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article Fall 2016

H2Ohh No!

By Katherine Underwood The average urban American uses around 157 gallons of water per day. This statistic accounts for all indoor residential, commercial, industrial, and institutional water one person is responsible for in one day. Professor Ned Paschke, a civil engineer and program director in the UW-Madison department of engineering professional development (EPD), generated this […]

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article Fall 2016

The UW-Madison Heating Plants: Staving Off Wisconsin Winters

By Brandon Grill Unlike in residential neighborhoods where every house or apartment building has its own heater, a large campus like UW-Madison can afford to go big with its heating needs to keep students and faculty warm during Wisconsin’s long winters. Instead of having boilers in every building, two major heating plants supply adequate heat […]

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article Fall 2016

Paris Climate Change Conference 2015

By Stephen Schwartz More than 70 percent of Americans now believe climate change is real and caused by human activity; however, this wasn’t always the case. While the first discussions of human-induced climate change date back to the turn of the 20th century, it wasn’t until the 1970s when modern scientists began outlining the potential […]

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article Fall 2016

Taking Care of Business

By Yingchong Liu Engineers learn a lot about science and math to solve grand challenges; however, their work does not always stop there. Engineers may also be required to talk and think in business languages. Thus, a lack of business skills sets may slow their career development. In order to broaden their career potential, pursuing […]

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article Fall 2016

From Ideas to Apps

By Ben Zastrow What do Snapchat, Eatstreet, and Zuntik all have in common? They all are apps that began as college startups, each one the dream of students who saw an opportunity to provide something new and exciting — and didn’t waste any time seizing their chance. The frantic, ever-changing culture of the startup world has permeated […]

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article Fall 2016

The Human Exoskeleton

By Anastasia Montgomery Nearly 20 percent of United States citizens have a disability, according to the United States Census Bureau. With such a large amount of people with conditions that may hinder their ability to participate in daily tasks, there is a great demand for technology to help make their lives easier. The technical term […]

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article Fall 2016

Remodeling the Electric Power Grid

By Siddarth Ramesh Over the last two decades, the electric power grid has made a lot of advances in electric energy technology than the public may realize. This rapidly evolving power grid is now experiencing significant shifts towards a market-oriented distribution of electric power geared towards the consumer. By collecting real-time data about consumer power […]

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article Fall 2016

Fitness Tracking Redefined

By Matt Stout Over the past few decades, people have become increasingly interested in tracking physical activity. Whether it is for health reasons, or merely to look and feel good, people have been seeking a more accurate way to track their physiological progress than a measly pedometer. They want to learn how to improve their […]

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article Fall 2016

Artificial, Yet Natural: Robotics and AI

By Stephen Eick Take a brief moment and picture the world prior to the Industrial Revolution. Few people yearn for times without our modern amenities, our technology. We safely conclude that the world ultimately benefits from the development of innovative tools, especially electronic tools. However, this exact moment in history holds the most rapid development […]

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article Fall 2016

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

By Eric Fleming In 1977, the world fell in love with a robot for the first time. That year, the first Star Wars movie smashed box office records and introduced a host of characters that became pop culture icons, including the lovable droid, R2-D2. With the creation of R2-D2 and his companion, C-3P0, Star Wars […]