New York to invest $400 million in UAlbany Nano College
Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced today $4.4 billion in secured investments for computer chip technology research over the next five years, including $400 million from the state into the University at Albanys College for Nanoscale Science and Engineering.
The agreement included securing investments from five leading private companies including Intel, IBM, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, TSMC and Samsung.
This unprecedented private investment in New Yorks economy will create thousands of jobs and make the state the epicenter for the next generation of computer chip technology, Cuomo said.
The plan will create and retain roughly 6,900 jobs in the state including the creation of 800 new high-technology jobs at CSNEs Albany complex.
The investment consists of two separate projects, one to create the next two generations of computer chip technology and the second will focus on increasing the efficiency and lowering the environmental effects of todays chips.
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver gave high praise to UAlbanys well-paid CEO of CSNE Dr. Alain Kaloyeros at the announcement:
About a decade-and-a-half ago, we listened to a pitch from an enterprising, young physicist by the name of Alain Kaloyeros.
As strong proponents of regional economic development ourselves, we took a chance on his vision. We made an initial investment of five million dollars in something he called “the regional center for interconnects.”
This small investment of state funds – and our ongoing investments in our public/private partnership – have helped to make the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering the largest, most state-of-the-art, high-tech complex in the academic world, and helped us to forge a partnership that already includes SUNY IT in Utica/Rome, Lockheed Martin in Syracuse, and Rochester’s Center of Excellence in Smart Systems Technology and Commercialization.
According to a release from Cuomos office, the agreement says that no private company will directly receive any state money.
Opportunity of Getting a Degree Online Boost Moral Pursuing Higher Education
Life is a learning process. Your age does not matter and you are privileged to increase your academic knowledge getting a degree online. There is no tension of attending regular classes. Students wishing to increase their academic qualifications by getting a degree online should be focused. To facilitate your education process you can get grants for single mothers if your parents are divorced.
They should not feel relaxed as they have a relaxation in time to finish their course. The urge to learn is now as per the market demands. The expectation to work harder to ensure swift completion for getting a degree online should be reflected. If you have doubts regarding which should be the ideal academic area to pursue or have clarifications regarding the content, do not hesitate to meet a counselor. Prospective candidates should appreciate that all degree programs are not available in all the schools. They are thus suggested to find out the details regarding the schools/colleges offering their desired degree. After you qualify for the Credit for Life Experience Program (CLEP), meet the admission counselor to guide you regarding the opportunities available. People with relevant work experience in business world can translate into college credits if pursuing CLEP.
Another option regarding getting a degree online is to clear the Proficiency Exam Program (PEP). This program allows students college credits for independent study. You are provided with the flexibility of not attending some classes if you can prove with relevant documents. Short semester courses are provided by some online universities enabling you getting a degree online. You usually are provided with the option of attending semester classes between six weeks to ten weeks. Students are advised that they think carefully while selecting the shorter time for the class semester courses. Students have to be clear that they will be able to assimilate the work load as the time is curtailed. While getting a degree online, some universities provide you the option of focusing only your field of study. The participation in the general education classes is overlooked. For getting a degree online with the Saturday Scholars Programs, a prerequisite exists that you must have an Associate degree prior to applications for this program. The unique opportunity of a self paced program is offered by some. The choice regarding starting and ending your program remains to be your option.
Tanning bed users exhibit addict-like behavior
People who frequently use tanning beds may be spurred by an addictive neurological reward-and-reinforcement trigger, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found in a pilot study.
This could explain why some people continue to use tanning beds despite the increased risk of developing melanoma, the most lethal form of skin cancer. The brain activity and corresponding blood flow tracked by UT Southwestern scientists involved in the study is similar to that seen in people addicted to drugs and alcohol.
Using tanning beds has rewarding effects in the brain so people may feel compelled to persist in the behavior even though its bad for them, said Dr. Bryon Adinoff, professor of psychiatry and senior author of the study available online and in a future print edition of Addiction Biology. The implication is, If its rewarding, then could it also be addictive? Its an important question in the field.
About 120,000 new cases of melanoma are diagnosed in the U.S. each year, according to the Skin Cancer Foundation. People younger than 30 who use a tanning bed 10 times a year have eight times the risk of developing malignant melanoma. While public knowledge of these dangers has grown, so has the regular use of tanning beds.
In this study, participants used tanning beds on two separate occasions: one time they were exposed to ultraviolet radiation and another time special filters blocked exposure to ultraviolet radiation. Participants did not know on which session they received the real or the filtered ultraviolet exposure. At each visit, participants were asked before and after each session how much they felt like tanning. Participants were also administered a compound that allowed scientists to measure brain blood flow while they were tanning.
Dr. Adinoff, who also is a staff physician at the Veterans Affairs North Texas Health Care System, said the next step is to create technology to further study brain changes among frequent tanners.
Other UT Southwestern researchers involved in the study were Dr. Heidi Jacobe, assistant professor of dermatology; Dr. Michael Devous, professor of radiology; and Thomas Harris, senior research scientist. Former dermatology resident Dr. Cynthia Harrington served as lead author.
The study was funded by the Department of Dermatology at UT Southwestern. Dr. Steven Feldman of Wake Forest University donated the ultraviolet radiation filters used in the tanning bed, and GE Healthcare donated the radioligand, the compound that traced the brain changes.
College Media Hall of Fame: Arez Hussen Ahmed, Outgoing Editor-in-Chief, Iraq’s Voice
The College Media Hall of Fame is a digital enshrinement of individuals, news outlets, and organizations who have made a lasting impact on collegemediatopia or greatly contributed to it over the past year. Much like last year’s inaugural batch (known as the CMM 10), this year’s inductees include standout student journalists, innovative student media entrepreneurs, and impassioned advocates of campus press 2.0. With a hat tip to the annual Time 100, many of the posts announcing each honoree include a few words of adoration penned by a close friend or colleague. Next up…
Outgoing editor-in-chief, The AUIS Voice
During my chats, emails, and in-person chats with individuals who have helped create and nurture student journalism during its infancy in Iraq, the most passionate has been Arez Hussen Ahmed. (Kurdistan Fatih, Namo Kaftan, and Jackie Spinner are tied for close second.)
As editor-in-chief of The AUIS Voice, Iraq’s first editorially independent campus newspaper, he has served for the past year as the face of quality, objective student journalism in the country. By all accounts, he was an endlessly hardworking newsroom leader with a nose for news and a commitment to better understanding and practicing responsible journalism in a region known more for innuendo and partisan pandering.
Arez Hussen Ahmed, 20, an international studies major at AUIS, served as Voice editor-in-chief for more than a year. He is posing here at the door of the Voice newsroom, which is located in the universitys cafeteria.
Ahmed once told me his passion for the Voice superseded almost all else. “I feel like the Voice is a part of me,” he said. “I always think about [it]. Sometimes I dream about it. I never thought that I would feel that much passion for anything.”
While it is incredibly difficult to start a newspaper, it is even tougher to keep it going after the initial adrenaline rush wears off, the staff turnover increases, and the story ideas pool shallows out. Ahmed kept the Voice alive providing living proof that journalism can survive and thrive even in one of the hardest hit spots on Earth.
I am humbled to include him as a Class of 2011 inductee to the College Media Hall of Fame.
I’m writing this as Arez is sitting in front of me across the table having his lunch meal. He has no idea why and what am I busy typing on my computer! Arez is the kind of person whom I’ve always enjoyed working with in any field, even in class projects and group works. He has always been a great colleague and the most loyal friend I’ve ever met.
He has great leadership skills, which makes him a remarkable and outstanding person to lead a team like the AUI-S Voice staff. Since the day we met, I realized how enthusiastic and passionate he is about his work and study. I also realized how exceptionally responsive and responsible he is. He is always courteous and wants things to be as excellent as possible. What amazes me about him with the Voice is that he is really accurate about every single detail and policy.
Kaftan (left) and Hussen in the Voice newsroom. (Photo courtesy of Kaftan.)
Arez’s presence on the Voice team made me more enthusiastic about journalism. I fell in love with journalism because of people like Arez. I’m really glad that Arez was my editor-in-chief for more than a year. We had some rough times, missing some deadlines, and rushing into things, which made us tired, but we also had a lot of inexorably good times with a lot of funny situations. One of the things that makes me really sad is that not everybody sees and appreciates what this stunning man does for the newspaper. I see him as the soldier behind the scenes, as many people are not aware of him and his hard work.
I remember the first time I saw the flyer on the student bulletin board about creating an independent student newspaper. I was with Arez. He was the one who pulled me into the meeting just to check it out and see what it was about, and there we met the great American journalist, Jackie Spinner, the founder and former faculty adviser of the Voice. If it wasn’t for Arez, I wouldn’t have gone to that meeting from the first place. I’m grateful I’ve always worked, and experienced this entire thing, with Arez.
First Days in Rabat
Salaam 3laykom. My name is Cameron and I am taking part in the AmeriSpan language program in Rabat, Morocco for the month of July. I am staying with a host family for the benefit of immersing myself in the culture and maximum exposure to the darejah, or dialect in Rabat. In addition to Moroccos location right near where I had been traveling, Granada, Spain, I could continue my studies of Arabic while being abroad without much preparation, which is not necessarily a good things to do always, but it is certainly convenient for some of us.
The first three days have been hectic, stressful, and tiring, however, it was nothing I did not expect. I have traveled and gone abroad alone in the Levant, which made Western Africa a new experience, but at the same time, familiar. I had previously been in Tangier, a port city. I traveled south from Spain and I wondered, how is this culture going to be the same as, different from, or related to Spains. In any case, I was going to see what the culture really was like. Getting to Rabat was fairly easy by train, and comfortable as well. A four-hour train ride from Tangier Station to Rabat Ville was 145 dirham, or about 20 dollars US, for first class. It was a French company ONCF, which was also strongly recommended by AmeriSpan, which is the reason I took it. I stuggled with getting to my homestay, however the taxi driver was extremely helpful, and we found a way to communicate despite a language barrier. I studied Jordanian Colloquial, however, it is very difficult to understand any of the accent in Al Maghreb. Nonetheless, I found my home, which was in the old city, near Bab al-Had, right smack dab in the middle of a souq.
After living a few days with my host family, slowly the social networks were revealed to me. For example, when I was picked up from the side of the zanqa, or small sidestreet, by my host mom, following her were two women, one woman wearing hijaab, and one short, white, older woman. I assumed that the woman with hijaab was my host moms mother, and the white woman was going to be living with me. In addition, I did not even know who my official host mother was going to be until after the first night. It turns out that the woman with hijaab with another host mother, not my host moms mother, and the white woman is staying with her. And yes, time passes slowly at first, and facts are revealed to you slowly, but with routine, it all speeds up. Another interesting, and perhaps compelling fact that I am not even quite that sure about, is the whereabouts of the husband. My host mother is 31 and with two children, however, the father is not present. Is he working? Is he gone? Are they divorced? I hesitate to ask that question, however, it is definitely an abberation that I have found to be different from the Levant. The language is clearly a mixture of French, Moroccan Arabic, and Berber, with traces of Spanish influence here and there that become more prominent in the North for obvious reasons. This makes learning the language difficult, but understanding this does give me more confidence in learning the darejah. In any case, in learning a language you have to be aware of the attainability of goals in order to remind yourself that you can do it. Sometimes this is crucial.
Online Resource Center on STEM in K/12
As technology becomes an integral part of the workplace, science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) skills are no longer just “good skills” to have; they are increasingly important to a 21st-century education. Training students for success in the STEM disciplines also is necessary if the U.S. is to remain globally competitive; recent results from the Program for International Student Assessment suggested the top-performing U.S. high school students were bested by students from at least 20 other nations in math and science. Attracting students to the STEM disciplines is the first hurdle, and retaining student interest in these areas is the second. Solving the STEM education crisis won’t be easy—but with the generous support of Learning.com, we’ve compiled this collection of stories from our archives, along with other resources, to help you answer this challenge in your own schools.