Steve sent me a link the other day to the page of a faculty member in Computer Science here at UVM. Josh Bongard is doing some pretty cool stuff, and posing some interesting questions:

Imagine a robot-making machine is sent to Mars, and settles on Meridiani Planum. The machine detects that the ground is littered with boulders between 10 centimeters and 1 meter high. Should the machine build a robot with wheels or legs? If the robot should be able to not only observe its surrounding, but also manipulate objects (like drilling into rocks), how many manipulators should it have? What should the manipulators look like? Determining what the most appropriate kind of robot is for a particular task is tricky.

He goes on to describe how he tries to answer some of those questions:

I implemented a system, called Artificial Ontogeny, that ‘grows’ a virtual egg into a fully formed virtual adult robot. The adult robot is then evaluated against the task. This approach then combines biological growth with biological evolution; an individual robot can learn and adapt to its virtual surroundings over its lifetime, while the robot population evolves over generations similar to how organisms grow and adapt to their surroundings, while species adapt over evolutionary time.

Kind of sets the imagination wandering, doesn’t it? Cool stuff, and right in our backyard!

Student and TechCAT extraordinaire Katie Chang has been documenting her semester abroad in Ireland on her blog. My favorite post? Her description of getting to class in the rain, and the walk back counting twelve (12!) broken and discarded umbrellas. What an experience!

For more examples of blogging in and about a foreign country, check out last spring’s cultural exchange trip to Japan. The list of participants on the side leads to numerous depictions of the trip as told (and photographed!) by the students themselves on their own blogs.

Like what you see? You might also be interested in Dr. Paul Martin’s Canadian Studies course, The Great White North, and the links along the side of it going to posts from student blogs.

I hadn’t been back to see the Landscape Change Program in a little while. Turns out they’ve made some really cool interface improvements. Now you can zoom in on images, see where an image was taken on google maps, discuss images, and create your own photo albums, among other things. See if you can spot the bicyclist in this early 20th century photograph taken at Shelburne farms.

Pretty neat, huh? If you’re looking for more images from Vermont’s past (and even present), you might start at the search page, where you can see a randomly selected image, drill down to your town using the interactive map, or - and this is my favorite - try to identify a mystery image.

The other day I came across an entry regarding the use of meebo as a communication platform for Librarians and their patrons. That reminded that I’d been meaning to try Twitter, since most reports I’d seen of it suggested that trying it was the best way to figure out what it really was. The fact that it came from the same folks that brought us Odeo piqued my interest even more. Well, I’ve tried it, and I kind of like it. If you’ve got a moment, give it a shot.

We used to have a service available to chat with a reference Librarian on call (and even push/share screenshots, etc. I believe), but I can’t seem to find it now. Perhaps it was just a pilot program?

Wow. Since I’ve just recently crested a ridge in a mountain of project work (only to see that I’m halfway there), I’ve taken a swing at cleaning and archiving my inbox.

Among the messages was one that I must have missed. It included a link to the DIL (DIL being short for Digital Initiatives Librarian), a blog documenting the work being done at our nascent Center for Digital Initiatives. Exciting stuff, and it’s always fun to find a new member of the UVM blogosphere.

It seems like every year this thing gets bigger. The past few years, for example, have seen tables moving across the street (on the other side of the bus in this photo) to the sidewalk in front of williams. In my quick pass around the event, I saw a table with a chainsaw and an axe on it (I think this was the forestry club), and an elvish language club. As usual, there were hot dogs, candy, and all sorts of swag.

All in all, quite the event.  You can see a full list of UVM clubs and organizations at the sga website.

technorati tags:uvm, club, activities, event, group, crowd, students

I learned a new word the other day:

phe·nol·o·gy n.

1. The scientific study of periodic biological phenomena, such as flowering, breeding, and migration, in relation to climatic conditions.
2. The relationship between a periodic biological phenomenon and climatic conditions.

Over on the place site, there is an area devoted to the phenology of Shelburne, VT. Poeple can send in observations of their local environment, and they get listed on the site for all to see.

During a short trip to the bookstore today, I stumbled into, and through, the annual UVM Sugar on Snow Party. In addition to the cold, sweet, chewy treats (and accompanying pickles!) served up in the warm spring sun, the local folk group Atlantic Crossing served up their own treat in the form of a live show. The Solar Bus was also there. I’ve put up a set of photos of the event on Flickr for your viewing pleasure.

During our recent colleague tea session on web tools in the classroom, we talked about ideas for using images on the web in the classroom. Image repositories were discussed. Scott McLaughlin from Archeology (and History, and Education), mentioned that some of his class projects include field work such as taking pictures and creating rubbings of gravestones. This made me think of the online photo sharing service Flickr as a possible image collection and organization tool. Here are some of my thoughts on how this might work, the benefits and possible pitfalls that might be involved in such an endeavor.

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Just a quick note - as I glanced at the front page of the Burlington Free Press today, I thought I saw a friendly face, and had to look closer. Indeed, on page one was a great shot of Charlie in action in the classroom. You can read the article and see the photos online on the BFP’s site.