Friday, June 02, 2006

Harry Potter's Invisibility Cloak Is Possible, Studies Say (Bloomberg). The key to making an object invisible is to surround it with a cloak made of ``metamaterials'' that are engineered to bend light around an object, continuing on the other side in the same direction as before, Ulf Leonhardt, author of one of the studies, said in a telephone interview. Sound waves, which have a longer wavelength than light, can be distorted in such a way, and light bends naturally in mirages, for instance, he said. ``All one has to do is enhance this bending effect and control it better,'' said Leonhardt, Professor of theoretical physics at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. ``We've given recipes of how to do this. You have to control structures that are smaller than the wavelength of light -- less than half a micrometer,'' he said. A micrometer is a millionth of a meter. The authors of the papers set out mathematical requirements for a theoretical metamaterial, that could achieve invisibility. . . . . . . . The two papers, ``Controlling Electromagnetic Fields'' by Pendry, Schurig and Smith, and ``Optical Conformal Mapping,'' by Leonhardt, were published yesterday by Science Express, the online advance publication of the journal Science. The Duke/Imperial research was supported by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. That's "all one has to do," indeed: enhance and control the bending effect on the light -- um, without adversely affecting the wearer of the cloak. Still, intriguing. 3:43:56 PM    comment []

Plagiarism review recommends faculty dismissals, by Kyle Kondik, The Post (Ohio University). An independent review of plagiarism in the Russ College of Engineering and Technology found that plagiarism has been “rampant and flagrant” for the past 20 years. . . . The report also recommends Provost Kathy Krendl “initiate the dismissal of the current chair of the department immediately” and another faculty member, who advised 11 questionable theses. . . . The university’s next step is to solicit the advice of Gary Pavela, the director of judicial programs and student ethical development at the University of Maryland, who will be on campus Tuesday, Krendl said. He will help the university reconcile differences between the independent review by Bloemer and Meyer and the Academic Honesty Oversight Committee report, advising the university on best practices to combat plagiarism, according to Krendl and a university news release. CHE story: Review Confirms Plagiarism by Ohio U. Graduate Students and Recommends Professors' Dismissals, by Paula Wasley. (subscription required) Mr. Matrka, who began collecting evidence of graduate student plagiarism in 2004 after his adviser told him his own thesis was unacceptable, said that complaints of plagiarism within the engineering college dated back to 1985, but that university administrators had been slow to act on the issue until recently. Some people think that the faculty maybe just had this slip by them, he said. But when you see two theses with the same title approved by the same professor, with the same first page, I think that speaks for itself. Subject: Plagiarism in the Department of Mechanical Engineering in the Russ College of Engineering at Ohio University (memo to the Provost) There can never be a time or reason at an academic institution, such as our Ohio University, when plagiarism can be justified. Equally, there can not be any tolerance of the individuals who participate in this serious misconduct. The ad hoc committee of the college established some guidelines to mitigate the obvious problems but we do not concur that the problems are caused by the graduate students and subsequently it is up to the graduate students to remedy the situation. When a faculty member becomes the advisor/mentor of a graduate student, she/he automatically assumes the responsibilities to monitor the progress of the students as they advance to become professionals. Supervision of theses is part of the process. We are appalled that three members of the faculty in mechanical engineering have so blatantly chosen to ignore their responsibilities by contributing to an atmosphere of negligence toward issues of academic misconduct in their own department. We are amazed to see that the internal ad hoc committee recommended no reprimand for those individuals. (Continues with the committee's recommendations.) 12:43:53 PM    comment []

Arizona Governor Napolitano signs bill to allow wine shipments to customers in Arizona. (AP) 11:45:06 AM    comment []

Extortion virus code cracked (BBC). 11:43:46 AM    comment []