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FRIDAY FEBRUARY 4, 2011
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Today: Partly Cloudy
TIMES ARE CHANGING
High: 36 • Low: 23
The day after adding a heralded 24-player recruiting class, Rutgers head football coach Greg Schiano announced the hiring of tight ends coach Brian Angelichio.
Solar panels sweep central Jersey town
New LED lights decrease city’s carbon footprint
BY LAURA TRANSUE
CORRESPONDENT
BY AMY ROWE
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Some South Plainfield residents may have witnessed a gradual integration of solar panels to the central New Jersey utility poles in the past two years because of an expanding solar program. PSE&G partnered with clean energy company Petra Solar to create the program and last week, opened a new network operations center in South Plainfield, said Mary Grikas, vice president of Communications at Petra Solar. The new center will allow for the direct monitoring and management of panels around the world. “We developed [the center] and the SunWave Energy Por tal software to help monitor and control the entire system and support utilities,” she said. “Utilities companies are tr ying to control and manage the energy coming into the grid to keep the grid stable.” Grikas said Petra Solar’s technologies provide an innovative model for integration with the grid because they allow companies to monitor and control the voltage levels of individual panels. Each panel also comes with a micro conver ter that allows energy to connect directly to the grid, she said. “The trend is for utilities to deploy renewable products that don’t deteriorate the integrity of the grid,” she said. “With solar energy, voltage levels go up and down [due to the weather and sun], and this is hard on the grid.” This model also fits into New Jersey’s broader energy master plan, said Clinton Andrews, director of the Urban Planning program at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. “The New Jersey energy master plan emphasizes three things — environmental improvements such as reducing greenhouse gases, economic progress [which means ensuring
NICHOLAS BRASWOSKI / SENIOR STAF PHOTOGRAPHER
New Br unswick is taking strides to reduce its electricity bill and carbon footprint with the installation of single-headed LED light fixtures along George Street. The fixtures, which line the road from New Street to Church Street, are par t of the George Street Reconstruction Project, said city spokesman Bill Bray. The LED lampposts bur n 100 watts of electricity and replaced double-headed mercur y vapor light fixtures that burned 350 watts, reducing the city’s electrical use for street lighting by 43 percent, Bray said. “Besides saving tax payer money, we’re doing our par t to save the planet and combat climate change,” he said. New Br unswick spends $900,000 on street lighting each year, Bray said. Out of the 47 LED fixtures on George Street, each
New energy-efficient LED streetlights will save the city of New Brunswick $216,000 over their 12-year life span and reduce the city’s electrical use by 43 percent.
SEE LIGHTS ON PAGE 4
BUDGET CUTS LIMIT 2011 RUTGERSFEST PERFORMERS Due to budget cuts, the Rutgers University Programming Association chose only two per formers — rapper Pitbull and electro-pop duo 3OH!3 — instead of the usual three for this year’s Rutgersfest. “We get a budget that depends on the school and from that budget we work on concer t ideas with our middle manager agent, then we pick ar tists that will best suit the University and its population,” said RUPA Rutgersfest committee member Elise Powers. The budget was an issue when determining the ar tists and eliminating choices for ar tists,
said Powers, a School of Ar ts and Sciences sophomore. Since the University has such a diverse population, RUPA tries to get it all in one shot and book artists that will not cater to one genre but the whole community, said Mariah Presbery, a RUPA Rutgersfest committee member. “We tr y to give students the best experience they can get, and get an artist that will satisfy the majority of the population on our budget of around $95,000,” said Presber y, a School of Arts and Sciences sophomore. The festival will take place on April 15 this year, but not on its usual campus.
Due to construction on Livingston, Rutgersfest this year will be moved to Busch campus, Presber y said. The more than 200 people in attendance received more than a Michael Jackson tribute at RUPA’s King of Pop event last night, as they were among the first to know the identity of the per formers. Musical acts Chaos Theory, RU Breaks and I.O.U. and a Jackson impersonator performed at the tribute event at the Rutgers Student Center on the College Avenue campus. —Anastasia Millicker
SEE PANELS ON PAGE 4
Female physicist earns praise for advocacy BY ELIZABETH ZWIRZ CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Physics Professor Emerita Noemie Benczer Koller contributed more than five decades of professional work to the physics community, but she also spent her professional life advocating for the rights of her fellow scientists. Recommended by her peers, Koller was nominated for the 2010 Nicholson Medal for Human Outreach, an annual award recognizing the humanitarian aspect of physics and physicists. “Noemie has given up many hours of her professional life to making a difference for scientists who are persecuted around the world and unable to pursue their science,” said University physics Professor Jolie Cizewski, who nominated Noemie. At a time when the student body and faculty were entirely male, Koller began working at the
University in 1960 and was the first woman hired at Rutgers College and its physics department. “I knew it was a men’s college, but I didn’t realize the faculty was all men. I was very naïve at the time,” Koller said. Women who did work at the University usually worked at Douglass College, she said. “The physics department was kind and normal,” she said. “I never realized it was a special situation. The department was very friendly and I wasn’t worried about it.” But Koller star ted to get involved with gender issues when she became the first female faculty member to receive tenure at the University. The first project she pursued ensured that women in physics were given the same oppor tunities as men. She and her team analyzed the income of the
SEE PRAISE ON PAGE 4
IN HONOR OF THE KING
INDEX METRO First exclusive Salsa dance studio opens in New Brunswick.
OPINIONS George W. Bush warns the nation about the dangers of growing nativism. Did we give him a laurel or dart?
UNIVERSITY . . . . . . . 3 METRO . . . . . . . . . . 6 OPINIONS . . . . . . . . 8 DIVERSIONS . . . . . . 10 CLASSIFIEDS . . . . . . 12 CAMERON STROUD / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Dr. Freeze, a Michael Jackson impersonator, performs in the Rutgers Student Center Multipurpose Room last night as part of “Remember the King of Pop,” an event hosted by campus comedy group A 4 Effort.
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