COLLEGIATETIMES
wednesday october 22, 2008 blacksburg, va.
www.collegiatetimes.com
Green Move over, Prius: Avion pushes 110 mpg software
sports MICHAEL VICK TO PLEAD GUILTY TO STATE DOGFIGHTING CHARGES
slashes power bill
Former Hokie quarterback Michael Vick plans to plead guilty to Virginia dogfighting charges. This action could allow Vick to VICK qualify for an early discharge into a halfway house from federal prison in Kansas.
RYAN TRAPP
ct news staff writer
news SUSTAINABILITY WEEK 2008 IN FULL SWING This week Virginia Tech and the surrounding community are celebrating Sustainability Week 2008. Events throughout the week will be focusing on water conservation, reducing food waste and engaging in climate action. From film to exhibitions to speakers, the Blacksburg community will host a wide variety of environmental activity. Specific events can be found at www.recycle.vt.edu/sustain.
SGA SOLICITS INPUT FOR HOKIES ON FIRE EVENT The Student Government Association is organizing for the Hokies on Fire game, which will take place on Jan. 28 against Clemson, by offering a survey regarding student ideas for this year’s T-shirt slogan and cheer. Students can enter their ideas at www.hokiesonfire.com.
COURTESY OF BILL GREEN
Tech associate professor of industrial systems engineering Bill Green poses with the original Avion, which broke the world record in 1986 for fuel economy. In 2008, Green and his original partner, Craig Henderson, fashioned another record-breaking Avion model, shown below.
BECCA THOMAS
ct news reporter In 1979, two college friends decided to design and build a lightweight sports car — the Avion — and in 1986, set the Guinness World Record in fuel economy, averaging 103.7 miles per gallon. Bill Green, now an industrial design associate professor at Virginia Tech, and Craig Henderson, current owner of Bullfrog
Boats in Bellingham, Wash., entered the Avion into the “Three Flags Econo Rally,” a race from Mexico to Canada. After their car set the world record it was featured at the World Fair in Vancouver. Fast-forward 22 years. On Oct. 11, Henderson and Green once again set the world record for fuel economy, this time averaging 113.1 miles per gallon in a new race from the Canadian border to the Oregon border. “It was a personal goal of ours to restore our car and break the old world record,” Henderson said. The redesigned and improved Avion has new parts from a Smart Car, including an engine and six-gallon fuel tank, Green said. “The Avion weighs about half of a VW and is streamlined,” Green said. “It’s 42 inches high and very smooth. It looks a lot like a lotus — it’s pointier. There is a lot of room inside and a large trunk.” While at Western Washington
SUNSHINE high 59, low 29
“It was designed to be practical and not an experimental car. If people were interested we would love to produce them.” The two finished building the car in 1984, and entered the contest that put them in the Guinness Book of World Records. The original Avion sports car cost between $20,000 and $25,000. After their recent world record, the two have already begun to design and build a new car. The new car will be participating in Progressive’s Automotive X PRIZE competition, Henderson said. The two might also enter the Avion. “This new car will have the opportunity to get better fuel economy, and be more comfortable,” Henderson said. “The new car should be in testing around the spring time.” Teams whose cars are able to attain 100 miles per gallon and can meet market needs for cost, safety, size and performance will have a chance to win a share of the $10 million purse. So far, 120 teams have signed letters of intent for the competition.
sports in brief BEAMER ADDRESSES INJURIES
weather
University, Henderson had hopes to become a biology professor. “After going through programs and classes something else caught my eye — The engineering department and Vehicle Research Institute,” Henderson said. Green, an industrial design major, was also drawn to the Vehicle Research Institute. “During my time there we built three or four cars,” Henderson said. “That was like training and background for this.” After graduating, Henderson became an engineer but found the work less than inspiring. As a senior thesis project, Green designed the Avion sports car. “Mike Seal was our professor and was a car builder, and built a number of high mileage cars,” Green said. Green and Henderson decided to build a car themselves that could potentially be manufactured and sold to the public. “Craig and I like cars a lot and I have some pretty crazy ones, but we wanted to build a fun car that also gets great mileage,” Green said.
Reporters peppered Frank Beamer with questions about his abnormally mistake-prone special teams squad during yesterday’s press conference. While his specialty is usually one of the nation’s finest, this year it’s given up three punt returns for touchdowns. Beamer cited the crucial losses of last year’s “head hunters,” or players who line up near the sidelines and run down the punter returner, such as Brandon Dillard (torn ACL) and Zach Luckett
(suspension) as well as missed tackles by their replacements as issues that could nip the poor performance of this unit in the bud. He added that season-ending injuries to Kenny Lewis Jr. and Davon Morgan also hurt their special teams greatly and that they’d focus on working with this group a lot in Tuesday’s practice. The Hokies gave up a punt return for a touchdown against Boston College in the second quarter of Saturday’s game. Beamer said that Tyrod Taylor is an accurate passer, but that sometimes the route running is out of sync. He expects to see man
coverage against Florida State, which is the same defensive strategy Taylor had success with in Tech’s 35-point output at Nebraska. Beamer said that he has some trepidation about implementing new offensive packages mid-season because of inexperience on that side of the ball. Outside of Taylor, the Hokies’ ground game struggled with Darren Evans and Josh Oglesby, posting a 1.6-yards-per-carry average. Beamer stated that no strategic change was needed to enhance this, but that the offensive line needed to block better.
To get an idea of how a typical computer processor functions, picture a car speeding 300 miles an hour across town but hitting every red light along the way. At each light the car sits, wasting valuable fuel. Likewise, typical computers put energy into every program opened, even those that aren’t being used. Now picture a car that could automatically predict when the lights would change. A car that intelligently sets its speed so that it hits no red lights, wasting no fuel in the process. With EcoDaemon, Virginia Tech researchers may have invented that type of “car.” Invented by Tech computer science professor Wu-Chun Feng, along with Ph.D. candidate Song Huang, EcoDaemon’s ability to both save energy and cut back on the environmental impact of computers helped it win the Southeastern Research Association’s first annual IP-to-market competition. This revolutionary computer software is able to conserve energy on virtually anything containing a processor, from laptops, to cell phones, to computing devices in cars. “The system is able to intelligently preset power modes for each application running on your computer,” Huang said. “This allows you to run a certain program using only the power you need for that program.” When applied to a typical 40-megawatt data center, EcoDaemon can save a company an estimated $30 million in energy costs per year. If EcoDaemon were implemented internationally, energy savings could reach nearly $60 billion dollars a year by 2009, according to the researchers. By reducing the computer’s core temperature, the software diminishes the impact the computer has on the environment. “Typically, when people think about being green, they see it as costing money,” Feng said. “EcoDaemon contradicts this belief; it’s so effective because it is able to save energy, as well as money.” By competing in the SURA IP-to-market competition, university research such as EcoDaemon can be brought into the limelight and noticed by businesses throughout the nation. “There is a lot of useful research going on in universities out there that goes unnoticed. This type of competition allows intellectual properties to be brought into a commercial market,” Feng said. Although currently owned by Tech, the notoriety EcoDaemon received at SURA has caused a stir in the market, and several companies are looking to seek out rights to the EcoDaemon properties. One company atop the list of potential buyers is EnergyWare, run by Tech alumnus Bob Summers. It’s interested in commercializing EcoDaemon in order to help solve the growing world energy crisis.
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Arbor Day
coming up
RILEY PRENDERGAST
ct news reporter
TOMORROW’S CT Take an inside look at Nicolas Delgado De Robles, one of Tech’s top tennis talents. Listen to what’s on the mind of our sports writers in their weekly sports podcast.
index News.....................1 Features................2 0pinions................3
Classifieds..............5 Sports....................4 Sudoku..................5
An independent, student-run newspaper serving the Virginia Tech community since 1903 105th year issue 96
As credit gets crunched, financial aid stream slows
SARAH KILBOURNE/SPPS
Shawn Custer (left), Jeannette Hoffman (center, kneeling), Yulim Hong (right) and Jessica Thai (behind) plant a tree behind the Skelton Conference Center as part of Tree Campus USA’s Arbor Day celebration yesterday.
As the nations’ financial situation continues to founder, financial security may become the deciding factor for many students in choosing whether to spend extra years in graduate school. While applications will rise, universities across the nation have been seeing a drop in state-funded student loans and student loan programs funded by banks while the number of students applying for financial aid has increased. Because Tech’s financial aid application deadline was in March, however, the biggest crunch has yet to pass. Barry Simmons, director of the office of university scholarships and financial aid, said that even up until the deadline, the number of applications for federal financial aid was up only slightly. “The number of FAFSA applications has been up in the past year around 12 to 13 percent,” Simmons said. “The adjustment is usually in the fall semester; we use grant funds to compensate. As of now, all of the grant and state funds have been spent, some federal aid for students does still remain.” Simmons foresees an increase in the amount of FAFSA applicants.
“We do anticipate an increase in financial aid applications, but there does not appear to be an increase in state or federal funds to compensate for this,” Simmons said. “We will be focusing on plans to compensate for this within the university in the coming years.” But it is not just the problems in the student loans and financial aid markets that are creating uneasy feelings among families sending their children off to college. Some banks such as Wachovia, which is experiencing some of the biggest nationwide setbacks, are being forced to liquidate programs set up to aid colleges in paying bills. On Oct. 2, Wachovia’s college investment fund was frozen, allowing for only a 10 percent withdrawal rate of the fund. The college investment fund serves roughly 1,000 colleges and private schools in the United States and has guaranteed its investors that it will relax these withdrawal caps as soon as the market allows. Another major setback for universities in western parts of Virginia was a delay where student loan funds from banks didn’t reach universities in time for the semester. Radford University, affected by this delay, has since received the financial aid owed to its students. “There are two types of financial aid,
one that comes directly from the federal government and another that is funded by banks,” Simmons said. “Virginia Tech deals directly with the federal government, so we do not go through banks … we were not affected by the delays in funding.” There were dozens of students whose funding did hit a snag, Simmons said. Those students with non-federal loans have since been given the funding that they need from the university. Simmons also said that he was a firm believer in “going through federal funding first,” which may turn out to be the best choice for students seeking financial aid in this time of fiscal uncertainty. Tech’s education abroad programs are also preparing for potential impact from the financial crisis. “We have not seen too much of a decrease in numbers. I’m sure that there will be an impact over time, but it is too early to tell what that impact might be,” said Jeremy Billetdeaux, assistant program director for education abroad. However, the financial crunch has a slight silver lining: the dollar has increased in strength relative to other nations’ currency, allowing Tech students greater purchasing power outside the United States, Billetdeaux said.
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