Bostlnno.com

February 27, 2012 by Lauren Landry

In hopes of getting college students more involved in their communities, the White House announced the Campus Champions of Change Challenge this fall. Now, after weeding through the thousands of submissions, they’ve announced the top 15 finalists, two of which are nearby schools: UMass Amherst and Brown University.

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OH&S
Occupational Health & Safety, February 25, 2012

First prize and $10,000 went to two Brown University graduates for an app named Lifeline that will be launched prior to this year’s hurricane season.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response has chosen three winners of its challenge to develop Facebook apps that help users prepare for emergencies and get support from their friends and family during an emergency. The ASPR Facebook Lifeline Application Challenge invited software application developers to design new app to establish social connections prior to an emergency.

First prize went to two Brown University graduates, Evan Donahue and Erik Stayton, with their Lifeline app. Coming in second was a Las Vegas team (David Vinson, Erick Rodriguez, Gregg Orr, and Garth Winckler) with an app named JAMAJIC 360. Third went to AreYouOk? developed by TrueTeamEffort, a team of 11 University of Illinois students headed by Alex Kirlik.

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Friday, December 9, 2011

MASS HIGH TECH
The Voice of New England Innovation

Med device entrepreneur wins RI Biz Plan contest

By Michelle Lang

Brown University engineering lecturer and entrepreneur Kipp Bradford took home top honors at the Rhode Island Business Plan Competition for his emergency cooling system aimed at first-responder ambulances.

The competition, held Wednesday at the Rhode Island Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, included 48 presenters giving 90-second business pitches to a panel of judges for a stake in the $1,000 total in cash prizes for the top nine pitches.
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Brown University on Wednesday announced a new program in which doctoral students will receive an extra year of support to pursue a master’s degree in a secondary field. While many Ph.D. students earn a master’s degree in their own discipline, the aim of this program is to provide a broader experience for doctoral students. Funds for “Open Graduate Programs” — as the effort is being called — are coming from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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PROVIDENCE — To scholars of early American history, the slim volume titled “An Essay Concerning the Reconciling of Differences among Christians” is a many-sided mystery.

With no title page, author’s name or publisher’s imprint, it’s almost impossible to tell when it was published or by whom. What’s more, the book is filled with hand-scrawled notes and annotations that may or may not have been penned by Providence founder Roger Williams.

Now owned by the John Carter Brown Library, a rare books library at Brown University, the book is also the centerpiece of “A Key into a 17th-Century Mystery: Investigating Roger Williams’ Shorthand,” one of several new exhibits celebrating the city’s 375th anniversary.

“If you’re the kind of person who likes a good puzzle, this show will definitely pique your interest,” says Brown history professor Steven Lubar. “Granted, it’s not a blockbuster. But it does offer a glimpse of a mystery that has resisted solution for more than 200 years.

Like any good mystery, this one comes with a colorful array of clues and suspects. The book, for example, was professionally bound and printed, suggesting the work of a well-established printer. Yet according to Lubar, no other copies “An Essay Concerning the Reconciling of Differences among Christians” have ever been found, despite decades of scholarly sleuthing.

“It’s just very weird,” he says. “Even if the essay was intended for very limited distribution, you’d think that one or two other copies would have surfaced by now.”

An even bigger mystery surrounds the handwritten notes and comments that fill most of the book’s 200-plus pages. First, it’s not clear who made the notes — although several clues, including handwriting samples and an unsigned letter found inside the book, point to Williams.

Second, the vast majority of the notes are indecipherable. The reason? Whoever made the notes used an obscure form of shorthand that is all but unreadable today.

“From what I understand, there were many different kinds of shorthand in use during the 17th century,” Lubar says. “In this case, we just don’t have the key that would tell us what the various symbols mean. It’s like trying to read ancient Egyptian without the Rosetta Stone.”

As part of the exhibit, library officials are unveiling a new tool — a digital version of the book that allows viewers to zoom in on every page — that may help solve the mystery. They’ve also assembled a host of supporting materials, ranging from Colonial-era stenography manuals to writing samples taken from other books and letters attributed to Roger Williams.

“If the book did belong to Roger Williams — and if we can figure out what the notes mean — it could have real historical significance,” says Lubar. “As a religious thinker, he was way ahead of time, especially when it comes to ideas about religious freedom and separation of church and state. This could help us understand what he was reading and thinking at a key point in his life.”

Two other exhibits, both on the Brown campus, also explore Williams’ legacy.

On Tuesday, Oct. 18, the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology will open “Customes, Mann-ers, and Worships — Rhode Island Begins,” an exhibit featuring Colonial-era artifacts from both European and Native American communities. Co-organized with the Rhode Island Historical Society, the show takes its inspiration from “A Key Into the Language of America” (1643), the famous dictionary that Williams based mainly on his dealings with local Narragansett tribes.

A few weeks later, on Nov. 8, the John Hay Library will open “The Art of Roger Williams: Providence at 375.” Drawn from the library’s own collections, along with loans from private collectors, the show aims to trace Williams’ legacy down to the present day.

Among the highlights: a rare Native American-language Bible (also thought to have belonged to Williams), several paintings and other artworks that depict incidents from Williams’ life, and variety of pop-culture products, including a box of Roger Williams Flour.

“A Key into a 17th-Century Mystery: Investigating Roger Williams’ Shorthand” runs through Nov. 30 in the John Carter Brown Library’s MacMillan Reading Room, 94 George St. (at the Brown Green) in Providence. Hours are Mon.-Fri.8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. and Sat. 9 a.m.-noon. For information on the other exhibits, call (401) 863-2065 (Haffenreffer) or (401) 863-2146 (John Hay Library).

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Mike Wolff and five of his Brown hockey teammates hadn’t been swimming, surfing and boogie boarding for long in the choppy waves at South Shore Beach in Little Compton on Tuesday afternoon when they heard a girl screaming.

“I looked over to my right and this girl was yelling towards us, ‘Help! Help!’ ” Wolff said. “She was kind of bobbing up and down. Her friend was a little further out, maybe five or ten yards.”

Just over 30 yards from shore, the two girls, approximately 12 and 14 years old, were caught in a rip current in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Irene.

Wolff and teammate Jeff Ryan swam quickly to the girls and, battling the rip current, got them to shore.

“It was a hard swim to move even five yards,” against the rip current, which was pushing him away from shore, Wolff said.

Once they made it back to the beach, the girls “were in a panic,” said Wolff.

“ ‘Can you help my boyfriend? My boyfriend is hurt,’ ” one of the girls said. “(Jeff) Ryan and I were like, ‘Where is your boyfriend?’

“He was floating on his back, past where the waves were breaking. He was going under the waves, kind of getting tossed around,” said Wolff.

“When I first spotted the kid, I thought it was a dead body floating,” he said.

Seeing what was going on, the other four Brown players –– Dennis Robertson, Mike Borge, Bobby Farnham and David Brownschidle –– leaped into action. Robertson, who has worked as a lifeguard at a swimming pool in his native British Columbia, took charge, swimming to the boy, who was about 60 yards from shore. With help from Borge, Robertson got him onto a surfboard and headed toward the beach.

It was only after minutes of struggling toward shore and making little headway that the players realized that the way out of a rip current is to swim parallel to the beach until reaching calmer water, said Brownschidle.

Finally, 15 minutes after the ordeal started, the players dragged the boy — estimated to be 14 years old — onto the beach. All three of the youngsters were safe and the six hockey players were winded but unhurt.

“It was a crazy couple of minutes,” said Ryan.

Once all were out of the water, “there were maybe 15 or 20 people scattered on the beach and not a single person even stood up or looked or realized what had happened,” said Wolff, in an interview along with his five teammates in coach Brendan Whittet’s office on Thursday afternoon.

No lifeguards were on duty at the beach.

“If all six of us hadn’t been there and Dennis wasn’t a certified lifeguard . . . I think it would have gone very badly. We were really lucky to have (Robertson) there,” Wolff said.

“This went the way it’s supposed to go,” said Robertson. “Things could have been a lot worse. These guys helped me out a ton. We were lucky the kid was still conscious. It worked out as good as you could have planned it.

“The kid was OK. He was in shock, so he was kind of dizzy and oblivious to what was going on. We told (his mother) to take him to the hospital. . . . He was out of it. He had swallowed a lot of water. Hopefully, he’s all right now.”

The players don’t know the names of the youngsters they saved, though they believe the boy’s name was Cory.

“The weird part to me was that 10 minutes later they’re gone and we’re sitting there thinking, ‘What just happened?’ ” said Wolff.

“To be honest, I’ve never had to save anyone back home,” said Robertson. “The pool is only waist deep. It wasn’t like I go through this every day. It shook me up a little bit.”

Except for Brownschidle, a native of New Jersey who graduated in May and is headed to the training camp of the American Hockey League’s Adirondack Phantoms later this month, the other five will play for Brown this season.

Wolff, a senior defenseman, is from Walpole, Mass. Farnham, a senior forward and assistant captain, is from North Andover, Mass. Borge, a sophomore forward, is from Somerset, Mass. Ryan, a junior forward and a graduate of St. George’s, is from Media, Pa. Robertson is a sophomore defenseman from Fort St. John, B.C. He was chosen by Toronto in June’s NHL draft.

mdivver@projo.com

From the July 22, 2011 edition

By David Klepper, AP

A 22-year-old Brown University student has a solution to a problem vexing advertisers in this era of distracted audiences: give viewers a chance to win prizes in exchange for watching commercials.

Brandon Yoshimura, a senior political science student, launched a startup company called Loffles that presents online advertisements to viewers in exchange for giving them gift cards to popular retailers and a chance to win products like televisions or computers.

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http://articles.boston.com/2011-07-22/news/29803977_1_advertisers-gift-cards-viewers-flip-channels

From the July 23, 2011 edition

PROVIDENCE, R.I.—After waiting four years, a Brown University scientist is celebrating the arrival of an unmanned space probe at a distant asteroid.

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http://www.boston.com/news/local/rhode_island/articles/2011/07/23/brown_scientist_cheers_probes_arrival_at_asteroid/