In the News, November 2012

In a recent article from the Los Angeles Times, the potential designs for California’s bullet train are discussed. Planners for the “$68-billion project” foresee “bullet trains shooting east from Bakersfield at 220 mph, climbing one of the steepest sustained high-speed rail inclines in the world. It would soar over canyons on viaducts as high as a 33-story skyscraper. The line would duck in and out of tunnels up to 500 feet below the rugged surface. It would cross more than half a dozen earthquake faults heading toward L.A.” As the article indicates, this could either be an engineering marvel or a literal disaster.

Τ

In late October, Richard L. Revesz announced that he would step down as dean of the New York University School of Law on May 31, 2013. Revesz, NJ D ’79, became dean in 2002, and will continue as a tenured member of the law faculty and a leader of NYU’s new signature initiatives to create an interdisciplinary institute on cities and the urban environment. He is an expert on environmental law, regulatory law, and policy. Read the news release

Β

The Chronicle of Higher Education profiled the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition that took place in Cambridge, MA, last week. Teams from around the world competed by taking a “kit of biological parts and designing/building biological systems and operate them in living cells.” The article from The Chronicle also detailed the scientific promise and the potential horror of synthetic biology

Π