The Battalion: March 21, 2017

TUESDAY, MARCH 21, 2017 | SERVING TEXAS A&M SINCE 1893 | © 2017 STUDENT MEDIA | @THEBATTONLINE

Business juniors Chase Giles and Gavin Menichini are part of the Thomas Brothers Collective, a candle company.

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A&M’s current STARS rating puts it ahead of universities leading in sustainability projects.

A&M earns gold rating for sustainability Office of Sustainability credits success to increased collaboration

By Rachel Knight @Reknight18

striving to be more than candles made in their kitchen.

“One day we hope to open a café that features locally made College Station goods because we have a passion for showcasing and investing in this city,” Chase said.

Giles and Menichini said there is a lot of culture in the College Station area that many are missing out on, and they want to spotlight those areas.

“We have so many ideas,” Chase said.

“Sometimes we’ll just sit down and talk for hours about all the things we want to accomplish here.”

This year Texas A&M received a gold rating from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education as the result of improved collaboration across campus.

Since Texas A&M started participating in the association’s rating program, known as STARS, in 2010 the university had received only silver ratings out of bronze, silver, gold and platinum rating possibilities. The Office of Sustainability had set a goal to achieve the STARS gold rating by 2018 and surpassed its goal this year by scoring higher on the STARS scale than anticipated.

The gold STARS rating puts Texas A&M in a more competitive range with similarly sized universities, and ahead of rival universities like the University of Texas, which scored a 55.67 landing them a silver rating.

In the past the Office of Sustainability submitted documentation to receive a STARS rating once every three years, but decided in 2016 that submitting a report every year has more advantages, according to the Sustainability Director Kelly Wellman.

“Last year we realized this has to be continuous improvement, and so we need to do this data every year,” Wellman said. “It helps drive the process. It makes us all more accountable.”

The Office of Sustainability worked with more than 30 stakeholders on campus to improve reporting about sustainability. Wellman said this strategy played a key role in the STARS rating improvement, citing a perfect score on the 2016 report in research as an example.

“We had a significant improvement because in research last time we had zero out of 12,” Wellman said. “We didn’t know how to report what type of sustainability focused or included research was happening on campus. Sponsored

CANDLES ON PG. 3

SUSTAINABILITY ON PG. 2

CANDLES

FOR A CAUSE Mariah Colon— THE BATTALION

Student trio starts business group hoping to support local culture

By Lauren McCaskill @lemoct21

A

typical week in the life of a Texas A&M student includes late night studying, tests and various meetings. Most students would not consider starting their own business, but business juniors Chase Giles and Gavin Menichini decided to do just that.

Giles and Menichini, along with industrial distribution junior Will Lancaster, make

up the Thomas Brothers Collective, a company that will open Tuesday, selling locally produced natural, soy candles.

The Thomas Brothers Collective is a group of student entrepreneurs who hope to open a number of small businesses that will help grow the B-CS community — starting with candles. The candles are made from 9 ounces of all-natural soy wax and their scents come from custom fragrance blends and essential oils. Each month, the group donates a portion of its profits to a different ministry or non-profit in the B-CS area, a practice they’ve named “Ministry of the Month.”

Chase and Gavin said their company is

A&M professor Tim Davis creates electronic art by visualizing music.

baseball

Bounce back SEEING SOUND

A&M’s seniors have gone 5-for-5 during the losing streak.

Cassie Stricker — THE BATTALION

A&M professor creates electronic art with music

By Pranav Kannan @pranavkannan92 Sparse matrix algorithms are behind many of the everyday tools used by people around the world. They are used in Google Street View, Google Earth, engineering simulations, financial markets and power systems. Tim Davis, A&M professor in computer science and engineering and a renowned expert in sparse matrix computations and creator of SuiteSparse, found another use: Creating works of electronic art by visualiz-

ing music.

Davis said the algorithms he develops are used to operate on matrices used in different applications. These matrices are not random blocks of data, but have structure to them. Davis collects these matrices from real applications and tests the algorithms to develop benchmarks.

“I have a collection of matrices that is used widely by researchers like me to test their methods,” Davis said.

“To understand these problems better we draw them, we convert these matrices to graphs and draw the graphs.”

Davis said fastcompany. com featured these visualizations on how science problems also yielded beautiful

art, catching the attention of the organizers of the London Electronics Arts Festival.

“I thought, this is not music these are matrices; that is kind of the thing that went through my mind,” Davis said.

Davis said graphs can be imagined as nodes that are connected by edges. He described his moment of inspiration as a combination of his knowledge on graphs, mathematics and music.

“I know how to take music, I can find relationships in the music and I could create a graph from the music and if the music has got regular beats I could get a mesh; and meshes are pretty, and if it is DAVIS ON PG. 4

FILE

A&M baseball will work to end a four-game losing streak this week

By Matt Koper @MattKoper The No. 23 Texas A&M baseball team looks to get back in the win column when it hosts Rice Tuesday night at Olsen Field.

After being swept over the weekend by Kentucky in the SEC opener, A&M has (147, 0-3 SEC) dropped its past four games — dating back to a 4-3 loss on March 14 against the University of Texas.

Over the four game skid, the Aggie’s seniors have gone 5-51 (.091) from the plate as a group, struggling to make contact with the ball. This includes Austin Homan, Blake Ko-

petsky, Walker Pennington and Nick Choruby. The slide from the veterans has resulted in Childress continuing to shuffle the lineup card.

Despite seeing a bit of an offensive slump from the upperclassmen, the younger hitters on the team have been productive — freshman Braden Shewmake is hitting for the highest average on the team at .404 and has knocked in the most runs at 26. Despite losing Saturday to Kentucky, Shewmake hit his third home run of the season. Cole Bedford trails Shewmake in average at .400 and Logan Foster is leading the team in homers at four.

The starters and the bullpen have also seen their fair share of struggles recently.

In the series opener against Kentucky, ace starter Brigham Hill was handed his first loss of the season, surrendering five runs over five BASEBALL ON PG. 5

Senior Boot Bag Senior Boot Bag

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A&M prof leads team of researchers to investigate Germanwings plane crash

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Computer simulation reconstructs destruction to determine cause

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An international team of scientists and mathematicians have been working to reconstruct the crash of Germanwings flight 9525, which burst into thousands of pieces upon impact in the the French Alps in 2015, through complex computer simulations.

Led by A&M professor of mathematics Goong Chen, the team used a computer model to recreate the plane and the surrounding terrain, and then virtually crash the plane in different ways to try to determine which initial conditions most likely led to the observed debris pattern.

“Through mathematical modeling and the ensued supercomputing, we can visualize from the dynamic video animation how the airliner was totally destructed and fragmented,” Chen said.

“This is like a ‘crime scene reenactment’ that is often critical in the investigation of any committed crime. But only computer simulation has made this possible, as physical experiments even with small scale models can be extremely expensive.”

According to Chen, the team had to collect data about the terrain from pictures provided by the French government, but that was all the contact they had with the crash site — the rest,

including the plane model and everything related to it, was all done on the computer. By comparing debris patterns on site with those in the simulations, the team was able to determine with remarkable accuracy how the plane struck the mountain.

Cong Gu, assistant professor of mathematics, and a former graduate student of Chen’s who worked on the project with him, described the procedure for creating a model that can mimic the disintegration of a complex structure like a plane into millions of fragments.

“After we set up the basic models, we take into account the geometry of the aircraft, and the local situation in the mountains,” Gu said.

Gu said each piece of geometry on the plane was divided into hundreds of thousands of pieces, and the inside of the plane was populated with particles to represent its contents.

According to Darren Hartl, Class of 2003 and assistant professor of aerospace engineering who has worked with similar technology before, that is typical for simulations of this kind.

“The most common way of doing the kind of design and analysis that we’re doing is the finite element method,” Hartl said. “And what that basically entails, to a layman, is taking a very complex structure and breaking it up into very, very tiny, very regular shapes.”

According to Hartl, finite element analysis, or FEA, allows for precise

programming of the plane’s contours, materials and densities.

“Every element can have its own material,” Hartl said. “One part is aluminum, another part is composite, the landing gear is steel, the aluminum for the top skin of the wing could be different than the aluminum for the bottom skin of the wing, and all that can be accounted for in FEA.” However, this technology is not strictly limited to the occasional remote plane crash. According to Chen, it can be applied to any structure with the potential to crack or break into small pieces, and the simulations are usually used as a preventative measure rather than as an accident reconstruction tool.

“This kind of ‘software-engineering technology’ using impact and fracture mechanics modeling and supercomputing can be applied to many safety designs such as automobile crashworthiness, and the integrity/survivability of nuclear power plants under terrorists’ attacks by crashing airplanes,” Chen said.

In the future, Chen said he believes simulations like these could save humanity.

“Ironically, the survival of our human civilization may also hinge on impact mechanics and engineering, as a wayward asteroid hitting the earth could easily wipe out our human civilization,” Chen said. “We need to think about how to ‘diffuse’ such incoming asteroids by breaking them up before they get too close to Earth.”

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Research Services really worked quickly to help us generate a database that we could review. That’s 12 points — that is almost as many points as you can claim on any one credit.”

Ben Kalscheur, sustainability assistant manager, said in addition to improved reporting small improvements in sustainability efforts and maintained scores added up quickly to help push Texas A&M over the gold rating threshold.

“Utilities and Energy Services also made some improvements in greenhouse gas emissions,” Kalscheur said. “Also, the building energy consumption, they were able to conserve energy in buildings. So we got a nice little point total increase there.”

Brian Christensen, a sustainability intern and team lead, said the gold rating represents a step in the right direction.

“It means that we are continuing to progress further and further,” Christensen said. “Not moving forward is a step backwards, and forward is obviously a step in the right direction. It means that we’re doing all the things we need to be doing to continue to improve and be more sustainable on campus.”

According to Kalscheur, despite common beliefs, sustainability is about more than the environment.

“Sustainability is about making sure that future generations of aggies are also able to have a really good experience in Aggieland,” Kalscheur said. “It’s kind of like a giant puzzle and how you have all these

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A&M has surpassed their goal of releasing the STARS gold rating by 2018.

pieces interlock to create a better world for everyone.”

Wellman said the contributions made by different departments and individuals on campus are about building a more sustainable future for Aggies.

“It really all comes down to your education as a student, or your research contributions as a faculty member, or what kind of environment does the staff here create to help you be successful,” Wellman said. “In our office we very much believe that sustainability is about people.”

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A TABLE FOR 2 to 6 ‘Tabletop Troupe’ meets every Thursday to play board games

By Mariah Colon @MariahColon18 Thursday nights are known for being college favorites, but instead of heading to Harry’s or Northgate, a group of friends had the idea to find entertainment in an older pastime — playing board games.

Texas A&M Tabletop Troupe, or T3, is comprised of a group of students who meet every Thursday night from 8 p.m. to midnight in the MSC basement to play a variety of board games. While the club does have active members, anyone is welcome to stop by and play.

Larry Vernier, chemistry junior and president of Tabletop Troupe, said Tabletop

Engineering freshman Quincy Huhn and history junior Samantha Hoagland play an interactive game at Tabletop Troupe’s weekly meeting.

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Troupe has existed unofficially since his freshman year.

“We used to just hang out and play board games, but as the number of people that wanted to play board games started growing we realized that the places where we were playing weren’t big enough,” Vernier said.

James Dietz, chemistry junior and executive of advertising for Tabletop Troupe, said the idea for the club grew out of wanting to start a board gaming community.

“We always enjoyed board games, board games were a community thing,” Dietz said.

“Larry came up to me and then we all met together and Larry said ‘Hey I really want to create a community around board games’ because we had experienced this bonding experience through them.”

Cole Hutton, food science and technology senior and treasurer of Tabletop Troupe, said he has learned a lot about the people he is with

through board games and has seen Tabletop Troupe grow over time.

“Games bring out a lot in people,” Hutton said. “We still get people who come all the time ... One of our biggest attendances was like 40 or 50 people and we had basically half of this [MSC basement] area to ourselves and that was really cool to see.”

Syed Anwar, chemical engineering sophomore and member of Tabletop Troupe, said Tabletop Troupe is one of his favorite clubs because it provides an avenue for people to play games and make friends — although one game is never on the table.

“The thing about physical board games is that it brings people together. You’re eye to eye and facing them and you have to be nice, a little vicious, sort of assertive that you want to win but at the same time you have to be kind about it,” Anwar said. “Every person I’ve played with here — I know their name, I’ve

hated them, I’ve loved them. It’s just one of those experiences where board games brings people together … But we do not play Monopoly here, we like all hate Monopoly. It destroys friendships.”

Vernier said the club collects dues from members to fund Tabletop Troupe’s board game library, but the club is focused on more than just games.

“The most rewarding thing about being in this club is the people. These people I hang out with every week and if it wasn’t for board games we probably would have never met so I am very thankful for that,” Vernier said. “The board game club is not even really about the board games it’s about the people you meet playing board games ... You learn things about the people you play with but you also learn things about yourself.”

10th annual College Sport Lecture Series to host 3 sports industry professionals, inform students

By Meredith McCown @meredithrhoads Hosted by the Laboratory for the Study of Intercollegiate Athletics and the Division of Sports Management, the 10th annual College Sport Lecture Series will provide an opportunity for students to acquire knowledge and information about the sports industry from a panel.

The panel will consist of three professionals in the sports field including Conference USA commissioner Judy MacLeod, Sun Belt conference commissioner Karl Benson and vice president for athletics at the University of Houston Hunter Yurachek.

Additionally, the panel will be moderated by vice chancellor for university advancement at Arkansas State and A&M former student Jason Penry. The lecture series will headline the topic, “The Future of the Group of Five Conferences,” followed by a question and answer session with the audience.

M.S. sport management and graduate assistant Juanita Rodriguez said the series is meant to learn more about the careers they are able to pursue.

CANDLES CONTINUED nity is not just a future goal — the Thomas Brothers have partnered with Young Life to send local high school students to camp this summer from the profit made from their new business.

“This is what we want at the heart of our company,” Chase said. “We want to inspire others and put our sense of community at the forefront.”

The pair said they love Texas A&M, but have fallen in love with the unique culture that surrounds the community like local restaurants and handmade pottery shops.

Thomas Brothers Collective received its name from the street the entrepreneurs live

M.S. in Biotechnology Laboratory-based, hands-on experience on a university medical center campus.

Professors are NIH-funded biomedical research faculty.

High faculty/student ratio.

The purpose of the College Sport Lecture Series (CSLS) is to provide a unique experience for students to gain knowledge from sport industry professionals,” Rodriguez said.

Shane Hudson is the assistant professor and internship coordinator in the Department of Health and Kinesiology Division of Sport Management. He said the goal of the event is to benefit every student at Texas A&M. “We want to bring college athletics to campus, we want to bring great speakers, and we want to impact our students,” Hudson said. “Not just our students, but these lecture series that we have are really for any student that wants to come.

And so we encourage any major, if they see an interest in one of our lecture series to make some time and show up for it.”

Jason Penry, moderator for the panel and former employee at the 12th Man Foundation, said he wants the attendees to walk away with as much knowledge as possible.

“I hope our audience has a better understanding after the panel discussion tomorrow about the Group of Five conferences, and it’s placed in an interconnected ecosystem so to speak in intercollegiate athletics,” Penry said. “And while we will probably find that there are differences such as resources,

and now work on.

“We live on Thomas Street, we’re like brothers and we want to come together to make something great,” Giles said.

Giles said like any company they have had difficulties, but it is worth it.

“It’s exciting to create the product,” Giles said. “Gavin is using techniques he learned in graphic design to make our labels and we’re getting to try out everything until it is perfect.”

Lancaster, who is Giles’ roommate, said the process of creating the company has been fun and to him that is what is most important.

“I’ve always seen it as if it fails then it was always something fun. We got to sit on the

there are also a lot of similarities between the Group of Five and the so called Power Five conferences.”

Penry said the event organizers are devoted to helping students in any way possible, and this lecture series is simply another way to assist.

“The sports management program at Texas A&M is near and dear to my heart and I’ve always been really impressed by the professors in the sports management program,” Penry said.

“They really care about their students and want them to have successful careers.”

According to Penry the information presented will be essential for sports management majors in the future.

“I would say as I learn more about the members of the Group of Five conferences … in a competitive marketplace, we’re happy to be in the FBS and competing against the Power Five conferences,” Penry said. “To be able to explore the similarities and differences, especially as it relates to resources, between the two conferences. I think it will be a great opportunity for sports management students in particular to have a better understanding of it all.”

kitchen floor until 3 a.m. talking about big ideas,” Lancaster said. “I think this would be the coolest thing in the world if this worked out and we got to expand into other things than just candles.”

Menichini, who has worked mainly with the design side of the company, said creating something — even as a student — can give anyone a rush.

“We feel like scientists and engineers as well as businessmen,” Menichini said. “There has been a lot that has gone into this, but we have had a lot of support from our friends and family.”

When asked what advice the Thomas Brothers would give to fellow young busi-

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nesspeople, Menichini said his philosophy is simple.

“Just go for it,” Menichini said. “Find something you are passionate about and run toward it.”

Chase added that having a support system and friends that will run with you through all your wild ideas makes the difficult times easier and their plans become a reality.

“Having people around you to encourage you and share that passion is important” Giles said. “If this fails, we’ll still have each other and a lot of candles.”

The Thomas Brothers Candle Co. website, www.thomas-brothers-candles.com will launch Tuesday.

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SPRING, DEADLINE TO APPLY: NOVEMBER 1 SUMMER, DEADLINE TO APPLY: APRIL 1 FALL, DEADLINE TO APPLY: JULY 1 Contact Ashley Jones at ajones@bus.olemiss.edu / 662-915-5483

Professor Tim Davis’ art has been featured at the London Arts Festival in England.

DAVIS CONTINUED meshes are pretty, and if it is complex who knows what I could get,” Davis said.

“One week later I had the artwork that eventually all over on billboards in London advertising the festival.”

Davis said there have been efforts by other researchers and artists to go in the reverse direction and use mathematical rules to generate music. There also exists a whole branch of music visualization, where a snapshot of the image being rendered was instantaneous, but Davis’ algorithms work differently.

“What you are seeing here is rendering the entire piece of music in a single image,” Davis said.

Yifan Hu, principal research scientist at Yahoo Research said he has used Davis’ matrices to test his visualization algorithms that led to a collaboration and papers. The graphviz algorithm utilized by Davis was originally developed by AT&T labs and was expanded by Hu to handle much larger graphs.

“Graphviz basically turns

a mathematical description of graph, to a visualization of nodes and edges — a node is a point and edge is a line,” Hu said. “You can see structures, patterns and anomalies in your relational data.”

Davis’ research has resulted in not only creating new algorithms, but also new software. Davis said to convert his algorithms to usable tools, voluminous code needs to be generated which needs to be perfect without any bugs. He said the code he creates is a published artifact and is peer reviewed by journals.

“I love creating new algorithms and new theory, though I also love writing code,” Davis said. “And it has to be perfect. I have this intense drive to make it perfect, and to make it perfect it has to be in some aesthetic sense beautiful in my own mind.”

Davis said the art comes in several places, including creating the rules to render the music, writing the code to implement the rules and then selection from the vast space of renderingsgenerated.

“I will generate a vast landscape, thousands upon thousands of images and then I will go manually through them, and say, ‘Oh yeah, this renders the music well; this is beautiful,’” Davis said.

Juan Rey, senior engineering director at Mentor Graphics, has been collaborating with Davis since 2013 on solving large sparse matrix problems, during the course of which he became familiar with Davis’ artwork.

Rey commissioned the creation of a visualization based off music composed by biologists he liked from Patagonia in Argentina.

“I got very much fascinated by learning more about the algorithms he has been developing to create these unique representations of music,” Rey said. “I was very pleased with the work that he did.”

Davis said he does not claim the uniqueness of the rendering of the music, but more as an artistic interpretation of the music.

“My tool is not a paintbrush, it‘s an algorithm and Matlab — it’s math,” Davis said.

www.olemissbusiness.com/MBA

ACCOUNTABILITY EXPERIENCE ENG ENGAGING ENERGY LEADERSHIP SHIP MWORK TEAMWORK PARK WEST IS HIRING RA’S FOR FALL 2017!

Want to be an RA at Aggieland’s Newest and Largest Community?

Find out how by attending an Informational Session at the Park West leasing office, located on Luther Street.

Call Park West at 979.353.0042 for more information.

INFO SESSIONS: MARCH 22 MARCH 23 6-7 PM

SPORTS

5

The Battalion | 3.21.17

THE TEXAS A&M STUDENT MEDIA BOARD INVITES APPLICATIONS FOR

Editor-in-Chief

Jorge Gutierrez and Braden Shewmake do a handshake.

BATT THE

The IndependenT STudenT VoIce of TexaS a&M SInce 1893

Fall 2017 –Spring 2018 (The fall and spring editor will oversee print and digital editions, and serve Aug. 14, 2017, through May 14, 2018)

Qualifications for editor-in-chief of The Battalion are:

FILE

BASEBALL CONTINUED giving up three runs leading to a 7-6 defeat. To close out the weekend, Mitchell Kilkenny and three relievers combined to give up 11 runs en route to an 11-7 loss.

The Aggies will look to get back on schedule with a win against Rice before continuing SEC play on the road against Vanderbilt this weekend.

The Owls, (6-16, 0-3 Conference USA) head to College Station after being swept over the weekend by Old Dominion on the road, including a 2-0 shutout loss in the series finale on Sunday.

Catcher Dominic DiCaprio and shortstop Ford Proctor lead the Owls on offense, batting .382 with 16 RBI and .333 with 12 RBI, respectively. Nine hitters on the roster have hit home runs, with outfielder Darryn Sheppard hitting the most long balls at two. Sheppard is second on the team in RBI at 13 and trails only his teammate, DiCaprio.

On the mound, starter Matt Canterino has a 1-1 record with a 2.93 ERA in five starts and has maintained the lowest ERA among his fellow starters. Addison Ross has been solid in relief for the Owls. In four appearances he owns a 2.45 ERA over 7.1 innings pitched.

First pitch is set for 6 p.m. and the game will be broadcast on the SEC Network.

REQUIRED • Be a Texas A&M student in good standing with the University and enrolled in at least six credit hours (4 if a graduate student) during the term of office (unless fewer credits are required to graduate); • Have at least a 2.25 cumulative grade point ratio (3.25 if a graduate student) and at least a 2.25 grade point ratio (3.25 if a graduate student) in the semester immediately prior to the appointment, the semester of appointment and semester during the term of office. In order for this provision to be met, at least six hours (4 if a graduate student) must have been taken for that semester.

PREFERRED • Have completed JOUR 301 or COMM 307 (Mass Communication, Law, and Society) or equivalent; • Have at least one year experience in a responsible editorial position on The Battalion or comparable daily college newspaper, – OR – Have at least one year editorial experience on a commercial newspaper, – OR – Have completed at least 12 hours in journalism, including JOUR 203 (Media Writing I) and JOUR 303 (Media Writing II) or JOUR 304 (Editing for the Mass Media), or equivalent.

Application forms should be picked up from and returned to Douglas Pils, Student Media General Manager, in Suite L410 of the MSC. Deadline for submitting application: 5 p.m. Tuesday, March 28, 2017.

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ANSWERS

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