Earlier this week, Sub Pop record label received an email from a Virginia Tech student with an interesting, albeit impossible, request. The student, VT's very own mascot and homecoming candidate, asks if Nirvana would record a personal video message for the school's annual homecoming week. Yes, Nirvana. As in the Nirvana that stopped being a band almost 20 years ago.
Participants at the Boy Scouts of America’s National Jamboree are turning each other into virtual zombies as part of an educational game that Virginia Tech researchers designed to show how disease spreads.
The Virus Tracker program combines technology with the game of tag.
At the Jamboree, Scouts earn points by “infecting” other players through bar-coded labels.
Codes can be activated at scanning stations or by troop leaders whose smartphones have the Virus Tracker app. The goal is to stay human. Individuals and troops that amass the most points each day win.
Scout Colin Slavin from Germantown Hills, Ill., says the chance to turn other Scouts into zombies is “really cool.”
Kristy Collins of the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech says about 3,000 Scouts have participated.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
Massachusetts lawyer Kenneth Feinberg has been near the heart of some of the worst catastrophes, dealing with people who’ve faced profound loss after 9/1l, the BP oil spill, the Virginia Tech shootings, and the Colorado movie theater ambush.
Now, he’s adding the Boston Marathon bombings to his workload, managing a victims’ compensation fund as he did after the previous tragedies.
The 67-year-old Feinberg said his work takes an emotional toll but is about wanting to help, in the same spirit as those who donate.
The One Fund — now nearing $26 million — was established to help victims of the April 15 explosions that killed three people and injured more than 260.
Feinberg has established an aggressive timeline in Boston. He hopes to meet with families by June 15 and get checks out by June 30.
Currently, he is advising a panel distributing money after the December school massacre in Newtown, Conn., and mediating settlement discussions between Penn State and alleged sex abuse victims of former football coach Jerry Sandusky.
The experiences are wrenching, he said. And recipients invariably resent him, thinking he’s trying to put a price on the priceless things they’ve lost.
“Don’t expect thanks or appreciation or gratitude, none of that,” Feinberg said. “We have very emotional victims and you’re offering them money instead of a limb, instead of the return of a family member. This is a no-win situation.”
But he keeps saying yes to the work because he wants to help.
“Look at the amount of money that pours in from private people, private citizens?” he said. “How do you say no if the governor calls, the mayor?”
In 1984, the Brockton native was appointed to distribute money from a $180 million settlement for military veterans exposed to Agent Orange. His work was stellar enough to prompt a call when President George W. Bush was looking for someone to manage the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund. Since then, the calls have come regularly.
Most of the work is pro bono, including the Boston Marathon job, though Feinberg was paid for his work with the 9/11 fund and the BP oil
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
Kenneth Feinberg, an attorney who managed the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, will design and administrator of a new fund to help people affected by the Boston Marathon bombing.
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino say the One Fund Boston is intended as a central place to gather donations for bombing victims.
Feinberg has also administered compensation funds for victims of the 2010 BP Gulf Coast oil spill and mass shootings at Virginia Tech and Aurora, Colo. The Brockton, Mass., native is chairman of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation board.
Patrick and Menino said that by 5 p.m. Wednesday the fund had more than $7 million in commitments from corporate and individual donors, and more than $500,000 in online donations from 8,500 people.
___
Online: www.onefundboston.org
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/national/~3/1yS1toIafic/
If the current national challenge to make solar energy cost competitive with other forms of energy by the end of this decade is met, Ranga Pitchumani, the John R. Jones III Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech, will have played a significant role in the process.
A team of Virginia Tech researchers has succeeded in transforming cellulose into starch, a process that has the potential to provide a previously untapped nutrient source from plants not traditionally thought of as food crops.
An 18-year-old college student was charged Friday with shooting and wounding two women at a mall branch of a southwest Virginia community college before he was subdued, the city’s police chief said.
Neil Allan MacInnis, of Christiansburg, faces two counts each of malicious wounding and using a firearm in the commission of a felony stemming from the shooting at the satellite campus of New River Community College at New River Valley Mall, Christiansburg Police Chief Mark Sisson said Friday night.
MacInnis, who was a student at the community college, was being held without bond at the Montgomery County Jail.
Sisson said authorities were still trying to establish a motive and any connection between MacInnis and the victims, who were hospitalized following the shooting in this town of approximately 21,000, less than 10 miles from Blacksburg, home to Virginia Tech.
He said authorities are investigating online postings allegedly made by MacInnis prior to the Friday shooting but that he was unable to confirm whether those postings were legitimate.
“Today has been a very tough day for law enforcement officers involved, it’s been a very tough day for victims and their families, it’s been a very tough day for the suspect’s family,” Sisson said before reading a prepared statement at a Friday night news conference. He did not take any additional questions.
One of the victims was airlifted to the hospital and the other was taken by ambulance. Authorities did not identify the victims or provide updated information on their conditions.
The type of weapon, how it was obtained and how many shots were fired during the incident were not being released due to the ongoing investigation, Sisson said.
The police chief also said MacInnis participated in the Christiansburg Police Department Citizens Academy program in 2012. The 12-week course gives citizens an idea what happens at the department on a typical day, according to a press release seeking participants for the free program. Participants are able to get a chance to ride along with police officers, tour the officers’ training facility and practice with firearms at the firing range, the news release said.
The shooting took place at about 2 p.m. The community college was closed Friday following the shooting and Saturday classes were cancelled, according to its website. The mall was set to reopen Saturday at noon.
Friday isn’t usually a busy day at the school’s mall campus, Ben Kramer, an activities counselor for the community college, told The Roanoke Times. Enrollment is roughly 1,500, and about a third of those students likely were on campus, he said.
Student Josh Brown said he was working on a computer near the classrooms when the shots were fired.
“I heard one gunshot, and I didn’t know what it was. … I saw people running out,” he told the newspaper.
Brown then got up and ran out himself.
“I’ll be scared to come back to school,” he said as he started to cry. “What’s wrong with people? Who would do something like this?”
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/national/~3/CqWOZ3TL6rI/
A team of Virginia Tech researchers has discovered a way to extract large quantities of hydrogen from any plant, a breakthrough that has the potential to bring a low-cost, environmentally friendly fuel source to the world. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
Researchers at Virginia Tech have found a way to efficiently extract hydrogen from plant materials, overcoming one of the obstacles that led the Obama Administration to put hydrogen fuel-cell technology on the back burner. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
East Room
11:58 A.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. (Applause.) Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Katerina, for sharing your story. Reema was lucky to have you as a teacher, and all of us are fortunate to have you here today. And I’m glad we had a chance to remember her.
Katerina, as you just heard, lost one of her most promising students in Virginia Tech, the shootings there that took place six years ago. And she and dozens of other moms and dads, all victims of gun violence, have come here today from across the country — united not only in grief and loss, but also in resolve, and in courage, and in a deep determination to do whatever they can, as parents and as citizens to protect other kids and spare other families from the awful pain that they have endured.
As any of the families and friends who are here today can tell you, the grief doesn’t ever go away. That loss, that pain sticks with you. It lingers on in places like Blacksburg and Tucson and Aurora. That anguish is still fresh in Newtown. It’s been barely 100 days since 20 innocent children and six brave educators were taken from us by gun violence — including Grace McDonnell and Lauren Rousseau and Jesse Lewis, whose families are here today.
That agony burns deep in the families of thousands — thousands of Americans who have been stolen from our lives by a bullet from a gun over these last 100 days — including Hadiya Pendleton, who was killed on her way to school less than two months ago, and whose mom is also here today. Everything they lived for and hoped for, taken away in an instant. We have moms on this stage whose children were killed as recently as 35 days ago.
I don’t think any of us who are parents can hear their stories and not think about our own daughters and our own sons and our own grandchildren. We all feel that it is our first impulse, as parents, to do everything we can to protect our children from harm; to make any sacrifice to keep them safe; to do what we have to do to give them a future where they can grow up and learn and explore, and become the amazing people they’re destined to be.
That’s why, in January, Joe Biden, leading a task force, came up with, and I put forward, a series of common-sense proposals to reduce the epidemic of gun violence and keep our kids safe. In my State of the Union address, I called on Congress to give these proposals a vote. And in just a couple of weeks, they will.
Earlier this month, the Senate advanced some of the most important reforms designed to reduce gun violence. All of them are consistent with the Second Amendment. None of them will infringe on …read more
Source: White House Press Office
In a National Science Foundation funded study, Kathleen Alexander, an associate professor of wildlife at Virginia Tech, found that climate drives a large part of diarrheal disease and increases the threat of climate change for vulnerable communities. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
By The Huffington Post News Editors
By Daniel Trotta
NEW YORK, March 24 (Reuters) – Survivors of mass U.S. shootings have united to provide victims of future tragedies greater control over donations made after such events and to prevent nonprofit groups from holding onto money intended for families of the dead and wounded.
A group representing families of those killed at the Columbine, Virginia Tech and Aurora mass shootings wants to ensure any unspecified funds raised as a result of the Newtown shooting go directly to victims and their families.
Newtown, the Connecticut town where a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, has identified more than 60 funds raising money on behalf of victims or projects related to the shooting.
The families of some mass shooting victims want a trusted, centralized authority to manage future donations.
“Going back to Oklahoma City, we’ve seen families who have had to endure not only horrific loss, but also the unimaginable task of wrestling with Byzantine nonprofit bureaucracies to access financial relief intended for them,” the families said in a statement. “It’s time to stop the madness. We cannot watch this happen, yet again, in Sandy Hook.”
The informal group, so far unnamed, has initiated talks with senior White House officials and two members of Congress about establishing an official fundraising operation for such tragedies, said Caryn Kaufman, a spokeswoman for the families. She declined to name the officials out of concern it might jeopardize the project.
The group is examining whether legislation or an executive order would be needed to create a federal or nonprofit entity that would coordinate donations after any future tragedy.
The project has won initial support from Kenneth Feinberg, the influential Washington lawyer who administered funds for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and several mass shootings.
Jerri Jackson, whose son Matt McQuinn was killed with 11 others in the 2012 movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado, wants it to be easier for future victims to receive aid. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post
By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Analog Devices and MathWorks Collaborate to Offer Engineering Students Portable, Hands-On, Low-Cost Learning Platform
ADI University Program Enhanced Through Integration of Analog Discovery Design Kits and MATLAB
NORWOOD, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI: NASDAQ) today announced the availability of a low-cost hardware-software solution focusing on circuit testing designed for the engineering education market. This offering combines MATLAB software and Analog Devices‘ Digilent Analog Discovery Design kits, enabling students to experiment quickly and easily with advanced technologies and build, test and analyze real-world, functional analog design circuits anytime – anywhere – for the price of a textbook. The Analog Discovery Design Kit costs $99 USD. Students can access MATLAB by purchasing a MATLAB Student Version license or through a site license that may be available from their university. Watch the ADI University Program video: http://videos.analog.com/video/1875694804001/Analog-Devices-University-Program/
“The combination of MATLAB and the Analog Devices‘ Digilent design kits provides a very flexible, powerful learning solution,” said Kathleen Meehan, Associate Professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Tech. “I don’t need to maintain a traditional large lab for my engineering students. Instead, students complete experiments after class, where and when they want with the analog design kit and analyze the data and write lab reports with MATLAB.”
MATLAB and ADI Analog Discovery Integration
MATLAB and the Data Acquisition Toolbox Support Package for Analog Discovery hardware allow students to acquire signals directly from the Analog Discovery as well as filter and analyze data. This integration allows students to develop a deeper understanding of the circuits they are building and reinforces MATLAB skills they are already learning in other classes. Each Analog Discovery is the size of a deck of cards, portable and features two oscilloscopes, two waveform generators, two power supplies and a logic analyzer. The Analog Discovery is manufactured by Digilent, Inc., and powered by Analog Devices components.
About MathWorks
Police from the University of Central Florida released video Wednesday of the raid on the dorm room of the man they say had a stockpile of weapons and had plans to use them to kill other students.
The fire alarm police say James Oliver Seevakumaran pulled apparently to get other students out into the open could be heard blaring in the video. The video shows the university’s tactical unit sweeping the apartment where they found homemade bombs, guns and a detailed attack plan in the room, authorities said.
Seevakumaran shot himself in the head as officers arrived.
“It could have been a very bad day here for everybody. All things considered, I think we were very blessed here at the University of Central Florida,” UCF Police Chief Richard Beary said. “One shooting is bad enough. Multiples would have been unthinkable. So, anybody armed with this type of weapon and ammunition could have hurt a lot of people here, particularly in a crowded area as people were evacuating.”
Some 500 students were evacuated from the building just after midnight, unaware how narrowly they had escaped what could have been another Virginia Tech-style bloodbath. Morning classes were canceled, but most campus operations resumed around noon.
“The kid’s bringing huge explosives in his room. So yeah, it could have been a lot worse,” 19-year-old UCF sophomore Anthony Giamanco said shortly after arriving on campus Monday morning.
Roommates told detectives that while Seevakumaran showed some anti-social tendencies, he had never expressed any violent behavior. The business major, who held a job at an on-campus sushi restaurant, had never been seen by university counselors and had no disciplinary problems with other students, said university spokesman Grant Heston.
Police shed no light on a motive, but Heston said that the school had been in the process of removing Seevakumaran from the dormitory because he hadn’t enrolled for the current semester. He had attended the university from 2010 through the fall semester.
Detectives found notes and other writings that indicated Seevakumaran had carefully planned an attack and “laid out a timeline of where he was going to be and what he was going to do,” Beary said.
Police were first alerted when Seevakumaran pulled a gun on one of his roommates, who then called 911 and holed up in a bathroom, Beary said. Around the same time, Seevakumaran pulled a fire alarm, apparently to get other students out in the open, the police chief said.
Police officers responded to the dorm within three minutes of the first call.
“His timeline got off,” Beary said. “We think the rapid response of law enforcement may have changed his ability to think quickly on his feet.”
In his room, investigators found four makeshift explosive devices in a backpack, a .45-caliber handgun, a .22-caliber tactical rifle, and a couple hundred rounds of ammunition, police said. Beary said it appears his weapons and ammunition purchases began in February locally in Orlando.
Authorities say Seevakumaran had two packages waiting for him in the mailroom that contained two .22-round magazines, a sling designed to fit his weapon …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
By Eric Volkman, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Vringo has signed a deal to partner with Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties, the licensing arm of Virginia Tech, to develop technology based on the latter’s innovations. In a press release announcing the move, the company wrote that this technology “could potentially enable first responders to quickly set up a wireless network in areas where telecommunication infrastructure has been destroyed or rendered inoperable.”
The technology is derived from development efforts at the university’s Wireless@VT research group. It was partially funded from a grant from the government’s National Science Foundation.
Vringo has been very active in the patent acquisition sphere of late. Last summer, it purchased more than 500 patents and applications centered on telecoms infrastructure.
The article Vringo Signs Licensing Deal With Virginia Tech Arm originally appeared on Fool.com.
Fool contributor Eric Volkman and The Motley Fool have no position in Vringo. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools don’t all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Copyright © 1995 – 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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The University of Central Florida student police say helped thwart a mass murder recalled how he crouched behind his bathroom wall after his roommate trained a gun on him.
Arabo Babakhani told UCF Knightly News, a campus student news source, that he slammed a bathroom door shut on his roommate, James Oliver Seevahumaran, moments before Seevahumaran could pull the trigger.
“I just saw what was going on and I was like, I’m not going out like that, So I slammed the door and I just, uh, crouched,” Babakhani said in the interview.
Campus police said Seevakumaran, 30, was armed with two guns, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, a backpack filled with explosives and a plan to attack other students as they fled the seven-story dorm where he lived.
Seevakumaran shot himself in the head as officers arrived.
His plans, police say, were thrown off by campus police officers’ quick response to a fire alarm and the 911 call from his roommate.
“It could have been a very bad day here for everybody. All things considered, I think we were very blessed here at the University of Central Florida,” UCF Police Chief Richard Beary said. “One shooting is bad enough. Multiples would have been unthinkable. So, anybody armed with this type of weapon and ammunition could have hurt a lot of people here, particularly in a crowded area as people were evacuating.”
Some 500 students were evacuated from the building just after midnight, unaware how narrowly they had escaped what could have been another Virginia Tech-style bloodbath. Morning classes were canceled, but most campus operations resumed around noon.
“The kid’s bringing huge explosives in his room. So yeah, it could have been a lot worse,” 19-year-old UCF sophomore Anthony Giamanco said shortly after arriving on campus Monday morning.
Roommates told detectives that while Seevakumaran showed some anti-social tendencies, he had never expressed any violent behavior. The business major, who held a job at an on-campus sushi restaurant, had never been seen by university counselors and had no disciplinary problems with other students, said university spokesman Grant Heston.
Police shed no light on a motive, but Heston said that the school had been in the process of removing Seevakumaran from the dormitory because he hadn’t enrolled for the current semester. He had attended the university from 2010 through the fall semester.
Detectives found notes and other writings that indicated Seevakumaran had carefully planned an attack and “laid out a timeline of where he was going to be and what he was going to do,” Beary said.
Police were first alerted when Seevakumaran pulled a gun on one of his roommates who called 911 and holed up in a bathroom, Beary said. Around the same time, Seevakumaran pulled a fire alarm, apparently to get other students out in the open, the police chief said.
Police officers responded to the dorm within three minutes of the first call.
“His timeline got off,” Beary said. “We think the rapid response of law enforcement may have changed his …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
A 911 call from a student at the University of Central Florida and a quick response by campus police may have prevented another mass murder.
Campus police said Monday that 30-year-old James Oliver Seevakumaran — who shot himself in the head as officers arrived, before any other students were hurt — was heavily armed with two guns, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, a backpack filled with explosives and a plan to attack other students as they fled the seven-story dorm where he lived.
Seevakumaran’s roommate, who hid in a bathroom after Seevakumaran pointed a gun at him, called authorities about the incident, UCF Police Chief Richard Beary said.
Around the same time, Seevakumaran pulled a fire alarm, apparently to get other students out in the open, the police chief said.
Police officers responded to the dorm within three minutes of the first call.
“His timeline got off,” Beary said. “We think the rapid response of law enforcement may have changed his ability to think quickly on his feet.”
In his room, investigators found four makeshift explosive devices in a backpack, a .45-caliber handgun, a .22-caliber tactical rifle, and a couple hundred rounds of ammunition, police said. Beary said it appears his weapons and ammunition purchases began in February locally in Orlando.
Antonio Whitehead, 21, said he heard the fire alarm go off in the dorm and thought it was a routine event.
“All of a sudden, I felt the crowd move a little faster. And a police officer with a machine gun or something told everyone to start moving a lot faster,” he said.
Some 500 students were evacuated from the building just after midnight, unaware how narrowly they had escaped what could have been another Virginia Tech-style bloodbath. Morning classes were canceled, but most campus operations resumed around noon.
“It could have been a very bad day here for everybody. All things considered, I think we were very blessed here at the University of Central Florida,” Beary said. “One shooting is bad enough. Multiples would have been unthinkable. So, anybody armed with this type of weapon and ammunition could have hurt a lot of people here, particularly in a crowded area as people were evacuating.”
Roommates told detectives that while Seevakumaran showed some anti-social tendencies, he had never expressed any violent behavior. The business major, who held a job at an on-campus sushi restaurant, had never been seen by university counselors and had no disciplinary problems with other students, said university spokesman Grant Heston.
Police shed no light on a motive, but Heston said that the school had been in the process of removing Seevakumaran from the dormitory because he hadn’t enrolled for the current semester. He had attended the university from 2010 through the fall semester.
Detectives found notes and other writings that indicated Seevakumaran had carefully planned an attack and “laid out a timeline of where he was going to be and what he was going to do,” Beary said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
By Associated Press Gonzaga received 54 first-place votes from the 65-member national media panel, remaining No. 1 in the AP poll. Duke, which received the other 11 first-place votes, moved up one spot to second after beating Virginia Tech and North Carolina last week. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at ESPN Headlines
Physicists at Virginia Tech, as part of a collaboration with U.S. and Chinese researchers, took part in one of 2012’s top scientific breakthroughs according to Science magazine. It’s a breakthrough that could have a significant impact on physics and the universe as we understand it. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
