On May 10th 2010 Marcelo Gleiser gave a very inspiring talk at the University of New Hampshire. The lecture’s title was: A Tear at the Edge of Creation, which is also the title of professor Gleiser’s new book. The lecture was part of the CEPS Frontiers Lecture Series.

Marcelo Gleiser is a distinguished physicist and astronomer. He holds the Appleton Professorship of Natural Philosophy at Dartmouth College. In his career so far he authored more than eighty peer reviewed publications as well as three books in popular science. He is the recipient of many awards.

Professor Gleiser’s talk focused on the significance of asymmetries in our universe that made our lives possible. In the first part of his lecture, he gave a brief historical overview of the research of the “heavens”. He argues that everyone so far has been looking for a unified explanation of the universe and it’s laws, starting with the ancient Egyptians, Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, Kepler, Newton and all the way to Einstein. In Gleiser’s opinion, this might not be the right way of thinking, especially if one accepts that our universe is based on fundamental imperfections and asymmetries. He then goes on to explain how time, matter and life are all asymmetric. Time can expand only in one direction, because it is very improbable that things would go “backward”, towards less entropy. Secondly, the universe which we can observe is full of matter and lacking anti-matter. This seems to be a physical necessity, which also creates asymmetry. Finally life on Earth is also asymmetric. For example amino acids in the DNA are “left-handed” while “right-handed” amino acids can be fatal for humans.

Gleiser hypothesizes that self-aware intelligent life in the universe is very improbable and this is why in his opinion it is very unlikely that we will get in contact with other intelligent life forms. Because of this, we should cherish life on our planet and be “humancentrists”.

Professor Gleiser’s lecture was very interesting and witty at the same time. His clever remarks kept a constant smile on many faces. His great way of presenting keeps the audience’s attention easily on topic. I would suggest the book to everyone interested in knowing more about the nature of the universe and life in it.

You can follow up on this and similar topics on the 13.7 blog site, where professor Gleiser is one of the four contributors.

Oszkar

Last week Dennis O’Brien the Chief Electronics Engineer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) gave a very interesting talk in the CEPS Frontiers lecture series. LLNL is one of the premier applied physics laboratories in the world. Together with Los Alamos, it is in charge of managing the US nuclear stockpile. It also runs a host of projects in the fields of national security and energy research.

Mr. O’Brien is a distinguished alumnus of UNH CEPS. He earned his BSc and MSc at our university in ‘75 and ‘77 respectively. Since then he was working at LLNL on various projects and at many positions. Currently he is the Chief Electronics Engineer of LLNL in charge of workforce planning and development for over 1300 engineers and other personnel.

At the beginning of the talk, Mr. O’Brien gave a quick overview of LLNL and its stunning achievements. He then spent the rest of the lecture introducing the National Ignition Facility, one of their most interesting and most expensive projects. It is essentially a huge laser (500 terawatt!) covering the area of three football fields. Its purpose is to generate enough energy to start nuclear fusion, with hydrogen as fuel, in a confined place. The idea is to generate more energy with fusion than it took to produce the laser beams. If this process of ‘ignition’ succeeds it could be the basic principle of future fusion powered power plants.

It was great to have such an accomplished alumnus give a talk at UNH. I think current students and faculty were very much inspired by the example of Mr. O’Brien’s great career and accomplishments.

Oszkar

For the week of July 13th, elementary school students in the Durham area participated in the KEEPERS camp in Kingsbury Hall. The Kids Eager for Engineering Program with Elementary Research-based Science is a week long science camp that allows the children to develop an understanding of various engineering fields.

The KEEPERS staff that includes University scientists, graduate and undergraduate students, and experienced teachers helps the campers explore fun science concepts through engaging, hands-on challenges. Each day of the week is reserved for a different area in engineering, and while the campers aren’t busy touring Project 54 or taking field trips to area children’s museums, the children participate in experiments that spark interest in science.

When the children were learning about Electrical Engineering, Mark, Eric and I helped them build simple circuits with batteries and light bulbs. Everyone seemed to have a great time, and the camp effectively garnered interest in electrical engineering among elementary students. Many of the campers plan on returning next year, and I hope their interest in science continues throughout their education.

Erika Swanson

This week UNH’s Tech Camp visited Project 54 to take a look at the simulator.

The tech camp is a program based out of Kingsbury Hall, where kids from seventh through tenth grade are able to get a sense of STEM professions (These include Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). The camp is designed to give students interested in STEM professions a closer look into what these jobs are all about.

Tech Camp students visited the Project 54 simulator, as well as a model of a New Hampshire State Police cruiser. Students were given a short briefing about Project 54, and were then allowed to ask questions about what the system does.

Above: Oskar Palinko demonstrates the use of the Project 54 simulator to UNH Tech Camp Students

Many students enjoyed testing the simulator, which allows the user to get a first hand look at Project 54. Students learned about how the Project makes operating a police officer’s cruiser safer, using speech controls and an integrated computer system, rather than a multitude of buttons and switches.

Above: Mark Taipan demonstrates Project 54 to UNH Tech Camp students with a state police cruiser model.

Devin Mullen

Alyssa Shooshan, Senator Gregg’s chief of staff and Dean Hingson Senator Gregg’s new counsel, visited Project54 earlier this week. They toured our labs and the new Project54 garage (the location of our recent open house) and had a chance to see in person the results of Senator Gregg’s continued support for Project54. In the picture below you can see Alyssa and Dean (right) looking on as Michael Farrar demonstrates the Project54 handheld application.

Thanks for visiting Alyssa and Dean, we hope to see you again soon.

You can see more pictures from this visit on Flickr.

Andrew Kun

Last Thursday we held a Project54 Open House celebrating the ten year anniversary of this effort. The event was held at our new garage facility in Morse Hall, on the UNH Durham campus. We’ve just recently moved into this facility, which was renovated for our use with the generous support of UNH CEPS Dean Joe Klewicki.

The turnout was excellent: 26 first responders, as well as around 40 faculty, staff, students, industry partners (our colleagues from 54ward) and friends attended the event. Ross Lenharth (picture below, left), the person in charge of the Project54 technology deployment effort, greeted our guests and Tom Prasol (picture below, right), Project Director in Senator Judd Gregg’s Portsmouth, NH office conveyed Senator Gregg’s congratulations and hopes for continued success.

Several first responder agencies helped out by demonstrating various aspects of the Project54 system as it is deployed in their vehicles. Lieutenant Mark Liebl of the New Hampshire State Police was on hand to demonstrate the Project54 system in a cruiser. Cruisers of the Lee, NH Police and the Merrimack County Sheriff’s office are equipped with mobile network cards that allow officers to access remote databases using a commercial wireless network. Sergeant Tom Dronsfield from Lee and Corporal Brendan Merchant from Merrimack County Sheriff’s were on hand to demonstrate this capability. The Project54 system is also used in firefighting applications as demonstrated by Inspector Brendan O’Sullivan from the Durham Fire Department and Chief Tom Perly from the Madbury Fire Department.

All of us at Project54 want to thank the first responders who helped us make this open house a success. We also want to thank all of our guests for helping us celebrate our anniversary. Finally, we thank Senator Gregg for his continued support of Project54.

You can see more pictures from the event on Flickr.

Andrew Kun

After the 2009 Undergraduate Research Conference at UNH the university newspaper featured not less than three Project54 undergrad students on its front page in the headline article.

Dave Garneau was part of the UNH Precision Racing Team, which won the first prize on the conference. Dave designed the traction control system for the racer. As previously reported, Mattew Lape and Mark Taipan developed the impressive Kingsbury Location Awareness System, which can help students find their way around university buildings.

Matt, Mark and Dave have defended their senior projects at this conference as they prepare to graduate from UNH this May. Nice work guys! You have surely showed that you can be called engineers from now on. Good luck in your future careers!

Oszkar

Yesterday Mark Taipan and I presented KLAS, or Kingsbury Location Awareness System at the Interdisciplinary Science & Engineering (ISE) Symposium for the 10th annual UNH Undergraduate Research Conference. We were able to share with the audience our project poster, our KLAS video, as well as have two PDAs on hand to provide user demos.

Here we see the KLAS URC presentation setup where both Mark and I are showing two interested engineers our project’s attributes.

This pictures (taken during one of our slower traffic moments) shows a little more of our presentation display.

Finally, we see both Mark (Left) and Myself (Right), standing next to our project poster.

In addition to these photos, we have posted many other pictures from this year’s URC here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eceblogger/sets/72157617236370816/

These pictures, as well as the ones above, were taken by Oskar Palinko. Thanks Oskar for capturing the event!

Overall this year’s URC was an excellent experience, and both Mark and I are proud to have been able to do the work to be involved!

Matthew Lape

Recently Mark Taipan and I completed the development of our Kingsbury Location Awareness System (KLAS) Video. Here you will see the development and operation of KLAS, and its principle functions, giving an example usage for both the Tour Guide and Navigation Applications. Hope you enjoy the video!

Matthew Lape

On Thursday, April 2nd 2009, Paul Green visited our lab. At that time he gave a talk on Human Factors Engineering and spent the whole day at our lab talking to students and visitors of the Open House.

Dr Green is a distinguished Professor at UMTRI and the president of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. He has immense experience in human factors engineering for vehicles. He was kind to share this experience with Project54 students and staff.

In his lecture Dr Green emphasized that vehicle accidents are one of the leading causes of preventable fatalities in the US. Therefore it makes perfect sense to research how human factors engineering can provide a safer in-car environment. Many passive safety systems are already deployed in cars (safety belts, airbags, child seats, etc.) Active systems are also finding their way into commercially available vehicles (anti-lock braking system, electronic stability control, adaptive cruise control, etc.) A so-called Workload Manager is a cutting-edge active safety system. Dr Green presented us his research on how to design such a system. What can an everyday driver take home from this research: it is a bad idea to have any additional tasks while driving, especially when maneuvering (turn, overtake, lane change, etc.) The talk was very well visited by UNH students, faculty and others.

After the talk Dr Green led an informal discussion panel at the Open House event, where everyone could try our driving simulator. We had many visitors from different UNH offices as well as from other institutions.

During the day, we had several opportunities to have discussions with Dr Green. Andrew, Alex, Zeljko and Nemanja were very interested to hear Paul’s experience with running experiments as well as about his opinion on our research plans. Dr Green emphasized many times during these talks that, to produce “good research” it is necessary to identify and precisely define the problems that need to be addressed. Furthermore, hypotheses are even better if they are accompanied by quantitative predictions. Also, he stressed the importance of repeatability of scientific research in our field: it is important to mention all important factors when writing a paper and have the same measures of performance throughout the research/development community.

From left: Andrew, Oszkar, Alex, Paul, Nemanja and Zeljko

All-in-all, Dr Green’s visit was a very inspiring one. I hope that we all will be even more able and motivated to do even better research thanks to Paul.

Oszkar Palinko