PAINTBALL Rutgers Paintball Team earns top-10
ELECTIONS Presidential elections have been marred
BASEBALL Team beat Delaware St., improving to
ranking in National Championships
by questionable circumstances, with New York as latest
17-19, 3-6 in Big Ten play
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Self-driving cars utilize existing, new technologies HARSHEL PATEL DIGITAL EDITOR
Roads filled with self-driving cars may stop existing solely in fantasies and become real, thanks to research innovations in the technology industry. Advancements needed to produce self-driving cars have been moving quickly, and industry giants predict self-driving cars will soon be available to the public. Nissan, for example, announced it will produce self-driving cars by 2020, while Google is aiming to do so by 2018, according to robohub.org. Designing a self-driving car is no small feat. The car has to be able to do everything a human driver does, such as navigating, determining its surroundings, predicting what will happen with the surroundings and what the car should do next, according to the website for Google’s Self-Driving Car Project. To do this, the car uses a global positioning system (GPS), an inertial navigation system (INS) and a series of sensors, according to robohub.org. Information from the GPS and INS are used to position the vehicle while the sensors produce a three-dimensional image of the environment. GPS works by having satellite signals sent to the vehicle to find the vehicle’s position and velocity. But, this signal can be jammed, SEE TECHNOLOGIES ON PAGE 4
Jennifer Coulter, a School of Arts and Sciences junior majoring in physics, has earned a Goldwater scholarship for the 2016-2017 academic year due to her work in research and her future goals. COURTESY OF JENNIFER COULTER
Rutgers student earns Goldwater scholarship ERIC WECK CONTRIBUTING WRITER
School of Arts and Sciences junior Jennifer Coulter has become the latest Rutgers student to be named a Goldwater Scholar. The Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship is awarded each year to a limited number of undergraduate sophomores and juniors planning on entering research-based fields, according to the Barry Goldwater
Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program. The scholarship grants a maximum of $7,500 per year to cover student tuition and fees. Coulter received the award for a variety of successes, including her research experiences, which ranges from the development of solar cell technology to working with heavy-ion nuclear physics, she said. Before she found success in her field, Coulter pursued more liberal disciplines.
“In high school, I was going through doing a lot of art related, graphic design sort of classes, and it wasn’t until I took physics in high school that I realized that I really, really liked math and I really, really liked science,” she said. Coulter largely attributes her change in direction to her high school physics teacher, Stephen Godkin. A total of 13 Rutgers Department of Physics and Astronomy undergraduates have received the
award over the past two decades, according to the School of Arts and Sciences website. Although she enjoys a lot of the applied, hands-on aspects of working with the Engineering Department, she said her true passions lie in the analytical, formula-based studies of physics. “There’s a different mindset between physics and engineering, SEE SCHOLARSHIP ON PAGE 5
Administrator explains coming Sakai changes JESSICA HERRING STAFF WRITER
The Office of Instructional and Research Technology will upgrade Sakai over the summer, adding new features and consolidating others, like the two different gradebook functions. They will also provide professors with more user-friendly tools. PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY CHLOE COFFMAN / ASSOCIATE PHOTO EDITOR
During the 2016-2017 school year, Rutgers University will be implementing changes to the Sakai site. Gayle Stein, associate director for Instructional Technology, said the Office of Instructional and Research Technology upgrades Sakai regularly to incorporate the latest updates from the international, open source and Sakai community. “We want to provide the best possible service to Rutgers faculty and students,” Stein said. On Sakai, there will be a data-shifter starting June 2016, which will allow an instructor to change the dates forward to the current semester for duplicated sites, Stein said. Also, a new grade book will
end up replacing “grade book” and “grade book 2” starting August 2016, she said. With the new Sakai changes, starting June 2017 students will no longer be able to access discussion and private messages since a forum will be replacing these tools, she said. Assignments two will end up replacing assignments, Stein said. “In the past, students have responded favorably to changes we’ve made in Sakai,” she said. Victoria Walega, an Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy first-year student, uses Sakai often to communicate with other students and professors. She regularly uses the forums and messages on Sakai. Walega thinks the new changes
VOLUME 148, ISSUE 51 • UNIVERSITY ... 3 • OPINIONS ... 6 • CLASSIFIEDS ... 7 • FOOD & DRINK ... 8 • DIVERSIONS ... 9 • SPORTS ... BACK
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