Member Spotlight: John Hickey

As some of you may have been wondering why was “John Hickey’s hair getting so long?” Well there is a reason and it is called St. Baldricks which is an event in which you shave your head for charity and all proceeds go to helping cure childhood cancers. This year John ran his own event and shaved his head along with 68 other shavee’s. He ended up raising about $33,000 and over 400 people were …

FAA Delays Closing Of Airport Control Towers

By Joan Lowy

WASHINGTON (AP) – The closings of control towers at 149 small airports are being delayed until mid-June, federal regulators announced.

The Federal Aviation Administration said it needs more time to deal with legal challenges to the closures.

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Also, about 50 airport authorities and other “stakeholders” have indicated they want to fund the operations of the towers themselves rather than see them shut down, and more time will be needed to work out those …

Rhode Island’s Tallest Building Will Soon Go Dark

By Michelle R. Smith

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) – Rhode Island’s tallest building will soon be its most visible symbol of the state’s long economic decline.

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The 26-story Art Deco-style skyscraper, known to some as the “Superman building” for its similarity to the Daily Planet headquarters in the old TV show, is losing its sole tenant this month. No one is moving in, and the building, the most distinctive feature on the Providence skyline, will no …

Taco Releases FuelMizerâ„¢ Boiler Reset Control

Taco’s FuelMizer™ outdoor reset switching relay is a microprocessor-based control designed to regulate the supply water temperature of a single boiler, based on the outdoor temperature. With reduced supply water temperatures, substantial energy savings are achieved.

The FuelMizer is a boiler reset control and switching relay in one unit. FuelMizer is ideal for retrofits but may also be used for new installations.

Including functions such as automatic reset, ratio calculation, warm weather shut-down, …

Simply Exceptional. Exceptionally simple. Hilti DD 160 Diamond Coring System

The Hilti DD 160 Diamond Coring System achieves truly impressive performance in rig-based wet coring work on concrete walls and floor decks, including drilling holes in diameters up to 8 inches. The system’s simplicity and self-explanatory design allows for jobs of all kinds to be completed quickly with exceptional ease.

The DD 160 features power control LED lights to help inexperienced users achieve the optimum rate of drilling progress and maximum core …

Oil-Based Gel Provides Nontoxic, Green Method Of Deterring Pest Birds

MISSION VIEJO, Calif. – Bird-B-Gone, Inc. has announced the arrival of Bird-OFF Clear Gel; the latest product in their line of high-quality, humane bird control products. Bird-OFF Clear Gel is made from all-natural, environmentally safe ingredients and is safe for humans, birds and animals.

Bird-OFF Clear Gel is the original bio repellent gel created as an efficient and economical means of deterring pest birds. Birds have a natural distaste for sticky things, making Bird-OFF Clear …

Race To Build Driverless Cars Is In Full Throttle

By Rick Montgomery
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -To call Tim Sylvester a road builder misses the point. The streets he intends to build are embedded with electronic sensors that may keep cars of the future from speeding, veering and crashing.

A few blocks from Sylvester’s Integrated Roadways office in Kansas City, doctoral candidate Amol Khedkar is toiling on his own prototype for a software system that would let cars talk to one other, synchronizing their own movements. The vehicles could automatically change lanes and make turns without humans mucking …

High-Tech Tools Help Make Sense Of Traffic Crashes

By Samantha Strong

FOND DU LAC, Wis. (AP) – Who did what, when and where are critical pieces to understanding what happened in a vehicle crash.

After officers arrive on the scene of an accident, whether it’s serious or not, a report is completed and information such as street names, time of day and names of drivers, is collected.

When the crash is serious or complex enough, the law enforcement agency may call for extra help from an accident reconstruction team that works to determine actions that led up to …

Students To Make Water Purifier System Smaller

By Deborah Circelli

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) – Yung Wong can’t forget the children he saw in Haiti. Some had lumps near their bellybuttons caused by intestinal problems from contaminated drinking water. The memory has made Wong passionate about the importance of purifying water.

“(Seeing the children) just reinforced what we are trying to do with Project Haiti,” said Wong, 23, an Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University graduate student who has been to Haiti twice with a team of students and professors installing water purification systems that they’ve developed on the …

Ann Arbor Startup Plans Autonomous Flying Robots

By Kody Klein

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) – Danny Ellis started the University of Michigan’s Autonomous Aerial Vehicles Team in 2009 with one objective: to build a robot light enough to fly, smart enough to do it independently, and competitive enough to take first place at the International Aerial Robotics Competition.

This past August, the U-M team met that objective when its design outperformed robots from 20 other universities from around the world.

It was the third year participants attempted to conquer the competition’s sixth mission wherein competing robots had …

Facebook Tweaks Android Phones To Build New ‘Home’

By Michael Liedtke and Barbara Ortutay

MENLO PARK, California (AP) – With its new “Home” on Android gadgets, Facebook is trying to prove that a company doesn’t have to make a smartphone or operating system to define how people interact with mobile technology. The audacious move will provide further insights into how pervasive Facebook has become, testing whether people want to be greeted with content from the social network every time they look at their phones.

When people start downloading the Home software upon its release in the U.S., …

In Death, Facebook Photos Could Fade Away Forever

By Lauren Gambino

BEAVERTON, Ore. (AP) – A grieving Oregon mother who battled Facebook for full access to her deceased son’s account has been pushing for years for something that would prevent others from losing photos, messages and other memories – as she did.

“Everybody’s going to face this kind of a situation at some point in their lives,” says Karen Williams, whose 22-year-old son died in a 2005 motorcycle accident.

The Oregon Legislature responded and took up the cause recently with a proposal that would have made it …

Hackers Use US Alert System For Zombie Warnings

By Jeff Karoub and Matthew Brown

DETROIT, Mich. (AP) – Warnings about the zombie apocalypse may seem pretty amusing, but officials say they’re dead serious about figuring out who hacked into the U.S. public warning system to broadcast such messages in a handful of states.

So far, people in California, Michigan, Montana and New Mexico have heard the warnings about attacking zombies that have been sent over the Emergency Alert System.

“Local authorities in your area have reported the bodies of the dead are rising from their graves and …

Blog Focuses On Champaign Buildings

By Mary Schenk

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) – When T.J. Blakeman goes for a walk in downtown Champaign, he sees not just the buildings as they are, he sees what they were.

The man who is a city planner by day and preserver of history in his off hours recently launched a blog about those buildings that he hopes will speak to others about Champaign’s past and get them to build on it as well.

Blakeman was instrumental in pulling together pictures and items from Champaign’s past for the city’s sesquicentennial …