At Wilson College, the Harry Brook Science Complex is the newest place to facilitate and enjoy science-related learning. Students will be able to use the facility to do work or study on science subjects like chemistry and biology.
With a worth estimated at $25 million, the Harry Brook Science Complex is Franklin County’s first LEED (Leadership in Energy an Environmental Design) certified building. It boasts of air exchange vents, two-way flushing toilets, and solar panels. The science facility also uses slate chalkboards and showers for people who travel to work by bicycle.
Considered a work of art, the science complex features a waterfall and an atrium. The waterfall provides the 76,500 square foot facility all-natural light.
Environmentalists and green thumbs will also enjoy the greenhouse, while history and science fans will love the rocks, stuffed animals, eggs, and fossils found in the natural history museum.
Veterinary medicine students can also study the skeleton of a thoroughbred, which they can take into the laboratories whenever needed.
Last January 2009, students started attending classes in the science facility.
Named after Harry R. Brooks, the Harry Brook Science Complex thrived on donations by Brook’s daughter, Marguerite Brook Lenfest. Together with her husband H.F. Lenfest, Marguerite gave $10 million for the completion of the science facility. In addition to this, the couple promised to match other donations with another $10 million.
According to news releases, Wilson College received a total of $17 million from the couple, together with over $16 million that came from other sources.
One of the reasons why the Lenfests donated to Wilson’s new building is their observation that majority of Wilson College’s students, about 63% to be exact, take up science-based or science-related majors. Science, together with math, is also a general education requirement in virtually all schools.
Fifty-five-year-old Dan Hesse was appointed as the new Chief Executive Officer of the Kansas-based telecommunications company, Sprint Nextel, Dec. 18, 2007.
Prior to becoming Sprint Nextel’s chief, Dan Hesse had served as the chief executive officer and chairman of Embarq Corporation, a $6 billion company providing data, voice, entertainment and wireless services across 18 states.
Aside from Embarq Corporation, Dan Hesse had also served as the chairman and chief for Terabeam Corporation, a technology company providing wireless telecommunications services. He was able to hold that position for three years from 2000 to 2004.
Moreover, Hesse was also able to dedicate 23 years of his career to serve as the president and chief executive officer at AT&T Wireless Services. The wireless services provider was at that time the largest wireless carrier in the United States.
From 1997 up to 2000, Dan Hesse was able to launch AT&T’s international online initiatives. As the head of the Online Services Group, Dan Hesse was also able to launch AT&T’s Worldnet family of Internet services. From 1991 up until 1995, Hesse was the president and chief executive officer of AT&T Network Systems International, a joint-venture telecommunications company. Prior to his AT&T management duties, Dan Hesse was assigned to several Network Operations, Network Engineering, International Services, Strategic Planning, Human Resources, Product Management and Sales.
For his dynamic leadership, Dan Hesse received the recognition of many prestigious publications in the telecommunications and technology industry.
He was named as the Wireless Industry’s “Person of the Year” by the RCR magazine, “Most Influential Person in Mobile Technology” by LAPTOP Magazine, as well as “Executive of the Year” by the Wireless Business and Technology magazine. In addition to those, Dan Hesse was also able to receive the Ellis Island Medal of Honor as well as Wireless Week magazine’s Leadership Award.
General Electric has purchased a Kent, Wash-based firm, Naverus, which spearheaded satellite-based airplane navigation technology for guiding aircraft and streamlining flight patterns around airports.
Naverus’ technology can steer air traffic on autopilot along a smoothly descending, satellite-guided path, avoiding the stair-step approach and constant interplay with air traffic controllers that are now required to bring in planes.
By linking satellite-based GPS with the plane’s autopilot system, the technology allows closer spacing of airplanes and more fuel-efficient landing approaches, according to experts in the field.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) gave the company approval two months ago to design and validate flight paths at U.S. airports for a wide array of airlines. The approval enables the company to play a role in accelerating the FAA’s proposed modernization of the U.S. air traffic system, known as NextGen.
Naverus was founded in 2003 and its mission is to “harness emerging navigation technologies to make air transportation operations around the world run better,” according to its Web site.
Naverus will become part of GE Aviation Systems.
A privacy agency in Switzerland said it plans to sue Google over its Street View feature.
Street View allows users to see street-level pictures online. The application has been criticized by other European countries because it could expose private or embarrassing things about people’s lives, according to an Associated Press article.
The Swiss agency said it wants Google to ensure that all license plates, faces and private streets are blurred. It also wants at least one-week notice of when Google will be in the area taking photographs and when it will be available online.
“In the Street View service, which has been online since mid August 2009, numerous faces and vehicle number plates are not made sufficiently unrecognizable from the point of view of data protection, especially where the persons concerned are shown in sensitive locations, e.g. outside hospitals, prisons or schools,” said Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner, Hanspeter Thür in a news release.
The commission maintains that previous advance information from Google has been incomplete.
“Google announced that it would primarily be filming urban centres, but then put comprehensive images of numerous towns and cities on the Internet,” said Thür. “In outlying districts, where there are far fewer people on the streets, the simple blurring of faces is no longer sufficient to conceal identities. This is primarily due to the website’s zoom function, which enables the Street View user to isolate and enlarge images of individuals on the screen.”
Mayo Shattuck: I’d agree with your premise that we need everything in order to meet the demands that we have from all sources in the US. We need to develop generation competencies in all areas. Particularly in the nuclear side. Renewables are important part of this mix in order to meet the air emission and climate challenges we have ahead. The vast majority of renewable are of an intermittent quality. We need other types of energy when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.
Stephen Leer: Energy is a global scale business. I would add that conservation and energy efficiency is the important part and cheapest form of additional energy supplies. Pricing has a way to choose the most efficient sources for that moment in time. To have a balanced mix…I’m not sure there is such of thing. The markets will determine the balanced mix of energy. Coal is the fastest growing fossil fuel in the world. The challenge of coal is carbon capture resequestered technology. If we don’t developed this technology, it won’t be possible to stabilize CO2 emissions.
Kevin Parker: There isn’t an optimal mix of energy. But the markets will force the energy producers to make low carbon emission. We’re going to crack the threshold that will lead to climate change. The pricing of carbon will become an increasingly important. There will be higher carbon prices in the future. We’re going to need all energy sources, but low-carbon producers will be the winner.
The three CEOs talked about the system of cap and trade to control the price of carbon. The price of carbon will go up. Mayo Shattuck is an advocate of cap and trade system. He talked about a price-caller so certain parts of the United States can gradually adapt to new carbon pricing. Mayo Shattuck feels this is the efficient way to reduce carbon.
Hajari: The mix in the US energy supply: it’s been the same for the last 30 years. There’s no single silver bullet, so as we move toward a diversified portfolio, how can we encourage investments? And is there an ideal mix?
Steven Leer: When you look at global growth, energy requirements are stunning. We will struggle to meet those requirements, and we’ll need every energy source we can develop.
Kevin Parker: Energy producers will be forced to make all of their energy low-carbon. Markets and investors will force it that way.
Steven Leer: If other countries don’t embrace this in a meaningful time frame, it affects their competitiveness. In the US, we’ve seen manufacturing bases relocate when policies don’t support them — we need to make sure that our regulations make companies want to stay and develop here.
Kevin Parker: Because boundaries don’t exist for capital flow, companies are going to go where they have a competitive advantage and stay there. We ignore it at our peril. Example: Germany’s regulatory framework works well to encourage companies — it’s a mix of incentives and taxes to grow efficiency. And it’s evolved as the country has learned how best to improve growth.
Steven Leer: there are a lot of small-scale projects already going on, and we need to work on scaling them. As an example, the carbon capture and sequestration project we mentioned here yesterday.
Kevin Parker: Regulatory uncertainty is dangerous for developing renewable technology.
Question: Nuclear power: what’s the greatest hurdle?
Mayo Shattuck: Policy goal: increase nuclear’s role in the American power structure.
Steven Leer: Tech advances at a different rate than consumption does. It’s a challenge to stay where we are — moving ahead of the game will take even more.
Google announced today, Monday, Nov. 9, that it will acquire AdMob, a start-up that has developed technology to place ads on cell phones, according to an article in the New York Times.
Google, according to the article, has agreed to the acquisition for $750 million in stock. The company said the move would help speed up its efforts to develop more “effective tools for creating and placing mobile ads on smartphones” and other portable devices.
“We see mobile as a huge growth opportunity for us,” Susan Wojcicki, vice president of product management at Google, said in an interview in the article. “We see an opportunity working with AdMob to really accelerate our efforts in an important industry for Google.”
This is the third largest all-stock deal for Google. There was the $3.1 billion deal for DoubleClick and the $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube.
According to its Web site, AdMob is the “world’s largest mobile advertising marketplace, offering solutions for discovery, branding and monetization on the mobile web.”
Based in San Mateo, Calif., AdMob was founded in 2006 by Omar Hamoui.