CU News
News from the University of Colorado in Boulder.
Wrap your mind around this! photo origami CU Boulder
Aug 27th
CU-Boulder ‘photo origami’ proposal
wins $2 million NSF grant
wins $2 million NSF grant
The art of origami has inspired children and artists all over the world because of the amazing objects that can be created by folding a simple piece of paper.
Now an engineering research team at the University of Colorado Boulder has won a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a light-controlled approach for “self-assembly” mechanisms in advanced devices based on the same principles.
Known as “photo origami,” the idea is supported by NSF’s Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation program, which supports interdisciplinary teams working on rapidly advancing frontiers of fundamental engineering research.
CU-Boulder associate professor of mechanical engineering Jerry Qi will lead the team developing the photo origami technique. Collaborators will include CU faculty Robert McLeod of electrical engineering, Kurt Maute of aerospace engineering sciences and Elisabeth “Beth” Stade of mathematics, along with Patrick Mather of Syracuse University.
The ability to transform a flat polymer sheet into a sophisticated, mechanically robust 3-D structure will enable new approaches to manufacturing and design of devices from the microscopic to centimeter scales, according to the team. Examples include using extremely low-weight, high-strength materials to create micro-electromechanical systems with complicated 3-D architectures that can be used for microscopic sensors such as antennas or microphones, and miniature robotic devices for environmental monitoring.
Present barriers to the development of folding and unfolding mechanisms stem from the lack of understanding of scaling laws that allow researchers to generalize results obtained at various size scales, the inability to easily cause matter to “reorient” itself to achieve the desired folding patterns, and challenges in automated, sequential folding.
To overcome these challenges, the CU team will make use of recent fundamental advances in the control of polymer architecture through light-triggered chemical reactions.
“One has to accurately control how much deformation a material should have in order to obtain a precise folding angle and to determine where to fold or stop folding in order to avoid interference in the folding path and form the desired structure,” said McLeod, who will use the interaction of light with material deformation to develop optical waveguide transistors.
In this new form of logic circuit, light triggers the deformation of a soft polymer, which in turn switches the light on or off. In this way, the optical waveguide transistor will enable a structure to be pre-programmed with a folding pattern through a sequential set of switching events controlled by the shape of an origami sheet.
In recent years, CU researchers and their collaborators have made significant progress in using light to control and alter the structure of a polymer. They are able to both bend and stiffen polymer structures and to develop new, soft, shape-memory composite materials through photo-initiation techniques. Shape-memory composites are “smart” materials that have the ability to return from a temporary, deformed shape to their original shape when induced by a trigger.
In addition, the team will work with the local school district to provide research and educational opportunities for K-12 students and teachers.
CU study: Romney to win presidency
Aug 22nd
Analysis of election factors points to
Romney win, University of Colorado study says
A University of Colorado analysis of state-by-state factors leading to the Electoral College selection of every U.S. president since 1980 forecasts that the 2012 winner will be Mitt Romney.
The key is the economy, say political science professors Kenneth Bickers of CU-Boulder and Michael Berry of CU Denver. Their prediction model stresses economic data from the 50 states and the District of Columbia, including both state and national unemployment figures as well as changes in real per capita income, among other factors.
“Based on our forecasting model, it becomes clear that the president is in electoral trouble,” said Bickers, also director of the CU in DC Internship Program.
According to their analysis, President Barack Obama will win 218 votes in the Electoral College, short of the 270 he needs. And though they chiefly focus on the Electoral College, the political scientists predict Romney will win 52.9 percent of the popular vote to Obama’s 47.1 percent, when considering only the two major political parties.
“For the last eight presidential elections, this model has correctly predicted the winner,” said Berry. “The economy has seen some improvement since President Obama took office. What remains to be seen is whether voters will consider the economy in relative or absolute terms. If it’s the former, the president may receive credit for the economy’s trajectory and win a second term. In the latter case, Romney should pick up a number of states Obama won in 2008.”
Their model correctly predicted all elections since 1980, including two years when independent candidates ran strongly, 1980 and 1992. It also correctly predicted the outcome in 2000, when Al Gore received the most popular vote but George W. Bush won the election.
The study will be published this month in PS: Political Science & Politics, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Political Science Association. It will be among about a dozen election prediction models, but one of only two to focus on the Electoral College.
While many forecast models are based on the popular vote, the Electoral College model developed by Bickers and Berry is the only one of its type to include more than one state-level measure of economic conditions.
In addition to state and national unemployment rates, the authors looked at per capita income, which indicates the extent to which people have more or less disposable income. Research shows that these two factors affect the major parties differently: Voters hold Democrats more responsible for unemployment rates while Republicans are held more responsible for per capita income.
Accordingly — and depending largely on which party is in the White House at the time — each factor can either help or hurt the major parties disproportionately.
Their results show that “the apparent advantage of being a Democratic candidate and holding the White House disappears when the national unemployment rate hits 5.6 percent,” Berry said. The results indicate, according to Bickers, “that the incumbency advantage enjoyed by President Obama, though statistically significant, is not great enough to offset high rates of unemployment currently experienced in many of the states.”
In an examination of other factors, the authors found that none of the following had any statistically significant effect on whether a state ultimately went for a particular candidate: The location of a party’s national convention; the home state of the vice president; or the partisanship of state governors.
In 2012, “What is striking about our state-level economic indicator forecast is the expectation that Obama will lose almost all of the states currently considered as swing states, including North Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida,” Bickers said.
In Colorado, which went for Obama in 2008, the model predicts that Romney will receive 51.9 percent of the vote to Obama’s 48.1 percent, again with only the two major parties considered.
The authors also provided caveats. Factors they said may affect their prediction include the timeframe of the economic data used in the study and close tallies in certain states. The current data was taken five months in advance of the Nov. 6 election and they plan to update it with more current economic data in September. A second factor is that states very close to a 50-50 split may fall an unexpected direction.
“As scholars and pundits well know, each election has unique elements that could lead one or more states to behave in ways in a particular election that the model is unable to correctly predict,” Berry said.
Election prediction models “suggest that presidential elections are about big things and the stewardship of the national economy,” Bickers said. “It’s not about gaffes, political commercials or day-to-day campaign tactics. I find that heartening for our democracy.”
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Only 2 % of students in CU dorms eligible for concealed weapons permit
Aug 16th
CU-Boulder announces conditions
for weapons in university housing
for weapons in university housing
The University of Colorado Boulder today announced it is amending housing contracts to ask students who live in undergraduate residence halls and hold a Colorado concealed carry permit, or CCP, to forgo bringing a handgun to campus. The campus also will accommodate those who hold a CCP in a graduate student housing complex off the main campus, provided the permit holders store their weapon in a safe within their dwelling when they are not carrying it.
The university also is asking residence advisers and faculty who live in university housing to sign the same housing agreement as a condition of their residence in these facilities.
The actions follow a ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court on March 5, which allows individuals with state-issued concealed carry permits to carry handguns on university or college properties. The University of Colorado Board of Regents last spring delegated the authority to the chancellors of CU-Boulder and CU-Colorado Springs to create a process to implement the Colorado Supreme Court ruling in the campus residence environment.
“I believe we have taken reasonable steps to adhere to the ruling of the Colorado Supreme Court, while balancing that with the priority of providing a safe environment for our students, faculty and staff,” said CU-Boulder Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano.
The approach would only affect, potentially, a very small number of individuals. An analysis by the University of Colorado shows that 0.6 percent of the faculty, staff and students on campus possess a CCP. A full 96 percent of CU-Boulder undergraduate students living in the residence halls are under the age of 21, and are thus ineligible to have a CCP. Of the 4 percent of eligible students, about half living on campus are CU Resident Advisers, or “RAs,” who as CU employees would not be permitted to live in undergraduate halls and possess a CCP.
Residence hall students who have a concealed carry permit or who obtain a concealed carry permit under Colorado law during the housing contract period may seek to be relocated to a University Apartment (if space is available) or be released from the residence hall contract without financial penalty.
Among the requirements for Colorado concealed carry permits are that the holder must be at least 21 years of age, complete an FBI background check, and have either previous military or police experience or proof of completion of a firearms training course.
Residence hall students may still store weapons at the University of Colorado Police Department on campus, which is open and available for drop off and pick up of weapons, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
CU-Boulder will continue to follow the CU Board of Regents policy that prevents the open display of weapons including guns, explosives and knives on campus. Only law enforcement officials who display their badges are allowed to openly display weapons while on campus.
Under concealed carry, anyone with a permit may carry a concealed handgun on campus generally and into CU buildings, with the exception of Folsom Field and any other ticketed public performance venue. The purchase of a ticket to a CU public performance constitutes an agreement with the university to not carry a concealed weapon, even as a CCP holder, into the venue.
Students begin moving into CU-Boulder residence halls on Tuesday, Aug. 21, and classes begin for the semester on Aug. 27.
