April 8, 2010
Peer Portfolio
ROBOT SOCCER?: The University of Utah held a three-day competition in late March involving 1,000 high school students and robots playing a soccer-like game. The university’s news center Web site reported, “Robots designed and built by students will play a game called ‘Breakaway’ — basically soccer for robots — during which robots score points on a playing field by collecting soccer balls in their goals,” reports the University’s news center Web site in an article headlined “Revenge of the Robots.” An event organizer and associate professor of mechanical engineering said, “One of our main goals for this competition is to help students see that engineering, science and math can be a lot of fun.” Read the story
‘DANGEROUS EXPERTISE’: Deborah Blum of the University of Wisconsin-Madison has written a book about the beginning of forensic medicine in the early part of the 20th century that Publisher’s Weekly said has the pacing of a suspense novel. It’s called The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York. But becoming an expert on poisoning has its downside, as humorously reported by Wisconsin Week, the university’s faculty-staff publication. Blum wrote, “There are mornings … when I start talking about a poison in my book, revealing my own dangerous expertise, and as I do, I watch my husband quietly, not really thinking about it, slide his cup out of my reach.” Read the story here.
SOY CHICKEN? Fu-Hung Hseih, a professor of biological engineering and food science at the University of Missouri, has created a soy product that looks, feels and even pulls apart like chicken. But he’s doing more than just adding chicken flavor to a hunk of soy protein, the university newspaper, MizzouWeekly, reports. The process is a complicated one, but here’s a taste: “When it leaves the extruder, the slurry becomes a dense and fibrous substance that assumes the shape of the die. It can be turned into granules, flakes, chunks, patties or steakettes, which are then frozen or dried in an oven. These pieces can be added to simple recipes like chili, fajitas, stews and pasta dishes.” Read the story here.
PET PALS: A program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison started in 1996 provides “pet therapy” for children in nearby American Family Children’s Hospital. Germs can cause bad trouble for the hospitalized children, so the Pet Pals program partners with the School of Veterinary Medicine to make sure the animals are right from both health and behavior standpoints. Some lively pups — good dogs nonetheless — are a bit too animated for the setting. “Many of our dogs who don’t pass our exam would be wonderful in a classroom of kids,” says a veterinarian and instructor working with the program. “I always tell the owners that the dogs that don’t pass our test have the most fun with the evaluation.” Read the story here.
MORE THAN SUPER: While the Super Bowl was being played out in Florida on Feb. 7, an odd alternative game was simultaneously being played in a former synagogue in Queens, New York, by artists affiliated with the University of Iowa. It was called More than Super, and it was a simultaneous, play-by-play re-enactment of the Big Game done by “a small army of collaborators who played the roles of players, referees, TV producers, halftime performers, advertisers, team owners, and fans in the stadium,” according to the university’s Web site. The shoestring satire streamed live from the Web as the game was played. Its organizers stated before the “game,” that More Than Super “will be a collaboration rather than a competition, more an awkward dance than a sublimated war. The game in the synagogue will engage America’s greatest spectacle and cut it down to size.”
Peer Portfolio is a compilation of goings-on at the UW’s peer institutions.
