South Can Cut Utility Bills, Create Jobs and Conserve Billions of Gallons of Water

According to a new study released today by a team of researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Duke University’s Nicholas Institute, aggressive adoption of energy efficiency programs in the South[1] would lower utility bills by $41 billion, create 380,000 new jobs, reduce the need for new power plants, and save 8.6 billion gallons of freshwater by 2020.[2]

Total energy demand in the South, where per capita energy consumption is already higher than average, is projected to increase 16 percent from 2010 to 2030.  At the same time, many Southern states spend less on energy efficiency programs than their peer states in other parts of the country.  The research strongly indicates the South’s projected growth in energy consumption need not materialize if the region begins to tap into its tremendous energy efficiency potential.[3]

“An aggressive commitment to energy efficiency could be an economic windfall for the South,” states Dr. Marilyn Brown of the Georgia Institute of Technology and co-lead researcher of the study.  “Such a shift would lower energy bills for cash-strapped consumers and businesses and create more new jobs for Southern workers.”

The energy efficiency policies examined by the research team fall into three broad categories: residential, commercial and industrial. Residential policies include changes to building codes, appliance standards and incentives, weatherization assistance, retrofit incentives and equipment standards.  Commercial building policies include appliance standards and building retrofit incentives.  Industrial policies include plant utility upgrades, process improvement policies, and combined heat and power incentives.

“Energy Efficiency in the South” found that the adoption of aggressive energy-efficiency initiatives in the South would:

Prevent energy consumption from growing over the next 20 years. In the absence of such initiatives, energy consumption in these three sectors is forecast to grow by approximately 16 percent between 2010 and 2030.
 Generate new jobs, cut utility bills and sustain economic growth.  Overall utility bills would be reduced by $41 billion each year in 2020 and $71 billion in 2030; the average residential electricity bills would decline by $26 per month in 2020 and $50 per month in 2030; electricity rate increases would be moderated; and 380,000 new jobs would be created by 2020 (annual job growth increases to 520,000 new jobs in 2030). The region’s economy is anticipated to grow by $1.23 billion in 2020 and $2.12 billion in 2030.
Reduce the need for new power plants.  Almost 25 gigawatts of older power plants would be retired and the construction of up to 50 gigawatts of new plants (equal to the amount of electricity produced by 100 power plants[4]) would be avoided.
Result in substantial water conservation. The reduction in power plant capacity would save southern NERC regions[5] 8.6 billion gallons of freshwater in 2020 and 20.1 billion gallons in 2030.
“The set of energy efficiency policies we examined are also highly cost effective,” said Etan Gumerman of Duke University’s Nicholas Institute and co-lead researcher of the study.  “On average, each dollar invested in energy efficiency over the next 20 years will reap $2.25 in benefits.”

The study was developed using the same state-of-the-art economic modeling tool that the U.S. Energy Information Administration uses in making its annual energy forecasts.  The research team used this tool to compare a “business as usual” scenario with a scenario that included a specific set of energy efficiency investments.  As the findings indicate, the analysis found substantial reductions in energy use, prices, utility bills, water use and carbon emissions in the energy efficiency scenario as compared with business as usual. This study provides a useful estimate of the benefits associated with an aggressive commitment to energy efficiency.  Since it does not include every energy efficiency investment that could be considered, it is by no means an exhaustive measure of the benefits associated with an aggressive commitment to energy efficiency.

“Energy Efficiency in the South” and state profiles that have been developed for each of the states are available on the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance (SEEA) website: www.seealliance.org/programs/research.php. SEEA is a nonprofit organization that promotes energy efficiency in the Southeast.  This project is funded with support from the Energy Foundation (www.ef.org), the Kresge Foundation (www.kresge.org) and the Turner Foundation (www.turnerfoundation.org).



About Marilyn Brown and Georgia Tech:

Marilyn Brown, a professor in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is an internationally-recognized leader in the analysis and interpretation of energy futures in the United States. In 2007, Brown was a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize along with the other members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Vice President Al Gore. Additional information about Brown and her research can be found at http://www.spp.gatech.edu/faculty/faculty/mbrown.php.  Brown has been nominated to serve on the Board of the Tennessee Valley Authority and awaits confirmation.  

Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts offers one of the world’s top public policy programs. The research-intensive and globally engaged curriculum aims to solve complex problems in the public interest related to issues of research and technology, energy and sustainability, economic development and governance. The School of Public Policy is dedicated to scholarship and learning that is reflective, effective and sustainable.

About Etan Gumerman and Duke University’s Nicholas Institute:

Etan Gumerman is a scientific engineer at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University.  Prior to joining the Nicholas Institute, Gumerman was employed by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and served as the lead modeler and analyst for the Scenarios for a Clean Energy Future Project.  In this role, Gumerman coordinated the efforts of scientists at five national laboratories.

The Nicholas Institute is a nonpartisan institute founded in 2005 to help decision makers in government, the private sector, and the nonprofit community address critical environmental challenges. The Institute responds to the demand for high-quality and timely data and acts as an “honest broker” in policy debates by convening and fostering open, ongoing dialogue between stakeholders on all sides of the issues and providing policy-relevant analysis based on academic research. The Institute’s leadership and staff leverage the broad expertise of Duke University as well as public and private partners worldwide. Since its inception, the Institute has earned a distinguished reputation for its innovative approach to developing multilateral, nonpartisan, and economically viable solutions to pressing environmental challenges.


[1] The study covers “the South” as it is defined by the U.S. Census – the District of Columbia and 16 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.

[2] Bill savings, job creation and water savings #’s are annual numbers as projected in the year 2020.

[3] McKinsey Global Energy and Markets (2009) published an assessment of economic potential for energy efficiency improvements in the United States.  The McKinsey study concluded that the South has the largest energy efficiency resource of any region in the county.  The South accounts for 41 percent of the national potential for energy efficiency improvements.  This contrasts with the Midwest (26 percent), the West (18 percent) and the Northeast (15 percent).

[4] For this calculation, a medium sized (500 megawatt) coal-fired power plant is used for purposes of simplicity.  A larger nuclear power plant produces nearly one gigawatt and a typical natural gas plant produces approximately 300 megawatts.

[5] The North American Electrical Reliability Corporation (NERC) regions covered include all of Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri and portions of Kentucky, Virginia, Illinois, Iowa, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.


By David Terraso

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The Jihadists of Georgia, Part 2‏

It was a tip from a foreign intelligence partner that set the case in motion.

In the summer of 2005, we learned that a central player in a terrorism investigation in another country was in e-mail contact with someone in the Atlanta area.

With appropriate court orders, our Joint Terrorism Task Force in Atlanta quickly tracked down who that person was. It was a 19-year-old American named Ehsanul Sadequee, who was also exchanging regular e-mails, we discovered, with a 20-year-old Georgia Tech student named Syed Haris Ahmed.

Initially, our investigation—code-named “Northern Exposure”—was focused on finding out what the two young men were up to and why Sadequee was trading e-mails with a terrorism suspect. We began both electronic and physical surveillance on each one and began tracking their financial and travel patterns with the help of partner agencies in the U.S.

We soon uncovered two key facts. One, both Sadequee and Ahmed were in touch with terrorist suspects in nearly a dozen nations around the world. And two, a great deal of this contact was via the Internet.

With our new post-9/11 intelligence-driven mindset, the last thing we wanted to do at that point was to rush in and make arrests. It was far more important to tease out information on all the players who might be connected to Sadequee and Ahmed, to paint a larger picture of this online and offline network of extremists, and to share that information with our national and international colleagues.

As discussed in part one of our story, our investigation revealed that Sadequee and Ahmed ended up casing U.S. targets, supporting and sharing information with terrorists around the globe, and traveling overseas to act on their desire to wage violent jihad. Some of our intelligence came from our overseas partners, who discovered links from their terrorism suspects to Sadequee and Ahmed. And the FBI shared its intelligence on terror suspects uncovered during our investigation of the two Atlanta extremists.

In March 2006, we approached Ahmed to see if he would cooperate in the case. Though he tried to deny his illegal activities, Ahmed made incriminating statements and secretly contacted Sadequee to warn him of our investigation. We arrested Ahmed soon after, and Sadequee was arrested in Bangladesh the following month. Both were convicted in separate trials this year, and sentenced on December 14.

A satisfying end to the case, but this investigation had a far broader and more significant outcome: thanks to unprecedented global cooperation, governments in nearly a dozen nations have arrested more than 40 individuals and disrupted an untold number of terror plots.

“Sadequee and Ahmed never pulled a trigger or set off a bomb, but they were making plans and working with known terrorists worldwide,” says Atlanta Special Agent in Charge Gregory Jones. “By using an intel-driven approach, we not only stopped these guys from doing harm, we took out a larger web of extremists.”

In the end, a network of terrorists was brought down by another network: a determined group of law enforcement and intelligence agencies from around the world working in unison to share information, compare evidence, and disrupt terrorist plots.

Source: FBI

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The Path to Terror: The Jihadists of Georgia, Part 1

They were a couple of young Americans with terror on their minds, two middle-class kids barely out of high school who lived seemingly normal lives in and around Atlanta while secretly taking up the mantle of violent jihad, who in the span of a year went from being extremist wannabes to trusted brothers of terrorist operatives across the globe.

Now, following their convictions in federal court earlier this year and sentencings this week, they are each headed to prison for quite some time.

Their names are Ehsanul Islam Sadequee and Syed Haris Ahmed, and their story is indicative of both the evolving homegrown extremist threat and the FBI's post 9/11 intelligence-driven investigations.

When Sadequee and Ahmed met at a midtown Atlanta mosque, neither was yet 21. Ahmed, who was born in Pakistan and moved to this country at about age 12, was a mechanical engineering student at Georgia Tech. Sadequee, a Bangladeshi-American born in Virginia, was working at an Atlanta non-profit while living at home with his mother and siblings in the suburb of Roswell.

The two soon became friends, finding that they shared a similar interest: violent jihad. They started spending hours online—chatting with each other, watching terrorist recruitment videos, and meeting like-minded extremists.

But they clearly wanted to do more than just stand on the sidelines. Fueled by their growing connections in cyberspace, Sadequee and Ahmed made a series of journeys that drew them further and further into a web of terror.

* In late 2004, they traveled to rural northwest Georgia, shooting paintball guns and practicing attack techniques as part of basic paramilitary training.

* The following March, they hopped on a Greyhound bus to Canada, where they spent a week talking terror with three jihadists they met on the Internet. One was an alleged member of the “Toronto 18,” a terror cell that later plotted to bomb the Canadian Parliament and other targets before being exposed in 2006.

* In April 2005, Ahmed and Sadequee drove a pickup truck to the nation's capital and cased a series of landmarks—including the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon—making more than 60 short video clips to help establish their extremist credentials. Sadequee sent several clips to Younis Tsouli—aka “Irhabi007” (“Terrorist 007” in Arabic), an al Qaeda webmaster, recruiter, and propagandist—and to Aabid Hussein Khan, a facilitator for two Pakistan-based terrorist groups. Both Tsouli and Khan have since been convicted of terror offenses in the U.K.

* That summer, Ahmed and Sadequee took separate trips overseas. Ahmed went to Pakistan, meeting with Khan and asking to attend a training camp and engage in jihad (he was talked out of it by his family). Sadequee was off to Bangladesh, where he joined with Tsouli and a Swedish extremist named Mirsad Bektasevic to form a violent jihadist organization known as “Al Qaeda in Northern Europe.” In October, just a few days after being in contact with Sadequee, Bektasevic was arrested in Sarajevo armed to the teeth; he was later convicted of terrorism.

What Sadequee and Ahmed didn't know was that for some time, they were being tracked by the FBI and its partners.

In part two of our story later this week, we'll talk about how our investigation unfolded and interview an Atlanta FBI agent and two Bureau execs.

Source: FBI

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Study Shows Atlanta Kills Off Start-Up Companies

Atlanta is poised to become the nation’s poster child for how to kill off a burgeoning industry. A new study by professors at Georgia Tech reveals that the city’s reputation as a high technology center masks a decade of erosion. Though it leads the U.S. in the physical resources that attract and sustain high-tech industry, Atlanta companies haven’t meshed within the local economy.
The result has been a steady migration of companies to other states and an industry profile described by the study as “at best, stagnant.” The findings offer a wake-up call to Atlanta and a roadmap for other regions looking to grow high-tech industry.

Study findings show that 40 percent of Atlanta’s high-tech start-up companies leave for other states within three years. California, New York, New Jersey and Florida are common destinations for Georgia-born IT companies. That, combined with a persistent decline in large IT companies, accounts for the industry malaise.

“Instead of building great high-tech companies, Atlanta has become a feeder system for great high-tech companies in other states,” says study author Dan Breznitz, assistant professor in the Schools of International Affairs and Public Policy within the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech.

Breznitz, and co-author Mollie Taylor of the Enterprise Innovation Institute and the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, set out to settle the debate over what induces sustained regional entrepreneurial growth in the high-tech industry - physical resources or business social structure. They focused their research on the Atlanta metropolitan area because it leads the U.S. in the physical factors necessary for developing technological-entrepreneurial clusters: top research universities, a large educated labor pool, a wealth of new technologies and entrepreneurs, a vibrant creative class and generous venture capital financing. Atlanta has also been perceived as having the social business structure needed to induce growth. The study revealed otherwise.

“The metro area excels at incubating high-tech businesses, but it lacks the cohesive business social structure needed to sustain them, so many of the most promising young companies leave the city,” says Breznitz. “Atlanta high-tech companies don’t interlock with each other, and the large companies that control industry in Georgia don’t interlock with the high-tech industry,” says Breznitz, highlighting a complaint that he and Taylor heard consistently from the area’s high-tech workforce.

Analysis of Atlanta’s most promising new companies and the city’s top 50 technology firms revealed little contact either between IT executives with those of Fortune 500 or with other technology companies. CEOs, attorneys and managers in Atlanta IT companies don’t sit on each other’s boards and don’t communicate. The problem isn’t unique to the city’s IT industry, but there are far fewer interlocks within the IT community than in other industries that are successful in the region.

The study identifies the need for policies and institutions that stimulate information sharing, collective learning, access to resources and business community building. It also identifies venture capital industry with true local focus (which Atlanta lacks) as crucial to embedding a company locally. In conclusion, business social variables are crucial for long-term entrepreneurial-technological economic growth, and unless Atlanta’s high-tech industry develops multi-dimensional locally centered social networks, it will continue to stagnate.

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City of Savannah Reduces Energy Consumption in Buildings

Savannah, the “Hostess City of the South,” is known for its southern hospitality and charm, but it is also making a bid to be known as environmentally friendly. Already, the city has implemented a number of initiatives, including converting all of its traffic lights to more energy-efficient and long-lasting LEDs, expanding use of treated wastewater for irrigation and implementing a much-anticipated single-stream curbside recycling program.

In August 2008, Mayor Otis Johnson held a town hall meeting to pledge that the city of Savannah will be a more environmentally sustainable community and to launch a new sustainability initiative, dubbed Thrive. However, Johnson wanted to focus on leading by example rather than making policies that force citizens to get on board with the program.

“There’s a lot of talk about being green and sustainable,” Johnson said. “If we’re going to lift up being environmentally healthy, we have to walk that walk.”

Rachel Smithson, Thrive coordinator for the city of Savannah, began collecting data to establish the city’s carbon footprint. The city conducted employee commuter surveys and analyzed electricity consumption, fuel usage and gas emissions. By plugging all of this data into a formula created by the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, Smithson realized that Savannah city government produces roughly 75,320 tons of equivalent carbon emissions per year.

“Now we had a baseline and we just needed to set an emissions reduction target,” Smithson recalled. “Just about that time, the Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority came up with the Governor’s Energy Challenge that invited statewide business, county and city governments to reduce their energy consumption 15 percent by the year 2020.”

After studying the carbon footprint data, Smithson noticed that city government buildings were the number one source of energy consumption, a trend that coincides with national data. The Thrive Committee decided to focus its initial efforts on buildings, and through its connection with the Georgia Environmental Partnership, called on Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute for assistance. One of the most comprehensive university-based programs of business and industry assistance, technology commercialization and economic development in the nation, the Enterprise Innovation Institute has a local office on Georgia Tech’s Savannah campus.

“We wanted to have an energy audit because we didn’t want to randomly start replacing lights and windows; we wanted to make sure that we were going to have the greatest impact on our electricity and energy consumption,” Smithson said. “The city was really excited about using Georgia Tech because it isn’t trying to sell us a particular product; the staff there gives us a good, third-party, neutral analysis of what we need.”

Mike Brown, an energy specialist with the Enterprise Innovation Institute, and two Georgia Tech co-op students conducted energy audits at three government buildings: City Hall, the Thomas Gamble Building and the Broughton Municipal Building. All three are designated historic buildings, and house the mayor’s office and council chambers, human resources, information technology, auditing, utility services and revenue, among others.

Brown and the students placed data loggers in each of the buildings, measuring temperature, lighting and energy consumption, even over nights and weekends. They studied each building’s energy consumption history and measured the major energy-consuming equipment.

Among the recommendations that the Georgia Tech specialists made were: replace incandescent lamps with compact fluorescent lamps, improve fluorescent lighting efficiency by replacing T-12 lights with T-8 lights, and manage the building plug-load. They also recommended installing occupancy sensors in restrooms, vending machine controllers to reduce lighting and cooling, a building automation system to automatically control HVAC systems, and variable-air volume fans to reduce air flow when cooling is not needed.

According to Smithson, the biggest challenge now is implementing Georgia Tech’s recommendations. As part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the City was able to establish a revolving loan with its stimulus funding. Although the City cannot implement all of the recommendations immediately, Smithson says that as soon as one investment is paid back, another project can begin with the energy savings from the previous project.

“Other challenges we face include changing the mindset of our employees, but behavior modification and organizational and culture shifts take time,” she said. “We also don’t want to harm the historic integrity of our facilities, but at the same time we don’t want to be so concerned that we’re throwing energy out the window because we’re using single-pane glass.”

Already, the benefits are outweighing the challenges. Georgia Tech’s assistance allowed the city to have an energy conservation strategy in place, a requirement of the stimulus funding application that some cities have spent more than $250,000 to obtain. And although a lot of investments have yet to be made, electricity expenditures were $350,000 below what the city had targeted through May 2009, something Smithson attributes to changing employee behavior alone.

“Having Georgia Tech on board doing the energy audit has helped us transform our messaging from ‘this is good for the environment’ to ‘this is good for the bottom line,’ and that has helped us sell this larger Thrive initiative to our elected officials and the community,” said Bret Bell, director of Savannah’s Public Information Office. “We’re taking it seriously enough that we want to document where we started and where we are going. It has given us credibility.”

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Korean Government and Georgia Tech Form Partnership

/PRNewswire/ -- Imagine watching your favorite TV show and talking about it with one friend on the phone, while at the same time trading messages with others on Twitter and e-mail. Sound like an impossible juggling act? A team of faculty from the Georgia Institute of Technology has formed a historic partnership with the Korean government, industry, and universities to develop a single platform where these and even more multimedia functions can take place, even anticipating what show you might like to watch or what music you might want to listen to.

Awarded a $9 million contract through the 2008 KORUS Tech Program, an initiative of the Korean Industrial Technology Foundation, Georgia Tech was chosen out of 109 universities to lead the development and design of the next generation of digital convergence devices that will let users establish and participate in digitally connected communities. This award marks the first time that the Korean government has chosen a U.S. university to lead one of its research and development programs.

Project investigators will develop immersive technologies on a hybrid graphics processing unit (GPU)-central processing unit (CPU) platform, which will be created at the newly established KORUS Research Center for Informersive Systems (CIS). The center will be headed by Jongman Kim, an assistant professor in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and the lead investigator for this project and consortium.

An enabling technology for personalized, interactive media convergence, the platform will consist of a custom-designed massively parallel architecture with a hybrid GPU accelerated many-core and heterogeneous multicore fusion system for new machine learning and multimedia algorithms and techniques. To balance resources and computationally demanding applications for high performance, Kim and his team are developing new mechanisms -- dynamically decomposed computing and hardware-based load balancing techniques. He will introduce a new holistic design analysis model -- the Performance, Energy, and Fault-Tolerance Metric.

"The interdependence among speed/throughput, energy, and fault-tolerance shows the importance of having this new metric that can identify the best tradeoffs among these three competing traits and desired design goals," said Kim, who leads the computer architecture part of this project.

Plans call for the system to be a smart, updated engine that understands user behavior; it will feature a tailored software interface that is based on intelligence and immersion with advanced three-dimensional graphics support. Ghassan AlRegib, a Georgia Tech ECE associate professor and editor-in-chief of the ICST Journal on Immersive Telecommunications, leads the multimedia processing and immersive communications portion of project, where data about home environments, modes of entertainment, and viewing and listening preferences are captured, processed, and interpreted by using motion, temperature, and light sensors; microphones; and multiple cameras that are placed in a user's home.

"Our challenge is to intelligently process this data and digitally understand the user," said AlRegib, who serves as area editor for IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. "We are trying to create smart agents within media centers that understand users and adapt media accordingly."

As the hub for home-networked entertainment, this platform will have wireless connectivity to other devices and will be operated with hand gestures, body movements, and facial expressions. AlRegib also noted that the platform would further advance the use of social networks by the broadcast industry to broaden its viewer base.

"This system will allow users to have a personalized media experience; content providers and Internet-based or TV broadcasters will be able to adjust their delivered media according to individuals' needs and interests rather than regional needs," AlRegib said. "We have witnessed the impact of social networking media on our daily lives, so merging them with TV seems to be a natural next step toward complete digital convergence."

Helping Kim and AlRegib -- both faculty members at the Georgia Tech Savannah campus -- tackle these technical challenges are ECE faculty members specializing in digital signal processing, telecommunications, computer architecture, and human-computer interaction: Monson H. Hayes, III, professor and associate director at Georgia Tech Savannah; Biing-Hwang "Fred" Juang, Motorola Foundation Chair Professor and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar; and Associate Professor Sung Kyu Lim. Kim and AlRegib will create undergraduate and graduate courses related to this project, while students at the Atlanta and Savannah campuses will assist with developing technologies and testing prototypes.

Four Korea-based partners will work with Georgia Tech to make this platform into a reality. Celrun, an Internet protocol television company, will handle graphic engine, media processing, and display layout issues. C&S Microwave, a wireless communications company, has conducted a feasibility study on Femtocell (a small cellular base station for residential or small business environments) and mobility between handheld devices and the proposed system. Sungkyunkwan University will work on embedded software, semiconductor technology, operating system, virtual ware, migration, and load balancing. The Korean Electronics Technology Institute will focus on personalized service solutions for various multimedia, data fusion, and digital communities, especially in social network modeling.

Kim said that interested parties from Georgia Tech and other organizations are welcome to join CIS in creating technologies for this platform. The center will also continue working with Georgia Tech's Enterprise Innovation Institute, which has provided crucial marketing research and commercialization plan assistance. "Growth in this area and industry interest is only expected to increase," said Kim, who has held R&D positions at both LG Electronics and Neopoint. "We believe that digital convergence will happen and that our work will be pivotal in its realization."

Institute officials enthusiastically support this new international partnership. "Georgia Tech and ECE have long been world leaders in digital media and its supporting technologies," said Gary S. May, Steve W. Chaddick School Chair for ECE. "The Korean government's decision to ask Georgia Tech to lead this effort further solidifies our international reputation in this arena."

The establishment of CIS and its future success could also lead to collaborations in areas like the automotive industry, according to Georgia Tech Vice Provost for International Initiatives Steven W. McLaughlin. "Georgia Tech has many longstanding collaborations in Korea and a very healthy representation here in Atlanta. The KORUS Tech program is emblematic of the partnerships we have, the kind of impact we continue to develop in the region, and the benefits those relationships have in Georgia," McLaughlin said. "Korea is a gateway to Asia for Georgia Tech, and we expect to have increasing interactions with Korean companies, institutes, universities, and ministries in the coming years."

According to the Georgia Tech study conducted for this project, Korea ranks among the world's top seven countries with the most households subscribing to broadband and is projected to move into the top five in the near future. Per capita, Korea ranks among the top four broadband subscribers, according to a June 2007 study conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, and had more total subscribers than the other top eight countries combined. The United States ranked 15th per capita, but had the largest number of total subscribers.

Korean officials cited Georgia Tech's stellar reputation in research, education, and translation of technology into useful products and successful companies as the primary reasons for choosing the institute for this project. "The Georgia Tech team's innovative ideas were backed by technological rigor and complemented by detailed analysis of state-of-the-art technologies and competing initiatives," said Sungjin (Bryan) Baik, senior researcher and project manager of the KORUS Tech Program from the Korea Institute of Advancement of Technology. "Atlanta's stature in the telecommunications and information media industries was also key in deciding that Georgia Tech was the proper home for this center." The majority of CIS operations will be based at the Atlanta campus of Georgia Tech and will receive additional support from facilities and personnel at Georgia Tech Savannah.

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New Type of El Niño Could Mean More Hurricanes Make Landfall

El Niño years typically result in fewer hurricanes forming in the Atlantic Ocean. But a new study suggests that the form of El Niño may be changing potentially causing not only a greater number of hurricanes than in average years, but also a greater chance of hurricanes making landfall, according to climatologists at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The study appears in the July 3, 2009, edition of the journal Science.

“Normally, El Niño results in diminished hurricanes in the Atlantic, but this new type is resulting in a greater number of hurricanes with greater frequency and more potential to make landfall,” said Peter Webster, professor at Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

That’s because this new type of El Niño, known as El Niño Modoki (from the Japanese meaning “similar, but different”), forms in the Central Pacific, rather than the Eastern Pacific as the typical El Niño event does. Warming in the Central Pacific is associated with a higher storm frequency and a greater potential for making landfall along the Gulf coast and the coast of Central America.

Even though the oceanic circulation pattern of warm water known as El Niño forms in the Pacific, it affects the circulation patterns across the globe, changing the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic. This regular type of El Niño (from the Spanish meaning “little boy” or “Christ child”) is more difficult to forecast, with predictions of the December circulation pattern not coming until May. At first glance, that may seem like plenty of time. However, the summer before El Niño occurs, the storm patterns change, meaning that predictions of El Niño come only one month before the start of hurricane season in June. But El Niño Modoki follows a different prediction pattern.

“This new type of El Niño is more predictable,” said Webster. “We’re not sure why, but this could mean that we get greater warning of hurricanes, probably by a number of months.”

As to why the form of El Niño is changing to El Niño Modoki, that’s not entirely clear yet, said Webster.

“This could be part of a natural oscillation of El Niño,” he said. “Or it could be El Niño’s response to a warming atmosphere. There are hints that the trade winds of the Pacific have become weaker with time and this may lead to the warming occurring further to the west. We need more data before we know for sure.”

In the study, Webster, along with Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Chair Judy Curry and research scientist Hye-Mi Kim used satellite data along with historical tropical storm records and climate models.

The research team is currently looking at La Niña, the cooling of the surface waters in the Eastern and Central Pacific.

"In the past, La Nina has been associated with a greater than average number of North Atlantic hurricanes and La Nina seems to be changing its structure as well,” said Webster. “We’re vitally interested in understanding why El Niño-L Niña has changed. To determine this we need to run a series of numerical experiments with climate models.”

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Georgia Tech Health Advisory

On Monday June 15, 2009, the Georgia Public Health Laboratory confirmed a student has a case of H1N1 influenza. Georgia Tech health officials are following established protocols and the student is recovering at home.

We remind the campus community that H1N1flu is considered no worse than seasonal flu and its symptoms are similar to those of the seasonal flu (see http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/key_facts.htm#flu).

Persons with chronic medical conditions who might be more likely to develop complications from influenza should seek medical attention if they experience flu-like symptoms.

Please keep in mind that everyday actions can help prevent the spread of germs that cause respiratory illnesses such as influenza. Some of these preventative measures include:

- Covering your mouth and nose with a tissue when you cough or sneeze

- Cleaning your hands after coughing or sneezing by washing with soap and warm water for 20 seconds or with alcohol-based hand cleaner.

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Georgia Tech Students Make Atari Games Look Like Atari Again

One of the main themes of Racing the Beam is the strong affinity between the Atari VCS and the CRT television. The system was designed around the TV and it interfaces with that display in an unusual and specific way.

In today’s world of huge, sharp LCD monitors, it’s hard to remember what a videogame image looked like on an ordinary television of the late 1970s. Emulators like Stella make it possible to play Atari games on modern computers, serving the function of archival tool, development platform, and player for these original games. But unfortunately, they also give an inaccurate impression of what Atari games looked like on a television.

An Atari game played on a television would exhibit a number of visual characteristics that cannot be seen on an LCD display:

Texture.
The display itself is not constructed out of pixels like a monitor, but out of the phosphorescent glow of an electron beam as it shines through a focusing grate. The result produces slightly separated colored dots on the screen, which become less visible as the viewer moves away from the set.

Afterimage.
The phosphor glow padding a bit of time to “burn off” and leaves more of an afterimage on the human retina compared to an LCD display. As a result, images might linger after they had moved or changed. Atari programmers took advantage of this feature to “flicker” objects between frames.

Color Bleed.
The edges of sprites and scanlines appear as sharp edges in an emulator. But on a television, luminance from these areas would bleed into neighboring sectors, both softening the hard edges of pixel-objects and blending colors together.

Noise.
A television transmission is sent via RF, so a natural amount of noise is introduced into the image ... this is hard to see in a normal TV broadcast, but the large, flat areas of color in a videogame will exhibit slight vibration.

Many of today’s players may only experience Atari games in emulation. Indeed, many of my students may have little to no memory of CRT televisions at all. Given such factors, it seems even more important to improve the graphical accuracy of tools like Stella.

In Spring 2009, I tasked a Georgia Tech Computer Science capstone group to modify Stella, adding settings to simulate the CRT behaviors described above. The group consisted of five committed and talented CS seniors: Edward Booth, Michael Cook, Justin Dobbs, Will Rowland, and Prince Yang.

The results are, to my eyes, fantastic.

Despite being mighty impressive, the results in a live game are far more remarkable. Edward and his colleagues have done a fantastic job.

They are currently working with the maintainer of the free, open-source Stella emulator to patch their changes into the main build, where the effects will be available as a configurable option. Expect to see it there shortly, where hopefully it will benefit players, creators, educators, and archivists alike. Given that we'll be placing the code back into Stella’s repository, I’m also hopeful that this software might be extended for use in other emulators for computer systems that used televisions as their primary output.

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Generating Some Buzz

For several weeks last fall, different artistic interpretations of Buzz were present around campus. An auction next month gives people the opportunity to own them.

In Buzz Around Town, part of the Alumni Association’s centennial celebration, alumni, student groups and campus organizations were able to sponsor one of 25 five-foot-tall Fiberglas Buzz statues. Each sponsor then paired with a local artist, who helped translate their vision to Tech’s beloved mascot.

Starting May 15 at the President’s Dinner, 20 of the 25 statues will be available for auction online. For a minimum bid of $500 or $1,000, members of the Tech community can own part of the campus-wide celebration.

“Since a lot of the Buzzes were created specifically for campus organizations, alumni who align with these groups are expressing interest,” said Renee Queen, vice president of Marketing Services for the Alumni Association. “Alumni from around the country are sending e-mails asking about them.”

Queen says 10 statues on each side of the walkway will flank attendees as they enter for dinner. The auction will be open for a week, closing May 22.

Sponsors have purchased four of the 50-pound Buzz statues ”two individual alumni, the Alumni Association and Auxiliary Services” and one was sold in a previous auction. Winning bidders must sign an agreement in compliance with the use of Buzz’s image and trademark.

Queen says there have been many requests to hold another Buzz Around Town event, which was held specifically for the Association’s centennial.

“While people have expressed interest, we have no plans to do this again,” she said.

“As far as I’m concerned, these 20 statues will be the only ones available for auction.”

After the fall semester, each statue was taken for repair and paint restoration. Proceeds from the auction will go toward the sponsoring organizations, with a small percentage being used for administrative costs.

“It’s been a wonderful experience,” Queen said. “We’ve been able to support student organizations and many local artists. And I feel so attached to each one. Each one epitomizes and shows the Tech community.”

Buzz Around Town facts

For Buzz Around Town, sponsors paid $1,600 to acquire and decorate a Buzz. Student organizations paid $800. Of the 25, 11 were sponsored by student organizations. Alumni sponsored nine, and Tech departments and organizations sponsored five.

Although every Buzz statue has undergone repair and restoration, Queen says the BuzzCard Buzz, sponsored by Auxiliary Services, was the only statue not damaged.

Tech organizations included the College of Engineering, the Alumni Association, the Georgia Tech Foundation, Auxiliary Services and the Tech Parents Program.

On the Alumni Association’s Web site, visitors were able to vote on which they thought were the best. The A.E.K.D. Buzz, sponsored by Kappa Sigma Fraternity, was voted the favorite.

Alumnus Kimberly Davis-Blackstone sponsored “Heritage Buzz.” Artists included David Boyd Jr., the art teacher at Heritage High School in Rockdale County, and Davis-Blackstone’s daughter, Nicole Young.

Alumnus Susan M. Davis sponsored the “Celebrating the Power of Women’s Contributions at Tech and Beyond.” Davis was the first female Buzz mascot, and the yellow shoes on the statue recall a time when she forgot her black high-tops while the team was playing out of town. The only shoes she could find at the last minute were yellow.

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Turn It Off Georgia for Earth Hour March 28

On Saturday, March 28, Gerogia Tech has committed to join more than 1,700 cities and towns, 5,000 organizations and 18,000 business in 80 countries to save energy.

Started by the World Wildlife Fund in 2007, the Earth Hour initiative seeks participants from across the globe to turn off their lights and other electrical appliances on March 28 from 8:30 to 9:30PM

“We see ourselves as a leader in sustainability, and this is an opportunity for us to be at the forefront and inspire other institutions to join the cause,” said Howard Wertheimer, director of Capital Planning & Space Management. “There is becoming enough critical mass out there.”

After participating in the event last year, Tech was solicited to become a Flagship campus, according to Wertheimer. By signing on, the Institute has agreed to “turn out, take action” by creating a board of students and faculty to plan Earth Hour events; encourage that non-essential campus lights be dimmed; promote climate-conscious decisions campus-wide; encourage student communications with policy makers; and report back to the WWF Earth Hour Team with campus plans.

Wertheimer stated that some data reported by Facilities last year suggested a 4 percent reduction in energy use—not an insignificant number for a Institute of this size.

As students on campus will be asked to darken their residence halls, Wertheimer encourages the entire community to participate, even though Earth Hour is on a Saturday. “Faculty and staff members can turn off their office lights, shut down their computers and unplug their microwaves and clock radios that Friday as they leave for the weekend,” he said.

Tech joins Atlanta, an Earth Hour Flagship City. The Georgia Tech Freshman Council, partnering with the Atlanta Mayor’s Office and City Council, will hold an Earth Hour party at the Campanile. Live music, free food and glowing candles, Atlanta District 2 Commissioner Kwanza Hall is scheduled to attend the event.

“It’s exciting for me, as Tech’s city councilman, to rally students in particular around Earth Hour,” Hall said. “We’re planning low-tech fun for the Campanile—the kind that leaves a small carbon footprint while generating long-lasting memories.”

For the future, Wertheimer said he sees the partnership with Atlanta growing out from just the city council and mayor’s office. “We have the opportunity to inspire people to make a cultural shift,” he said.

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Georgia Tech Teams with BlueCat Networks to Develop World’s First Virtual IPAM Test Lab

(BUSINESS WIRE)--BlueCat Networks, the IPAM Intelligence Company™, yesterday announced that the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) has purchased BlueCat’s Proteus IP Address Management (IPAM) solution and has teamed with BlueCat to develop the world’s first Virtual IPAM Test Laboratory. Situated on the university’s Atlanta, Georgia, campus, the Test Laboratory will collaborate with BlueCat to guide the development of BlueCat’s recently announced virtual IPAM, DNS and DHCP technologies. BlueCat will be working with a Georgia Tech team to test and scale an “IPAM Think Tank.”

“Initially, we are excited to be able to use the lab to test our own virtual environment, but ultimately it will be used to test the limits of IP address management in a virtual environment,” explained Ron Hutchins, Chief Technology Officer at Georgia Tech. “Strategically, Georgia Tech is very keen to stay on the leading edge of IPAM and DNS/DHCP development, and we are proud to be a partner in an effort to drive future innovations.”

Developed for organizations that have implemented a virtual infrastructure, BlueCat’s virtual appliances will enhance the market-leading IPAM and DNS/DHCP functionality of BlueCat’s physical solutions by making it easier than ever before for organizations to accelerate software deployment and simplify management, while leveraging their existing investment in virtual infrastructure. Organizations will now be able to rapidly provision DNS/DHCP for capacity handling and relocate DNS/DHCP services from one server to another for disaster recovery support – all without having to install any additional physical systems. BlueCat’s virtual appliances are available for download at http://www.bluecatnetworks.com/ipam-goes-virtual.

“The $1.7 billion virtualization market is growing rapidly worldwide because it provides the simplest and most cost-effective method of consolidating multiple systems,” said Dean Del Vecchio, Regional Director, BlueCat Networks. “’IPAM goes Virtual™’ is a huge focus for BlueCat and we have leveraged our position as the leader in IPAM, DNS and DHCP solutions to develop true virtual appliances that will make it simple for organizations to save power, reduce operating costs and accelerate software deployment,” Del Vecchio continued. “BlueCat is fully committed to the virtualization market, and is proud to work with the prestigious Georgia Tech to develop a unique Test Lab focused on maximizing the capabilities of virtual IPAM, DNS and DHCP technologies.”

The proliferation of such technology as VoIP, Virtualization, RFID, Wireless and IPv6 is making it impossible for organizations to continue managing IP addresses with spreadsheets and homegrown solutions. BlueCat’s market-leading solutions integrate with Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Active Directory to completely eliminate network accessibility problems by making it simple and secure for administrators to centrally deploy, manage, monitor and audit IP addresses across an entire organization from a single web-based interface.

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Georgia Tech Joins Industry Alliance to Help Build the Mobile Internet

True mobile Internet capability for wireless devices – including high-definition TV, movies and video-conferencing – has taken a step closer to reality.

The Georgia Electronic Design Center (GEDC) at Georgia Tech is allying with several major corporations and an international standards group to promote a new worldwide cognitive radio (CR) standard that would allow new levels of performance in portable devices such as cellular phones and computers.....http://gfpwebtech.blogspot.com/2009/02/georgia-tech-joins-industry-alliance-to.html

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GT: Creating New Ways for Audiences to Participate in Performance

Music Professor Jason Freeman created Piano Etudes, a Web-based application that allows audiences to participate in the composition process.

According to Freeman, his Piano Etudes are not like traditional etudes that you might go and hear a musician play in a concert. In Freeman’s Piano Etudes, everyone is involved in the process of composing the musical piece.

“You can go and listen to a musician play at the concert, but you can also get involved by going to the companion Web site,” said Freeman. “On the Web site you’re able to look at musical fragments, the little building blocks that make up the Etudes, and rearrange them however you want.”

According to Freeman, by rearranging the fragments you’re able to create your own unique version of the piece. Once you’ve created your own version, the Web site allows you share the piece with friends on many social networking sites. The music can also be downloaded as MP3 files or even as conventional musical scores that can be performed in concert.

“I developed Piano Etudes because I have grown increasingly dissatisfied with the distinctions that get drawn between people that compose music, people who perform music and people who only get to listen to music,” said Freeman. “For me, these distinctions seem artificial.”

Freeman said that his most fulfilling musical experiences are when he is able to compose, create and perform. “When I do all of those things, I listen to music differently,” said Freeman. “I’m more involved in it and it is much more fulfilling. I am hoping others will share in this experience through Piano Etudes and many of my other works.”

Freeman wrote Piano Etudes for pianist Jenny Lin, who challenged him to explore what a musical etude would be in a contemporary cultural environment.

“What a modern etude meant to me was the ability for the pianist and Web site participants to take part in the composition process,” said Freeman. “The performer’s task really becomes interesting then, because the musician must take all of these possibilities and make the piece his or her own.”

Upcoming concerts include Spivey Hall in Atlanta on April 1st, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC on April 5th, and Strathmore in Maryland on May 7th.

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GT: Reducing CO2 Emissions Through Smart Growth and Technology

A Georgia Tech City and Regional Planning study on climate change, published February 10, 2009 online by Environmental Science and Technology, shows that “smart growth” combined with the use of hybrid vehicle technology could reduce cities’ carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions – the principal driver of global warming – significantly by 2050.

According to Brian Stone, associate professor of City and Regional Planning, the research shows that expected levels of CO2 emissions from cars and trucks in 2050 could be reduced back to 2000 levels if the full vehicle fleet was converted to hybrid electric vehicles, such as the Toyota Prius or the soon-to-be released Chevy Volt. This research also found that a doubling of population density in large U.S. cities by 2050 would have a greater impact on CO2 reductions than full hybridization of the vehicle fleet.

Stone’s study looked at 11 major metropolitan regions of the Midwestern U.S. over a 50-year period and took into account three different scenarios: the use of hybrid vehicles and two different urban growth scenarios through which population density was increased over time, a central component of smart growth planning.

“In this study we looked at two general approaches on how to deal with the challenge of climate change,” said Stone. “One approach is to improve vehicle technology and become more efficient. We can use less gas and reduce tailpipe emissions of CO2. The second approach is to change behavior by changing the way we design cities. We can travel less and take more walking and transit trips.”

Stone says he believes it would be possible for virtually all cars on the roads by 2050 to be hybrid electric vehicles, assuming the costs of these vehicles become more competitive with conventional engine technologies. Today’s hybrid electric vehicles can achieve 40 miles to the gallon and higher.

However, even the full hybridization of the national vehicle fleet by 2050 would not meet the CO2 targets identified though the Kyoto Protocol, an international climate change agreement which the United States has signed but not yet ratified. To meet these global targets, CO2 emissions from all sectors on the U.S. would need to return to 1990 levels or lower. According to Stone’s work, meeting this goal in the transportation sector would require a combination of technological improvements and higher density land use patterns in cities.

“If we can help cities to grow in more compact ways, what we call smart growth, it will help reduce emissions even further by allowing people to travel less often, travel shorter distances when they do travel and take advantage of public transit,” said Stone.

The eleven metropolitan regions that were studied include Madison, Wisconsin, Columbus, Ohio, Indianapolis, Indiana, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, Cincinnati, Ohio, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Chicago, Illinois, Detroit, Michigan and Dayton, OH. In addition to Stone, Dr. Tracey Holloway, Scot Spak, and Adam Mednick also authored the study.

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Arbor Day Foundation Honors 29 Colleges and Universities in Tree Campus USA's Inaugural Class

Twenty-nine schools from across the United States earned Tree Campus USA status from the nonprofit Arbor Day Foundation for their dedication to campus forestry management and environmental stewardship. The 29 schools recognized by the Arbor Day Foundation make up the initial Tree Campus USA class.

Tree Campus USA is a new national program launched by the Arbor Day Foundation and aims to honor colleges and universities that engage in best tree-care and sustainability practices. The launch of the Tree Campus USA program was supported by a generous grant from Toyota.

"We are proud to recognize the first 29 colleges and universities to be honored as a Tree Campus USA school," said John Rosenow, chief executive and founder of the Arbor Day Foundation. "These schools have made a major commitment to protecting, caring for and adding to their campus forest, and the results of this commitment will have a lasting, positive impact not only on campus but in the overall community."

Colleges and universities who earned Tree Campus USA status were: Albany Technical College; Arizona State; California State University, Fresno; Creighton; Duke; Furman; Georgia Tech; Gwinnett Technical College; Illinois State; Indiana State; Indiana University Bloomington; Jackson State; Kent State; Macon State; Nebraska Wesleyan; Northern Kentucky; Northland College; Oregon State; Southeastern (N.C.) Community College; University of California, Davis; University of California, San Diego; University of Maryland; University of Michigan; University of Nebraska-Lincoln; University of North Texas; University of South Carolina Upstate; University of Texas, Austin; Virginia Tech; and Western Michigan.

Tree Campus USA is modeled after the Arbor Day Foundation's Tree City USA program. Since its inception in 1976, Tree City USA has had a powerful impact resulting in more trees and better tree care in more than 3,300 communities nationwide.

Tree Campus USA creates opportunities for college campuses to work with the greater community through tree-care management practices. The program also provides a hands-on way for students to care for their local environment through tree-related events.

To receive Tree Campus USA recognition, schools are required to meet five core standards of tree care and community engagement. Those standards are: establishing a campus tree advisory committee; evidence of a campus tree-care plan; verification of dedicated annual expenditures on the campus tree-care plan; involvement in an Arbor Day observance; and the institution of a service-learning project aimed at engaging the student body.

"Connecting students with tree-planting opportunities on campus will create healthier communities for people to enjoy for generations to come," Rosenow said. "Tree Campus USA will teach students the many benefits trees provide our communities, and the students will leave school and go out and plant trees where they work and live."

The Arbor Day Foundation and Toyota launched the Tree Campus USA program last fall by planting nearly 1,000 trees at nine college campuses throughout the nation.

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Continuous Descent: Saving Fuel and Reducing Noise for Airliners

Airline passengers arriving in Atlanta on early morning “redeye” flights during the past few months may have noticed something different during their descent to the runway. Instead of the typical sound of engine power rising and falling as the aircraft descended in a series of level flight steps, they may have noticed a quieter arrival – without the steps.

The changes were part of Georgia Tech’s flight-testing of “continuous descent arrivals,” a procedure designed to save fuel and time while producing environmental benefits by reducing both noise and emissions. Involving more than 600 flights, the Atlanta study was done in collaboration with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), FedEx and Atlanta’s two dominant air carriers: Delta Air Lines and AirTran Airways.

The continuous descent arrival procedure has already been studied at Louisville and Los Angeles airports. Proponents hope the 90-day test at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport – currently the nation’s busiest airport – will move the concept one step closer to nationwide implementation. Estimates suggest that continuous descent arrivals could save a large airline as much as $80 million per year in fuel costs alone.

“In commercial aircraft, we see anywhere between 300 and 1,000 pounds of fuel saved for each arrival,” said John-Paul Clarke, director of the Air Transportation Laboratory at Georgia Tech and an associate professor in the School of Aerospace Engineering. “With fuel cost at $3 per gallon, that would amount to as much as $600 per arrival and could really add up for the airlines at a time when they need all the savings they can get.”

Because aircraft engines don’t throttle up and down during a continuous descent arrival, there are also significant reductions in noise and emissions. Keeping engines at idle power can cut emissions of nitrogen oxides by nearly a third, and reduce noise by 6 decibels along certain portions of the flight path – both significant reductions that would improve the environment in the vicinity of airports.

And the technique could cut two minutes off the approach and landing portion of a flight. While that doesn’t seem like much, it could result in more efficient utilization of aircraft and reductions in flight times for crews.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is the nation’s busiest.

Continuous descent arrival is one in a series of improvements aimed at creating the next generation of air transportation technologies. The goal is to redesign the airspace to allow future airliners to travel the most efficient paths to their destinations.

Though the final numbers from the Atlanta evaluation won’t be known for several months, the potential savings have been demonstrated by more than 60,000 landings at Los Angeles with a continuous descent arrival technique developed by Georgia Tech. But adopting the procedure throughout the airspace system won’t be easy. Safety considerations must be paramount, and there are a number of optimization challenges caused by widely varying aircraft types, wind conditions and airport configurations.

“Imagine a line of aircraft descending through a long tube that’s fixed laterally and limited vertically to be within a narrow band,” explained Clarke. “If each airplane were like a ball with a different coefficient of friction, then when you put the balls in the tube at equal intervals, they would begin to catch up with one another. The ball with the lower coefficient would tend to catch up with the ball with a higher coefficient. That’s something that we have to work very hard to avoid.”

While the risks of getting aircraft too close are obvious – and governed by FAA rules on minimum spacing – too much spacing between landing aircraft can waste time and reduce airport throughput.

“The goal is to design a procedure that allows the aircraft engines to throttle back to idle power at the point of initial descent and to remain at idle power along the flight path to the runway as long as possible,“ Clarke added. “We have figured out how to put altitude and speed constraints along the flight path so they can stay at idle power as long as possible while achieving the required minimal spacing at the runway threshold.”

Determining those constraints requires detailed knowledge of the performance of each aircraft type in use. Clarke and his research team have obtained performance data for most Boeing aircraft, as well as some of those manufactured by Airbus. Based on the performance data, they have simulated the operation of each aircraft type under varying wind and weight conditions.

The researchers have also modeled variation in pilot behavior, because small differences in when flaps are deployed and landing gear lowered create variations in speed, which affect aircraft spacing.

Arrivals would be customized for each airport, taking into account wind and traffic patterns. And because the spacing between aircraft is determined well before they arrive at their destinations, adoption of the technique will require changes in the nation’s air traffic control system.

“The air traffic control system currently isn’t designed to allow the kind of fine-tuning we need, but I’m very optimistic about being able to change that,” said Clarke. “Throughout all the areas, the FAA and the airlines, there is a growing acceptance that this is a solution. We have been able to do the analysis, the flight-testing and the number crunching to show that it can be done.”

Clarke, who began the research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before joining Georgia Tech in 2005, believes the cost savings will ensure adoption of continuous descent arrivals. He compared the technique to the adoption of fuel-saving winglets, small vertical attachments that have replaced traditional wingtips on many aircraft.

“For years people knew that winglets provided better performance, but it costs money to install them,” he added. “When fuel got more expensive, airlines started installing winglets because the savings justified the costs. The benefits of continuous descent arrival may also take some time to be realized.”

This article originally appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Research Horizons, Georgia Tech’s research magazine.

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UGA Ranks First Nationally in Student Payback Ratio

The University of Georgia ranks first among national universities, both public and private, in payback ratio according to the January 2009 issue of Smart Money magazine.

"This ranking speaks first and foremost to the very high quality of education that UGA students receive. They leave here prepared for success by any measure, and I am proud of them," said UGA President Michael F. Adams. "Our low price makes us a great value, and overall in this poll, the best value in America."

Smart Money, a magazine published by the Wall Street Journal, quantified the long-term value of education by examining the relationship between tuition costs and graduates' earning power at two different stages in their lives. According to the survey, UGA graduates earn a median salary of $44,100 four years after graduation and $86,000 15 years after graduation. The median salaries were divided by the institution's tuition at the time of graduation resulting in a payback ratio. UGA's payback ratio is 338%.

Princeton, ranked first among Ivy League schools and 20th overall, has a payback ratio of 132% and Washington and Lee, ranked first among liberal arts schools and 19th overall, has a payback ratio of 145%. Washington and Lee is the highest-ranked private institution on the list.

The overall top-ten also included number two Texas A&M, followed by the University of Texas at Austin, Georgia Tech, the University of Washington, Rutgers University, the University of Illinois, Clemson University, Purdue University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Initiative Helps Rural Georgia Hospitals Improve Performance

Seven rural Georgia hospitals will participate in a new initiative designed to help increase their capacity to serve patients, improve the quality of their services and reduce costs. The benefits will come from adopting performance improvement techniques that are already widely used in manufacturing industry.

The two-year demonstration project, to be led by the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Enterprise Innovation Institute through a $349,000 grant from Healthcare Georgia Foundation, will help train hospital staff in “lean” techniques that identify waste in processes and find ways to eliminate it.

Georgia Tech has successfully used the approach with hospitals in Atlanta, Columbus, Newnan and Vidalia. Its “lean health care” training programs have been licensed for use nationwide by the American Hospital Association.

“We want to take the techniques that have proven to be so successful in large hospitals and use them in small, rural hospitals,” said Frank Mewborn, director of the Healthcare Performance Group in Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute. “Rural hospitals typically don’t have the resources to hire outside consultants to help with performance improvement issues, so we very much appreciate the support from Healthcare Georgia Foundation to make this initiative possible.”

Georgia Tech project leaders will work with health care professionals at the participating hospitals to conduct lean assessments, teach basic lean concepts, develop value stream maps to analyze the flow of materials and information, and implement rapid process improvement techniques. Because the techniques rely on input from those closest to the processes being improved, each hospital will dedicate staff members to work with Georgia Tech.

“This is a substantial investment on the part of the hospitals because they must pull front-line staff from their normal responsibilities during the process improvement activities,” Mewborn noted. “Involvement of these key people is essential to the process, and it pays off long-term through better processes and buy-in from those who are on the front lines of providing patient care.”

Beyond direct process improvements, the initiative will also provide long-term benefits through senior leadership and hospital staff who have been trained in the lean techniques and who will share them with other departments and facilities. Success will be measured by improvements made during the process, and by the ability of each hospital to continue the process improvement efforts after the initiative’s conclusion.

Rural hospitals in Georgia face a financial crisis because their patients are less likely than those of metropolitan hospitals to have health insurance. At the same time, hospitals in underserved areas face other competitive disadvantages as they confront rising costs.

“A lot of rural hospitals are struggling to make payroll every month,” Mewborn noted. “They don’t have revenue opportunities from more profitable kinds of surgeries because they may not have a large enough market. They are meeting an essential need for health care in their areas, but their reimbursement rates tend to be low.”

Such facilities need to find sustainable ways to become more efficient, which is why Healthcare Georgia Foundation provided the grant to Georgia Tech.

“This grant award represents a tremendous opportunity to achieve greater efficiencies in health care quality and costs,” said Gary D. Nelson, president of the Foundation. “By taking this issue on from both clinical and operational perspectives, we can achieve sustainable efficiencies where they are most needed in our state.”

One of Georgia Tech’s first lean health care projects was with the emergency department at Meadows Regional Medical Center in Vidalia, Ga. As a result of the process improvement activities done there, the average time patients remained in the emergency department was reduced 44 percent and physicians were able to see more patients per hour – all while maintaining a 92 percent patient satisfaction rating.

Other hospital process improvement projects done by Georgia Tech have:

-Shortened the lead time and reduced errors in blood testing,
-Developed a time-saving system for managing intravenous pumps,
-Reduced errors and lead time for collecting and processing tissue samples,
-Increased capacity by reducing room down-times between patients,
-Boosted laboratory capacity and reduced errors through improved organization,
-Increased physician productivity through standardized work processes, and
-Streamlined pre-registration processes.

Hospitals that have agreed to participate in the program include Upson Regional Medical Center in Thomaston, Peach Regional Medical Center in Fort Valley, Monroe County Hospital in Forsyth, Morgan Memorial Hospital in Madison, Banks-Jackson-Commerce Hospital in Commerce, West Georgia Medical Center in LaGrange, and Hutcheson Medical Center in Fort Oglethorpe.

The projects are expected to be completed by June 2010.

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Georgia Tech Student Helps Bloggers Overcome Writer's Bock

If you write a blog and haven’t been to Skribit (skribit.com) perhaps it’s just a matter of time. Paul Stamatiou created the service as a tool to help cure blogger’s block (writer’s block for bloggers) a little over a year ago, and already it boasts more than 4,000 blogs using it and gets about 4 million hits per month.

Stamatiou created Skribit (rhymes with ribbet) out of necessity to help him as he worked on his own blog, www.PaulStamatiou.com. He had been running his blog since 2005, but was having a bit of trouble coming up with the next thing to write. So he pitched the idea at Startup Weekend Atlanta, a conference that brings together entrepreneurs, computer programmers and marketing types to create companies and products —they built it that weekend.

“After three days, people start to ask, ‘why haven’t you blogged in a while?’,” said Stamatiou. “With Skribit, readers can vote on topics and post ideas on what to write about and the widget will sort them out by how hot they are. If you suggest something, you will get notified when they use your suggestion.”

Skribit’s user base is vast, according to Stamatiou. Everyone from English-speaking bloggers to Japanese, Spanish and Korean bloggers are using it. He even has a police department in Maryland using it to get feedback from the community.

What makes Skribit successful, said Stamatiou, is that it provides a place for bloggers to get new ideas, rather than simply write about what everyone else is already talking about.

“Someone might use Skribit if they want their site to be up-to-date, but don’t want to go to the echo chamber to mimic everyone else,” said Stamatiou.

Skribit works in two ways. Users can post suggestions on topics to write about on the site either anonymously or with a user account. Bloggers can either read the site or post a widget on their blog. The benefit, said Stamatiou, of having the widget is that readers can post their suggestions directly to the blog they read. Readers can vote on their favorite topics, and the blog displays the suggestions based on factors such as how many votes they’ve received and how recently they were suggested.

Stamatiou created the site while he was a Computational Media student in both the College of Computing and the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech. And although it came out of his initial idea, Stamatiou continues to develop the site with co-founder Calvin Yu. When he graduates later this month, he plans to work full time on making Skribit profitable with help from the Georgia Tech Edison Fund.

The Georgia Tech Edison Fund helps provide initial funding for early-stage technology companies that have a close association with Georgia Tech. Chief Commercialization Officer Stephen Fleming said that keeping young talent from having to look outside of Atlanta for initial funding is one of his most important missions.

“At one time, I know that Paul was looking to move out to California to try to get funding for Skribit,” said Fleming. “I’m glad that we were able to provide him with the initial funding to keep young talent like him here in Atlanta.”

So, does Stamatiou ever use Skribit to help out when he gets blogger’s block? Of course he does.

“For me it is a backup plan when I really can’t think of something to write. If I notice something that has received a lot of votes in a very short amount of time, I'll take that as a note that my readers really want to read about it and I'll change my plans and blog about it,” he said. “Then there are the times that, for a few weeks, I won’t have any clue about what to write, so I'll just rely on it.”

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