J.B. Speed School of Eng. Renewable Energy

12:21 am | Green | No comment

For a summer course, students at the J.B. Speed School of Engineering, develop renewable energy projects. Students utilized a selection of different backgrounds, from chemical engineering to physics, to develop the system.

Here are some videos of some student projects that are quite interesting: Thermoelectricity, Solar powered hydrogen production, Solar powered LED, Human powered LED, and Solar cooling.

3 High School Students on Nanotechnology

12:49 am | Green | No comment

The country’s well-known pre-college science competitions have chosen three high school students for the semifinalists in the 2010 Intel Science Talent Search (”Intel STS”).

Arunima Deya Balan, a student at Niskayuna High School in Niskayuna, NY, is working on clean energy research that uses nanotechnology to imitate the optical processes in photosynthesis. She aims to develop more effective photovoltaic carbon nanotube diodes by reproducing the highly efficient process of changing sunlight into energy.

Ian Michael Schneider, who goes to Byram Hills High School in Armonk, NY, is also performing a research in the area of renewable energy. His project is for the purpose of intensifying the efficiency of thin film solar photovoltaic devices, which have demonstrated considerable potential to lower the cost of manufacturing while providing a clean and sustainable source of energy.

Xiao Rui Guo, a student at the Berkshire School in Sheffield, MA, is working on the development of bioengineered surfaces for depositing hydrogel microarrays containing biological molecules and cells, which has the potential to significantly reduce the cost and usage of animal models in drug and healthcare product development.

Jefferson High finalists for Intel Talent Search

1:30 pm | Engineering | No comment

13 students from Fairfax County’s Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology became semifinalists for the Intel Talent Search which is the nation’s most outstanding high school science and math competition.12 students from Montgomery County’s Blair High School got the honor.

Rohan Puttagunta, 16, of Montgomery County’s Blair High School, is to make a mathematical theory associating to the frequency of monochromatic rectangles in multicolored grids.

Allison Koenecke, 16 of Thomas Jefferson High School, examined the facets and ridges on crumpled-up paper as a resemblance for thermodynamics that might predict earthquakes. She verified a certain mathematical formula and some collected data that is related in her theory.

By means of his study on fruit flies that 70 percent of the genes in human diseases also exists in the fly genome, Dennis Wang of Thomas Jefferson High School could cure a genetic disorder called Huntington’s disease that deteriorates brain functions.

Bangalore needs for Aero Design Competition

1:26 pm | Engineering | No comment

The Bangaladore students that will participate in the U.S. design contest might be put to a stop due to lack of funds. BM Sreenivasaiah College of Engineering’s young designers are going from place to place asking for supports and finances to pay for the expenses in taking part in the coming SAE Aero Design Competition which will be held between April 30 and May 2 at Fort Worth in Texas.

The team has already created an e-model of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that took them three months to finish the project. A lot of students want to join but only a few Indian teams are participating in this international competition not because of talent shortage, but because of money crisis. The raw materials which were suggested for the creation of UAV like balsa are pretty expensive as well as the shipment. The group is preparing to take this project beyond. An array of innovative projects by the team extends from chuck glider to a double-drive retractable detachable system which can be used in cars.

Univ. of Alaska Fairbanks engages on ATV project

12:38 am | Engineering, University of Alaska | No comment

A group of mechanical engineering students at the University of Alaska Fairbanks went through a two-week modification process for the department’s first all-electric vehicle. The modified 2002 Suzuki Eiger four-wheeler won’t depend on gasoline and does not produce any kind of emission. It does not make a noise either except for the sound of tires rolling on the ground.

A 7-inch diameter electric motor, that is about the size of several stacked gallon-size milk jugs, fused with a 45-volt lithium battery pack to run the ATV. The combination takes up roughly the same amount of space and weighs slightly less than the engine and gas tank in the pre-modification Eiger which will be powered with an adapter that can be plugged in.

A graduate engineering student who is very familiar in overhauling of vehicles, Michael Golub, had converted a lot of cars including trucks and snowmobiles up to riding mower to electric power though this was his first ATV. The purpose of the ATV that can go about 30 miles at 20 mph. was to introduce the idea of no-emission vehicles to the campus.

BT Young Scientist Award Winners

1:24 pm | Health | No comment

Thomas Dunne of Colaiste Lorcain, Co Kildare got the IBM Special Award. “In search of the gene that causes 1,000,000 deaths each year” was the title of his project that concerns the different species of malaria parasite or the mosquitoes. He wanted to find out that “One Species” that is accountable for the 90% deaths globally and 80% of infections.

Richard O’Shea, the sixth-year student from Scoil Mhuire Gan Smal, Blarney, Co Cork, was the Overall BT Young Scientist Award Winner. His project was entitled “A biomass fired cooking stove for developing countries”. Discovering that half of the world’s population depends on biomass to cook their foods, it inspired him to do an 18-month research plan by using mostly tin cans and other waste materials to design and create an effective smoke-free cooking stove.

More award winners are Bryan Murphy and Paul McKeever from Abbey Christian Brothers Gs, Co. Down, who got the Analog Devices Student Award for their “Specs Detector” Project that will make the power tools and machinery not to switch on if they are not wearing the correct safety equipment.

BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition 2010

7:25 pm | Student Competitions | No comment

The exhibition Thursday, Jan. 14 until Saturday, Jan. 16 went ahead as planned and was opened to the public.

Innovative projects about science, technology, engineering, and math surfaced for the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition 2010 by the students from all over Ireland.

Various remarkable technologies at the exhibition such as of the PanSphere, a project of Kevin Bluett, a fifth-year student at CBS KILkenny that requires creating a supercomputer to simulate pandemics including swine flu (H1N1) and other human viruses. The infrastructure for a virtual supercomputer that has the ability to simulate pandemics in order to produce accurate analysis patterns and track its movement globally has been encoded and created by the students engaged in the project.

One more distinguished project: the Ubuntu Linus operating system Zorin OS have been put into an experiment by a group of students interested to find if it can be a free, dependable, open-source and a better option to Windows.

The group of Richard O’Shea, an 18 year old student from Scoil Mhuire Gan Smal, Blarney, Co Cork is focusing at a global health issue about designing and developing a biomass-fired cooking stove for growing countries that is clean and economical and can be made from waste materials, such as tin cans.

Third Annual LLVM Developer’s Convention

7:46 pm | Software | No comment

With the support of Google who generously facilitated a fund for several students and active members of the LLVM community to be there at the meeting and present their LLVM-related work.

The Low-Level Virtual Machine (LLVM) is a collection of libraries and tools that make it easy to build compilers, optimizers, Just-In-Timecode generators, and many other compiler-related programs.

Here is a short outline of the works of some of these developers and students:

Anton Korobeynikov, a long time developer, project administrator, and an LLVM code owner. A Ph.D student in applied statistics at Saint Petersburg State University, Russia, who presented an invaluable Tutorial on Building a Backend in 24 Hours. His tutorial is an outline of the various code generation phases, such as SelectionDAG, Register Allocation, and post register allocation. He goes into the different pieces of the backend that one will need to implement such as the target, subtarget, lowering, register set, instruction selection, and the calling convention.

Bruno Cardoso Lopes, a multi-year participant with the GSoC project, active LLVM contributor, and Ph.D. student at University of Campinas, Brazil. He presented Object Code Emission and llvm-mc this year that gave a sophisticated outline of the LLVM Machine Code Emitter and concentrated on the emission of object files. The driving force behind direct object code emission is to bypass the external assembler, and speed up compile time.

UMB student joins Anthurium Solutions

11:29 pm | Internet, University of Massachusetts | No comment

A University of Massachusetts’s student was hired by the newest establishment, the Anthurium Solutions. John Gray, College of Management, was recently employed by the company as their new web development intern. A growing software company that is situated in the Venture Development Center that has started developing a ground-breaking online matching and workflow platform to provide healthcare.

John Gray, the thirty-second student intern this year to be in a local establishment. These establishments are taking the benefit of work being made by the VDC’s entrepreneur in residence like Dan Phillips, a business adviser with great connections to the local tech group and Anna Tsui who knows some entrepreneurial students.

The students of UMass Boston are under-grad and grad majors in Computer Science, IT, MIS, Bio Tech, Green Energy, Management, Finance, Economics, Engineering, Mathematics, and many more.

Schweitzer Fellows REACH for Healthier Camden

7:45 pm | Health | No comment

Hyun Ouk Hong and Farhad Modarai, second year medical students at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) created the REACH program and serve as the administrators for the project’s first year. Project REACH (Revitalizing Education & Advancing Camden’s Health), a program that is equipped with a self-discipline technique, is a distinctive health education involvement program intended to prepare helpless Camden middle school students with the ability to assume responsibility of their own health and let their neighborhoods to do the same. The two worked together with the Camden community members with the help of The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship, a national nonprofit organization that works to address health disparities by developing “leaders in service”. Creating an interactive problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum on preventive health, with full unique workshops that will help youth-initiated community health service projects, and delivering that syllabus each week to students at East Camden Middle School (ECMS).

To this far, their plans have coped up with cleaning graffiti, preventing bullying in school, preventing the gang violence, serving the homeless, teaching to eat healthy, stopping smoking, and cleaning the environment.