Tagged: technology

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Stateside
3:48 pm
Wed May 8, 2013

Building better security screening systems

Credit user g7ahn / Flickr
Could radar be used in future screening systems?

In the aftermath of school shootings, theater shootings, and bombings, the question of security screening has become real and important.

How do we balance privacy concerns and rights with the need to screen for potential threats?

A University of Michigan professor is working on that challenge: building a better security detector.

Dr Kamal Sarabondi is a professor of electrical engineering, and he's the director of the Radiation Laboratory at the University of Michigan.

He's gotten funding from the U.S. Department of Defense and is developing a long-range radar technology as a means to detect a concealed object. He explains what it is and how it differs from what we have today.

Listen to the full interview above.

Education
1:47 pm
Thu February 21, 2013

We will all be working for this kid someday

Credit Mark Gurman / www.markgurman.com
Get ready to feel bad about your accomplishments. Thanks, Mark Gurman.

You think your freshman year was crazy? Ha. You never had to balance finals with your part-time job as the “World’s Best Apple Reporter.”

Mark Gurman can't legally buy himself a drink to celebrate his new unofficial title, which BusinessInsider recently bestowed on the 19-year-old University of Michigan freshman.

Actually, Gurman's been painstakingly tracking Apple since high school, when he first picked up an iPod.

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The Environment Report
9:58 am
Thu February 21, 2013

Michigan inventors compete in college clean tech venture challenge

You can listen to today's Environment Report above or read the story below.

I recently got a chance to hang out with Tom Brady.  

Nope, not the football star. 

But this Tom Brady is working on making a name for himself. Brady just wrapped up his Masters degree. He’s an aerospace engineer, and now he's also the chief financial officer of SkySpecs LLC.

He holds up something that looks half-insect/half-helicopter. It’s an autonomous flying robot. In other words... it has a mind of its own. Brady says it finds its way around with cameras and computer vision.

“Basically, what these things are: they carry sensors to places that an inspector would otherwise have to,” he says.

Say, down into a sewer or up to the top of a wind turbine.

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Education
5:22 pm
Thu December 27, 2012

UM's futuristic printers can print out 3D objects

Some printers at the University of Michigan can make unusual prints.

Machines  in the University's 3D Lab can produce three-dimensional sculptures, car parts and even model human body parts. A student or faculty member can design a model, take it to the U-of-M's 3-D lab and leave hours later with their object in hand.

Here's how it works:

A student or faculty member designs a model on a computer. Technicians send the design to the refrigerator-sized machine, then a mechanical arm applies layers of material in cross-sections that slowly build up the model.

The machines layer plaster or heated plastic models as large as basketballs.

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Economy
3:54 pm
Mon December 17, 2012

New York investment firm offers to buy Compuware for $2.3 billion

Credit Urban Adventures / flickr
Compuware moved its headquarters to downtown Detroit in 2002.

A New York-based hedge fund said Monday that it wants to buy Compuware, Michigan’s largest technology company.

Elliott Management Corp. has offered to buy the company for $2.3 billion at $11-a-share. Elliott currently owns 8 percent of the Detroit-based software company.

The Detroit Free Press has more:

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