Cleveland State University, Student Branch, office SH346

2 meetings for your convenience:

President Barack Obama's 2011 budget request has effectively shut down NASA's five-year effort to return astronauts to the moon, leaving the U.S. space agency with lofty goals — but no firm deadlines — to once again send humans beyond Earth orbit.

The budget request, released Monday, would scrap NASA's Constellation program to build the Orion spacecraft and Ares rockets for new manned moon missions — a $9 billion investment to date. The request calls for $19 billion in funding for NASA in 2011, a slight increase from the $18.3 billion it spent in 2010.

The request does, however, pledge extra funding to extend the life of the International Space Station through at least 2020 and offers $6 billion over five years to support commercially built spaceships to launch NASA astronauts into space. The space agency's three remaining space shuttles are due to retire later this year.

NASA drops moon plan [msnbc]

This, is the Misa Digital Guitar. The Misa Digital Guitar is made by a software engineer named Michael.  And yes, it's everything that dreams are made of.  WARNING, you might want to prepare a fresh pair of pants, because after you watch this video,  you are going to soil them.  It's a fairly traditional MIDI interface setup when it comes to the electronic music world, only applied in a new, innovative way.

"The guitar itself is CNC machined out of solid ABS plastic. This is an extremely solid body, not like injection moulded plastic which is thin, lightweight and hollow. The screen is an 8.4" LCD 800x600 resolution. The CPU is a 500MHz x86 compatible AMD Geode which makes life easier, I guess. The operating system is Gentoo Linux which I've stripped down to be as lean as possible. Graphics (framebuffer access) is done with DirectFB which acts as a fast layer on top of the hardware. The neck is 144 "keycaps" sitting on top of a special keymat that I had tooled. They are not pressure sensitive - but I made the decision early on not to include this because I don't feel it is neccessary, it would make the instrument harder to play and less reliable."

No official product has been released for purchase, but from what I have seen and the buzz going around, there's no doubt this will be huge.  The software is open-source, and if the code is released soon, I will post it in our downloads section.  Check out the site for more detailed information.

Digital Guitar [Misa Digital]

It's always hard to get your feet moving after stuffing your face for weeks and sleeping in till 2pm.  Or, like the rest of us, your boss has been been making you work more hours ever since you foolishly let them know you were on break...  Well winter break is officially over and most of us are back to school this week.  Sadness and the urge to just drop everying and quit can easily creep up on you these hours before your first class of the semester.  If this is true for you, take a step outside and let the dry brisk air brush that right off your face and get moving towards downtown.  Slacking is over and it's time for you to rattle that brain and try to remember all of the equations and laws you have forgotten.  Over this new semester, do not forget to post study group sessions on the calendar and submit challenging questions on the forum for help from other students. (Help doesn't mean sending each other the answers for the take home mid-term.)  You can expect this semester's member and officer meeting schedule to be posted soon, so keep a look out!

Finals week has approached us once again...

For countless numbers of college students, surviving finals week is one the most challenging aspects of college life. After an already long semester of projects, labs, and chapter tests, this time period serves as an apex of high stress for students. Following a healthy balance of nutrition, studying, and relaxation will ensure every student a significant increase in test taking ability and outcomes.

Expand this topic to read some tips for finals preperation.

Good luck to all IEEE CSU students, hope to see you after winter break!

 

Today the LHC circulated two beams simultaneously for the first time, allowing the operators to test the synchronization of the beams and giving the experiments their first chance to look for proton-proton collisions. With just one bunch of particles circulating in each direction, the beams can be made to cross in up to two places in the ring. From early in the afternoon, the beams were made to cross at points 1 and 5, home to the ATLAS and CMS detectors, both of which were on the look out for collisions. Later, beams crossed at points 2 and 8, ALICE and LHCb.

“It’s a great achievement to have come this far in so short a time,” said CERN1Director General Rolf Heuer. “But we need to keep a sense of perspective – there’s still much to do before we can start the LHC physics programme.”

Beams were first tuned to produce collisions in the ATLAS detector, which recorded its first candidate for collisions at 14:22 this afternoon. Later, the beams were optimised for CMS. In the evening, ALICE had the first optimization, followed by LHCb.

“This is great news, the start of a fantastic era of physics and hopefully discoveries after 20 years' work by the international community to build a machine and detectors of unprecedented complexity and performance," said ATLAS spokesperson, Fabiola Gianotti.

"The vacuum, long an instrument for chasing cats, has now been turned against its own. What better use for automatic home appliances than to have them chase each other in classic video game style?

Built using our spare time, Roomba Pac-Man is designed to showcase the extensive Unmanned Aerial System software suite that we have developed to support our personal research. It was also a great opportunity to use some of our skills for our own entertainment. Check out the sections above to learn about the engineering that went into the complicated system which enabled the creation of this game."

Check out their website for full hardware/software diagrams and code downloads.

Roomba Pac-Man [elstonj]

NASA said Friday that they had discovered water on the moon, opening "a new chapter" that could allow for the development of a lunar space station.The discovery was announced by project scientist Anthony Colaprete at a midday news conference.

"I'm here today to tell you that indeed, yes, we found water. And we didn't find just a little bit; we found a significant amount" -- about a dozen, two-gallon bucketfuls, he said, holding up several white plastic containers.

The find is based on preliminary data collected when the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, intentionally crashed October 9 into the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus crater near the moon's south pole.

After the satellite struck, a rocket flew through the debris cloud, measuring the amount of water and providing a host of other data, Colaprete said.

The project team concentrated on data from the satellite's spectrometers, which provide the best information about the presence of water, Colaprete said. A spectrometer helps identify the composition of materials by examining light they emit or absorb.