Sept. 16, 2008


CAMPUS NEWS AND NEWS & EVENTS HIGHLIGHTS

Destler discusses RIT's future
In opening-day remarks Aug. 28, RIT President Bill Destler presented past-year highlights and looked ahead to the coming academic year.

Enrollment expected to reach all-time high
RIT enrollment in several categories, including total head count, is projected to hit an all-time high this fall.

'Futurist' Ray Kurzweil kicks off Gannett lectures
The 2008-2009 Caroline Werner Gannett Project, Visionaries in Motion II, begins with an address by Ray Kurzweil at 7 p.m. Sept. 17 in Gordon Field House and Activities Center.

RIT Press publishes political memoir
Richard Rosenbaum, former chair of the New York State Republican Committee and 1994 gubernatorial candidate, offers behind-the-scenes insight in No Room for Democracy: The Triumph of Ego Over Common Sense.

Brick City Homecoming events slated
Well-known entertainers headline RIT's Brick City Homecoming Oct. 8-11.

More News & Events

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


LATEST PODCASTS

Studio 86: Visionaries in Motion
Mary Lynn Broe, the Caroline Werner Gannett Professor, discusses the speaker lineup for the 2008-2009 Caroline Werner Gannett Project, Visionaries in Motion II.
Listen to audio (15:00)

RIT University News YouTube Channel


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 (Sept. 1-15, 2008):

New York's Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) recently opened a branch at the Dubai Silicon Oasis. Among its programmes is a graduate degree in microelectonics.

'The Dubai Silicon Oasis mission is to establish a microelectronics technology park in the region and we happen to be one of the best institutions in the US that trains people in this field,' said Mustafa Abushagur, president of RIT Dubai, in a conversation with Notes.

RIT comes to Dubai after opening branches in Croatia and Kosovo.

'Dubai is a dynamic place and this is where we can attract a lot of good students and bring value to the community here,' said Abushagur.

Courses are currently being offered at the Dubai Silicon Oasis headquarters.

Courses offered

Courses include graduate degrees in finance, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, human resource development, service leadership and networking and systems administration.

Human resource development and service leadership disciplines aimed at managers will start in October.

Much market research was done to choose the disciplines that match markets requirements here, Abushagur said.

Accreditation

It takes 18 months to complete a postgraduate degree at RIT. 'The degree that students receive is the same one that is offered in New York. RIT is accredited by all accreditation agencies in the US and by the Knowledge and Human Development Authority in Dubai,' Abushagur said.

Faculty and resources

Currently there are seven faculty members from the US. Some are here full time while others visit for lectures and support the class with online education. Students in Dubai also have full access to the libraries and resources of the US campus.

Cost factor

A masters degree at RIT Dubai costs Dh100,000. Scholarships are not being offered currently; but they will be given to students with outstanding credentials in the future, said Abushagur.

Training opportunities

Graduates will be trained to be managers and executive officers of companies. According to the president, about 1,900 companies in the US hire RIT students. 'We are a career-focused university: we teach students to go to the marketplace and work from day one,' he said.

He hopes to achieve the same in Dubai. 'We are in the process of establishing partnerships with companies so that our students are ready to go out to the marketplace and start working,' he said.

Future plans

The campus is expected to be fully ready by 2010, at which time the administration plans to introduce undergraduate programmes.

In 2009, more graduate programmes will be added. 'Next year we will add graduate programmes in industrial and systems engineering,' Abushagur said.

Dormitories will also be made available so that students can live and study on campus.

Students here can opt to take a semester in the US; their counterparts in the US can do the same to gain an international experience in Dubai.

Copyright © 2008 Al Nisr Publishing LLC

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Ray Kurzweil plans to live indefinitely

Are you ready for the merger of human beings and computers? How about tinkering with our genes to allow us to eat as much as we want without getting fat? How would you like to live indefinitely? Ray Kurzweil believes that if you make it into the 2020's, you'll be part of a new world that will have all of this and more.

Kurzweil has spent most of his life decades ahead of the rest of us. He invented the CCD flat-bed scanner, the first music synthesizer to accurately simulate a grand piano and other instruments, the first pocket-size print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first widely marketed speech-recognition device, and many other innovations.

In recent years, he has concentrated on re-examining the technology of life itself.

But are we prepared for the future Kurzweil envisions? Everyone wants a cure for cancer, but do we want microscopic computers controlling our bodies?

Kurzweil, who is 60, is looking forward to it. He follows a strict diet and takes150 vitamin supplements a day to make sure he's around to participate and potentially live indefinitely.

Kurzweil will inaugurate the third season of the Caroline Werner Gannett Project at the Rochester Institute of Technology on Wednesday, September 17. (The title of his talk is the same as his recent book: 'The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology.') In addition to his talk, there will be a 'Kurzweilfest' with a panel of faculty members, business people, and students discussing his work on September 15. All events are free. (More information: www.cwgp.org)

The Gannett Project brings to RIT world-class artists, scientists, scholars, and inventors who ask unconventional questions.

During the project's first two years, speakers ranged from philosopher Daniel Dennett to writer and cartoonist, Lynda Barry. Illustrator-designer Maria Kalman and jazz musician DD Jackson are among the speakers in this year's series, 'Visionaries in Motion II: the Human Imprint.'

But no one embodies that theme more than Kurzweil.

'Ray Kurzweil is a perfect pioneering futurist for us with his stunning record of invention and innovation in business and finance, technologies, artificial intelligence, various sciences, and health,' says Dr. Mary Lynn Broe, Caroline Werner Gannett Professor of Humanities.

In a recent interview, Kurzweil talked about his vision of the future. The following is an edited version of that conversation.

City: Some of your predictions sound like science fiction. What do you base them on?

Kurzweil: When I was a student [at Massachusetts Institute of Technology] 40 years ago, MIT shared one computer, taking up half a building. The computer in your cellphone is a million times smaller, a million times cheaper, and a thousand times more powerful.

Every aspect of information technology, even genetic sequencing, has doubled every year, and the price has come down by half every year. Halfway through the Genome Project, skeptics said, 'I told you this project wasn't going to work. You're halfway through this 15-year project and you've only finished 1 percent.' But that was right on schedule; it had been doubling every year, but doubling little numbers. Once it reached 1 percent it went to 2, 4, 8, 16, 32; seven doublings gets you to 100 percent.

Many other aspects of information technology - the size of the internet, the amount of data we move around every year, telecommunication speeds, the spatial resolution of brain scanning, the amount of data we're getting from the brain - progresses in the same exponential fashion. Computers that now fit in your pocket will fit inside a blood cell, and they'll be very powerful.

That brings us to your theory that microscopic computers will play a large roll in health care in the future.

We'll have blood-cell-size devices, millions of nanobots, keeping us healthy from inside our bodies and interacting with biological neurons in our brains. If this sounds futuristic, we already have a first generation of blood-cell-size devices keeping animals healthy.

One scientist cured Type 1 diabetes in rats with a blood-cell-size device that releases insulin in a controlled fashion and blocks antibodies. At MIT they have a blood-cell-size device that can detect cancer cells and destroy them in the blood stream. Go out 25 years, and these devices will be a billion times more capable and 100,000 times smaller.

When do you see all of this happening?

We will have both the hardware and the software to simulate the whole range of human intelligence by 2029. We'll get the software by reverse-engineering the human brain. Once computers reach human levels of intelligence, they'll combine the flexibility and subtleness of human intelligence with ways machines are already superior to us. They can remember billions of things accurately; I'm pressed to remember a handful of phone numbers.

So humans will become part machine?

It's not going to be an alien invasion of intelligent machines to compete with us; we're going to merge with this technology. We'll be putting it inside ourselves, but we'll be essentially making ourselves smarter. We already do that with computers. The fact that you can take a computer out of your pocket and with a few keystrokes access all of human knowledge is certainly an extension of human intelligence. We routinely do intellectual feats that would be impossible without machines.

If you go out to the 2020's and 2030's and you talk to an average biological human, you'll be talking to a hybrid of biological and non-biological intelligence. There will be, ultimately, millions of nanobots inside that person keeping them healthy, extending their intelligence, putting their brains on the internet, providing full-immersion virtual reality, incorporating all the senses within the nervous system.

If you get to 2045, by my calculations the non-biological portion of our intelligence will be a billion times more capable than the biological portions. We will be principally non-biological. That doesn't mean we'll have done away with the biological part, but the action will be with the non-biological part. We will have multiplied our intelligence a billion-fold.

Your book, 'Fantastic Voyage' [written with Terry Grossman] is about life extension and the possibility of living indefinitely.

We talk about three bridges to radical life extension. Bridge 1 is about keeping yourself healthy and slowing down the aging process, which I have succeeded in doing, according to biological aging tests. When I was 40, I came out at 38. I'm now 60, and I come out 40.

The goal of Bridge 1 is to get to Bridge 2 - about 15 years away - the full blossoming of the biotechnology revolution, being able to reprogram the information processes underlying biology.

We have the genome as of a few years ago; we have the means of actually changing our genes as adults. New forms of gene therapy can add new genes, and we can turn on and off enzymes.

Fifteen years from now, we'll be adding more than a year every year not just to infant life expectancy but to your life expectancy, so there will be a tipping point where you'll be extending your life expectancy by more time than is going by, and the sands of time will start to run in rather than run out.

Bridge 3, 20 to 25 years from now, will bring us to the nanotechnology revolution, where we can go beyond the limitations of biology and extend ourselves with this intimate merger with nanotechnology.

Life expectancy was 37 in 1800. There was no sanitation and no understanding of the germ theory of disease. People got bacterial infections, and there were no antibiotics. Schubert and Mozart died in their 30's; that was typical. Life expectancy was 48 in 1900. When Social Security was put in in 1935, 62 - when you could start receiving Social Security - was considered old. Now, if you watch Mick Jagger prancing around at 65, he doesn't seem particularly old.

This process will go into high gear as we get to the mature phase of the biotechnology revolution. We can treat the information processes in our bodies as software and reprogram and update it. You don't go very long without updating the software in your cellphone, but we've gone thousands of years without updating the software in our bodies.

One example is the fat insulin receptor gene, which basically says: Hold on to every calorie, because next hunting season may not work out well. That was a great idea 1000 years ago; it's not a great idea today in an era of abundance. It underlies an epidemic of obesity.

When that gene was turned off in animal experiments, the animals ate ravenously and remained slim. They didn't get diabetes, heart disease; they lived 20 percent longer than normal mice. Several pharmaceutical companies are rushing to bring fat insulin receptor gene inhibitors to the human market. That's just one of 22,000 genes we'd like to tinker with.

That sort of thing can change as a result of evolution. Are we speeding up evolution?

Biological evolution is continuing, but the cutting edge of evolution is technological evolution. Biological evolution moves at such a slow pace, it's really not relevant. Technological evolution is thousands of times faster and getting faster still.

Do these technologies raise ethical question the way something like cloning does?

I'd be careful of the word 'ethics.' There are legitimate ethical issues having to do with the safety and deployment of these technologies. Technology has always been a double-edged sword. Ever since fire and stone tools, we've used technology to enhance our creativity and well-being on one hand, but it's also used to magnify our destructiveness on the other.

These new technologies are even more powerful than 20th-century technologies. Biotechnology can, I believe within a decade or so, overcome cancer and heart disease, but it could also be applied by a bio-terrorist to reprogram a biological virus to be more deadly, more communicable, or more stealthy.

Where ethics comes in is to deploy standards for responsible practitioners to prevent accidental problems. There's a set of ethical guidelines for biotechnology, and it's actually worked well for the last couple of decades.

The other issue is somebody who intends to be destructive like a bio-terrorist. For that, we need a rapid response system like we have for software viruses. I've been working with the government to develop rapid responses. We have the technology to do it. We can sequence a virus in one day; it took us five years to sequence HIV. We can apply RNA interference to turn off biological viruses.

Sometimes the word 'ethics' is applied to the idea that we should not change biology, that it's immoral to change who we are. I don't agree with that. In my view, we are the species who change who we are, and if we didn't do that our life expectancy would still be 23. We haven't stayed on the ground, we haven't stayed on the planet, we haven't stayed with the limitation of our biology.

Do you see any problem in not making room for new generations if we have the ability to live indefinitely?

I don't think that's a problem. If you imagine today with our limitation of resources, a dramatic reduction in the death rate would put a strain on resources. But the same technologies leading to dramatic extensions in life will also provide dramatic increases in resources.

I just wrote the report for the National Academy of Engineering on energy. We're calling for completely replacing fossil fuels with solar energy in 20 years. We're doubling the amount of solar energy every two years. We're only seven or eight doublings from it meeting 100 percent of our energy needs.

If we captured one part in 10,000 of the sunlight that falls on earth, we'd meet 100 percent of our needs. We haven't been able to do that because until recently solar panels have been heavy, inefficient, expensive. The new generation, revolutionized by nanotechnology, are much more efficient, lightweight, cost-effective.

[Google co-founder] Larry Page and I, who jointly worked on this, believe we're less than five years from a tipping point where the cost per watt of solar energy will be less than the cost per watt of fossil-fuel energy. The same thing will be true of water and basically all the material resources we need. We'll have desk-top nano-fabrication units where you can take an information file and create physical products.

Right now I can email you an attachment, and you can turn it into a movie or sound recording. Those used to be physical products. On your Kindle, you can download books wirelessly from Amazon. In the future, I'll be able to email an attachment you can turn into a blouse or a module to build a home. Basically, all of the physical things we need will be information.

A desk-top nano-factory will take input materials, which have a variety of the atoms and molecular building blocks needed. It will be an inexpensive input stock and will, through a massively parallel fabrication process that's computer controlled, basically build, at the molecular level, physical products from information descriptions.

Will we ever be able, in a Star Trek-like way, to beam people from one place to another?

In terms of scanning a person, that sort of thing will ultimately be feasible in that we can capture the information that constitutes a person. That will take longer. That's a 2040 scenario.

In your discussion of artificial intelligence, you debate the implications of philosopher John Searle's Chinese Room Analogy, in which a man or a computer, by following rules, can answer question in Chinese without really understanding Chinese. To extend that idea, a computer can compose music, but can a computer ever compose a Beethoven sonata?

Yes, once it's achieved the full range of human intelligence. One of the advantages of the machine form of human intelligence is that it can operate at high levels of human performance in every field. The reason a computer composing music today doesn't seem like Beethoven is because it's not yet operating at human levels.

John Searle makes the argument that the computer doesn't seem to be operating with the deep understanding of a person. When he makes that analogy, people think of the computer programs they know, which don't have that level of complexity.

You can apply Searle's argument to the human brain itself and prove, according to Searle, that the brain itself has no understanding, because a neuron, which he acknowledges is just a machine, still operates by the law of physics. There's no magical substance in the brain. Once we capture the essence of those methods, we'll be able to capture its capabilities.

But can a computer have, for lack of a better term, a soul or spirit, something most people believe machines could never have, no matter how exponentially they progress?

The key mystery is consciousness, and consciousness is actually not a scientific issue because it's really only apparent to its possessor. We only assume other human beings are conscious; we have no way of experiencing someone else's consciousness.

There's no machine we could envision where we could slide it in and a green light comes on saying, Yeah, this one's conscious, this one's not conscious, that doesn't have some philosophical assumptions built into the machine. Searle might build in the assumption that it has to be biological. [Philosopher] Daniel Dennett would build in a different assumption, that it had to have circuits that reflect on itself.

So when does a computer cross over into consciousness?

This is the heart of my prediction: When we encounter entities that seem conscious and human-like - that unlike today's characters in video games, really have the subtle cues that go along with their emotional statements, and when they say 'I'm jealous' or 'I'm angry' it's really convincing - then we will come to believe that these entities are conscious, even though they're not biological.

But that's not strictly a philosophical demonstration that they're conscious. Philosophers will say, 'Yes, Ray Kurzweil's Ramona avatar [Kurzweil's virtual-reality alter-ego, with whom you can chat on KurzweilAI.net] certainly seems conscious. She's very funny and engaging, but she's not biological. So she's not conscious, just an illusion.'

Do you personally believe she is, or will be conscious?

I think so. There's no reason not to consider her conscious if she seems conscious, any more than we consider people to be conscious. For that matter, some people don't seem all that conscious.

This world that you see in the future, is it a better world than the one we have?

It's a good question. There are some risks that are pretty fundamental, some of which exist now. There are 20,000 thermonuclear weapons from the cold war that still exist. They're still on a hair-trigger. It's never mentioned in the presidential debates. So, a half-century ago, we created an existential risk to the survival of our species which didn't exist before. These new technologies could be comparably dangerous.

I'm optimistic. I think you can make a strong argument that human life is far better off due to technology. If you go back 300 years, it was described well by Thomas Hobbes as disaster-prone, poverty-prone, disease-filled, short, brutish. People struggled to survive and worked very, very hard in difficult conditions. That was the plight of 99 percent of humans.

So we've come a long way. There's still a lot of suffering in our midst. I think we'll have the technology to overcome that suffering. We have to work on the down side of these technologies. I believe it will be a better life. That's why I want to be around to see it.

Copyright © City Newspaper 2008

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Morning Edition, September 9, 2008 - Google is taking on Microsoft's ubiquitous Internet Explorer with a new browser called Chrome. Technology commentator Mario Armstrong tells Renee Montagne that it's an easy to use, open-source browser that has a long way to go before it could oust Explorer as the No. 1 browser.

But there's room for more than one Web browser, he says, because each has distinct features that appeal to different users. And browsers present "tremendous revenue opportunities" for companies.

NPR.org, September 2, 2008 When Google unveiled its new browser on Tuesday, it was touted as a faster and more reliable experience for those using the Web for everything from e-mail and word processing, to music and video.

The new open-source browser, Google Chrome, is an alternative to programs like Internet Explorer which enjoys a 72 percent market share, according to Net Applications, and is pre-loaded on many PCs as well as Firefox, Safari and Opera.

Here, some first impressions about what the Google Chrome experience offers.

Why has Google created a new browser?

'We're moving towards a Web-centric world, where the operating system means less and the browser means more,' says Tom Spring, a senior writer for PC World magazine. The growth in the number of people using Web applications spurred Google to develop Chrome over the last two years.

'We saw an opportunity, given how much the Web has evolved, to rewrite the browser from scratch,' says Sundar Pichai, Google's vice president for product management. The goal, he says, was to create a simple, yet powerful user experience with no interruptions: 'The user should enjoy surfing the Web, and the browser should stay out of it.'

Many applications that people now run in their Web browsers, such as Google Maps, require intensive processor power. Chrome is designed to help handle this and to prevent crashes by effectively segregating each open browser window into a distinct 'sandbox.' This unique setup is also advantageous from a security perspective, because Chrome will prevent a rogue Web site from reaching into your computer by keeping any activity restricted to the browser, Spring says.

Google posted a comic book on the Web to help explain Chrome, which can be downloaded and used with any search provider.

Dan Bogaard, an associate professor of information technology at the Rochester Institute of Technology, says Google is 'almost begging other companies to use what they're doing. They're actually just trying to drive the Internet into a new place a place where applications reign, rather than individual pages.'

To create Chrome, Google says it relied on open source projects already developed by Mozilla in addition to WebKit the engine behind Apple's Safari browser.

How will the look and feel of Chrome differ from a Google search as we know it?

Lightning fast speed and intuitive design are just some of the advantages, according to Spring.

'It has an elegant simplicity to it in its design, reminiscent to what Apple does,' he says.

One of the real pluses is that the browser enables you to create application shortcuts on your desktop. With this feature, Chrome 'attempts to blur that line' between Web applications and desktop applications, Spring says.

The centerpiece of Chrome is the tab, which is now located at the top of the browser. If one tab is loading a page, a user can switch to another tab to continue work without waiting. Similarly, if one tab crashes or freezes, you can close that tab without affecting other open tabs. This helps to keep memory jams from bogging down the computer or the whole browser. Google has also created a task manager, so you can monitor which sites or plug-ins are using the most memory.

The new real estate for tabs makes them stand out like a folder in a file cabinet. They also can be moved around just as easily. The size of the tabs also adjusts based on how many are open in the browser, but the 'x' for closing the tab remains in the same spot on each one, so you can quickly close many of them without moving your mouse. You can also drag a tab out of the browser to create a new window.

When you open Chrome, the default page brings you to your nine most visited sites, giving the page a customized look and feel. It also displays your search history and recent bookmark selections.

One user-friendly feature is that the search and address window have been combined. Now there's just one box, and it has become a center of power just starting to type any letter in the alphabet will bring up suggestions. These are culled from bookmarks (Chrome automatically imports bookmarks and passwords from your existing browser) and from popular searches that begin with that letter. This allows you to type in just a few letters for example 'n' and then 'p,' and NPR.org automatically comes up.

It's easy to bookmark pages in Chrome, but it's not a necessity. Chrome maintains full text searches in its history. If you've already searched for 'elephants at the national zoo,' Chrome will take you back to the page you found the first time you ran that search. With popular search sites like Amazon, Google and others, you can also run a search right from the address bar by typing the first letter of the site. Once Chrome recognizes it, you can hit the tab key and enter your search terms.

When will it launch, and will it be accessible on all types of operating systems?

Google launched a beta version of Chrome for Windows on Tuesday. The company said it is developing versions of the browser for Mac and Linux. Bogaard says the 'beta' designation is worrisome because of the company's history of keeping everything in test-mode for long periods. A case in point: Two popular programs, Gmail and Google Docs, still have beta labels. 'Beta scares a lot of people away,' he says.

What kind of privacy safeguards are part of Chrome?

Google says that Chrome 'continually' downloads lists of troublesome Web sites that engage in practices including malware distribution and phishing that could compromise data on your computer and warns you if you encounter one of them.

Chrome also has a privacy feature that users can summon called the 'incognito' window, which enables users to browse the Web without creating any record or history on their local computer. When the window is closed, any cookies are also deleted. Spring says that users should be aware that this does not amount to 'surfing anonymously.'

During Tuesday's press conference, Google officials said that they hoped this feature would help prevent people from deleting the history on their computers, since Chrome works best when there is a record of searches.

Spring says that when it comes to privacy, consumers should keep their eye on what Google decides to do with Chrome going forward. Google has a record of tracking user searches and selling ads against that, he says, and now they have the ability to track what you do with your browser.

'They will own your experience from the moment that you launch the browser to the time that you shut it down,' Spring says.

What implications does this have for other browsers?

John Lilly, the CEO of Mozilla Corp., said in a recent blog post that Google's entry into the browser universe 'increases' competition, because it provides users with 'another interesting browser' to choose from. He says Firefox 'will keep getting better.'

Bogaard says Chrome doesn't represent a threat against Firefox (Google has agreed to provide funding to Mozilla through November 2011), but he says the introduction of Chrome signals mounting competition with Microsoft, which plans a new release of Internet Explorer soon.

Internet Explorer has been 'laying stagnant for a couple of years' without many updates, he says. Microsoft's Web site says its update Internet Explorer 8, which is only available now as a test version on its Web site will be 'faster, easier and safer than ever.'

In the meantime, Chrome has some bugs to fix. Spring says it doesn't support the very popular collection of extensions that Firefox users enjoy, and there isn't a print preview function. But he says it's too early in development to take them to task for a browser that 'shows a lot of promise from the get-go.'

Copyright © 2008 NPR

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ScienceDaily (Sep. 9, 2008) Marine vessels are no longer resting in a safe harbor.

The forecast for clear skies and smooth sailing for oceanic vessels has been impeded by worldwide concerns of their significant contributions to air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions that impact the Earths climate.

A new study by professors James Winebrake and James Corbett examines Emission Tradeoffs among Alternative Marine Fuels: Total Fuel Cycle Analysis of Residual Oil, Marine Gas Oil, and Marine Diesel Oil, in a recent issue of Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association.

According to Winebrake, professor and chair of the Department of Science, Technology and Society/Public Policy at Rochester Institute of Technology, and Corbett, associate professor in the College of Marine and Earth Studies at the University of Delaware, reducing fuel sulfur content is an essential component of any strategy aimed at reducing sulfur oxide emissions from marine vesselsespecially since global concerns have caused policy makers to accelerate the introduction of emission control technologies and cleaner fuels into the international marine sector. These tactics aim to improve air quality and human health and mitigate climate change.

Cleaner fuels are expected to reduce sulfur and particulate emissions, however, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions may increase because of the additional refining energy required to produce these fuelsresidual oil, marine gas oil and marine diesel oil, Winebrake explains. Our study provides a total fuel cycle emissions analysis to help quantify these emissions tradeoffs.

In the study, Winebrake and Corbett applied a jointly developed model called the Total Energy and Emissions Analysis for Marine Systems (TEAMS) model, which was developed to explore what are called upstream emissions associated with fuel production and distribution. Using the model, the authors demonstrated that although cleaner fuels increase GHG emissions during their production, they reduce GHG emissions during vessel operation, creating almost a net zero GHG impact.

This result was counter to claims by the petroleum industrywhich suggested that the use of cleaner fuels in the marine sector would exacerbate green house GHG problems.

Given that the GHG impacts associated with cleaner fuels are almost nil, and given the tremendous advantages of these fuels with respect to other pollutants, policies that encourage cleaner fuels seem warranted, explains Winebrake, who also published a paper last year with Corbett demonstrating significant premature human mortality across the globe due to emissions from ships.

The global shipping sector is one of the last unregulated emissions sources, and our study will provide useful information to the ongoing international debate surrounding cleaner marine fuels.

Adapted from materials provided by Rochester Institute of Technology.

Copyright © 2008 ScienceDaily LLC

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Henrietta, N.Y. - It may seem like an easy prediction now but in the 1980s, when surfing was associated with the ocean and not computers, Ray Kurzweil correctly predicted the explosion of the Internet and the use of computerized, intelligent weapons systems.

Kurzweil is an inventor, entrepreneur, a key innovator in the development of artificial intelligence and a futurist, someone who speculates about the future.

He will kick off the 2008-2009 Caroline Werner Gannett Project at Rochester Institute of Technology by presenting The Singularity is the Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, an adaptation of his best-selling novel of the same name, at 7 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 17 at RIT.

"Ray Kurzweil is a real visionary," said Mary Lynn Broe, Gannett professor of humanities and director of the Gannett Project. "He is one of the leading voices in predicting the impact of accelerating technology on health, longevity, invention and business in our 21st century. We are delighted to have this restless genius speak at RIT."

Kurzweil is a pioneer in developing computers that can recognize and convert handwritten or typewritten text into speech and vice-versa. He invented the Kurzweil Reading Machine for the blind the first machine of its kind that could recognize virtually any standard font. He has started 10 companies, including Kurzweil Computer Products, which was purchased by Xerox, authored five books and received the National Medal of Technology from President Bill Clinton in 1999.

"When making predictions about the future, you have to think in terms of exponential growth not linear growth," said Kurzweil. "If you count linearly from one to 30, you don't have a very large number. But if you count 30 steps exponentially 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 ..... and so on, you have a very large number."

Kurzweil said that when speculating about the future whether its health, biology, life expectancy or how much sunlight a solar panel can capture exponential growth is the key.

"This growth has led to gigantic leaps in artificial intelligence technology so that within a quarter of a century, artificial intelligence will match the range and subtlety of human intelligence," he said.

According to Kurzweil, artificial intelligence may soon even surpass human intelligence. Through his eyes, the future holds infinite possibilities cures for diseases, efficient means of alternate energy production and a world where humans live well past the age of 100 as science and technology advance the world we live in.

These predictions and more will be Kurzweils talking points when he speaks at RIT as part of this years Caroline Werner Gannett Project.

The Project was created in 2006 to explore how people interact with science and technology to further their education and culture. Noted scholars, authors and artists will present a series of lectures and workshops related to innovations across different disciplines. An elective course, Visionaries in Motion, will be offered in 2008-09 in conjunction with the series through RITs College of Liberal Arts and the Honors Program.

"My advice to students is to find something they are passionate about and gain all the knowledge possible about that subject," said Kurzweil. "There is real value in knowledge."

For more information about the Caroline Werner Gannett Project, including a full listing of the 2008-09 schedule visit www.cwgp.org. All Gannett events are free and open to the public.

Copyright © 2008 GateHouse Media Inc.

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We delved into a few urban driving legends last week. Let's pick apart two more: the safest place to be during a lightning storm is in your car, and red cars attract more speeding tickets than less-colorful vehicles.

Lightning legend

You've undoubtedly heard this saying. But you might not know the real reason why it's safer to be in a car than being outside during a storm.

'It's not because of the rubber tires, as people often claim,' said Daniel Davis, a physicist who narrates the Boston Museum of Science's famous lightning show. 'You're safe riding inside the T, for example, and the T has metal wheels. You're very safe inside a plane. Most commercial airplanes are struck by lightning once a year on average and there's very little damage. They're airborne, and the rubber tires have been pulled up into the fuselage.'

Cars and other metal structures are predominantly safe havens from lightning for two distinct reasons, Davis said. First, they are great conductors of electricity. Second, when cars and the like are struck by lightning, the current stays on the outermost surfaces of their metal frames. No matter where you touch inside the car, you won't get zapped.

'The charge is pushed to the outside skin of the conductor. It's called a skin effect,' Davis said.

The science behind this phenomenon goes something like this, explains Davis: A bolt of lightning might last but a second, but during that moment, the intensity of the current fluctuates several times. The current might start at 100,000 volts, jump up to 1 million volts, then slide back down to 500,000 volts, all within a second. The fluctuations create a magnetic field in the object that's being struck, such as your car, and that magnetic field pushes the current to the outside surfaces of the object.

'We do a very similar demonstration at the Theater of Electricity in the Museum of Science,' Davis said. 'We have a [human-size] metal bird cage with one-quarter-inch-thick iron bars that's struck by our 1-million-volt Van de Graaff generator. Visitors regularly touch the inside of the cage as it's being struck and they don't feel anything. Certainly, they are not harmed.'

Davis added a few points of caution, however. A car will conduct the electricity from a lightning strike with the windows open or closed. But if you were to stick out your hand, the charge would likely jump to your skin.

While being in a car is safer than being outside during a lightning storm, it's probably only slightly safer than being in a house. (A house's electric wiring and plumbing will soak up the charge from a strike.)

Likewise, you might be 'marginally safer' in a larger vehicle than, say, a Mini Cooper. 'But if a lightning storm were coming, I certainly wouldn't waste any time debating which vehicle to get in. I'd pick the closest one,' Davis said.

It's also a good idea to pull over, not because a lightning strike will affect your engine, but because you might be blinded by the flash and lose control.

Lastly, although cars are excellent electrical conductors, there's an extremely remote chance that you could still be hurt.

'Your chances of being struck by lightning are very, very small - about 1 in 3 million,' Davis said. 'But I'd hesitate to say you're absolutely safe in any place. It's possible with a particularly strong stroke that something would happen.'

Seeing red

People wear red when they want to get noticed, so it stands to reason that red cars get noticed more often by the police, right?

This legend is an ancient one, with tons of theories on the Web about its accuracy, or lack of. (Police everywhere, not surprisingly, say it's completely false.)

One of the better myth-busting websites, www.snopes.com, has a nice feature on the subject. The story mentions a number of possible explanations - the color red produces an optical illusion that makes the car seem faster; seeing red increases police officers' heartbeats, etc. But ultimately, it dismisses the theory by referencing a St. Petersburg Times survey on red cars and speeding tickets.

A reporter, who was attempting to answer the same question I am, jotted down the colors of 1,198 cars to approximate the percentage of red cars in his county. He then categorized the 924 most-recently issued speeding tickets according to vehicle color.

'Red cars accounted for 14 percent of the vehicles surveyed on the road and got about 16 percent of the speeding tickets, not a significant difference,' the newspaper's reporter found.

The Times survey, conducted in 1990, is somewhat convincing. But I wanted more proof.

The Massachusetts Merit Rating Board, the agency responsible for tracking all of our state's speeding tickets, does not track them according to car color. So for a second opinion, I turned to Mark Fairchild, a research professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology's Munsell Color Science Laboratory.

Fairchild not only holds a doctorate in vision science, he drives a red BMW sports car, too!

'I bought my first red BMW in 1997, turning in my blue Honda Civic. And I got a speeding ticket on the third day,' Fairchild said. 'My friends said, 'You're an idiot, Mark. You should have known. You're a color scientist!'

All joking aside, Fairchild said, that's not why he got the speeding ticket.

'I was going 45 in a 30 mile-per-hour zone, and I didn't know it,' he said.

Because red is a bright color, it does indeed stand out against darker backgrounds, Fairchild said. But from a scientific standpoint, red doesn't have any magical or intrinsic properties that would grab an officer's attention.

'It tends to have a connotation as an emergency color, or a stop sign color, so it does tend to get noticed. But you're going to get noticed if you're speeding no matter what car you're driving,' Fairchild said.

Certain colors can indeed trigger memories, like the smell of an apple pie may remind someone of his grandmother, Fairchild said. But those triggers have everything to do with the individual's makeup and nothing to do with the color itself.

'It's a personal thing,' Fairchild said. 'I get these questions all the time. 'What color should I paint my room to make me happier?' My response is, whatever color you like. Red might make me happy and excited; it might make you depressed. And it tends to be very small effects.'

If anything, Fairchild said, he believes that police may be biased against sports cars, which by design go very fast. 'And they tend to be red more often,' he said.

Interestingly, because of the way our eyes are constructed, red is a difficult color to see at night, Fairchild added. So if you drive a red car at night, it will actually be more difficult for a police officer to notice you.

© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Co.

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Edwin Pinero, a member of the research faculty in the Golisano Institute for Sustainability at Rochester Institute of Technology, has been selected as chair of the newly created Energy Management Committee of the International Standards Organization.

Pinero will lead the effort to establish an international framework for industrial plants and companies related to the management of all aspects of energy, including procurement and use. The committee will also develop a global standard for energy management, to be named ISO 5001, which will combine with international standards related to quality management and environmental systems to further sustainable development in industry, officials said.

"The urgency to reduce emissions, the reality of higher prices from reduced availability of fossil fuels, and the need to promote efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources provide a strong rationale for developing this new standard, building on the most advanced good practices and existing national and regional standards," said Alan Bryden, ISO secretary-general, in a statement.

Bryden said he expects the standard developed by the committee will achieve major, long-term increases in the quality of energy management in industrial facilities and believes the effort could lead to a 20 percent increase in energy efficiency.

"We have a major opportunity to enhance overall environmental quality while also reducing the worlds dependence on fossil fuel," Pinero said. "I am honored to be selected to chair this committee and look forward to being a part of ISOs efforts in this area."

Before joining RIT, Pinero served as federal environmental executive in the White House, where he was responsible for implementing policy and practices on environmental stewardship and sustainability throughout the federal government. In this capacity, he was also a member of the Presidents Council on Environmental Quality, which assists in developing and implementing national environmental policy.

ISO is the worlds leading standards organization, developing and regulating commercial and industrial standards in a host of sectors. It was founded in 1947 and currently represents national standards organizations in 157 countries.

Copyright © 2008 Rochester Business Journal

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When Rochester Institute of Technology looked at upgrading its Perkins Green student apartments, college officials sought ways to incorporate green construction.

One of the enhancements included an ecological improvement to its storm drain system now being transformed into the Henrietta campus' first eco-swale.

An eco-swale is a man-made biofiltration system that utilizes different size aggregates and vegetation to purify storm water.

RIT's eco-swale, which will stretch about 800 feet along the Perkins Green complex on the eastern edge of campus, will feature stones, aquatic plants, shrubs and trees that will act as natural filters against motor oil, pesticides and fertilizer that previously entered the old pipe drains that seeped into nearby wetlands.

"RIT is surrounded by wetlands and we really want to start incorporating them into our design now," said Quent Rhodes, senior project manager at the college.

Two types of plants being introduced are emergent wetland plants, such as sedges, rushes and native grasses, and plants such as asters and cardinal flowers. The roots of these plants have microbe bacteria that cleanses or breaks down pollutants typically found in stormwater runoff.

Designers also introduced native trees and shrubs as part of the system that would provide a canopy and support some of the plants' growth and stability.

"We can get more diversity in the swale if we have some areas of sun and shade," said Tom Robinson, landscape architect, Environmental Design & Research PC in Rochester.

Wetlands and swales play a much larger role in the environment then most people give them credit for, said Laurie Broccolo, owner of Broccolo Tree & Lawn Care, the Henrietta company that is installing the eco-swale.

"Wetland areas are very sensitive because we have such a high water table and heavy clay soils," she said. "It's important that we don't get a lot of silt and pollutants into those streams and wetlands because it can possibly change the ecology of the environment."

The eco-swale is the first line of defense when water rolls off the parking lot. The bio-filtration system is supposed to mimic nature's cleaning force and natural system of balance. That water eventually will spill into the Genesee River.

Most of RITs swales are just grass, but the eco-swale offered an innovative way to make the swale both attractive and economically feasible. The swale is part of a $1.5 million renovation project that includes parking lot restructuring, new sidewalks, bus stations and sitting areas for the Perkins Green complex.

"We want to send water back to the wetlands as clean as possible," added Rhodes.

The eco-swale is expected to be completed this month. and will yield immediate results, according to Broccolo. Within three to five years, most of the plants will have reached a maturity stage that will produce significant benefits to the water quality.

According to EDR, engineers estimate the eco-swale will help cleanse about 1.2 million gallons of water per year.

Copyright © 2008 Rochester Democrat & Chronicle

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"Since the onset of the World Wide Web, essentially beginning in 1994, youth have grown up not knowing a world without the Net," McQuade said. "And they generally have never been actively monitored, so they don't know how to behave in ways that are appropriate to larger society."

In the wake of two Nebraska wrestlers appearing on a pornographic Web site, Osborne said the university would join athletic departments across the nation in enhancing the monitoring of athletes' use of cyberspace.

The situation for the two Nebraska wrestlers, who were dismissed from the team, points to a larger issue: the use of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook.

Osborne said he'll talk to the more than 500 Nebraska athletes this Thursday about being careful with their Internet posts. He'll also tell them that the athletic department will be monitoring social networking sites.

'We won't turn our heads if we see something inappropriate,' Osborne said.

Many schools address Internet policies in their student-athlete handbooks. Nebraska's does not, but there is a general warning about avoiding activity that could cause embarrassment.

Earlier this year, a University of Iowa athletics board approved guidelines allowing school administrators to check players' sites on public networking Web sites, such as Facebook and MySpace. The move came after Facebook photos surfaced showing a number of Iowa football players who are no longer with the team. The players were holding cash and liquor bottles.

Loyola University in Chicago has barred its athletes from having profiles on social networking sites.

It's more common for schools to counsel their athletes and monitor their profiles, according to John Lata, the Florida State athletic department's director of student services.

Lata has consulted with schools across the country about setting up programs for policing the Web. He estimated that nine out of 10 athletes have social network profiles.

A random check of Nebraska athletes' profiles by The Associated Press revealed pictures of athletes partially undressed and party photos as well as comments about sexual activity, racial slurs and criticism of coaches.

At Creighton University in Omaha, athletes are required to read and sign an 'Internet ethics' policy that cautions them to be careful about what they post online and warns them that the athletic department will be watching.

'If, in my opinion, I see anything that affects them, the team, the athletic department or the university in a negative way, I'll handle it any way I see fit,' Creighton athletic director Bruce Rasmussen said.

Refusal to take remove inappropriate material could range from suspension to dismissal, Rasmussen said.

Florida State's policy is similar.

Lata makes an annual presentation on Internet use to all FSU athletes. Part of his lecture features inappropriate material pulled from FSU athletes' social network sites.

'A lot of times they're surprised when they realize I can get to some of the stuff they thought only their friends could see,' Lata said. 'It's a real eye-opener for them. I ask, 'Would you want your coaches or parents or other family members to see that?''

One of the difficulties in monitoring social networking sites is that a profile under an athlete's name could have been created by someone else. All that's required is an e-mail address to create a profile, and pictures of athletes are readily available on the Web.

'One student-athlete we checked on had some stuff on a Web site attributed to him that was somewhat beyond the pale,' Osborne said. 'We want to make sure people understand that we'll bear responsibility for what someone really puts up there. But there may be information that is not authentic, done by somebody else.'

Lata said he has nothing against MySpace and Facebook if used appropriately. He said such sites can be good and positive ways for people of all ages to socialize.

Lata said athletic departments' priority should be to help athletes spare themselves and their families embarrassment. The harm isn't always immediate. He points out that potential employers look at social network sites to help them screen job applicants.

Lata said he also wants to make sure the image of the university and athletic department are protected. School logos, after all, often are visible on athletes' profiles.

Nebraska quarterback Joe Ganz said he doesn't have a MySpace or Facebook page, though there is a profile listed under his name that hasn't been active since 2005. He said it's not worth the time or risk to have one.

"You could have something meant for a joke for somebody, and someone else could see it and get the wrong idea about who you are as a person, not realizing it's for fun," Ganz said. "Guys need to be smart with it."

Copyright © 2008 the International Herald Tribune

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Though he points to offshore outsourcing, his plan needs specifics

September 1, 2008 (Computerworld) Sen. Barack Obama, (D-Ill.) attacked offshore outsourcing in his acceptance of the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday night, drawing a bead on a practice that has displaced nearly one in 10 IT workers, according to a new study.

Obama said that as president, he 'will stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America.'

Economists and legal advisors contacted about those comments said they are unaware of any specific tax breaks aimed at offshoring tech jobs. Instead, they said, Obama may be targeting broader tax deferment strategies, such as the ability of multinational firms to avoid taxes on profits by moving money overseas.

Joe Greco, director of California State University-Fullerton's Center for the Study of Emerging Markets, discounted the impact of tax code changes on the broader offshore trend. 'Any plans for a tax code change are like trying to plug a hole in a leaky dam with your finger -- to believe the U.S. government tax code promotes outsourcing is a major misconception of the fiery debate around outsourcing offshore,' he said.

But Obama could have more success fighting the shift of jobs overseas through the second half of his point --- by creating incentives for companies to add jobs in the U.S, said Greco. 'If you want to be a magnet, you can be a magnet,' he said.

Indeed, Jim Harvey, the partner and co-chair of the global technology and outsourcing practice group at Hunton & Williams LLP in New York, said state and local governments can be very active in creating incentives to retain jobs, including tying a particular number of jobs to the size of a tax break. Such incentives, he said, can make a difference for some clients. 'Incentives to keep jobs on shore, targeted at the IT industry, would make a lot of sense,' Harvey said.

But tax breaks to keep jobs in the U.S. don't always work. The Nielsen Co., recently gave up local tax breaks it received in Florida after it hired an India-based firm.

If Obama plans to keep giving attention to offshore outsourcing, he is hitting an issue that is having a major effect on tech workers. In what may be the largest study of its kind, involving 10,000 workers and human resources professionals across a range of occupations, researchers at the New York University Stern School of Business and Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania found that 8% of IT workers in the U.S. have been displaced. The study was released last week.

As high as that figure is -- 240,000 out of some three million tech workers -- Ron Hira, an assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology and author of Outsourcing America, said it still understates the impact of offshoring on IT workers.

'First, there are many cases when a worker or even employer doesn't realize that they lost a job or a project to an offshore outsourcing firm,' said Hira. 'Second, it (the study) doesn't count the number of jobs that are created offshore in lieu of being created here. Before offshore outsourcing, those job opportunities would have been here.'

Among other issues Hira raised is the effect of offshoring on wage suppression in the U.S., as well as the impact of H-1B and L-1 visas.

Advocates of offshore outsourcing, which include the titans of the tech industry, have argued that it creates jobs at U.S. firms. That argument is typically raised as a lobbying point in getting Congress to raise the H-1B cap, now set at 85,000. That total includes 20,000 for foreigners who have earned advanced degrees at U.S. institutions.

Obama has supported raising the H-1B cap, as has Sen. John McCain, (R-Ariz.), the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Opponents of the H-1B visa program cite its heavy use by offshore firms in arguing that it facilitates the offshoring of U.S. jobs.

Firms in India, in particular, aren't just competing on low cost but on the increasing quality of their services, said Stephanie Moore, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. The cost of doing work in India is increasing, but users are gaining through the better efficiencies these firms offer, which can deliver savings in their own right.

Virendra Singh, a senior economist at Moody's Economy.com, said the cost savings overseas is too great. "In case of labor-intensive industries like programming, help desks, call centers ... the labor cost differential between the U.S. and countries like China, India, Philippines and other developing countries is too large to make any difference."

Singh also said the computer and systems programming "visa regime in the U.S. is too restrictive -- so companies will go wherever talent is available."

Copyright © 2008 Computerworld Inc.

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