Organizations fund search for new nanoelectronics transistors
Nanowerk News – July 15
Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), the world’s leading university-research consortium for semiconductors and related technologies, today teamed with the National Science Foundation (NSF) to announce funding of $2 million in new supplemental grants for nanoelectronics research. Researchers at six major NSF centers inside leading U.S. universities will contribute to the goal of finding a replacement for the transistor – the foundational building block of computing technology for decades – and discovering a new digital switching mechanism using nanoelectronics innovation… The joint NSF-NRI supplemental grants were awarded to teams at six NSF centers in nanoelectronics research:…Center for Materials for Information Technology, a Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, directed and led by Dr. William Butler at the University of Alabama…
Obama’s Ambitious Plan for Community Colleges Raises Hopes and Questions
Chronicle of Higher Education – July 15, 2009
…President Obama visited Macomb Community College here, outside Detroit, to propose an unprecedented federal infusion of dollars for two-year colleges.…The infrastructure money is vital, several experts said, as the surge in students further strains a worn infrastructure. Between the 2001-2 and 2005-6 academic years, nearly 2.3 million new students enrolled at community colleges, the greatest enrollment boom since the 1960s, when many of the institutions were founded. At the same time, two-thirds of all state community-college systems report deferred maintenance needs, according to a 2007 survey by the Education Policy Center at the University of Alabama. Ten of those states said they had “significant” increases in deferred maintenance…There has been no major federal program for community-college construction and renovation since the 1960s, when the government gave out $1-billion annually between 1965 and 1970, said Stephen G. Katsinas, the policy center’s director. “It’s probably not enough; it’s probably nowhere near enough,” he said of the $2.5-billion proposal. “But this is the first administration since Lyndon Johnson to see the need.”
Section of Sipsey added to advisory
Tuscaloosa News – July 15
People should limit eating largemouth bass caught in a section of the Sipsey River south of Aliceville because of high levels of mercury found in the fish, according to an advisory issued by the state Tuesday…’The fish advisories are something everyone that eats wild-caught fish should pay attention to,’ said Robert Findlay, a University of Alabama professor of freshwater biology…it’s a long-term process,’ Findlay said. ‘If you eat a lot of fish, it’d be a concern, but if you occasionally eat fish, it wouldn’t be a big problem because your body is going to get rid of it.’…Findlay and two other UA professors published a paper a year ago showing the Sipsey River has three times more mercury in its fish than the Black Warrior River, a larger, man-controlled river that shares the same environmental conditions. Findlay said more research is needed to understand why fish in the Sipsey have more mercury. Findlay said the advisory is based on the average fish. ‘This is contrary to what most fishermen do, but if you are going to eat bass, what you can do is throw back the big one and eat the little one,’ he said.