At a robotics conference last week, a vehicle called ROAMS demonstrated a cheap approach to mobile map-making

ROAMS (Remotely Operated and Autonomous Mapping System) was created by researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., with funding from the US Army. It uses several existing mapping technologies to build 3D color maps of its surroundings, and it was demonstrated at the 2009 IEEE conference on Technologies for Practical Robot Applications in Woburn, Mass., last week, as detailed in MIT Technology Review.

The ROAMS robot is also featured on the technology website engadget.

Diverse group of scholars will advance university in education and research across all disciplines

By Tracey Regan
Special to the Stevens News Service

With the 2009-2010 academic year under way, Stevens welcomed many new faculty members to campus this fall.

“Please join me in welcoming this diverse group of scholars to Stevens, and congratulating those who have recently been named to our faculty. These stellar faculty members will advance Stevens in the areas of education and research across all disciplines,” said George Korfiatis, Provost and University Vice President.

New faculty members include a mathematics professor who has received international recognition for groundbreaking work group theory; a specialist in managing project uncertainty; an expert in enterprise governance and enterprise systems; and a lecturer in urban politics, national political movements and racial identity.

Dawn Digrius joins the College of Arts and Letters as an Assistant Professor of History and the History of Science. She will teach introductory courses in European intellectual and cultural history and an upper-level course on Charles Darwin and the intellectual upheaval precipitated by his theories of evolution. She will also direct the Gender and Cultural Studies Program, an interdisciplinary minor degree program that explores issues of gender, culture, race, ethnicity and sexuality. Her research centers on the history of scientific ideas and methods and their impact on society. She recently contributed a chapter on botanist Gregor Mendel, a founding figure of modern genetics, to the book Icons of Evolution: An Encyclopedia of People, Evidence and Controversies. She is currently writing a chapter for an upcoming encyclopedia on Charles Darwin, focusing on the influence of his theories on the science of botany, to be published by Cambridge University Press. Before coming to Stevens, Digrius held teaching posts at Clemson University, Drew University and Fairleigh Dickinson University. She earned her undergraduate, master’s and doctoral degrees at Drew University, where her dissertation on the development of paleobotany in 19th-century Europe won the university’s Mary Pennywitt Lester Prize in 2007 for Best Dissertation in History. (more…)

Insights Gained from Cell Biology Studies Have Generated a Number of Improvements

Philip Leopold, Ph.D., professor and director of the Department of Chemistry, Chemical Biology, and Biomedical Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology, presented results of his group’s study of the packaging of DNA using rigid, polyunsaturated lipids, as described in the current issue of Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News.

By Tracey Regan
Special to the Stevens News Service

The years following World War II were a time of unprecedented growth in the United States, but curiously, one in which small and mid-sized companies faced capital constraints, from conservative bank lending policies, limited access to debt and equity markets and a dearth of pooled private equity funds.

But Seymour Gussack, ME ’45, an enterprising bearings manufacturer from New York, was undaunted by these financing hurdles. In a pioneering move, decades before the Internet, cheap air travel and ready access to international capital markets ushered in the current era, he globalized.

Gussack said it became clear to him soon after founding his business in the early 1950s that he had the industry know-how and marketing savvy, but not the production capacity, to meet rising demand. His subsequent search for additional bearings to sell took him to all corners of the globe, including countries considered unknowable and inaccessible to many in the West.

He was one of the first American manufacturers to form business alliances in the Soviet Union and satellite countries such as Poland and Yugoslavia.

And his early interest in China led him to make a key contact there with another ambitious up-and-comer: Shanghai mayor Jiang Zemin, who went on to become Communist Party chief and then the country’s president. (more…)

A guest post by Paul Winstanley, the Director of Energy Initiatives from Stevens Institute of Technology, appeared recently in the GreenEnergyBlog.com

Titled “The Energy Conundrum,” this paper was written as preparation for the recent Discover and Shell sponsored “Fossil Fuels 2050” event in October 2009 at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey. Discover Magazine editor-in-chief Corey S. Powell moderated the panel, which also included Professor Turgay Ertekin of Penn State, Anthony Cugini of the US Department of Energy and Richard Sears of MIT.

Richard R. Reilly, Emeritus Professor in the Howe School of Technology Management at Stevens Institute of Technology, and Howe School Ph.D. alumna Karen Sobel Lojeski, a professor in the Department of Technology and Society at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, co-authored an article in this month’s Mechanical Engineering magazine, which is the official journal of the ASME.

Titled “Leading the Dispersed Workforce,” the article can be accessed by clicking here.

Uniting the Virtual Workforce: Transforming Leadership and Innovation in the Globally Integrated Enterprise by Karen Sobel Lojeski and Richard R. Reilly was published in 2008 by John Wiley & Sons.

They report on subsequent research in Leading the Virtual Workforce: How Great Leaders Transform Organizations in the 21st Century , written by Sobel Lojeski with contributions from Reilly. It is due to be published this month by Wiley.

An Interview with Charles Seife, author, “Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking”

By Marta Wieczorkowska-Curry

The latest book by noted science journalist Charles Seife reads like a psychological thriller. Considering its focus is quantum physics and the quest for economically viable fusion technology, this is no mean accomplishment. Seife’s book offers not only a history of the quest for unlimited energy, but also a treatise on the politics, psychology and ethics of fusion research.

The lively narrative follows a handful of colorful, if borderline-insane characters. Seife takes us on a journey stretching from the Manhattan Project and the birth of the Nuclear Age, to the tabletop fusion contraptions of the last two decades that could, their inventors believed, solve mankind’s energy problems once and for all. He peeks into the minds of scientists who sacrificed their careers in order to pursue the elusive dream of unlimited power, and explains in simple terms why cold fusion, while basically a scam, has a mesmerizing power that science alone cannot destroy.

I recently sat down with the author of Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking, for a short chat, after he presented on the topic of his book at the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology.

MWC: You’ve been writing about fusion since the mid ‘90s and the bibliography of Sun in a Bottle is 30 pages long and includes hundreds of sources. When did you get an idea to write a book about – as you put it – the ’science of wishful thinking?’ What attracted you to the subject?

CS: It’s hard to pinpoint when the work on this book really began. I started writing and doing research on fusion 15 years ago, and all of this research wound up in the text. The active decision to turn it into a book came about three years ago. (more…)

By Alan S. Brown
Special to the Stevens News Service

Fossil fuels will still account for 65 percent of energy output in 2050, but new technologies will evolve to control carbon emissions, experts tell audience at Stevens Institute of Technology [click player screen to view event video]

Energy is a hot button issue, and opinions often veer to extremes, Discover magazine editor-in-chief Corey Powell told the audience at “Fossil Fuels in the Year 2050,” an event held at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, N.J., on October 14, 2009.

“You have one group of people who think everything is fine and we should not change anything. Then there’s a group that thinks we need to overthrow the system and change everything.

“But most people who have studied the issue believe we’re going to need a transition to the solar, wind, and other technologies of tomorrow,” Powell said.

How that transition might evolve was the focus of the event, sponsored by Shell, produced by Discover and hosted by Stevens’ Office of University Communications. (more…)

By Marta Wieczorkowska-Curry

Alternative-energy generation lives and dies at the mercy of the elements. The wind blows some of the time in many places and all of the time in only a few, while the sun shines at the most for half of any given day, and often much less. Ocean waves on the other hand flow virtually without interruption, day and night, across 70% of the earth’s surface. Efforts to harness wave power for generating electricity have been fraught with disappointment and failure, and a wide variety of pilot programs have been hit with everything from generator-wrecking ocean swells to the recent economic tsunami.

However, the field’s heretofore uninspiring record could soon change thanks to “wave tuning” research spearheaded by Stevens’ Research Engineer Michael Raftery at the Center for Maritime Systems‘ Davidson Laboratory, financed by a $50,000 grant from the US Army’s Picatinny Arsenal.

It may sound counter-intuitive, but the energy potential of ocean waves is essentially concentrated wind power: Waves are created by the transfer of energy from the wind as it blows over the surface of the ocean. When deep-sea waves move toward more shallow depths near coastlines, they loose power due to friction against the seabed, meaning that more energy is available the further offshore you are. Tapping this energy treasure trove has become a tempting goal for scientists and industry, especially given that the vast majority of the world’s population lives close to a coastline (37% within 100 km/62 miles, and 66% within 400 km/250 miles). (more…)

By Ellen Lampert-Gréaux
www.livedesignonline.com
Nov 3, 2009 10:34 AM

Stevens Class of ’88 graduate alumnus Paul Reale, chief executive officer and founder of Green Allowance, a company that motivates and empowers children to champion resource conservation, will be the keynote speaker at LDI2009’s Green Day: Greening In The Entertainment Industry conference on Thursday, November 19, 2009 in Orlando, FL.

“We are very excited to have someone trained by Al Gore to kick off the sessions at Green Day,” says Robert Usdin of Showman Fabricators, who has organized this important “green” initiative at LDI, which includes the conference component as well as a Green Technology Showcase* on the exhibit floor.

Reale formed Green Allowance in 2008 with a vision for children in the United States to transform their families into the most resource-efficient in the industrialized world. Using Green Allowance, children make a deal with their parents to conserve at home, which saves the family money and children receive a Green Allowance. (more…)