Second College of Engineering radio program focuses on sustainability

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Innovative ideas for addressing energy needs and
environmental protection is the subject of the second installment of
the Global Challenges radio series. The series is produced by the
Purdue University College of Engineering and WFYI Public Radio in
Indianapolis.

“Sustainability” is available on the Internet at http://www.engineeringimpact.org and will be broadcast nationally on public radio stations after its 7 p.m. Wednesday (April 22) premiere on WFYI.

The program, narrated by Barbara Bogaev, former
host and editor of “Weekend America,” examines a handful of
developments that may benefit from the Obama administration’s push for
renewable energies and clean technologies.

Purdue professors Fu Zhao, mechanical
engineering, and Suresh Rao, environmental engineering, who are working
on transforming municipal solid waste into ethanol, are among those
featured. Larry Nies of civil engineering, also is interviewed.

“Sustainability” looks at the Subaru of Indiana
Automotive plant in Lafayette, which sends zero waste to landfills.
Listeners also will be introduced to an MIT professor who has invented
a solar cell that not only works at night, but in the rain; a group of
New York City sanitation engineers who have cleaned up the dead zones
in the East River using a process they invented that could revive
oceans and rivers all over the world; a California company that
captures CO2 as it’s being emitted from power plants and seals it away;
and a team of experts that has developed special sidewalks that will
suck CO2 out of the air.

“This series of radio programs is designed to
spotlight engineering’s role in solving pressing global challenges,”
said Rwitti Roy, former director of marketing and communications for
the College of Engineering and now Purdue’s senior director of brand
and advertising. “Certainly, finding ways to ensure the sustainability
of our planet is one of those challenges.”

Richard Miles, WFYI vice president of audio
services and television programming, said: “The Global Challenges
series reflects WFYI Public Radio’s commitment to produce high-caliber
programs that impact the lives of our listeners. We’re delighted to be
collaborating with Purdue’s College of Engineering on this radio
series.”

The first program in the series, “After Oil,” also is available online at http://www.engineeringimpact.org  

Writer: Judith Barra Austin, 765-494-2432, jbaustin@purdue.edu

Sources: Rwitti Roy, 765-496-9799, rroy@purdue.edu 

Lori Plummer, 317-614-0462, lplummer@wfyi.org

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

To the News Service home page

Zero Waste Plasmagasification

Plasco Energy Group, a Canadian company, is developing a process to convert solid waste to energy [and other usable stuff] via plasmagasification. Big word, but it seems to work. I’ve embedded a video below to explain how it works. Good stuff. Hank

Verterra: Dinnerware from fallen leaves

I viewed a clip about this company on Bloomberg’s Venture program yesterday evening. Verterra is about making organic plates [for eating off of] from palm leaves. The founder and CEO Michael Dwork has an interesting background here: A 10:00 interview with him is below. Hank

Pitch Hints From Vator for ENTR200 CRV presentation

The best pitches answer three things in under seven minutes: specifically: 1) What’s the problem? 2) How are you going to solve it? 3) How are you going to make money?

Good model for your pitches coming up in roughly a week. More detail from Vator below:

Have A Happy Friday: Stand By Me

Below is a a video that has to be the best sound engineering work I have ever seen. It is a composite audio/video of song whereby additional tracks were laid in by different singers and musicians from different places around the world. The finished product is tremendous! The song itself is that classic standard "Stand By Me" originally released in 1955 by The Staple Singers and released again in 1961 by the Drifters. This composite version is a real toe tapper. Turn your audio full blast, and Have A Happy Friday. I’m going to. Hank

Smule: Combines Computer Science and Music Interests

Ge Wang is a very unique individual and a cofounder of Smule. Ge is an Assistant Prof @ Stanford’s Computer Research in Music and Acoustics who also happens to hold a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Princeton  and was involved in development of Chuck, an audio programming language [not the hour-long program several of us watch every Monday @ 8pm ] He is also an iPhone app developer, and is behind Ocarina for the iPhone. TechCrunch loves them, especially since they recently raised $3.9 million in VC funding.

So here’s a geek, that’s combined his “geekness” [Ph.D. in CS] with his love of music and obvious past in playing Nintindo games [Legend of Zelda theme]. Best of both worlds! Hank

PogoPlug: The Easy Network Drive

Yesterday the pogoplug that I ordered a couple of months ago arrived and I demo’d it in class yesterday. This blog provides details about the device as provided by my nephew Craig [Purdue ME grad and Lily engineer] with a few [bracket] comments by me:

“UHH, [Uncle Hank Himself, a family thang ]

Yours arrive today also? [Yes it did]

Got mine up and running.  Set up folders for the family.  Trent [brother living in Oregon]  has already loaded some pictures on there.

Cute little bugger, ain’t it?

Here’s what I learned.

Dumb thing comes with almost zero instructions.  Go here:  http://my.pogoplug.com

That’s easy enough.  Plug it in.  Get a drive attached.  Go.

I set it up on my desktop.  Worked great.  Moved it to its final resting place – would not recognize anything.

Had to set up the WD drive by itself [Craig has WD, I'm using 8 gig thumb drive], then restart everything.  Working like a champ now.

The login is nice.  Each email address you assign to a folder gets to create their own password.  Then, from any computer, go to my.pogoplug.com and sign in [can just go to pogoplug.com].  Easy as pie.

The Cat5 network cable issued with the plug is too short to be of value [actually too long for me, I place my pogoplug next to switch].

What is the extension cord for?  I have no idea.  Red arrow in picture. [as delivered ac prongs are removable and replace with ac cord as needed]

I did buy the 250 GB Western Digital pocket drive.  Currently whole setup is sitting behind computer #2 – out of sight and mind.

Would have to recommend that one install it where you want it to remain, instead of how I approached it. [I had to "reboot" after changing setup also. No biggie.]

Total cost:  PogoPlug ~$80; WD drive ~$70 = $150 for a networked drive that’s open to whomever I decide.”

Note: The packaging is very elaborate  and doesn’t add to the device’s functionality. For my ENTR200 class to decide Thursday when they see it. Picture of my installation is below. It’s one of those gizmos that “just works.” Hank aka UHH

Multisensory Marketing

In a previous post last week, I blogged about Scent Marketing. In class, we briefly discussed Neuromarketing. Today [thanks to Stroh Brann for the input and idea] we’re going on to the next big thing in marketing, ads that you can eat to taste the product, that’s right, “Flavor Marketing.” While a sophomore at University of Pennsylvania, Adnan Adiz, now a graduate with a double major in bioengineering and poly science, was watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory [don't ask me why he was watch this children's movie?] and pondered the scene where kids licked wallpaper that tasted like fruit [see video clip immediately below]. He wondered if this could actually be done, and thus was born the concept behind what is now First Flavor, “marketing with taste.” He has an outstanding board, and big grunt behind his concept. Selected as one of the top 25 entrepreneurs under 25, he is an example of the move toward multisensory marketing. The press is starting to pick up on the concept. Have any readers seen/tasted such products?

There is a very good presentation by Adnan to Google [35 minutes] at the bottom that is well worth your time to watch. Lots of lessons therein for serious entrepreneurs. Hank

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IP: What The Textbooks Don’t Tell You

This week in ENTR200 we are moving into the Grey Area called intellectual property, or IP for short. It is a mess; there is no other way to put it. Here’s an example: A guy named Mike Morgan recently started a blog named goldmansach666.com mainly to gripe about the investment firm Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs is going after Mike for trademark infringement, although Mike’s blog starts off plain and simple with a massive disclaimer at the very top/entry point. The letter states in part (reference link here: ) “Your use of the mark Goldman Sachs violates several of Goldman Sachs’ intellectual property rights, constitutes an act of trademark infringement, unfair competition and implies a relationship and misrepresents commercial activity and/or an affiliation between you and Goldman Sachs which does not exist and additionally creates confusion in the marketplace, …..”

We will discuss this and other ways IP is misused in class Tuesday. Like the wiki states, what’s the difference between erotica and pornography? Is it only “I know it when I see it?” or something else? Why do many students think it’s OK to download music in violation of copyright law? Does being “poor” justify violation of IP law? Same for citations in papers? If you post something on FaceBook, or Twitter or any other social networking site, do you have a right of privacy such that your comments cannot be re-published? Does attribution alone make it OK? Same concept applies to many areas of IP. And even our best legal minds are actively attempting to sort emerging areas of IP out. See here for instance. This is an area where “right” answers may not exist. As a conversation starter, consider this: You are on Facebook, and one of your friends, a future Einstein, writes the equalivalent of E+MC^2 on your wall.  Who owns this earth-shattering revelation? You as “owner” of the wall – in fact, do you own your wall. Your friend? Zuck? No one? Everyone? Hank

Have A Happy Good Friday: CUMonday