Headlines VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
College of Engineering Headlines is produced annually to present highlights of the past year as well as late-breaking December 2013 news, as they appeared in the general media. Due to limited space, many of the articles appear in excerpted form and are designated by ellipses. These 28 pages represent only a small sampling of news concerning the College of Engineering alumni, faculty, student, and events during 2014.
Published by the News Office, College of Engineering, Virginia Tech
F.A.A. Picks Diverse Sites to Carry Out Drone Tests
are lost and, most important, how to replace the traditional method for avoiding collisions. Integrating the aircraft into the nation’s airspace, set by Congress for 2015, will be phased in gradually. … The six winners, chosen from a field of 25, included Griffiss International Airport, a former Air Force base near Rome, N.Y., which will fly some tests from Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and Virginia Tech, which will fly in Virginia and has an agreement with Rutgers University in New Jersey for testSee DRONE TESTS, page 2
FOX NEWS • January 31, 2014
Football helmet design can lower concussion risk, study finds by Loren Grush As the Super Bowl approaches on Sunday, more and more attention is being paid to the concussion epidemic surrounding the game of football. During the 2013 regular season, NFL players suffered a total of 121 concussions, equating to more than seven concussions per week. Many experts claim that
proper helmet design can ultimately lower the incidence of concussions in the game – an argument that has now been confirmed by new research conducted on the football field. After embedding sensors into two different types of football helmets, researchers from Virginia Tech University have revealed that
one helmet was much more effective at preventing concussions than the other. According to the researchers, their findings confirm that helmets can actually be designed to reduce the risk of concussions during gameplay. Study author Stefan Duma, professor and head of the Virginia Tech – Wake Forest See DESIGN, page 5
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL • September 5, 2014
U.S. Intelligence Community Explores More Rigorous Ways to Forecast Events by Jo Craven McGinty Analysts for the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and more than a dozen other government organizations depend on their ability to forecast national and global events to help ward off various threats to the country, but old-style approaches can produce flawed results. To improve quality, the government has taken the unusual step of running tournaments that invite people outside the intelligence community to develop better ways to forecast world events, and several have produced notable results.
Vol. 31 No. 1
BBC • April 2, 2014
THE NEW YORK TIMES • December 31, 2013
by Matthew Wald WASHINGTON — The Federal Aviation Administration will authorize test sites for drone aircraft in upstate New York, New Jersey and at least eight other states, the agency said on Monday, preparing for a time when unmanned aircraft of various shapes and sizes cruise over the landscape. The agency picked six institutions to operate test locations, which will explore how to set safety standards, train and certify ground-based pilots, ensure that the aircraft will operate safely even if radio links
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“Traditional forecasting in the intelligence community relied on human judgment, and the way in which humans make those judgments has tended to be unstructured deliberation,” said Jason G. Matheny, a project manager for IARPA, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, the research and development arm of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence…. EMBERS, the winning OSI project, beat out two competitors and is led by Naren Ramakrishnan at Virginia Tech. To identify brewing events, the team vacuums up large See EVENTS page 15
U.S. Navy tests robotic fire-fighters
The Shipboard Autonomous Fire-fighting Robot (SAFFiR) has been built by engineers at Virginia Tech and other U.S. universities. The robots are expected to perform a variety of tasks - balancing, turning valves, picking up and dragging a fire hose and jetting water on the fire. They also have a vision system to search for survivors. “The human-sized autonomous robot is capable of finding and suppressing shipboard fires and working seamlessly with human firefighters,” says the Office of Naval Research’s website. Such a machine should be “able to withstand
See ROBOTIC, page 11
THE WASHINGTON POST March 9, 2014
Researchers closing in on solving mystery of how some snakes fly
by Meeri Kim An ornate, lime-green snake hangs from a branch. Upon spotting a predator, it suddenly propels itself into the air, flattening and wiggling its body until safely landing in a faraway tree. Flying snakes sound like creatures from a bad B-movie, but these serpents are elegant gliders that have evolved a special skill that sets them apart. In two new studies, engineers have used simulations to try to decipher how the wingless reptile manages to remain airborne despite its lack of flight appendages. … In a tornado, the low-pressure region is in the center, or eye. Similarly, researchers found areas of low pressure that form on top of the snake’s body, creating a small amount of suction and helping to generate lift. In collaboration with flying-snake expert Jake Socha of Virginia Tech, Barba was able to visualize these swirls of air in a complex computer air-flow simulation.
See SNAKES, page 20