BEHREND BEACON August 27, 2010 www.thebehrendbeacon.com LOCAL NEWS IDIOM The Erie County District Attorney is offering a $5OO reward for any information that will lead them to the ar rest of two drivers who fled the scene of a fatal crash on Interstate 90 last Friday. The accident occurred when a truck driver at tempted to pass a Volkswa gen Passat station wagon and clipped the rear of the car. The passenger Xiaoxia Zhang, 30, of Chicago was thrown onto the road as the car was sent into a spin. The driver of a second truck then proceeded to run Zhang's body over. Erie County DA, Jack Daneri, hopes the reward money as well as the ran dom nature of the crash will work in investigators favor. "You would hope that there aren't any interests that would want this to be a secret," he said. Tips can be left in his of fice by phone (800) 4-PA TIPS or via his office's website, www.eriealert.com. ERIE "For Sale" signs might be staying on house lawns longer nationally. Bleak na tional reports about sales of doesn't mean the Erie region is feeling the same squeeze. The number of sales in Erie County decreased by 95 percent from July 2009. The values of the new and exist ing properties sold in July were only down slightly, ac cording to Greater Erie Board of Realtors figures. In June, local Realtors closed 568 deals worth $7B million, compared with the 356 closings worth $43.5 million in July. Nationally, new home sales fell 12.4 percent in July from a month earlier to a season ally adjusted annual sales pace of 276,000. That was the slowest pace on records dating to 1963. Tim Presta, owner of Presta Contractor Supply Inc., 2669 W 16th St., said business is brisk among the remodelers and commercial developers. Presta said he is also no ticed an upswing in the number of out-of-town de velopers taking their busi ness to Erie, a sign that their hometown markets might be depressed. / _ _ _ 1. 'The worst is yet to come' PAKISTAN - Two Islamabad women put their personal lives on hold as they head to the re mote village of Utror to aid flood victims. One of the women, Huma Beg, documentary film maker says the worst is yet to come. Essential crops have been de stroyed, clean drinking water is a rarity, and disease is rapidly spreading. Some people have even be come so terrified of the water, they have moved to the moun- TECHNOLOGY MIT creates robots to cleanup o ERIC PEIRCE f.dirof Up until now, the only way to clean up oil spills involved large equipment, workers, and money. On Aug. 28, an MIT team will reveal a robot that can change the way we deal with these en vironmental disasters. The robot, named the Seaswarm, uses the idea of a treadmill to 'lift' oil off the water with the help of a type of nonmaterial and collect the oil into a con tainer. "You can imagine it like a carpet rolling on the surface of the water." stated Assaf Bider man, who was the overseer of the research team of the proj ect. The conveyor belt itself is made out of material that can absorb up to 20 times its weight in oil. the robot can then either burn-off the oil using a heater connected to the robot, or bag the oil and leave it for pick-up later, where the oil can be even World News tains and are living in tents Problems will continue to arise of they villagers cannot salvage enough crops to sell and use the income to make it through the long winter. 2. UN calls for ac don D.R. CONGO, AFRICA - An emergency session of the Secu rity Council was called to order in response to the rapes that have occurred after rebels oc cupied Luvungi town and sur rounding villages. The Security Council said the Massachusetts Dept. of Environmental Protection New robots could make oil spills both easier and cheaper to clean up. The Office of Educational Equity and Diversity Programs Local National News meeting was "of the utmost im portance" as they try to renew their efforts to bring peace and stability to the conflict-ridden Congo. 3. Suspected terror plot CANADA - Three Canadians were arrested in an alleged ter rorist plot and bomb threat ear lier this week. Lead investigator and Royal Mounted Police Chief Superin tendent Serge Therriault be lieved an attack was imminent from these suspects. "This Respect Comes Full Circle welcomes all students, faculty, and staff to a new and exciting academic year! Together we can continue to create an environment that promotes respect for differences while fostering caring relationships and cross-cultural understanding throughout the campus. Best wishes this semester! offut of aiwtiiwvti, Division of Student Affairs 1 Reed Union Building (814) 898-7101 Behrend.•su.edu/e•uit email:Diversit ~--~ ~_ group posed a real and serious threat to the citizens of the na tional capital region and Canada's national security," added Therriault. 4. Toyota recalls USA - Toyota has announced yet another recall of one million Corolla and Matrix cars made between 2005 and 2008. The Japanese-owned car maker recalled 700,000 cars worldwide and has now re called about ten million in the past year. The latest recalls are due to engine failure. be reused or recycled The design of these robots make it beneficial for them to he deployed in a swarm, mean ing thousands of the robots can he deployed at once on the same spill. They could then or ganize each other by using a GPS system to clean up the spill in the most effective and quickest way possible. For example, if the robots were deployed during the Deep Horizon oil spill, the clean-up costs would have been $lOO million to $2OO million, a small fraction of what the actual cost One of the reasons that the robots are so efficient is that they operate using solar energy and only needs about 100 watts of power to operate, the same amount of power used for a light bulb to work. MIT will continue to conduct research on the robots for at least a year, after which the robot technol ogy would be ready for produc tion and possibly a buyer. 1:)4trui:0" Progrants Behren a, ~~~,, ills I sp =EA BEACON ONLINE The Beacon website, the behrendbeacon.com, is your online source for campus news. Constantly updated with new and breaking news sto ries, the website will feature immediate coverage of events as well as an archive of past articles in the Bea con. We also offer a Twitter ac count, «i behrendbeacon, which will be used to let stu dents know of breaking news happening at the col lege: notification of impor tant events about to begin, police reports at the cam pus, or developments not yet released to students by the college. The site also offers an RSS feed, links to Erie resources, and Behrend students' blogs. FACT OF THE WEEK ; _,„ Did You Know? Americans, as a nation, on average eat 18 acres of pizza a day! I I " s`. /I , b, flt't CONTACT US Our offices are located in the bottom floor of the Reed building, office 10H, down the hall from the mailroom. 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