Eden Prairie HS Student develops Room Guide

11:26 pm | Computer Programming, Eden Prairie High School | No comment

Gavin Ovsak, a student from Eden Prairie High School surprised Principal Conn McCartan when he asked for an appointment to propose an idea that will benefit the students of EPHS. Ovsak idea was to develop a Map Quest-like program that students can use to navigate their school.
Ovsak calls his prototypes the “RoomGuide”, a desktop/kiosk program custom-manufactured to guide visitors around the building. He was also working to market the RoomGuide to hospitals and college campuses.

RoomGuide’s features:

Find/Discovery
- Easily locate any room on multiple levels!

Optimized Route
- Guaranteed fastest route calculated by advanced algorithms

Map with Visual Route
- Clear graphics convey fast directions

Click Anywhere” Interaction
- Intuitive Popup Interface

Step-by-Step Directions
- Simple and clear with landmarks

Easy Export to Email or Print
- Share by handout or message

Improves Welcoming Audit
- Impress visitors!

Other Ovsak’s accomplishment: the creation of a “Head-Controlled Computer Interface” that can enable those with limited muscle control to use a computer. The prototype he put together fits on a hat and functions as a mouse for people who have limited muscle control. A person can move the mouse on a computer screen by just moving his head. Mouse clicks can be made by biting down on the device. These computer interfaces offers a less-complex and more efficient and affordable device to allow those with disabilities to use the computer.

U of W Australia wins Google Online Challenge

11:13 pm | Advertising, Carnegie Mellon University, Google Online Marketing Challenge, Marketing, University of Western Australia | No comment

The Google Online Marketing Challenge that is a global university competition that let students experience a hands-on exposure to online marketing held its third edition this year. Each team receives an equivalent amount of $200 to get to work with a local company and create an online marketing campaign. Before they submit a campaign report to an international judging panel of professors, the teams have only three weeks to come up with a skillful strategy.

There are 3,034 from 60 countries that participated in the 2010 Challenge, increasing 39 percent from last year and making the Challenge one of the world’s largest university competitions.

The Global Winning team comes from University of Western Australia and is taught by Jamie Murphy. The team of Lauren Williams, Ganesh Chaudhari, Jeeana Atmarow, Alison Miller, Mohammed Assiri and Hui Min Chua worked promoting the kid’s novel The Adventures of Charlie and Moon. The team will visit the Googleplex in Mountain View, California and each of the members will receive a laptop for their great performance in the Challenge.

There are also three regional winners: for the Americas, the winning team comes from Carnegie Mellon University in the U.S. and a team from the Warsaw School of Economics in Poland won in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa). In the Asia Pacific region, the winners come from the Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia.

Sign-up period for the competition for the 2011 Challenge will open in the fall.

Honda announces iDream Challenge Winners

10:53 pm | Carnegie Mellon University, Duke University, Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Houston | No comment

Honda, a well-known automobile manufacturer from Japan that has been operating in the U.S. since the year 1959 has announced the winners of the first iDream Student Challenge at the 2010 ‘Honda Initiation Grant’ Technical Horizon Symposium held in Columbus, Ohio.

In this year’s competition that included 19 teams of Ohio State science and engineering students, fifteen electrical and computer engineering students, and their three ECE faculty mentors, were among the winning teams in Honda’s first iDream Student Challenge whose projects offered creative engineering solutions and innovative technologies in one of three categories: electronics, mobility and materials.

A total of $60,000 was awarded to the top three teams in each category as well as to the viewer’s choice winner, a team chosen via online voting.

This year’s winners are:

– Electronics, First Place: No Abandonment, Baby Wireless Sensor
– Mobility, First Place: Solar Solutions, Solar Thermal Electric Car Charging Station
– Materials, First Place: Smaller Memories to Remember, Oxide Nanowires for Next Generation Solid State Memory Devices
– Viewer’s Choice: OSU Gait Trainer Team, Gait Trainer for Children with Cerebral Palsy

This year’s HIG recipients, who were each awarded a grant of $50,000, are:

– Andrea Thomaz, Georgia Institute of Technology, Socially Guided Machine Learning for Humanoid Robots
– Alan Black, Carnegie Mellon University, Conversational Speech Synthesis
– Michael Harold, University of Houston, Enhancing Liquid Fuel Yield During Algae Pyrolysis in Structured Catalytic Reactors
– Donald Bliss, Duke University, Light and Flexible Multi-Element Structures that Resist Sound and Vibration Transmission
– Yaser Sheikh, Carnegie Mellon University, Dynamic Visual SLAM: Reconstructing Dynamic Environments from Mobile Cameras

Middle School Students Discover Cave in Mars

10:03 pm | Evergreen Middle School, Science | No comment

Seventh graders from Evergreen Middle School in Cottonwood, California discovered a cave from Mars while participating in the Mars Student Imaging Program (MSIP), a part of Arizona State University’s Mars Education Program. The 16 students found lava tubes on their two targeted images while they were studying about lava tubes for their class project as part of Mars Education Program at Arizona State University. The program allowed the 16 students to actually command a Mars-orbiting camera to take an image, allowing them to look for lava tubes around volcanoes. They picked an area on Pavonis Mons volcano that had yet to be photographed by THEMIS at its highest resolution of 18 meters.

The students are hoping to get a better look at the pit which is estimated to be approximately 190 by 160 meters wide and at least 115 meters deep. They have submitted their site as a candidate for imaging by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The Mars Student Imaging Project (MSIP) offers students nationwide the opportunity to be involved in authentic Mars research.

Wichita SU Students win Excellence in Aviation

12:36 am | Engineering, Wichita State University | No comment

The “Excellence in Aviation Research” award was given to the three students for their impressive engineering projects by the NIAR (National Institute of Aviation Research) at Wichita State University.

The first place award and $250 prize went to the project “TB24 Design, Validate and Compete Aircraft” and the team of Brian Kollar, Tyler Higgs, Mark Holliday, Austin Reed and Nick Steinbrink for their electric-powered remote-controlled aircraft.

Second place was awarded to Tawny Blumenshine, Jordan Jensen, Ryan Longwell and Grant Rudd, for a project entitled “Team Strikeout: Pitching a baseball with different positions.”

Third place went to the team of Jordan Zerr, Brendan Kelly, Aaron Werhan and Shuet-Ming Wong for their design of a blended wing body, radio-controlled aircraft.

The competition was part of the recent open house at WSU’s College of Engineering.

BYU Students launch Orabrush on YouTube

12:15 am | Advertising, Brigham Young University, Marketing | No comment

A 75 year old inventor, Dr. Bob Wagstaff who spent 8 years to bring his invention into market as well as spending over $40k on an infomercial that only sold about 100 orders wants to thank YouTube for giving him the chance to make something like Orabrush possible. Orabrush is a tongue cleaner that has specialized bristles that will reach down into the indentations of the tongue to loosen and remove the bacteria growing there without causing harm on the tender tongue surface.

Dr. Bob Wagstaff approached some big company names but they are not interested. It did not stop Dr. Bob to make some more efforts until in 2009; he went to the Marriott School of Management at BYU and asked a market research class to see if they could come up with new ways to market the product online. A student group presented a conclusion that 92% of the people who would like to try the product will not buy Orabrush online and suggested to drop the idea of marketing Orabrush on the Internet.

Jeffrey Harmon, a student who is not part of the project told Dr. Bob to focus on the remaining 8% which is equivalent to millions of people that will perhaps buy the Orabrush. Harmon’s idea led Dr. Bob’s Orabrush into a huge sensation when Harmon orchestrated a marketing scheme video on YouTube garnering millions of views, and bringing Orabrush to the attention of major distributors and retailers. With the help of a student, together with the creative team of the original Orabrush video and YouTube that gave way to this invention, Orabrush is a small business success story.

UA Students Create Mars Flying Blanket

6:34 pm | Engineering, University of Arizona | No comment

The Mars Lander Camera

A team of students were challenged by NASA and the UA (University of Arizona) to create an improved camera for space missions. NASA’s RISA (Remote Image System Acquisition), wants to create an imaging system that is versatile and can be used for many applications that would lessen the capacity of the necessary cargo space. The final design must have wireless power and communications. It should be small, light, and energy efficient but tough as well unlike the present space cameras that are considered to be disposable because of the extremes found in the space.

Flying Blanket

As for the flying blanket, Raytheon is sponsoring a project to design it. This project needs the students to design a firing tube that shoots a folded blanket that will open up in mid-air before wrapping around its target. Since it could involve human as the target, the purpose of this project is to create a harmless way of restraining and making a person to stop. The final design consists of a collapsible metal exoskeleton that spreads out like a giant bat wing and then wraps around the target on impact.

ASU wins Latino & Hispanics in America Award

6:27 pm | ASU, Journalism | No comment

On the 2010 AEJMC (Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication) Best of the Web awards ceremony in Denver, the Award of Excellence will be presented for this year’s winners. The awards ceremony is scheduled at 8:15-9:45 a.m. on Friday August 6.

One of this year’s winners from the Team Innovation category, Arizona State News21’s project, “Latinos and Hispanics in America” that tied up for first place with another ASU student project, qualifies for the said award.

Latinos and Hispanics in America is an exploration as well as gathering of information about the art, culture, politics, religion, education and life of Latinos and Hispanics as well as their struggles regarding their immigration status and identity in the United States.

Souhegan High Bday Wish Program

12:33 am | Entrepreneurship, Souhegan High School | No comment

Today, the underprivileged kids will no longer be deprived to have their own birthday parties. Thanks to the girls of Birthday Wish who are giving their best effort to make the difference for area children to have one party at a time.

The six students from Souhegan High School, Mallory Sullivan, Kristin Leffler, Annie Bacher, Julie Arrowsmith, Stephanie Wesson and Caroline Hagen created a business project for the community called Birthday Wish, a unique venture that provides underprivileged kids with birthday party packages. The party packages consist of everything that is essential to throw a birthday party. The students donated the packages to SHARE and Marguerite’s Place, which distribute them to families. The girls also sell party packages, provide party help and hold fundraisers. Thanks to these efforts, Birthday Wish remains cost-effective.

Seniors from Birthday Wish, JS Treasures and Little Leaf Lawn Care were honored for their work at the Youth Venture Awards at Nashua Community College.

MSU students in NASA Lunar competition

11:51 pm | Engineering, Montana State University | No comment

An engineering student of MSU (Montana State University) will have to maneuver the 120-pound robot called “Montana MULE” through a giant sandbox, avoiding craters and rocks, and then removing as much simulated moon dirt as possible within 15 minutes in a competition sponsored by NASA.

Regolith is the simulated dirt where the MSU students tested their robot in a May snowstorm. If MSU wins NASA’s first Lunar Regolith Excavator Student Competition, the university team will receive a cash prize of $5,000 plus a chance to watch the launch at the Kennedy Space Center.

The robot stands about 5 feet tall and is mostly recycled aluminum. It rolls on four wheels and incorporates several systems instead of just one. Students operated on it by using wireless technology and the controls for an XBox 360 computer game. The wireless technology talks to the robot’s electronics system that turns the motor on and off. The motor turns a chain that moves small buckets below the level of the wheels. The buckets, moving as though they were the seats on a Ferris wheel, scoop the soil and dump it into the robot’s hopper.

The eight team members are: Christopher Ching of Belgrade, Ben Hogenson and Phillip Karls from Billings, Steve Pemble of Colstrip, Craig Harne of Cut Bank, Paul Dallapiazza from Florence, Jennifer Hane of Fort Shaw and John Ritter of Idaho Falls, Idaho.