AVL - Creating the Future

Located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Advanced Visualization Laboratory (AVL) continues to swiftly and efficiently improve society with its visualizations. AVL is a research group within the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) that is supported by the state of Illinois, the National Science Foundation, and grants from other federal agencies. In addition to the NSCA, AVL is also partnered with eDream to “serve as an interdisciplinary center for arts-led creative thought and technical innovation." The mission of AVL is “to communicate science, inspiring audiences to learn about scientific concepts through capturing the thrill of scientific discovery and wonder of complex systems."  

These visualizations created by AVL act as a “tool for discovery” by allowing scientists to see inside natural phenomena and learn with these sophisticated simulations. The simulations allow scientists to look further into what they are studying by allowing them to observe from a different angle and therefore gain more understanding. For instance, with these simulations, a scientist could literally type in the exact dimensions of the tornado and watch it play out in 3D with this interactive software. And the more we know and understand about disasters, such as tornados or hurricanes, the better we can prepare for them.



University of Illinois Students experiencing the visualizations for themselves on a visit to NSCA



The work of AVL has received much public attention as it contributed to: the IMAX Warner Bros. (who’s “Hubble 3D IMAX won three Giant Screen Cinema Association Awards in 2010 for Best Film Produced Exclusively For Giant Screen Theaters), Lifelong Learning, and Cinematography.” AVL work was also featured in Computer Graphic World for Black Holes on “Scientific Visualization,” and their researchers presented two TED talks in one month.

Their work can be seen by the public at any time with a visit to NSCA on the University of Illinois campus.

Animal Kingdom

Wayne's podcast

sleep and study

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The Animal Kingdom

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In Vitro Fertilization- The Test Tube Baby

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4 million babies and counting...

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In-Vitro Fertilization

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Studying Before Sleep

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In-vitro fertilization

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32 years ago, Robert G Edwards developed technology called in-vitro fertilization. In this process, egg cells are fertilized by sperm outside the body, and then placed into the uterus of a woman in hopes of a successful pregnancy. After 4 million successful births, Edwards is being rewarded with the Nobel Prize for Medicine at the age of 85. While this was a breakthrough in science, it was met with more controversy than acclaim, as people considered this procedure unnatural and immoral. Today, this procedure is rather common and accepted. But now, the thing to worry about is how far people will take this power. Advances in IVF technology could lead to more than the creation of life, but rather the designing of life, through genetic engineering. This new idea is being received in the same way Edwards’ idea was 32 years ago. The thought that this could lead to a superhuman race has sparked another controversy.

Written and recorded in Room 1 Gregory Hall

Environment Saver at UIUC




Floating telescoping weir skimmer/ Photo by Hsin Yu Chang

 

Due to the BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, oil spills have become one of the more prominent issues throughout the world. However, you might not know that one of the most efficient solutions lies here at UIUC campus.

The floating telescoping weir skimmer, developed by Tim Lindsey, who is associate director in Illinois Sustainable Technology Center, is believed to be able to clean about 100 barrels of polluted water a day. Students in the class Science and the Media got to take a look at the model of this new invention while taking their field trip to the ISTC.

“It is certainly a better alternative than the chemical dispersant they are using right now,” said Rebecca, one of the students in the class.

The floating skimmer works similar to a vacuum. It sucks polluted water in and separates oil from the water by using a purification system Lindsey invented previously to separate oil from industrial cleaning liquid. This invention is able to solve mass environmental disasters caused by oil spills or industrial waste and therefore caught the eyes of the public and sponsors. Lindsey mentioned that he already got funding to build a full size prototype. Unfortunately, the students were not able to see the actual prototype; however, they got to tour around the research laboratory in ISTC.

The mission of ISTC is to help companies to be more sustainable. The researchers in ISTC usually go through the industrial operations and find out how the companies can be less wasteful. They also research and invent tools such as the floating telescoping weir skimmer to solve problems created by industry or the problems within the operating system. For example, Lindsey just helped a company to cut down their usage of water. “They think water is cheap, but they did not think about the true cost of ‘using water’ which includes the energy to process water to be used. Using water is actually very expensive,” said Lindsey. Visit http://www.istc.illinois.edu/ for more information about ISTC.

Illinois Sustainability Technology Center

On Sept. 23, 2010, the JOUR199 discovery class went to the Illinois Sustainability Technology Center to learn about what the center does. According to the ISTC website, the staff members “identify and implement energy efficiency opportunities in industrial, commercial, institutional, and government sectors.” Basically, companies ask the people at ISTC to evaluate their buildings and procedures to determine the amount of waste they are producing. Then, the employees at ISTC will give suggestions about how to minimize the output of waste. The center has been given many awards, including the Sustainable Electronics Initiative. The man who gave the tour, Dr. Tim Lindsey, has been the recipient of a P2 Champion. This means that he has an “outstanding impact on implementing pollution prevention.”

The ISTC encounters many challenges when it comes to downsizing the amount of waste people produce. One growing concern is e-waste. When people purchase new products, their older models are left sitting around out of use or are thrown away. Only about 15% of electronic parts are recyclable, leaving the rest to waste. Also, most products do not have interchangeable parts, so when an object breaks, it must be replaced completely. Finding new ways to reuse the e-waste is a current task at the ISTC. One way they are tackling this problem is by starting a competition challenging University of Illinois students to create “appealing, useful products from e-waste.” It has since grown to a global competition.

The ISTC works hard to reduce the amount of waste people and companies produce. They can give advice on how to make a building “green” while it is still being planned and designed. The center also has multiple seminars a month on how to incorporate sustainable technology in everyday use. To learn more about the ISTC , you can visit their website at http://www.istc.illinois.edu/.

By: Maggie McPhillips

Galaxy Zoo Podcast

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In my profession, journalists are trying to figure out what comes next for journalism. Stories created by members of the public are called citizen journalism or participatory journalism. Some journalists say we need more direct work from the public. The world of science also is figuring out both how to tell the story of science to the public, and how to involve the members o f the public in discovery. Web projects allow that. At Galaxy Zoo, people get to classify galaxies according to their shapes. To do this, viewers look at pictures of galaxies taken by the Hubble telescope. They decide if a galaxy is spiral or elliptical and classify the direction of its rotation. Apparently people are better at identifying the shapes than supercomputers are, so regular people add to the data.  At  Galaxy Zoo, everybody can be an astronomer. Everybody can be a  scientist.  This is Jennifer Follis for Science and the Media.

Smart diet, better outcome

David Lee, an undergraduate freshman of UIUC, walks into the dining hall of his dormitory. “Wow, they are serving fried chicken today,” he says. He happily runs toward the food but stops when he finds the Nutrition Facts chart that says “Calories 319, Fat Cal. 185.” Discouraged, David decides to eat some more lettuce instead of the fried chicken that looked as if it were from heaven. Sadly, David is not the only one who suffers from this dilemma when eating. Modern society tells people to be fit and slender, and sees obese people as ugly. In order to be confident about their appearance in this world, people should keep themselves in shape.
Then how? While the majority of people want to be fit, not all of them achieve their goals because it is not an easy task losing weight while keeping the body healthy. Apart from the fact that it is a hard task losing weight, a lot of people do experience that their effort does not pay off. In order to efficiently lose weight and not damage the body’s overall functioning, it is important to know what to do and what to avoid.

Many people know that low-fat diet is necessary in keeping the body in shape, but they seem to ignore the impact carbohydrates have upon the body. Carbohydrates are, just like fats, stored as extra body fat when surplus calories remain. And, because it is easy to consume carbohydrates from many different sources, people tend to eat excessive amount of carbohydrates while not noticing it. In order to lose weight, people should not only reduce the amount of fat they consume but also cut off the amount of carbohydrates they eat throughout the day.

What about protein? Protein is important because it keeps the person from losing muscles when the calorie intake is significantly reduced. Muscles are very important in losing weight, because more muscle results in higher metabolism, which means that the person can eat more and still lose weight. (Kim, 2010) This is the main reason muscular exercise is more important than aerobic exercise in losing weight. More muscle, as stated above, increases the body’s metabolism, and later on prevents the so-called yo-yo effect in which the lost weight comes back rapidly. Foods that are low in fat and high in protein include chicken breast and beans. One thing to be careful about protein is that the surplus is stored as fat, just like any other nutrients.

Of course, it is important to exercise both aerobically and muscularly. However, one cannot lose weight if he/she does not change his/her diet. Eat smart and lose your weight efficiently. Always remember that vegetables can help you fill up your stomach without many calories being taken in, and that drastically reducing calorie intake can have detrimental effects to your body, such as hair loss.


Information source taken from: Korean Ministry of Health & Welfare

Dispersants: Dish Soap or Deadly Poison?

It is human nature to overlook the long-term effects of man’s impact on the environment. Though the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has finally been capped, after an excruciating period of five months, the remnants of the crisis still permeate our ocean. Over the course of five months, the once translucent blue waters of the Gulf have been transformed into a viscous mixture of petroleum and the remnants of harmed aquatic life. Because oil is less dense than water, it floats on top, forming a semi-opaque layer that acts as a death trap to any unfortunate marine life that comes in contact with the water. Oil itself eventually disperses, but the scale of the BP oil spill requires human intervention to reduce the negative effects it has on the delicate ecosystem. The resilience of the oil is precisely what drives people to look for short-term solutions to stop the situation from escalating.

The use of dispersants has long been controversial due to the unknown effects they may have on the environment. Dispersants act like dish soap: think of them working like your lemon-scented dish detergent you use to clean your dinner plates. They have properties to separate the oil into smaller droplets so that the cleaning process is easier. However, unlike dish soap, dispersants contain potentially hazardous chemicals. The effects of these chemicals are currently indefinite, though there have been reports of BP spill workers becoming ill due to exposure to dispersants. If there is notable harm, why aren’t dispersants being used in moderation? Scientists admit it was logical to use dispersants at first, but we should be trying to eliminate the reliance on something that could potentially cause greater harm in the future.

Tim Lindsey, a scientist working at the ISTC at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is one of the people who is researching an alternative to separating oil from water without the use of dispersants. He firmly believes that “one should not optimize only one component if an entire system is at stake.” Currently, Lindsey is testing out an oil skimmer and filter that would separate oil from water without the use of harmful chemicals. There are people all over the world like Lindsey trying to solve problems, but at the same time keeping in mind the long-term effects of their findings.

Maybe It's Not So Random...

How many times have you said that something is “so random”? How many times is that something really random? If you think about it, we throw the term around all the time, but never really think about what it entails. Radio Lab DJs Jad and Robert explore the wonder of randomness in an episode called Stochasticity. Stochasticity is, as they put it, "a wonderfully slippery and smarty-pants word for randomness."

Now, imagine you live in Northern England, and you send out a balloon with a message saying, “Please return to (your name).” What do you think the odds are of someone finding it and sending it back? Now, what are the odds of that person sharing your name? Age? Pet? This is what happened to Laura Buxton when she was ten years old. Jad and Robert caught wind of this story and had both Lauras on their show, where they were posed the question, “Do you believe in miracles?” One Laura answered, “I’d say it’s more fate than a miracle.” But how much of it is really fate? Jad and Robert embarked on a journey to find out.

Photo taken by: Paige Leyden

What if you sent not only one balloon, but a whole bunch?

What they found was both shocking and slightly disappointing. With the help of Deborah Nolan, a professor of Statistics at UC Berkeley, they found that when something is really random, it doesn’t seem random at all. They also learned from Jay Koehler, statistics and probability expert from the University of Texas, that the odds of something extraordinary, like winning the lottery, are not as slim as we think. He shared instances of people who had won the lottery multiple times.

All this makes me wonder, how many other things and events do we see in our everyday lives as random, but really have high chances of occurrence. If we knew about all these things, would we lose faith in fate? I would hope not. After all, Laura Buxton essentially met herself nearly ten years ago, and hasn’t lost faith. Even if the differences outweigh the similarities, sometimes it’s more comforting to turn away from statistics to know we aren’t alone. But the next time you call something random, just think: Is it really?

The Proper Flow of Energy

by Danielle Brown

Laura Barnes, from left, and Tim Lindsey meet our class at Illinois Sustainable Technology Center. Photo by Maggie McPhillips.

Energy is one of the most expensive resources we use, yet it is also a resource we tend to waste quite often. Well, located at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana lies the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC). The ISTC is here to help us with our terrible waste habits, which is a global problem.
Energy inefficiency is a common flaw of the world. People always tend to go with the lowest bidder, but in the long run may end up spending more money while using too much energy. Problems like these are the ISTC’s specialty. Their goal is to help organizations discover the problems of being wasteful.
According to the ISTC, the problem of being wasteful starts with the system. “The key to sustainability is the development and implementation of better systems,” said Tim Lindsey, a representative of the ISTC. In a class visit to the center, Lindsey pointed out that the ISTC works to find better solutions to run a system more energy efficiently. When doing this, the ISTC does a lot of research. After the research aspect of their job is complete, they help spread the word to businesses all over the world by providing their knowledge.
Once businesses realize the problems of their inefficient habits, they improve their habits. Therefore, instead of paying more for energy in the long run, businesses learn to pay more now and use less energy, thus saving money in the future. It is small concepts like these, that the ISTC provides, which can be a big difference to many businesses.
The ISTC has a motto they go by. Lindsey said, “You become more sustainable when you become less wasteful.” They truly embody this type of character. By providing ways for businesses to become less wasteful, they help them become more energy efficient and make it possible for businesses to keep a little bit more change in their pockets, which is always a good thing.

Understand The World Better With Visualization

Our world is composed of countless models. For example, the formation of galaxies can be explained by a model of clustering and merging of masses; the traffic in a city can be illustrated by a model of myriad vehicles’ movement; and the activity of a cell can be demonstrated by a model of numerous organelles working together. Therefore, the key to understand our world is to understand these models. While scientists and specialists comprehend models in a specific area and continue to research in new models, laymen have great obstacles to understand these models.

Are there any approaches to this cognitive problem? Luckily, the scientific visualization made by Advanced Visualization Laboratory (AVL) of NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Application) is a great method to overcome this difficulty. The AVL team used scientific models and data as raw materials, applied their visualization skill, artistic designs, data management and multi-media technique, and, with the calculation of supercomputers of NCSA, transformed the models to 3D movies, which can be easily understood by the laymen.

The visualization technology helps audiences realize that they can learn some complex systems without reading through the research papers of specialists. On Sept. 2, 2010, the Journalism 199 class of UIUC (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign) visited NCSA and watched a 3D movie made by NCSA’s Advanced Visualization Laboratory (AVL). Wearing 3D glasses, students watched high-resolution scientific visualization of supercomputer-generated models, and they were amazed at the vivid presentation of phenomena such as the formation of a tornado, the daily traffic of Chicago and the emergence of galaxies. Through watching the scientific visualization, students picked up pictorial, dynamic and causal concepts about how the world works. With the visualization technology, more people can understand the world better.

Less Talk is More Annoying

"What? No! Really? Ha Ha Ha!" Ever heard this before? While sitting on the twenty-two North Illini bus toward the main quad, this is what I, along with several other bus commuters, hear on a regular basis. This diluted chatter is what Lauren Emberson, PhD candidate for psychology at Cornell University, would call a "halfalogue." A "halfalogue" is when a listener hears only half of a conversation in a dialogue. A dialogue is a conversation between two present people.
Yes, this chatter and noise may be annoying and distracting to most, which seems harmless, but there may be other serious side effects. Ever try studying, reading a book, or even focusing on something while listening to a "halfalogue"? If so, you would probably find this task very difficult. Personally, I find it very frustrating to listen to someone talk on the phone because I find myself always thinking about what the other person is saying on the other end of the phone. Emberson says this makes my brain try to focus more intensely, in order to fill in the missing holes in the conversation and make sense of everything.
Imagine if you heard only half of a scary murder story. You might find yourself asking questions like: How did it end? Did anyone get hurt? Who was the killer? These questions are similar to the questions you may be asking yourself when listening to half of a cell-phone speech. Because the speech is less predictable, it causes the brain to focus on the unheard speech instead of the intended task, therefore decreasing the progress on the intended activity. Emberson has also done studies to prove that unheard cell-phone chatter causes the brain to have slower reaction times, specifically in driving.
So, the next time you can't focus on your studies, you might want to blame your neighbor sitting on the bus next to you on the phone before you blame yourself.