Regular route and trolley riders should be aware that when Purdue classes are not held, as will be the case on Wednesday, November 26 and Friday, November 28, the following changes occur:

1. Route 4B Purdue West/Downtown detours through Purdue Village when inbound. There is no inbound service on State St. between Airport Rd. and S. Martin Jischke Dr.
2. 5 Happy Hollow service is reduced to one bus operating on a 60 minute frequency from 9:30AM to 4:00PM.
3. Route 8 Klondike Express does not operate on days when classes are not held.
4. The Wabash Trolley Line follows the Black Line route. S. River
   Rd., Williams, and S. Grant will not be served.

Route 3A Lafayette Square Detour Expires

The detour on route 3A Lafayette Square, which has been in effect for several months, will expire on Monday morning, November 24. The bus route has been detouring due to the closure of State St. and Earl Ave. These streets are now open.

CityBus will continue operating the detour through Sunday, November 23 in order to allow time for passengers to become aware of the change.

Beginning on Monday, November 24, the bus will follow its regular route. The outbound bus will follow State St., 26th St., and Teal Rd. to 18th St. The inbound bus will follow Teal Rd., 22nd St., and State
St. to 18th St.

The method uses the pervasive Bluetooth signals to constantly update how long it takes vehicles and pedestrians to travel from one point to another. Harnessing the wireless signals represents a potentially low-cost leap in technology to provide information for everything from the speed of the morning commute to the sluggishness of airport security lines, said Darcy Bullock, professor of civil engineering.

Bullock led the class of graduate students who used the new approach for the Penn State traffic study during the Oct. 4 home game in West Lafayette.

The method picks up the identifying “addresses” from Bluetooth devices in consumer electronics. Because each device has its own distinct digital signature, its travel time can be tracked by detectors installed at intersections or along highways and other locations.

The students used a special antenna to identify 1,520 Bluetooth addresses in the crowd of more than 57,000 fans in attendance. The students then used 13 tracking stations to monitor the Bluetooth signals as fans drove home from the game at Purdue’s Ross-Ade Stadium along two routes leading to Interstate 65: a 4.2-mile southern route and a 5.2-mile northern route.

Data from the study documented which route had the fastest travel time.

“We found that the postgame travel time along the southern route was up to 28 minutes, but the travel time along the northern route was only 12 to 14 minutes, even though the northern route is one mile longer,” said graduate student Mary Martchouk. “And there was also much less variability in travel time on the northern route, much less congestion.”

The researchers concluded that the Bluetooth method was far more effective than two more conventional traffic-tracking techniques. Those techniques typically use spotters with camcorders to manually record individual license plate numbers on cars or “probe vehicles” equipped with a GPS tracker.

“Bluetooth matching is much easier to do than license-plate matching, which is very labor intensive,” said graduate student Ronald Davis. “And you can gather much more data using the Bluetooth signals than you can with both license-plate matching and GPS probe vehicles.”

The Bluetooth method is less invasive than license-plate matching, which identifies the person being tracked. People cannot be identified by their Bluetooth signals, Bullock said.

The students presented their findings on Nov. 18 during an annual dinner of local members of the Institute of Transportation Engineers and will be hosting a national webinar, scheduled for 12:30 p.m. Dec. 3, that is open to the public.

Purdue Musical Organizations director Bill Griffel said everyone involved is grateful that so many friends, family, alumni and community members make the annual Purdue Christmas Show a part of their holiday plans. For the special 75th anniversary performances, 130 alumni from every era of PMO’s history will join the student performers on stage, he said.

The 75th annual Purdue Christmas Show will be presented Dec. 12-14 in Elliott Hall of Music. New Purdue Musical Organizations director Bill Griffel will direct the show for the first time this year. (Photo courtesy of Purdue Musical Organizations)

Griffel, who will direct the show for the first time this year, said the audience members get a different impression for every show they see.

Thousands see the show live and millions will see the 2007 production through broadcasts on public television and radio networks.

Performances are scheduled for 8 p.m. Dec. 12; noon, 4 and 8 p.m. Dec. 13; and noon and 4 p.m. Dec. 14. Tickets are $20 for students age 13 through college; $26 for adults; $24 for seniors age 65 and older; and $12 for children age 12 and under. For information or to order tickets, visit the Stewart Center, Pao Hall or Elliott Hall box offices or call (765) 494-3933 or (800) 914-SHOW.

Purdue Musical Organizations also will offer a special children’s matinee at 11:30 a.m. on Dec. 12. Children’s tickets are $10 per student for groups of 49 or less; $8 per student for groups of 50-99; and $6 per student for groups of 100 or more. For this performance, teachers, chaperones and bus drivers will be admitted at no charge. For information about the student matinee, call Monica Ruberg at (765) 494-3947 or (800) 893-3941.

Lt. Fred Davis said a graduate student came to the Purdue Police Department on Tuesday (Nov. 18) to report that several items had been stolen from the bed of his truck, parked in the 400 block of Russell Street. The items reported stolen included black powder and other commonly available reloading supplies for a muzzleloading-type gun.

Davis said the student positively identified the box and supplies that had been taken from the back of his truck sometime between 11 p.m. Friday (Nov. 14) and 6 a.m. Saturday (Nov. 15).

About 100-150 people were evacuated from the Purdue Armory and the building was closed for about 90 minutes Monday morning after a groundskeeper discovered the ammunition box just outside of the building. Northbound University Street at Third Street also was closed off, as a member of the Tippecanoe County Sheriff’s Department’s bomb squad retrieved the container.

Huntington Bank named number 1 SBA 7(a) lender in OH, IN, KY and WV for October 2008

Huntington ranked first in both loan dollar volume and number of loans among all SBA lenders in Ohio with 791 loans for a total of $73.7 million. In Indiana and Kentucky, Huntington ranked first in loan dollar volume with a total of $23.6 and $6.6 million, respectively. Huntington also ranked No. 1 for the number of SBA loans in the state of West Virginia with a total of 44 loans.

Huntington moved up from its 2007 ranking to now become 11th in the nation for number of SBA loans and 15th in the nation for total 7(a) loans, the most common type of loan used by small businesses.

Huntington’s SBA enhanced loans can be used by small business owners for real estate, business acquisition or expansion, start-up costs, equipment purchases, working capital and more. The Huntington National Bank is an SBA preferred lender. For more information about Huntington’s SBA-guaranteed loan program, visit www.huntington.com.

Sharp is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting and writing and has been involved in not-for-profit work since age 9. Her experience working for both the Art Museum of Greater Lafayette and the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, among others, over the last twenty years has enhanced her skills in grants writing, development, marketing and design.

“Paige Sharp brings with her not only experience, but leadership qualities and a genuine passion for the arts,” said TAF Executive Director, Tetia Lee. “Her enthusiasm and energetic spirit echo the direction of the organization.”

As Regional Services Director, Sharp will be charged with the administration of grant funds from both the private and public sector. In addition, she will work directly with county representatives to increase the arts throughout the region.

Spring, a watercolor by Lafayette artist Rena Brouwer

An opening reception was held Friday, November 14 at Lala Gallery & Studio where Brouwer was present to discuss her work.

Brouwer will also give three holiday watercolor workshops at the gallery, open to all ages, on December 6. The workshops will be one hour in duration and offered at 10:00a, 12:00p and 3:00p. The workshops will be followed by a closing reception from 4:00-6:00p.

Lala Gallery & Studio is located on Main Street in Downtown Lafayette, across from the old Lafayette Theater. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday, 10a-1p, 4:30-6p and Saturday 10a-4p. For additional information, call (765) 414-7962 or visit www.lalaglallery.com

Rack-A-Node is an online video game that lets those über-geeks who love both science and technology try their hand at designing and operating a simulated research supercomputer.

Purdue University has created a game designed to teach how to build and operate a supercomputer. Called "Rack-A-Node," the game lets players design a supercomputer and then try to keep it operating as science jobs are submitted. (Purdue University image/Michele Rund)

The online game can be found at http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/rackanode/

Players build a cluster supercomputer using a variety of computing types to run science experiments. A player begins with a small supercomputer and receives science jobs to process. If these jobs are successful, the player receives funding needed to build an even bigger supercomputer.

The game requires the player to optimize the supercomputer to deal with waves of science jobs that are submitted.

“Like the game ‘rock, paper, scissors,’ certain tools perform better against certain challenges,” Bowen says. “In Rack-A-Node, the player has to optimize the supercomputer for the type of science being performed.”

For example, the game begins with a chemistry job that requires a lot of memory, then a climate-modeling job, which is a high throughput task that needs faster network communication. Later, a 3-D science animation-rendering job requires multiple nodes to process. The game also includes jobs from life sciences, pharmacy, physics and engineering.

“Supercomputing is not the most accessible of topics. It can be difficult to understand,” Bowen says. “We worked with a research scientist in Information Technology at Purdue to make sure the game is fairly realistic but still fun to play.”

The game was built to highlight Purdue’s student team participating in the Cluster Challenge at the SC ‘08 supercomputer conference on Nov. 15-21 in Austin, Texas. University teams compete in the challenge to see who can build the best supercomputer in a day.

In this year’s Cluster Challenge, the students will work with constraints on the amount of electricity they can use. Purdue’s team has partnered with SiCortex, a manufacturer of low-energy supercomputers. This summer Purdue was the first university to install a low-energy SiCortex supercomputer.

“Rack-A-Node is a game that captures the essence of the supercomputer challenge,” Bowen says.

The conference, at Purdue, is designed to foster the growth and development of minority- and women-owned businesses and strengthen the local economy. It also is sponsored in part by the Lafayette-West Lafayette Chamber of Commerce.

“It’s rewarding to see this effort grow since we started in 2005,” said Jesse L. Moore Jr., Purdue’s director of supplier diversity development. “More than 400 minority and women business entities attended last year’s sessions at Purdue, which is the only college in Indiana to host such an event.”

Buyers from Purdue will be joined by representatives from event co-sponsors Eli Lilly Co., Alcoa Inc., Vectren Corp., State Farm Insurance Co., Caterpillar Inc., Tate & Lyle PLC, Ivy Tech Community College, Freitag-Weinhardt Inc. and the Greater Lafayette Chamber of Commerce.

In addition to the seminar’s co-sponsors, other members of the Supplier Diversity Coalition of Greater Lafayette are scheduled to be at the conference, including Kirby Risk, Wabash National, the city of Lafayette, the Small Business Development Center, the Indiana Diversity Business Council and the National Association of Woman Business Owners. Other Lafayette area companies invited include Kettlehut Construction Inc., J.R. Kelly Construction Inc., Gaylor Group Inc. and D. A. Dodd Inc.

Lafayette, West Lafayette and Tippecanoe County on Nov. 17 each proclaimed Nov. 20 as Supplier Diversity Day in honor of the coalition during the county commissioners’ meeting at 10 a.m. at the Tippecanoe County Building.

This year’s seminar will be held in Stewart Center, rooms 218, 302 and 306. The seminar will feature four two-hour sessions, each geared toward a specific group of suppliers:

• Session 1, 10:10 a.m.-12:30 p.m.: construction, architectural, engineering, and related services.
• Session 2, 10:10 a.m.-12:30 p.m.: marketing, computer and IT services.
• Session 3, 2:30-4:30 p.m.: products and goods.
• Session 4, 2:30-4:30 p.m.: professional services (other than marketing, computer and IT services).

Reginald Williams, a consultant to business and government on supplier diversity who has appeared on PBS and writes a column for several trade journals, will be the keynote speaker at lunch at 12:45 p.m. in Purdue Memorial Union’s South Ballroom.

Williams’ company, Procurement Resources, has worked on diverse supplier development with corporations, government agencies and institutions such as University of California Systemwide, IBM, the U.S. Postal Service, General Motors, Time Warner, Duke University, American Airlines, AT&T, Procter & Gamble, Marriott, Hewlett-Packard, Coca-Cola, Hilton Hotels, Johns Hopkins University, NASA, the city of Baltimore and Microsoft.

Each of the sessions is limited to the first 75 suppliers to register. Buyers and suppliers from Tippecanoe County can register for the conference online or by contacting Ed Keller, at (765) 494-9482, ebkeller@purdue.edu. The admission fee of $35 covers all sessions and lunch. Lunch only is $25. Registration deadline was Nov. 14.

Purdue organizes several supplier relationship-building events every year, including each summer at Indiana Black Expo.

The goal of the Office of Supplier Diversity Development is to cultivate opportunities for qualified minority- and women-owned businesses to partner with Purdue. The office provides centralized services for Indiana minority and women business owners, a liaison between external business owners and Purdue departments seeking goods and services, and a connection to Purdue entities that can assist business owners and entrepreneurs with business development ventures. The office also conducts outreach to advocacy organizations and maintains ongoing communication with minority and women business owners.

Police evacuated the Armory and closed off northbound University Street at Third Street shortly after the call came in at about 8:45 a.m. Purdue police Lt. Mike Boesch said approximately 100-150 people were evacuated. Both University Street and the Armory were reopened about 10:15 a.m.

Boesch said that at about 8:45 a.m. a groundskeeper found the small, military ammunition-type box atop a plastic toolbox near a bush on the north side of the Armory. The box was about 6 inches wide, 12 inches long and 8 inches tall. The groundskeeper opened the box, which contained black powder and other commonly available reloading supplies for a muzzleloading-type gun.

The Tippecanoe County Sheriff’s Department bomb squad took the package from the scene, and Purdue police continue to investigate the incident.