Archive for September, 2010
A Conversation with Dr. Robert Koger of Advanced Energy
Monday, September 20, 2010, 7:04 am 1 Comment | Post a Comment
Dr. Robert Koger
Dr. Robert Koger is president and executive director of Advanced Energy, a nonprofit organization established by the North Carolina Utilities Commission in 1980 to forestall electrical rate increases by promoting energy conservation and alternative and renewable sources of electricity. Advanced Energy provides services that focus on energy efficiency for commercial and industrial markets, electric motors and drives, plug-in transportation, and applied building science.
Advanced Energy also operates NC GreenPower, a program funded through consumers’ voluntary contributions, designed to increase the amount of renewable energy put on the electric grid in North Carolina and to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.
This month, Dr. Koger assumes the chairmanship of Triangle Area Research Directors Council (TARDC), a group of science and technology leaders from local companies, nonprofits, and universities. The group meets over lunch monthly from September to May, to exchange ideas and information and to hear from guest speakers. TARDC’s first meeting under Dr. Koger’s leadership will be September 21, and the guest speaker will be Mr. Joe Freddoso, president and CEO of MCNC/NC STEM. Non-members of TARDC can attend the luncheons.
I recently asked Dr. Koger about the history of Advanced Energy and about his leadership of TARDC. Read more…
RTP Week Ahead, September 19-25
Friday, September 17, 2010, 1:35 pm 1 Comment | Post a Comment
Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, co-hosts of Discovery’s “MythBusters”, at UNC Sunday, 9/19!
Sunday, September 19
An Afternoon With The “MythBusters”!
2:00 – 4:00pm
Dean Smith Center, Chapel Hill
You’ve seen the show. Now see Adam & Jamie live. An Afternoon With Adam & Jamie, co-hosts of television’s “MythBusters”. Tickets available online at NC Science Festival site.
Monday, September 20
Marketing Mondays: The 4 “C”s of Marketing
4:00 – 5:30pm
RTP HQ, 12 Davis Drive, RTP, NC 27709
Bob Lauterborn, UNC James L. Knight Professor Emeritus of Advertising, will be discussing his 4 C’s of marketing. Many people who have taken a marketing course have learned about the “4 P’s” of marketing. Have Product, Price, Place and Promotion now become obsolete? Come to Marketing Mondays and find out!
Tuesday, September 21
TARDC September Luncheon: Joe Freddoso, MCNC
12:00 – 2:00pm
RTP HQ, 12 Davis Drive, RTP, NC 27709
In his role as President and CEO of MCNC, Joe Freddoso works with the MCNC Board of Directors (BOD), the MCNC Advisory Committee (MAC) and MCNC staff to meet the organization’s mission of employing advanced Internet Protocol (IP) networking technologies and systems to continuously improve learning, research and collaboration throughout North Carolina’s K-20 education community.
Wednesday, September 22
7:00am – 6:00pm
Nortel’s Gateway Facility in RTP, 4001 E. Chapel Hill Nelson Hwy. (Hwy. 54)
Sponsored by Environment@rtp. Feel free to forward this message to co-workers. This free event is only for employees who work in The Research Triangle Park. If you plan to bring materials to the event, bring a filled-out form (on site).
NanoBio Executive Roundtable Series
5:30 – 7:30pm
RTP HQ, 12 Davis Drive, RTP, NC 27709
The NanoBio Executive Roundtable will be a series of quarterly evening networking forums offering innovators and entrepreneurs in North Carolina’s nanobiotechnology companies an opportunity to discuss topical business issues and to network. Brooks Adams will be presenting “Accelerating Commercialization of Nanobiotechnology”, a review of nanobio market perspectives, state of the market in NC, and available resources to accelerate commercialization. Free.
Thursday, September 23
7:30 – 9:00am
NC Biotechnology Center, 15 T.W. Alexander Drive, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
Sean Harrison (Alliance Medical Ministry) and Dr. Dennis Chao (RTI International) will co-facilitate a discussion that would take a comparative look at providing health care to low-income recipients locally as well as globally.
Friday, September 24
BioNetwork Course: HPLC in Theory and Practice
9:00am (Fri. 9/24) thru 3:00pm (Sat. 9/25)
BioNetwork Capstone Center, BTEC 250 B 850 Oval Drive, Centennial Campus, Raleigh, NC 27695
Learn about HPLC (High Performance Liquid Chromatography), a chemistry technique used to separate chemical compounds-of-interest from other compounds in a liquid sample. Topics will include an introduction to separation science and detection methods, types of HPLC, instrument orientation, operation, maintenance, and troubleshooting, as well as sample preparation and analysis. Laboratories provide hands-on experience. (1.2 CEUs) Cost: $65
Saturday, September 25
11:00am – 4:00pm
UNC-Chapel Hill
The UNC Science Expo is a signature event of the North Carolina Science Festival, the nation’s first state-wide celebration of science. Presented in part by Morehead Planetarium.
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To view a complete calendar of RTP community events, please visit the Science in the Triangle calendar.
Female role in gaming industry grows
Friday, September 17, 2010, 11:59 am 3 Comments | Post a Comment
Phaedra Boinodiris says the Wii prompted a radical shift in traditional gaming industry marketing.
Women represent a huge portion of the market for the $10.5 billion video game industry. According to the Entertainment Software Association, females account for 40 percent of all players. At 33 percent of the gaming population, adult women even outnumber boys age 17 or younger. But despite those statistics, the male-dominated industry is still widely criticized for its portrayal of women.
But some female gamers, like IBM Gaming and Interactive Manager Phaedra Boinodiris, are working to change that portrayal – and get more women interest and playing and creating games. Science in the Triangle spoke with Boinodiris, the co-creator of WomenGamers.com, about the state of the industry and how it’s changing when it comes to women.
How did you first get into gaming?
My sister and I have been playing forever, ever since the days of Pong. I know that completely dates me – it’s scary. We knew we played and our friends played and our cousins played, but we’d open up most gaming magazines and look at gaming websites and they were targeted toward young men. So we decided to start a company, WomenGamers.com. That’s how we got the site of the ground.
How long did it take you when you were younger to notice how slanted the gaming industry is toward men?
It was gradual. I don’t know if you recall the first advertisements on television for the Atari or for ColecoVision, but if you take a look at what those looked like, you’d always see families playing together. Then there was this subtle shift in the kind of marketing that gaming companies were doing to focus more and more on a predominantly male audience. It was very interesting to us to note this shift.
So one day we were invited to a marketing to women online conference — this was back in the late 90s – and there was a panel on women in gaming. There was so much interest from big companies. Mattel, at the time, was really investing in that space. There was a lot of conversation about where this was going and how it was untapped. We just walked away thinking there was a lot of opportunity here to showcase this untapped market and really provide service.
Given the statistics about women gamers and gaming parents, why do you think the industry fails to market to women appropriately?
Because they have very few women working for them. If there were more women game designers, for example, if there were more women who were on staff working within these companies, you would see a bigger shift.
It wasn’t until Nintendo decided to make a play in that space to go after the more casual gamer that you would see huge changes in marketing and advertising. I remember before the Nintendo Wii, you would go to conferences like E3 – you would never see a poster of a woman actually playing a game. If you saw a woman, if she was depicted at all, she was typically in a chain mail bikini. But once the Nintendo Wii came out, there was a big push toward showing women playing.
They were on the frontier, and obviously they scored big with that. It wasn’t until after Nintendo made that big play that people started to wake up to this notion of the casual gamer and going after new blood. So you have more social games, like Farmville, mobile games, going after a bigger and bigger audience.
In Epic Games' upcoming Gears of War 3, communications officer Anya Stroud will hit the frontlines as a soldier. | Photo courtesy of Epic Games
Do you think the industry’s lack of female roles and often misogynistic overtones turn off female gamers who would otherwise want to play?
Absolutely. It perpetuates a stigma of what working within the game industry is like. It’s a shame because if women consider it as a boy’s club that’s really exclusionary, why would they ever try to, as their career, work there?
We really have a job to do to make sure the gaming industry itself is considered more inclusive so we can include more women who work there. This isn’t just to benefit women, by the way. You include women as game designers, you’re going to get whole new genres of games that don’t exist. I’m noticing with my daughter, she approaches certain games in a very different way. I’ve spoken with professors who teach game design and development classes who also remark upon the fact that the female students they have in their classes end up creating things that are really different from the status quo out on the market.
It will mean a lot more diversity in the market of games out there. Also, it means some serious profit for these game studios because they’re going after a larger and larger audience.
Intelligence officer Kat is second in command of Halo: Reach's Noble Team. | Photo courtesy Bungie/Microsoft Studios
In hardcore games, the female role does seem to be changing. We have female soldiers in the new Gears of War and Halo titles. Mass Effect 2 also has very prominent females as major players in the game. Are gaming companies starting to realize they need to put more females in these larger roles?
Actually, for the titles you mentioned, I don’t think they’re doing that to attract women necessarily. I think they’re primary reason for including women is for the men.
We’ve done a lot of studies and we’ve seen that a lot of the male game players prefer to play females, especially in [massively multiplayer online role playing games]. You ask them why, and they say, “Well they’re nicer to look at.” Secondly, they’ve found that when they’re playing a female character, a female avatar, others within the game will assume they’re a female playing. They’ve said they actually get a lot of free stuff – weaponry, swords, all kinds of things! It’s interesting to see the dynamic there in terms of the men choosing to play the female avatars.
Do you think one part of the solution here is sparking the interest of young women in math and science early on?
Absolutely, and my sister and I have done a lot of talks at elementary schools and middle schools about this subject. There’s been a huge drop in the number of women in math and science ever since the Bush era. One of the ways that we purport to be able to encourage women back into these fields is to encourage them to design games, early.
If you think about it, from my personal experience, the way that I got interested in math and science was absolutely because of games. It is a fun pursuit, especially the idea of designing your own. It’s play, if you will. What better way to get enthusiastic about subject matter than by playing in it to begin with? The idea is that you encourage young women, young girls to play these games, to design their own games, so hopefully they’ll be able to see why having a field in computer science or math or physics would be interesting.
Do universities have a role to play when it comes to encouraging women in science, technology, engineering and math fields?
Absolutely, but I think it’s a challenge. From an even earlier age than college, why is it that they’re being turned away from math and science? That question needs to be answered.
Whether it’s [creating] a game or a software application, it takes a lot more than programming. It takes good writing skills, good scripting, texture design, art, sound. In my case, for serious games, it takes a lot of business acumen and knowledge of complex systems.
For those women who think, “Programming is not really my thing,” that should not deter them from looking into this space anyway.
Was there a moment for you at some point in your childhood that you knew going into a science- or math-related field was for you?
It wasn’t a sudden thing. Both of my parents were retired IBMers and we had computers all the time in our house. They were very big on education and very big on math and science. It was something we always enjoyed and something we always loved and embraced. No one ever scared us off of that.
We were lucky to grow up in an environment that was very nurturing for us to like those fields and not feel like we’re eating our Brussels sprouts.
Looking forward, is there something that gives you hope about the future of the role of female gamers?
Everything I see. Look at the big push toward mobile gaming and casual gaming and what’s happening with the Nintendo Wii and how they’re outpacing everybody. It’s a huge wake-up call to companies. They’re really saying, “Gee, we really missed the boat. We really need to refocus on what we’re doing here. ”They’re looking at their staff and saying, “Who here knows how to target women? Who here knows how to make a gender inclusive game?”
They really are trying to learn at this point, not for good karma or altruistic feelings, but because it makes sense for the bottom line.
Tyler Dukes is a freelance reporter and journalism adviser at N.C. State University. Follow him on Twitter as @mtdukes.
RTP puts Robotics “FIRST”
Friday, September 17, 2010, 11:30 am 1 Comment | Post a Comment
Students, parents, and science enthusiasts alike packed the RTP Headquarters Friday for the NC FIRST Robotics Info and Demonstration Session.
FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) offers robotics programs throughout North Carolina for students between the ages of 6 and 18. Teams showcased their finished bots and wowed the crowd with special tricks. Some bots kicked soccer balls (see video), some sped up jump-ramps like Evel Knievel. One even hung vertically from stretch cables. Bots were constructed from FIRST-standardized parts kits, the general framework for all teams being equal. Spectators were impressed with the teamwork and creativity the students put into their finished product.
Regional director Marie Hopper and eight of the team participants gave a brief history of the FIRST program and painted a picture for where it’s headed next. FIRST helps foster an appreciation for science and math and helps prepare our engineers of tomorrow, Hopper said.
Students told their personal favorite parts of the Robotics challenge: working together, building community, learning about electronics, becoming leaders, and even cheering on their opponents.
Hopper announced a new engineering scholarship for FIRST students through N.C. State University — the pioneer of its class for the Triangle Region.
The goals of FIRST are to (1) inspire young people to be science and technology leaders by engaging them in exciting team-based, mentor-based programs that build science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)skills; (2) promote the spirit of creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship; (3) foster well-rounded life capabilities; (4) help today’s youth acquire the knowledge and skills needed to compete in the technologically-driven global economy; and (5) encourage students (ages 6-18) to pursue studies in engineering and technology at the college, graduate and post-graduate levels leading to careers in related technical fields.
For those interested in getting involved with FIRST, there’s a training event for students and coaches at Park Research Center on 10/16.
For more information, contact Marie Hopper at ncfirstrobots@gmail.com
“Power Plants” on North Carolina’s Roadsides
Monday, September 13, 2010, 9:46 am 1 Comment | Post a CommentLike many farmers, Ted Sherrod double-crops, growing canola in the winter on the same land where he harvested sunflowers or safflower grown during the summer. But Sherrod’s “farms” are stretches of roadside or median across the state, and his crops are part of an innovative experiment designed to produce biodiesel for N.C. Department of Transportation vehicles.
Biofuel crops on a roadside near Raleigh. Photo: NCDOT
Brains, poop, blood and other things that make science exciting
Monday, September 13, 2010, 12:24 am 1 Comment | Post a CommentThere’s science for adults and there’s science for kids.
Science for adults is a lecture on “Idiopathic Interstitial Lung Disease: From Molecular Pathogenesis to Therapy.” Science for kids is an experiment to see whether dorodungo, the Japanese art of rolling a shiny ball from water and dirt, also works with ostrich and lion droppings.
Which science do you prefer? I go with polishing the poop.
The N.C. Science Festival is a little bit of science for adults and a lot of science for kids. One of 39 satellite events of the first national science festival, the U.S. Science & Engineering Festival, which will run from Oct. 10 to Oct. 24 in Washington, D.C., the N.C. Science Festival started Saturday with the annual BugFest at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh and will end Sept. 26.
Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage
One of the highlights of the N.C. Science Festival is a Sept. 19 visit to Chapel Hill by MythBusters Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, the Discovery Channel duo known for spectacular explosions and experiments that explore answers to burning questions like this: Can you get sucked into an airline toilet while in flight?
Honestly, who hasn’t wondered about that while watching the blue water in an airplane toilet whooshing out with an earsplitting roar?
Savage and Hyneman also tried out the dorodungo with ostrich and lion poop. Don’t believe it? It’s part of the MythBusters’ 10 strangest myths video. Read more…
RTP Week Ahead, Sept. 11-17
Friday, September 10, 2010, 2:33 pm 1 Comment | Post a Comment
Saturday, September 11
9:00am – 7:00pm
Museum of Natural Sciences, Jones Street, The Plaza, Edenton Street
Learn about arthropods, which make up three-quarters of all animals on Earth, during fascinating presentations. Taste delectable dishes featuring creepy crawlers as a major ingredient at Café Insecta. Join the moths, fireflies and katydids for an exhilarating evening of nocturnal activities at the Evening Insectival.
Sunday, September 12
Various events, ongoing through Sun. 9/26
Presented by UNC’s Morehead Planetarium.
Monday, September 13
BioNetwork Course:Operations in Biotechnology Processes
8:00am (Mon. 9/13) – 5:00pm (Fri. 9/17)
BioNetwork Capstone Center, BTEC 250 B, 850 Oval Drive, Centennial Campus, Raleigh, NC 27695
Take a hands-on approach to learning the details of the typical processing steps used to produce a biopharmaceutical in a simulated cGMP environment. An understanding of the science and equipment used in each processing step will be proviced, as well as hands-on laboratory experience in ferentation, product isolation, and purification of a protein.
SBIR/STTR Phase I Proposal Preparation Workshop: Clean Green Energy Edition
8:00am – 5:00pm
Durham Marriott Convention Center, 201 Foster Street, Durham, NC 27701
Come join other energy / clean / green technology-based entrepreneurs and small companies who are seeking funding for R&D and plan to submit a SBIR/STTR proposal within the next 12 months.
Tuesday, September 14
SJF Summit on the New Green Economy
All day (thru Wed. 9/15)
Durham Convention Center (Adjacent Marriott)
A dynamic gathering of entrepreneurs, investors, government and community leaders sharing inspiring successes & practical tools and exploring strategic partnerships to build the green economy with opportunities for all. The event will feature keynotes from Bruce Usher, former CEO of carbon trading firm EcoSecurities, and David Orr, distinguished professor at Oberlin College describing the innovative Oberlin green economy initiative, as well as many more.
Periodic Tables: Alcohol and the Adolescent Brain: Dude, where’s my car?
7:00 – 9:00pm
Broad Street Cafe, Durham
Recent MRI studies have shown that adolescence is a period of intensive brain development, and this research has generated new public policy debates on topics ranging from criminal liability to the drinking age. Dr. Swartzwelder of Duke’s Institute for Brain Sciences will be joining us and will review his studies of the effects of alcohol on the adolescent brain, and suggest a context for the ongoing public policy debates.
Wednesday, September 15
Medical Innovation and Strategies Conference 2010: Wireless and Consumer Health
7:00am – 5:00pm
Duke University, The Fuqua School of Business, Health Sector Management Program, 100 Fuqua Drive Durham, 27708
Program Focus: Future impact of wireless technology on healthcare industry, Understanding the future trends of consumer healthcare, Expert panel discussions on business models and innovation solutions.
Thursday, September 16
TiE: Working in the US: Trips and Traps
11:30am – 2:00pm
Brier Creek Country Club
TiE Carolinas lunch session. Jennifer Parser of Poyner Spruill discusses immigration and work issues for employees, including visa requirements.
Seminar: Molecular Pathogenesis and Therapy of Subsets of Tobacco-Related Head and Neck Cancers
2:00 – 3:00pm
NIEHS, Rall Bldg., Rodbell B
Open to the public. Speaker: Carter Van Waes, M.D., Ph.D.
Friday, September 17
DGHI Global Health Exchange: Dr. Eva Harris
10:00 – 11:00am
Duke Global Health Institute, 124 Trent Hall
Please join us for this Global Health Exchange for MSc-GHs. This exchange is being arranged by the Duke Human Vaccine Institute.
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To view a complete calendar of RTP community events, please visit the Science in the Triangle calendar.
White House: Tough year ahead for R&D funding
Thursday, September 9, 2010, 7:59 pm 1 Comment | Post a CommentIncreases in federal funding for research and development in the past 10 years - from the doubling of biomedical research dollars to the stimulus money - have created jobs and supported the economy in R&D hot spots like North Carolina’s Research Triangle area.
Kei Koizumi
But concerns about the rising U.S. deficit now threaten to slow the flow of federal R&D funding to universities, research institutes and companies developing new technologies. Budget proposals for the fiscal year starting October 2011 are due Monday and the Obama administration has asked all federal agencies to cut funding requests by 5 percent.
The five months of budget negotiations that are ahead will determine whether R&D funding can be protected from the cuts, Kei Koizumi, assistant director for federal R&D in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, told faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Wednesday.
Regardless of the outcome of the negotiations, Koizumi said, “it’s going to be a very tough year.”
With the same amount of money or less to go around, more new research projects might languish for lack of funding and existing projects might have to be scaled back in favor of others with a higher priority.
Health, clean energy, global climate change and security remain among the R&D priorities of the Obama administration, Koizumi said. But the budget may also include some new funding ideas, such as experimental approaches to bring new technologies to market and a shift in how to balance research that is relevant today and high risk-high return research that could prove transformational in the long term.
Results of these policy discussions and budget negotiations will reverberate in R&D hot spots, where federal R&D funding supports a significant part of the local economy.
U.S. industry, nonprofits and taxpayers invest about $400 billion every year in R&D.
The federal government’s share is about 37 percent, or $147 billion. That’s up about 50 percent since 2000 thanks to initiatives to boost biomedical research and advances in clean energy and engineering.
Meanwhile, R&D spending in the Research Triangle about doubled.
In 2008, Duke University, UNC-CH, N.C. State University and RTI International, a research institute in Research Triangle Park, spent about $2.34 billion on R&D, according to a survey by the National Science Foundation and RTI’s annual report.
North Carolina was also among the states that benefited the most from stimulus money earmarked for R&D in the past 18 months - the three universities and RTI were awarded more than $225 million just from the National Institutes of Health.
Hundreds of R&D jobs have been created in the Triangle backed by stimulus funds and university researchers are already asking what will happen with these jobs once the funding runs out.
“There’s not going to be another stimulus,” Koizumi said. “There is some adjustment coming.”
Find Koizumi’s slide presentation here.
Epic technology goes mobile
Thursday, September 9, 2010, 12:03 pm 2 Comments | Post a Comment
Don’t have an iPad or iPhone? Check out this walkthrough from melfassyfihry.
When Triangle-based Epic Games makes announcements, they apparently don’t pull any punches.
Epic President Mike Capps took the stage after an introduction from Apple CEO Steve Jobs at Apple’s Sept. 1 press conference to announce Epic’s first foray into mobile gaming — Project Sword.
The currently codenamed title doesn’t come out until this holiday season, but Epic already released a free technology demonstration through the iTunes store called Epic Citadel. The demo allows users to walk through an environment rendered with the company’s Unreal Engine. And it’s this component, not the “all-new action role-playing adventure game” itself, that has already turned some heads in the gaming world.
Epic has plenty of experience with next-generation video game hits. It sold almost 12 million units in its Gears of War series worldwide, and its Unreal Engine powers critically acclaimed best sellers like Batman: Arkham Asylum and Mass Effect 2.
But there’s a big difference between creating amazing graphics on a mobile device and a console intended to run high-performance games. The Xbox 360, for example, has a CPU three times more powerful than that of the iPad.
Nonetheless, the tech demo wowed some critiques so far.
Jerry Holkins, co-creator of Penny Arcade webcomic and the PAX gaming convention, raved about the graphics power.
“We’ve run it on everything it will run on here at the office, and it is very nearly horrifying in its fidelity and expressive power, from the iPhone 3G up.”
John Funk, at the Durham-based Escapist Magazine, said he “certainly never thought I’d see graphics like that on a mobile game.”
In an interview with the gaming blog Gamasutra, Capps points out one big benefit with the iPhone and iPad devices is memory. And that can help when rendering complex lighting and textures.
“You’ve got 16 gigs of flash memory, which is way better, faster memory than what most people have generally on a home PC. So that stuff works really well. It’s the big environments that get really complicated on the rendering tools for iPhone. But yeah, we’ve got some tricks for it.”
The tech demo looks pretty sharp, but as with any title, the true value will involve gameplay as much as the art.
What do you think of Epic Citadel? Does it represent any advances for mobile gaming?
How to write and publish a science book?
Wednesday, September 8, 2010, 7:53 pm No Comments | Post a CommentSCONC Presents: Writing Science: Local Authors Discuss Their Craft (an N.C. Science Festival event):
Join the Science Communicators of North Carolina as we probe the minds of local science writers to find out how they go about the process of writing a book.
How are ideas generated? What does their research process entail? How do they go about getting words down on the blank page/screen? What is the editing process like? Once the book is finished, what next?
Find out the answers to these questions and pose your own.
Panel includes:
T. Delene Beeland (blog, Twitter), author of the forthcoming The Secret World of Red Wolves.
Scott Huler (blog, Twitter), author of On the Grid (review).
Glenn Murphy, author of Why is Snot Green?
Moderated by Russ Campbell (blog, Twitter) of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.
Thursday, September 23, 2010 from 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM (ET) in Research Triangle Park.
Really bad timing for me - I’ll be at the Block by Block summit on exactly the same day. I hate I will have to miss this. But you should go if you are in the area! This is bound to be awesome!
