spears and the comedian Louie Anderson were allegedly R.I.P., too.

''We got a phone call from a friend who read it on Facebook, that's how we found out,'' said Mr. Clooney's publicist, Stan Rosenfield, who also received calls from news outlets seeking confirmation. Instead of issuing a news release, Mr. Rosenfield contacted TMZ, a celebrity news and gossip site, which posted a story that dispelled the rumor and shook a finger at the mongers.

As for Mr. Clooney himself, ''George quoted Mark Twain and said his death had been 'greatly exaggerated,' '' Mr. Rosenfield said.

Twitter may have been the messenger, but most of the rumors did not originate there. The hoax trifecta of Mr. Goldblum, Mr. Ford and Mr. Clooney started at a prank Web site called Fakeawish.com, which offers visitors a template to generate outlandish stories about the actor or actress of their choice. Think of it as macabre Mad Libs for the crowdsourcing era.

It works like this: a user enters a celebrity's name and is given a list of fake news stories to choose from -- the celebrity can die by plane, yacht or cliff, or be hospitalized after a traffic altercation. The user must choose whether the victim is male or female.

From there, the prankster is directed to a site called Global Associated News, where a vaguely plausible story appears, ready to be e-mailed, linked to and instant-messaged. A disclaimer at the bottom of the page reveals that the content is ''100% fabricated.''

The Borat of this particular Web site is Rich Hoover, a 37-year-old Atlanta resident who parlayed his information-technology expertise into a modest empire of 20 Web sites, including Global Associated News and a YouTube-style pornography site. He is proud to say that he makes money off of his sites (through advertising) and generates all the death hoax stories himself.

''I'd be lying if I said there wasn't some twisted sense of satisfaction or accomplishment,'' said Mr. Hoover, who designed the site in 1998 to amuse his co-workers and refined it in 2002 to concentrate on celebrities. The recent popularity is a result of all the traffic driven to his site by Twitter feeds. ''In a small way, you have to pinch yourself and think, 'Wow! I caused all this,' '' he said.

Mr. Hoover was also behind the 2006 hoax that had Tom Hanks careering off the Kauri Cliffs. Ditto for Tom Cruise, whom Mr. Hoover had plunging to his death in 2008.

Why New Zealand? ''I'm an avid golfer, and I saw a segment on New Zealand when I was watching the PGA Tour -- it looked beautiful,'' Mr. Hoover said, adding that he mostly uses international locations because they take longer to disprove. He said the only cease-and-desist letter he has received since 2002 was sent by a lawyer for Michael Vick, the football star (whose problems with dog-fighting may have pushed this concern to the back burner).

Clearly, pumping up fake stories about famous people has been a popular and even lucrative pastime for ages. (Supermarket tabloids, anyone?) These days, the same naughty human instincts are still there -- you know, the ones that have prompted generations of teenagers to make prank phone calls -- and technology has moved things forward.

''Within Internet memes, it's natural for people to build on top of what is already happening,'' said Tim Hwang, a research associate at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard.

Twitter, for instance, already has credibility as a news site, thanks to its users' real-time coverage of the recent violence in Iran, the shooting rampage in Mumbai last year and the US Airways plane that landed in the Hudson River. That type of citizen journalism helped legitimize Twitter as a place people turn for the freshest developments.

TMZ is also known as being nimble. After it beat the print and broadcast news outlets in reporting Michael Jackson's death, a flurry of Twitter posts followed. Harvey Levin, TMZ's editor in chief, said he receives celebrity death tips all the time. ''But we fact-check everything,'' he said. ''We have legal and research departments. It's rigorous.''

This is not the case on Twitter, which is just as useful for disseminating bad tips as good ones. The blogger Emily Miller at Politics Daily has coined the term TwitterDead to refer to victims of the latest hoaxes.

Biz Stone, a founder of Twitter, said by e-mail, ''We don't typically identify rumors as abuse, nor do we actively monitor user content or censor user content.'' Among those rumored dead on that site was Rick Astley, the ''Never Gonna Give You Up'' singer whose name is synonymous with a prank called Rickrolling (blasting a clip of his signature song at an inappropriate place or time). And among the people who fell for the Goldblum hoax was Demi Moore, who used Twitter to express her grief (perhaps she should have been mindful of her Twitter handle, Mrs. Kutcher, and her husband's former TV show, ''Punk'd'').

In Mr. Goldblum's case, the rumor spread so quickly and widely on Twitter and Facebook that his publicist issued a statement to assure people that he was ''fine in Los Angeles.'' Four days later, Mr. Goldblum appeared on ''The Colbert Report'' to dispel the hearsay and playfully eulogize himself.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Goldblum said he saw the humor in the prank: ''We have to surrender to our own death. That's what monks do.''

He even derived some benefits. His name surged in Google searches, and ''people came back into my life that I had been out of touch with,'' he said. ''They called to say 'I was very upset and I'm glad you're alive,' and so it's been a sort of reunion for me.''

Consider Ed McMahon, who had been rumored dead on the Internet well before he actually died. ''Twitter can be a wonderful social tool, but at the same time it can be confused as a media outlet,'' said Howard Bragman, a publicist who had represented Mr. McMahon. ''Once something gets out there, I'm not naive enough to think I can stop it.''

Nicholas DiFonzo, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology who studies the psychology of rumors, said that the mass confusion over Mr. Jackson's sudden death probably left people craving a feeling of control. ''People spread rumors when there is some uncertainty or anxiety that they are trying to calm,'' he said.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's death on April 12, 1945, caused similar morbid ripples, according to Alex Boese, who wrote a book about historical hoaxes and founded an online Museum of Hoaxes. Back then, rumors spread that Frank Sinatra, Babe Ruth, Al Jolson, Errol Flynn and other notables had suddenly expired as well. ''This has been going on for hundreds of years,'' Mr. Boese said. ''It's the people, not the Internet. You can't blame Twitter.''

Copyright © 2009 The New York Times Company

Return to Top

For people pressed for time, scrapbooks with magnetic pages can seem a godsend, in the battle to keep up with family photos.

Just slap the photos down, and there's one album done. But for the pictures themselves? Not so good.

They're very bad, Melissa Eastin, archivist with the East Baton Rouge Parish Library, said of the scrapbooks at a workshop on Making Memories Last.

The plastic overlays in many of those type scrapbooks are made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), which has the unfortunate property of causing them to eventually stick to the photographs, Eastin said.

It's best to remove items from them (the scrapbooks) and rehouse them, she said.

At the workshop at the East Baton Rouge Parish Bluebonnet Regional Branch Library, Eastin addressed how to best make photographs and newspaper clippings last.

Photographs are the most tangible representation of our memories, and we usually have a lot of them, Eastin said.

Photographs, though, are especially vulnerable and can be damaged by sunlight, age, chemicals that are in the photos themselves and handling.

Eastin said that any handling can be a threat to photos, but that leaving them untouched is not the nature of these types of memories.

People are going to hold them, frame them and store them.

In the best of all keepsake worlds, people would store their photographs in individual plastic sleeves made, not of PVC, but of polyester, polypropylene or polyethylene, she said.

The plastic sleeves would be open, not sealed, so the photographs could "breathe," and would be stored supported and upright, in a file folder, she said.

Most people, though, want to enjoy their treasured photos in a scrapbook, she said.

Scrapbooks with open, plastic sleeves are available.

And, the popularity of scrapbooks with paper pages has grown, along with renewed interest in decorative and creative "scrapbooking."

There are still dos and don'ts, though, for "paper" scrapbooks.

Following the guidelines of the Library of Congress in her presentation, Eastin recommended that the paper in the scrapbooks be "acid free" with a pH of 7.0 or higher and that paper that is free of lignin, an acidic organic substance, is the best.

Scrapbooks with these attributes will be labeled that way, she said.

The humble picture corners, used to hold the photos on the pages, are important, too, and should be ones that are labeled "PAT tested," she said.

The label means that the item has been found safe for photographic images.

The "PAT" refers to the "Photographic Activity Test" that many photographic "enclosure" materials go through at the Image Permanence Institute, Eastin said.

The institute is a nonprofit lab in the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences of the Rochester Institute of Technology, according to the Web site, http:// www.imagepermanenceinstitute.org.

In summing up her tips on keeping photos, Eastin also suggested that people scan their photographs into computers, then print out the images on quality paper and safely store the originals.

If photographs can't be safely removed from their albums, they can still be scanned while on the album page, she said.

Original newspaper clippings and other paper memorabilia should be taped into scrapbooks with polyester tape, an item that can be found in scrapbook-supply shops and through online vendors, Eastin said.

The tape doesn't become fragile and brittle with time, she said. Before taping it into a scrapbook, people can also enclose the newspaper item in a quality, plastic sleeve, she said.

There are inherent difficulties, though, in keeping newsprint, Eastin said.

It's "some of the most acidic paper made," Eastin said, adding that it has a lifespan of 20 years.

She recommended that for their scrapbooks people might want to make copies of the newspaper article on quality, low-acid and lignin-free paper.

A member of the audience, Dale Ducote, volunteered a "home remedy" he had come across, a mixture of Milk of Magnesia and Canada Dry, that's said to remove the acidity from newsprint, when the paper is soaked in the mixture and dried.

(Several Internet Web sites also provide the recipe: one Milk of Magnesia tablet to one quart of Canada Dry.)

Patricia Cullens, of Baker, who had come to the workshop to learn tips for photo-keeping, said that she had a large, plastic tub "filled with photos (going) all the way back to the turn of the century."

"Because they're that old, I don't know who they are, but I don't want to throw them away - it could be a relative," said Cullens of the people pictured in her photographs.

She said her late mother had given her the photos for safekeeping.

At the library workshop, Eastin said that if photographs need to be stored away, that "location, location, location" is the maxim of the day.

Avoid attics and basements and "be mindful of plumbing," just in case water lines break, she said.

The photographs should be kept in containers that fit their size, in a temperature of between 65 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit, and away from sunlight.

Eastin, who joined the East Baton Rouge Parish Library staff in May 2008, is the library system's first archivist.

She works out of the "Baton Rouge Room" housed in the River Center Branch Library downtown.

The "Baton Rouge Room" is open to the public and is an archival repository of pictures, maps, papers and more, documenting the history of Baton Rouge. For more information on the Baton Rouge Room, call (225) 389-4960.

Copyright © 2009 Baton Rouge Advocate

Return to Top

Merging galaxies that forcefully eject supermassive black holes have theoretically created a whole new class of astronomical objectand now scientists think they know how to find them.

Black holes that get kicked out should carry with them clusters of nearby stars, a new study says.

These stars can act as signposts and can reveal details about the now galaxy-less black hole's past life.

In theory, hundreds of massive black holes left over from the age of galaxy formation could be lurking in the nearby universe.

'Every such black hole that's ever been kicked out is still potentially observable, and that's very encouraging,' said lead study author David Merritt of the Rochester Institute of Technology.

'It's not quite what anybody has seen so far,' he said. 'We're just talking about what they would look like if you were to find them.'

Observations made with the Hubble Space Telescope and re-examined with ground telescopes have come close, Merritt said.

'People are now just starting to make the kind of observations to see these kinds of things, if they are there.'

Powerful Kick

Most galaxies are thought to harbor black holes at their centers that are millions to billions of times the mass of our sun.

When galaxies merge, their respective supermassive black holes start to coalesce in a process that creates a spurt of gravitational waves.

If the waves are strong enough, the kick they provide should drive the newly merged black hole outside the host galaxy, simulations from the past few years suggest.

Story continues at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090710-new-black-hole-type_2.html

Copyright © 2009 National Geographic Society

Return to Top

FORT KENT, Maine — A crowd gathered around Mitsuyoshi Yabe on Tuesday morning as he bent over a table in front of him and rubbed a piece of paper with his fingers.

He made one more pass with his fingers, and lifted up the piece of paper, holding it up to the 20 people around him. On the paper was a print of a fish. It was blurry and fuzzy, but the scales, tail, fins, eye socket and open mouth were easily identifiable.

The crowd cheered. Yabe didn't say anything, but smiled and nodded his head. His demonstration of a Japanese fish printing technique called gyotaku had gone well.

Yabe's presentation was part of the five-day Guild of Natural Science Illustrators annual conference, being held this year at the University of Maine at Fort Kent. More than 50 attendees from around the country and world, including some of the most renowned science illustrators in the field, are participating.

Yabe, 23, is an undergraduate student in a medical illustration program at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. Joan Lee, a guild member from St. Francis who organized the conference, said she included the Japan native in the list of GNSI workshops for several reasons, including the fact that he is deaf.

Yabe communicates by using a notebook and pen he carries with him, encouraging people to write out questions or statements. He writes his responses in English.

“This [demonstration] was set up as an experiment to show people that you can work with all students,” said Lee, who was initially contacted by Yabe's electronic translator. “Behind it all, there's no such thing as handicap. This is the basic concept. It's also a great cultural exchange.”

On Tuesday, Yabe had some help from Stephen DiCerbo, a freelance illustrator from Saratoga, N.Y., who has been making gyotaku prints for 20 years. DiCerbo read aloud from the notebook whenever Yabe wanted to say something to the audience, and also provided some play-by-play as he watched Yabe create.

Gyotaku is a technique that came into use in the 1860s, DiCerbo said, and was originally used as a method of record-keeping and species identification. It evolved into a form of trophy art, similar to the practice of taxidermy, and finally into its current form as art technique. The basic method involves brushing ink or colored paint onto the fish, covering it with a piece of Japanese rice paper, and pressing down carefully to imprint the fish on the paper.

“For scientific illustrators who get into this, it's just a looser style and you wind up having a lot of fun,” DiCerbo said. “It's like finger painting for adults. And it's really a variation on traditional printmaking methods. As you develop your technique you try to find ways to control the image so you get a finer piece of artwork at the end.”

Yabe's technique is the one he learned as a teenager, when he was a fisherman in Japan.

“[Gyotaku is] so popular in Japan that if you go into fishing stores and the tackle stores, it's all over the walls,” DiCerbo said, reading from statements Yabe wrote in his notebook. “He thinks it's very beautiful and wonderful, and he's still practicing and learning, like we all are.”

Thanks to Bryce Carter, a 13-year-old Fort Kent resident, Yabe had some fish with which to work. Carter caught two 5-inch yellow perch Monday evening in St. Froid Lake during a fishing outing with his family and brought them to the gyotaku demonstration Tuesday.

Yabe's first step on Tuesday after wiping the perch was to pin the fish's fins so they flared out from the body in preparation for the inking. He placed pieces of plastic foam under the tail and fins to stabilize the perch and used tweezers to poke out the fish's eye, which would help create a white circle in the print. Some gyotaku artists paint in an eye on the print later in the process.

Yabe began to paint the perch with a small brush and dark India ink diluted with water — the traditional gyotaku ink is sumi, made of soot and water, but Yabe didn't have any with him — from the head to the tail of the fish. Then, he used a clean paint brush in the opposite direction from which he had painted on the ink. This absorbs excess paint and allows the scales to show up more clearly in the print.

After inking the fish, Yabe covered it with a piece of the traditional rice paper, which is flexible and strong enough to withstand the next step. Yabe began to carefully rub the rice paper over the fish with his fingertip to coax the ink onto the paper.

Finally, Yabe peeled the paper from the fish with an image of the perch printed on the paper.

Carter had a chance to try gyotaku himself, and decided it was something he might work on at home.

“I thought this would be fun,” Carter said. “I like art, and I like to draw with pencil and paper.”

Dwight Gagnon, a conference attendee from Benton, watched part of the demonstration. He wasn't sure he would include gyotaku in his work, but was interested to watch a technique he first saw in his student teaching days in Waterville.

“I wanted to see where it was, at this level,” said Gagnon, a 1976 UMFK graduate making his first trip to campus since his graduation. “In the labs, we'd take the fish, get a print, and the students would label the different anatomy features. I was fascinated to see what else was being done with it.”

The GNSI conference continues through Saturday. A juried exhibition of illustrators' work will be on display this month at UMFK's Acadian Archives.

Copyright © 2009 Bangor Publishing Co.

Return to Top

NPR.org, July 9, 2009 · Google has long been part of people's vocabulary whenever they talk about doing a Web search. Now the company hopes to trade on its household name to gain market share in a new space — inside computers.

In a bold move this week, Google announced its plans to create an operating system for computers based on its Chrome browser, which was unveiled in September. The research and development for the browser will feed directly into Chrome OS, which will be a free, open-source project designed to get people onto the Web quickly. Open source means any programmer can make changes to it.

Two Google executives, Sundar Pichai, vice president for product management, and Linus Upson, engineering director, wrote about the initiative in a company blog post: "It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be."

Google says it's going to focus initially on developing the Chrome operating system for netbooks that consumers can purchase in the second half of 2010.These smaller-than-laptop computers have skyrocketed in popularity because of their portability and the ease with which users can browse the Web and check e-mail. But the announcement is also a milestone for other reasons.

Turning Up The Heat

"This is the first time that you have a company with massive consumer market share and some level of consumer confidence saying, 'I'm going to put out an operating system that's open source,'" says Stephen Jacobs, director of the Laboratory for Technological Literacy at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Google's Chrome OS will add another operating system to the mix in a landscape dominated by Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac Os. Chrome is based on Linux, another operating system that hasn't been widely accepted by consumers.

Jacobs says other companies like Red Hat have made strides in developing open-source operating systems based on Linux too, but they don't have the same name recognition in the marketplace. What's more, the average person doesn't have a comfort level with open-source systems. Still, the popular Web browser Firefox, created by Mozilla, is an example of one such program that has gained wide appeal.

Will Open Source Open Doors?

With open source, users have the freedom to change, improve or customize the software. And there's a community of users that can help fix something that breaks, instead of relying and paying for companies like Apple or Microsoft to ride to the rescue.

For small companies, taking the open-source plunge is something of a gamble because it assumes that a community will rally around its product to help improve the software over time. In the case of Google this shouldn't be an obstacle, Jacobs says.

Computer experts say one of the advantages Google has over rivals is that it's starting from scratch.

"Google's platform is its online services and everything else hangs off of that," says Frank Gillett, an analyst for Forrester Research "All they're trying to do is enable better Internet experience. From their point of view, they're not worrying about making it work with a zillion peripherals."

And that's where it differs from Microsoft, which is a software company.

Google makes its money from online advertising revenue, but it also offers programs, like Google Docs, a free Web-based word processor and spreadsheet that's an alternative to Microsoft Office. Analysts say the introduction of Chrome OS is sure to escalate competition between the two companies.

Betting On The Web

"Microsoft should be worried about what Google is doing," says Gene Munster, senior research analyst for Piper Jaffray. "This is the first step of what will be a five-year trend of Microsoft feeling intense competitive heat from Google."

Munster says Microsoft stands to lose its growth and pricing power — especially if Google gets even a 5 percent to 7 percent share of the operating system market. Since Google's operating system will be open source, there won't be a fee. That means Google will have a hand in creating lower-priced computers, Munster says.

A spokesman for Microsoft said the company doesn't discuss forthcoming products or comment on competitors. Microsoft plans to launch its new Windows 7 operating system in October and the company is already promoting it with online discounts.

Google believes that "everything is going to migrate to the Web," says Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis for the NPD Group, a market research firm. "So this, for them, is certainly a much longer-term play because frankly — in 2009 and 2010 — there are very few consumers who want to trust the Web."

Baker says the fastest-growing hardware segment for consumers now is external hard drives — further evidence that people want to retain access and control over their digital property whether it's documents, photos or music.

But this concern isn't just limited to the consumer marketplace. Google will have to reckon with companies about its reputation for data mining.

"Many corporations and educational institutions are uncomfortable because you're putting your intellectual property on somebody else's servers and Google maintains that they have rights to whatever is on their servers," Jacobs says. As a result, many institutions prefer to pay for technicians to keep their computer systems updated and secure rather than risk the loss of intellectual property.

A spokesman for Google declined to comment. Google posts information on the data it collects and its privacy policies online.

From Speed To Security

When Google released the Chrome browser, it touted its security — noting that each time a new browser window opened it created a virtual sandbox that effectively traps any virus or malware that tries to infect a computer. Google now plans to extend that technology to the new operating system.

Google says that "speed, simplicity and security" are the cornerstones of its new operating system. "We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their e-mail instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up," the Google executives said in their blog post." They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them."

Computer experts agree that Chrome OS could offer a simpler user experience.

"If what you want to access is on the Web, Windows is a lot of overhead from having to

boot it up, to having to deal with system updates, security patches and anti-virus software," says Jeffrey Schiller, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's network manager. He says many users ultimately end up with a machine that slows down over time because of viruses and spyware that accumulate.

Ambitious as it may be, Google's plan to create an operating system that will launch to the Web in seconds isn't going to happen overnight. Schiller says managing open-source projects can be a headache because of all the contributors.

He predicts Google will tap ideas from the open-source process, but ultimately control the final product: "They will attempt to get the upside, and avoid the downside," Schiller says.

Copyright © 2009 NPR

Return to Top

ROCHESTER, N.Y., July 9 (UPI) -- Smokestack emissions from oceangoing ships will cause an estimated 87,000 deaths worldwide each year by 2012, U.S. researchers said.

James Winebrake of the Rochester Institute of Technology and colleagues note that the current finding is almost one-third higher than previously believed. Winebrake said most oceangoing ships burn fuels with a high sulfur content.

The smokestacks emit sulfur-containing particles linked to increased risk of lung and heart disease. A 2007 study by the researchers estimated about 60,000 people died prematurely around the world due to shipping-related emissions in 2002.

However, the study estimates the toll could rise to 87,000 by 2012, assuming the global shipping industry rebounds from the current economic slump and no new regulation occurs.

Policymakers are considering limiting ships' emissions by either restricting sulfur content in fuel or designating air pollution control areas to reduce air pollution near highly populated coastal areas, Winebrake said.

The study, published in the Environmental Science & Technology, said requiring ships to use marine fuel with 0.5 percent sulfur within 200 nautical miles of shore would reduce premature deaths by about 41,200.

Copyright © 2009 United Press International Inc.

Return to Top

ROCHESTER — Mark Marcello of Bemus Point has gone viral, but there is no need for quarantine.

In fact, hundreds more people are seeking him out every day.

Marcello, a 2001 Maple Grove graduate and a doctoral candidate of computing and information sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology, has ''gone viral'' on the Internet with a video featuring the toppling of more than 3,000 dominoes.

The video, which has received more than 166,000 hits on vimeo.com and an additional 20,000-plus on YouTube, is called ''Dominoes Everywhere'' and won first place in RIT's Get Viral for Big Bucks contest, which showcased student ingenuity across the Internet.

''We had no clue it would get to this level of popularity,'' Marcello said. ''We were looking the first few days, and we were so excited when at one point it had 3,000 views in one day. We were like, 'Oh my gosh - 3,000 people viewed this.'''

And that was only the beginning.

The two-minute, four-second video was created in April to promote RIT's Innovation and Creativity Festival. A cardboard cutout of Bill Destler, RIT president, is manipulated to knock over the first domino. From there, dominoes topple across desks, cubicle walls and filing cabinets in the university's publications office, where Marcello works as a Web developer.

Along the way, the dominoes go up and down ramps, send balls rolling, and hit a copy machine which then spits out an RIT logo. When the sequence ends, the final domino unrolls a banner advertising the festival, which took place May 2.

Marcello created the video along with co-workers Jared Lyon and Alexander Gartley, with whom he shared the contest's $3,000 grand prize. He says the idea for the video came when they were discussing ''neat things'' from the Internet and began talking about the domino-art videos of a YouTube user named FlippyCat.

''FlippyCat has tons of domino videos, and they get a lot of views,'' Marcello said. ''We thought it was something that we could do ourselves for relatively cheap for promotion for the festival. Then, when we found out about this contest, we thought it would be a perfect entry for it - and we turned out to be right, because we won it.''

Marcello's role in the creation of the video involved coming up with ideas for dominoes' journey, testing different types of dominoes and designs, and setting up dominoes - lots and lots of dominoes.

''We set up for about two weeks,'' he said. ''We saw what worked best, recorded it and then just kind of storyboarded the whole thing together.''

While the video attained a fair number hits after it was first posted to the Web, it was when it was linked to a major design inspiration Web site and later to the blog of popular rocker Mark Hoppus of the band Blink-182 that the number of viewers started to increase rapidly - including more than 29,000 on May 9 alone.

The number of daily hits has come back down to earth since, but the video is still being viewed hundreds of times a day around the world. As a Web designer, Marcello said he is quite impressed with the number of people who have taken the time watch it, especially given the notorious short attention span the common Internet user.

''I have a Web site, and the average person probably only looks at the site for a few seconds before they click away,'' Marcello said. ''I was very happy that people watched the video and they enjoyed it so much. The comments we received on the video sites were great, and we've received e-mail afterward from all these people saying, 'This is a great video; thanks for making it; what are you going to make next year?'''

Though he doesn't know if there will be another Get Viral contest next year, he says he and his team do plan to create another work to promote the annual Innovation and Creativity Festival in 2010.

''We're kicking around the idea of doing dominoes again,'' Marcello said. ''But we're also looking at other current viral videos and trends, and seeing what's out there. We'll see if we can be as successful next year.''

Copyright © 2009 The Post-Journal

Return to Top

RIT men's hockey coach Wayne Wilson announced the signing of six recruits on Tuesday. The group includes three forwards, two defensemen and one goaltender.

Three are from Canada, and three from the United States.

"We are really happy with our incoming class of newcomers,'' said Wilson, who will enter his 11th season as head coach of the Tigers. "All six guys can come in and play right away and will be a big part of our team in 2009-10 and beyond. We had needs to fill in net, on defense and upfront and feel this class will help.''

Forwards Bryan Potts (Niagara Falls, Ontario), Jeff Smith (Spokane, Wash.), and Adam Hartley (West Vancouver, B.C.) all signed with Rochester Institute of Technology.

Potts, a 6-foot forward, tied for the OPJHL lead with 48 goals in 2008-09. He added 26 assists for 74 points in just 51 games, leading Markham to a 36-15-2 mark.

Smith, a quick 6-foot forward, played for the Tri-City Storm of the United States Hockey League in 2008-09, recording 18 points in 44 games.

The 6-foot-1 Hartley led the Surrey Eagles of the British Columbia Hockey League with 28 goals, 35 assists and 63 points in 2008-09.

"All three forwards fit into our up-tempo system really well,'' Wilson said.

On defense, Chris Saracino (St. Louis) and Chris Tanev (Toronto) are strong skaters who can contribute at both ends of the ice.

Saracino, who played for current RIT assistant coach Dave Insalaco and with sophomore forwards Cameron Burt and Taylor McReynolds in Green Bay during the 2007-08 season, led the Gamblers to the best record in the USHL last year. He recorded seven goals and 14 assists while playing at a plus-21.

Tanev, a teammate with Potts in Markham last season, scored four goals and dished out 37 assists for 41 points in 50 games.

Shane Madolora (Salinas, Calif.) will make his debut in net for the Tigers in 2009-10. He enrolled at RIT this past spring and helped the Omaha Lancers of the USHL win the Clark Cup Championship in 2008. He posted an 11-4-2 record with a 2.41 goals against average and .914 save percentage.

Wilson believes Madolora will compete for time in net right away.

The Tigers set a Division I team record with 23 wins in 2008-09, sharing the Atlantic Hockey Regular Season Championship with Air Force. The Tigers advanced to the Atlantic Hockey tournament semifinals for the second straight season.

RIT lost six seniors to graduation.

Copyright © 2009 Rochester Democrat & Chronicle

Return to Top

In an effort to advance computing as a discipline, Rochester Institute of Technology's B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences has launched a new school of informatics.

The school will house the department of information sciences and technologies, the department of networking, security and systems administration and the department of interactive games and media.

Informatics has been defined as the interdisciplinary study of the design, application and use of information and communication technologies. Luther Troell, who will serve as director of the school, said the interrelated programs within the school focus on the opportunities and challenges resulting from ongoing advances in computing technology.

“The three departments which comprise the school of informatics at RIT prepare our students to use information technologies to solve problems in a variety of settings,” Troell said in a statement. “Our degrees emphasize the development of new and innovative uses for technologies, while accommodating the needs of people and using technology appropriately.”

The college formed the school as part of an ongoing effort, spearheaded by the computing research association's deans committee.

“The committee views the computing discipline as being comprised of two fundamental groups, those looking inwards into the computing and information world, which they refer to as a C-school, and those looking outwards into the domain of computing applications and their users, an I-school,” said Jorge Díaz-Herrera, dean of the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences.

Together, the C and I schools represent computing and digital information as two interrelated features of a common discipline, said Robert Constable, dean of the faculty of computing and information sciences at Cornell University. Constable is a member of the deans committee and an advocate of computing schools adopting this new format.

Díaz-Herrera said the school of informatics, which represents an I-school, is a decisive step in that direction.

“We believe that our college is destined to become a world leader in the establishment of computing as a distinct branch of knowledge and a professional discipline in its own right,” he said. “We aim to provide innovative examples of this implementation—which is the vision behind our strategic plan.”

Díaz-Herrera says plans are under way to investigate the formation of a C-school in the coming academic year, which could include departments that already exist within the college.

Copyright © 2009 Rochester Business Journal

Return to Top

WASHINGTON — U.S. engineering unemployment soared to a record in the second quarter of 2009, nearly doubling on a quarterly basis to 8.6 percent, the IEEE-USA said Tuesday (July 7), citing government figures.

The previous quarterly record for joblessness among U.S. electrical and electronic engineers was 7 percent, reached in October 2003.

'These new data suggest we've got a long way to go as the United States attempts to regain its economic footing,' IEEE-USA President Gordon Day said in a statement.

Engineering unemployment reached 4.1 percent in the first quarter of this year, according to data compiled by the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Others said the global recession is providing an opportunity for companies to cut their U.S. payrolls, especially professional workers like engineers, and ship those jobs to countries with lower labor costs.

'This recession is a clear opportunity for firms to layoff in the U.S. now that they have built up huge human resources in low-cost countries,' said Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a vocal critic of offshoring.

'Firms are laying off in Boston before Bangalore. The firms can blame it on the recession, and since the government hasn't bothered trying to collect data on offshoring, we are left to speculate about what's really happening,' Hira added.

Hira urged caution in drawing other conclusions about the government jobless data on electrical and electronics engineers, noting that specific occupational data generated by government collection methods can be 'noisy.'

'I'd want to wait at least one more quarter to draw conclusions about this [EE umployment] data point,' Hira said.

A better measure of technology unemployment, he said, may come from larger groups like 'engineering professionals' and 'computer professionals.' According to BLS, the 2Q jobless rate for the former jumped to 5.5 percent and 5.4 percent for the latter. These figures may be 'more reliable since they represent much larger populations,' Hira added.

The government also counted 29,000 EEs out of work in the second quarter, a jump of 16,000 over the previous quarter.

'Taken together, these data may suggest that engineers laid off last year and early this year are having trouble securing the new engineering jobs being created,' Day said.

Copyright © 2009 TechInsights, a Division of United Business Media LLC

Return to Top

CD's Tyler Herrman leads a strong local contingent to Indianapolis for the Junior Gold Championships.

Tyler Herrman of Central Dauphin was good when he went off to the Rochester Institute of Technology to become a member of the bowling team and get an education.

And now he is even better.

In his first year he learned how to adjust to difficult lanes and to read transitions better, and he has become a good judge of which bowling ball to pick up on certain conditions.

It led Herrman to a spot on the team and a 202 average in competition against some of the best college bowlers in the country.

Now he hopes it will lead him to a top finish in the Junior Olympic Gold Championships in Indianapolis next week.

"It's helped me a lot," Herrman said of his college experience. "Unlike last year, I know what to do more when certain things happen."

Herrman is ready for all challenges.

The tournament begins Monday with six games of qualifying and continues with an additional six games each of the next two days.

After qualifying, the field of 2,000 male and female bowlers will be cut to 150 males and 78 females for the semifinals, which will consist of two additional six-game blocks on July 16.

The top 16 in both the male and female divisions will return July 17 for match-play finals.

Story continues at http://www.pennlive.com/columns/patriotnews/elliott/index.ssf?/base/columnists/1246917319158660.xml&coll=1&thispage=2

© 2009 PennLive LLC

Return to Top

Nazareth College of Rochester and Rochester Institute of Technology are among 150 colleges recognized in The Chronicle of Higher Education's 2009 Great Colleges to Work For program. The results of the second annual survey were announced in a supplement published Monday.

The program recognizes small groups of colleges based on enrollment size for specific best practices and policies, such as compensation and benefits, faculty/administration relations and confidence in senior leadership. There are 26 recognition categories for four-year institutions.

Nazareth was recognized in five categories, including facilities and security, professional/career development programs, confidence in senior leadership, internal communications, and tenure clarity and process.

“Our campus community is especially proud to earn national recognition among colleges and universities as a great place to work,” said Daan Braveman, Nazareth president. “This wonderful achievement is a real tribute to the devoted efforts of our entire faculty and staff. It is noteworthy that Nazareth had one of the highest participation rates in this year's Chronicle of Higher Education survey, which is a testament to our employees and their overall satisfaction with the work environment.”

RIT ranked among the top schools in six survey categories, including satisfaction with benefits, compensation and benefits, tuition reimbursement, 403(b) or 401(k) plans, disability insurance and life insurance.

“This is wonderful news not only for RIT, but for the greater Rochester community where higher education is a major component of the economic engine,” said William Destler, RIT president. “We are proud to be a university that attracts the best and brightest. This honor is a testament to our employees that make RIT a great place to work.”

RIT also was included on last year's list.

More than 300 two- and four-year colleges signed up for the program, and 247 went through the entire survey process this spring—nearly triple last year's number of participants, officials said. The results are based on responses from nearly 41,000 administrators, faculty members and staff members at those institutions.

Copyright © 2009 Rochester Business Journal

Return to Top

Consumers continue to buy the vintage kitchen items — some dating to the Great Depression of the 1930s — that Mary Merz has on display in her booth at the All That Jazz Antique Co-op in Penfield.

But some shoppers for antiques and collectibles have adjusted to today's economic realities by seeking items of a practical value. "People want to justify their purchase," said Merz, 69, of Penfield.

An old-fashioned juicer, which with a quick turn of the hand can squeeze the juice out of half of an orange, is likely to sell faster than a pricey decorative vase.

Still others continue to shop for collectibles at this kind of mall because, after they pay for their bread-and-butter essentials, they want to satisfy their appetite for hobbies.

"I usually buy on impulse," said Steve Zaremba, 39, of Geneseo, who recently bought two used license plates — one from Georgia, the other from Indiana — for a total of $7 at Ontario Mall Antiques in Farmington.

Outlets for collectibles and antiques gained a firm foothold in the Rochester area a couple of decades ago. While some of these malls have closed over the years, the surviving ones seem to be weathering the recession.

"People are passionate about collecting," said Marie Zenkel, 67, who previously sold at antique shows before opening All That Jazz with business partner Carol Annalora 11 years ago.

Sales are down a bit, but antiques and collectibles continue to be a draw at All That Jazz, which rents space to about 100 vendors in a two-story, 10,000-square-foot building on Empire Boulevard.

Selling antiques and collectibles differs from the typical business because these goods are not produced to meet demand. Rather, such items are passed on or sold from one generation to another. They can be put on the market for any number of reasons, which makes an educated consumer all the more important.

"Understand what is a good value," said Joseph Miller, assistant professor of marketing at Rochester Institute of Technology.

Bill Guche started Ontario Mall Antiques 17 years ago. He previously sold used cars to dealers and started out with 12 antiques dealers renting a part of what now houses almost 1,000 dealers in a 31,000-square foot complex on Route 332. Most rent display cases for $50 a month, while booths, depending on the size, typically go for $165.

"For the seller, it provides a place where they can set up without paying a lot," Guche said.

The $2.3 million in sales that dealers at Guche's mall made last year was about the same as the year before. Storewide monthly sales are coupled with discounts given by individual vendors to help draw customers.

Brion Phelps, 64, of Ogden went on a recent scouting trip to Guche's mall in search of Hull Pottery, which is known for its textured glazes and earthy colors.

"I'm a pottery junky," said Phelps, a retired Rochester police officer who purchased a vase and small pitcher to add to his collection.

The 400,000 items that Guche says are on display at his mall over the course of a year range from antique furniture to a can of "Genuine Los Angeles Smog."

Gary and Sharon Merrill of Canandaigua, who showcase items ranging from Lesney miniature vehicles to English bone china, have downsized their displays at Ontario Mall Antiques with the recession.

Their sales over the past two years at this mall were about 40 percent below their 2005 high, so the Merrills went from renting four display cases to two and continue to rent a booth from Guche.

But the Merrills are now considering renting another display case.

"I feel like it's on a comeback," said Gary Merrill.

Copyright © 2009 Rochester Democrat & Chronicle

Return to Top