Hopkins is Using Tech Right

This morning I went on to the CNN tech page to find a suitable article to write about on this blog. To my happy surprise, Hopkins was on the front page for their exceptional use of social media and interactive blogs to attract students. My friends Noah Guiberson and Lucie Fink were even featured in the article! But I digress; let's talk about what Hopkins is doing that's so fresh.

I'm not sure how many of you have heard of or used Hopkins Interactive, but it's a centralized location for the student blogs written about the various experiences of their four years at Hopkins. The blogs are updated daily (at least), keeping pace with the dynamic environment of Hopkins itself. Every week there is a guest blogger who is invited to give his perspective of Hopkins and the opportunities it has to offer, so it's not the same 9 people from each class each time. This allows prospective students to get a true view of what it means to be a Hopkins student, beyond the shiny brochures that are sent in the mail by every other college. HI is a way for Hopkins to stand out and be remembered.

But HI isn't the only way that Hopkins is using blogs to reach its prospective and current students. At the bottom of the HI page is a directory to four other blogs Hopkins runs, including blogs about the majors and minors offered from the point of view of those who study them. No gimmicks, no false appeals, just experiences on the web for the world to see and share. You can also read about what the office of Admissions is up to (especially now that college apps are flooding in!), the social events on campus, and the guest blogs.

And still Hopkins surpasses other schools with its effective use of Twitter. There are currently about 30 Twitter accounts associated with some department or branch of Hopkins, including the Applied Physics Laboratory, Peabody, and the famous Shush Lady. All this, while not always good, lets students connect to the campus both in et ex situ.

Congrats Hopkins Insider on your exemplary use of social media! Just another reason to be a Blue Jay and proud.

Adam Riess' Nobel Prize

Congratulations to our own Adam Riess, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Physics and Astronomy and staff member of the Space Telescope Science Institute, on his 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on Type Ia Supernovae and Cepheid stars, which led to the discovery of dark energy and that the universe is indeed expanding. We look forward to the next discovery to be made at Johns Hopkins. Hit those books people!

RIP Dennis Ritchie

Less than a week after the death of Apple's Steve Jobs comes the equally upsetting news that Dennis Ritchie, the man who developed the C programming language and influenced the Multics and Unix operating systems, died on October 8. A true trailblazer in coding and computer systems, Ritchie received the Turing Medal in 1983 and the National Medal of Technology 1998. When he retired from Lucent Technology Services in 2007, he was the head of the System Software Research Development office. He was 70 years old.

Ritchie was the son of prominent Bell Labs scientist Alistair E. Ritchie, himself a pioneer of switching circuit theory. Dennis Ritchie was educated at Harvard University where he received degrees in physics and applied mathematics. He later earned his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1968 after working briefly at Bell Labs. His mentor was Patrick C. Fischer

A modest man, Ritchie embodied the spirit of computing with his understanding of the simple systems that make complex machines. He will be missed.

Here are some quotes of his that exhibit his character and his views on life:

1. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the demigodic party."
2. "Usenet is a strange place.^"
3. "UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity."
4. "C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success.

RIP Steve Jobs

The day after the iPhone 4S debuted, the face of the company died. Steve Jobs, who was able to rebuild the reputation of Apple, who became its face and its figurehead, passed on Wednesday, October 5 from pancreatic cancer. "Cancer took our Jobs!" wrote one Reddit user. This comment has risen to the top of the thread, for good reason. Steve, what a life. You will be missed.

Hot Air Isn't Just Nonsense

It's no secret that one of the hardest problems for America today is how to sustain our energy needs in the age of declining oil supplies. This has nothing to do with politics or reducing our dependence on the Middle East; this is a real problem that college students of today will inherit tomorrow. The most challenging part of this problem is that there's no one type of alternative energy that the entire American public has rallied behind. Sure, solar energy is flashy, but there isn't a mass push to make it more of a dependable source. This is partly because of a lack of cheap, mass-produced technology.

So why not take advantage of another thing that the world is full of: hot air?

That's exactly the idea of Australian entrepreneur Roger Davey, who is going to use the hot air that naturally rises off the Earth to power turbines, which will translate that energy into electricity. In an official statement, EnviroMission, Davey's company, boasts that it can create up to 200 megawatts of power, which is enough to power 100,000 homes. This is an extrapolation from data already collected. The Hot Air Technique has been tested on smaller scales on the plains of Spain, where prototypes of the solar updraft tower created about 50 killowatts of electricity per day. Some external engineers are skeptical of the projected 200 megawatt power ratings, but not one of them can deny the sound engineering of his device.

The tower will be surrounded by a plastic dome as wide as a football field, which will help heat air. When it reaches 194 degrees, the hot air enters the tower and travels up to the turbines. The increased height will increase the strength of the air flow, which will make the turbines turn faster, which leads to more electricity generated. Because the Earth continues to cool after the sun goes down, this is an energy that will not cease at night.

Unlike solar power, which is scarce on a cloudy day, and wind power, limited both at high and low wind speeds, the capture of hot air is something that happens every day without fail because of earth's natural specific heat. This is a solution that can be used everywhere, but especially in Australia. Another advantage is the long projected lifespan of the hot air towers, which EnviroMission says will be up to 80 years, far longer than a solar panel's lifespan.

As of right now, EnviroMission is the only publicly traded developer working on this job, but even with the encouraging data from Spain, the entire plan is still in the planning phase. Understandably, Oil companies have reason to be nervous, but Davey says the Hot Air is not meant to replace anything, yet. The current idea is that hot air will come to be a low emission alternative to fossil fuels, and, if the sentiment sticks, a primary source of fuel.