Higher Education : In The News

The New York Times reports that Haverford College will get a new president next year -- Daniel H. Weiss,who has held the same position for the last eight years at Lafayette College.

Mr. Weiss, who said he was announcing his decision with "mixed emotions," plans to leave Lafayette at the end of the 2012-13 academic year, according to the letter.

Original source: The New York Times
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The Star-Ledger writes about Drexel University engineers who kicked off national Engineers Week by displaying seven adult-sized humanoid robots on Monday.

"These are world-class, state-of-the-art robots, says Youngmoo Kim, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. "No one has ever seen that many on the same stage before. Never in the world, and never in history."

But don't get excited just yet. "They are not ready to sweep the floor," says Kim, who also is assistant dean of media technologies in the College of Engineering and director of Drexel's Music and Entertainment Technology Laboratory. While the HUBOS (a contraction from "humanoid" and "robot") stand about 4 feet tall and weigh in at about 100 pounds each, developmentally, they seem a lot like babies. "We're working on getting them to walk without falling over," Kim says, "getting them to climb stairs, pick up small objects." They also can't talk or see or hear (which, actually, makes them also a bit like teenagers...). The computer-driven robots will be outfitted with cameras, microphones and tactile sensors and other apparatus that will allow them to make their way around in the real world, Kim says.

Original source: Star-Ledger
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Campus Technology checks in on Villanova University's transformation of the second floor of its Falvey Memorial Library into a state-of-the-art learning and student support center.

Philadelphia-based BLT Architects designed Villanova's new Learning Commons. The layout of the physical space follows a shared "street" concept to enable library users to easily access academic support resources. The space also features high ceilings, improved lighting, multi-purpose rooms with flexible furniture, an open lounge area for informal group study, and smaller spaces for individual study. The Commons' large conference rooms have been outfitted with display systems and digital whiteboards for presentations, meetings, and informal classes.

Original source: Campus Technology
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Drexel University materials scientists Alexander Moseson and Michel Barsoum have created a low-tech, low-energy cement they hope will reduce carbon output as developing countries build more sidewalks, roads and housing.

Potential demand for lower-carbon building materials has sparked a race to replace Portland cement featuring a handful of manufacturers and scientists. Some claim to sequester carbon within the cement itself. Others use alternative fuels. Still others tap unconventional feedstocks, such as magnesium silicate, that require lower kiln temperatures.

Moseson and Barsoum are trying the latter, mixing recycled iron slag or fly ash with readily available limestone. "We literally used a bag of garden lime from Home Depot," Moseson said. Instead of a coal-fired kiln, they use a bucket with a spoon at room temperature.

Original source: Daily Climate
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VentureBeat covers the Wharton School's Innovation Tournament, in which MBA students aim to create an internet business in four days.

At the end of the workshop, the organizers announced the winners of the Innovation Tournament. Each team won on a specific metric, such as most pageviews for the business website or best real world application.

The team that won based on pageviews and marketing created Chow4You, a service that helps you find meals based on nutritional value and dietary needs. Rohan Mirchandani, the acting CEO of Chow4You, said, "The workshop was focused on learning the steps to take to make a business viable, especially focusing on user experience, which I found to be the most important topic." The program is just a prototype now, but based on his experience in the course, Mirchandani said he felt confident that he could launch Chow4You as a real business.

Original source: VentureBeat
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The Lenfest Plaza designed by David A. Rubin of local firm OLIN created a true campus for the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, reports Metropolis Magazine and Dexigner:

(from Dexigner)
In creating an institutional plaza for public enjoyment, performance and exhibition within the dense historic and cultural district of Center City Philadelphia, Rubin has designed an environment that many people can now experience: the administration, faculty and students of the Academy; guests of the new restaurant to be situated within the plaza; museum goers and art lovers; Philadelphians, and visitors to the City. In order to accommodate all of these potential visitors within a former narrow streetscape a design that allowed for social gathering but is also reflective of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' prominence within our nation's art history and the cultural corridor of Museum Mile was required.

Original source; Dexigner
Read the full story in Metropolis Magazine and in Dexigner.

The Wall Street Journal spotlights the rifle teams at USciences, a college known more for its pharmacy program than marksmanship training.

For the past 35 years, the USciences shooting program was led by coach Paul Klimitas, who is widely credited with spurring the team, known as the Devils, on to numerous victories. It ended last season ranked 15th out of the 38 NCAA teams in the country -- tied with one of the top military academies, Virginia Military Institute.

"They're competing against people who are training to be soldiers and spending hours every day doing military exercises," says Marling "Newt" Engle, a member of the NCAA Rifle Committee, of the UCSciences team.

Original source: Wall Street Journal
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Drexel University researcher Dr. Yury Gogotsi believes figuring out why cell phone and laptop batteries die prematurely will help create a sustainable energy grid, reports Nanowerk.

"A dramatic expansion of research in the area of electrochemical energy storage has occurred over the past due to an ever increasing variety of handheld electronic devices that we all use," Gogotsi said. "This has expanded use of electrical energy in transportation, and the need to store renewable energy efficiently at the grid level. This process has been accompanied by the chase for glory with the arrival of new materials and technologies that leads to unrealistic expectations for batteries and supercapacitors and may hurt the entire energy storage field."

The main type of energy storage device addressed in the article is the supercapacitor. Supercapacators, which are built from relatively inexpensive natural materials such as carbon, aluminum and polymers, are found in devices, ranging from mobile phones and laptop batteries to trams, buses and solar cells.

Original source: Nanowerk
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The New York Times follows a young man's journey from coma to consciousness as aided by Ambien, and how two Philadelphia institutions are uncovering why.

This year, scientists at Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute and at the University of Pennsylvania, both in the Philadelphia area, began the first large-scale clinical study of zolpidem as a treatment for disorders of consciousness. (Amantadine, a drug used to treat Parkinson’s disease, and the anti-anxiety medication Ativan also show promise in increasing awareness in minimally conscious patients.) So far, the evidence suggests that less than 10 percent of brain-injured patients will experience the drug’s paradoxical effects, and that among those, only a few will respond as profoundly as Viljoen did. For families like the Coxes, such odds provide a tortured kind of hope. For doctors, they bring questions. Why does a sleeping pill induce awareness in some patients but not others? And what can these bizarre awakenings tell us about the brain’s ability to heal?

Original source: The New York Times
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A Wharton School MBA is working with a University of Pennsylvania team on a local startup that aims to make transferring money overseas more efficient, reports el-emergente.com

Edrizio De La Cruz, a recent MBA graduate from The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, founded Regalii and leads the UPenn team working on it. For Edrizio, It’s a personal mission. "I grew up in the Dominican Republic," Says Edrizio, "and immigrated to New York's Washington Heights neighborhood, which was probably 110 percent Dominican. But I went to high school in Queens, where I used to play basketball with Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Colombians and Salvadorians. I quickly assimilated to each subculture. But my social circle was pretty homogeneous. Almost everyone around me was an immigrant. So I assumed that only immigrants sent money or remained connected to family in Latin America."

Original source: el-emergente.com
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Earth Techling takes a closer look at Drexel University's vertical wall of living plants inside the new Papadakis Integrated Sciences Building, the largest such wall in North America.

Scientists and students at the university are currently studying the biowall and the plant and microbe communities responsible for its air filtration properties to get a better understanding of how the whole thing works. Dr. Michael Waring, an assistant professor in the university’s College of Engineering who specializes in indoor environmental engineering, will focus on the chemical and physical aspects of the living wall, while two biology faculty members from the College of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Jacob Russell and Dr. Shivanthi Anandan, will focus on the wall’s biological functions.

Original source: Earth Techling
Read the full story here.